What was the lifestyle like for vikings?

Answer 1

The greatest and most aggressive viking warriors came from Norway and Denmark. Sweden and Finland also produced large numbers of viking warriors, but their raids were no where near as large as their Norwegian and Danish counterparts. But to look at why the longboat was so important to the Vikings, look at their culture and and the geography of Scandinavia.

The Vikings were all warriors. Even before the 800s when their raids on Europe began, their tribes frequently fought each other over territory, kingship, or whatever wealth one tribe or another had. This produced a culture that was very willing to fight and trained its children to fight from a very early age. Now, while they were politically divided, they mostly warred amongst themselves, but when they began to produce some semblance of unity in the late 700s, they were able to prepare to go beyond Scandinavia to attack other peoples. The Vikings predominately sailed on the North Sea and the North Atlantic, both potentially violent. They thus needed strong sturdy ships that could survive the sells and possible storms. While their favorite target was the British Isles, they also raided modern France and went as far south as the Mediterranean. Their boats, thus also needed a low draft to be able to sail up rivers or to successfully "beach" itself without worry about taking damage in doing so. The perfection of the longboat reinforced the Viking warrior culture as it allowed them to sail great distances and strike seemingly more powerful countries at will.

The other reason is geography. Norway is extremely mountainous and crisscrossed by deep fjords. Most of the people living in Denmark live around the island that the modern city of Copenhagen is located on. Sweden and Finland have lakes scattered throughout their territory. This made it difficult to build roads in Norway alone, and unlike much of Western and Southern Europe which could try to copy Roman roads, there was no earlier engineering super-power in Scandinavia. This left traveling by boat as their only real source of travel beyond their immediate hometowns.