Who were the Vikings and why did they invade Europe?

Answer 1

The Vikings were a group of Norse peoples that came from the lands that are now parts of modern day Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. They were both skilled mariners and warriors. They spoke various dialects of what we now call the Old Norse language, a Teutonic language (Old Germanic dialects including the Anglo-Saxon dialect that became Old English are also Teutonic languages). They had a pre-Christian religion at a time when most of the rest of Europe was Catholic.

They invaded Europe to plunder and conquer. They often picked Catholic monasteries as targets, where the unarmed monks could not fight against them or small villages where there were no fortifications.

They also settled in large parts of England (e.g. Northumbria) and northwestern France (hence the region called 'Normandy') and conquered and ruled Sicily for centuries.

Answer 2

Vikings (at the time they were always called either Normans or Norsemen) was the generic name for the inhabitants of Scandinavia and Denmark. Since their homeland barely provided the means and climate to survive by farming and fishing alone, the Normans quickly developed as a seafaring people.

We know them today often mostly because of the stories about their looting, plundering of churches and convents and raping of nuns and maidens young and old. But that aspect (plus the 'cruelty') of these activities is much exaggerated; history writers at the time were mostly monks who took a very dim view of people helping themselves to church property and treasure, especially as these people were heathens as well.

Of course there were raids in which any valuables not too heavy to carry aboard were taken, but in many more cases, Normans were looking for places to settle and take the pressure off a homeland that could not feed them all. England and Ireland especially are much influenced by Norman expeditions: firstly, because in the early Middle Ages the Normans settled in Ireland and large parts of eastern England. Secondly, because of William the Conqueror's conquest of England; which came out of the French duchy of Normandy: another Norman settlement that had been allowed and even encouraged by the French kings who had made William's Norman forefather a duke in return for his services to the French Crown.

In other areas, they discovered and settled Iceland and Greenland. They also discovered America and even settled there some 600 years before Columbus did. They ruled over Sicily and supported the Pope against his enemies in Italy and elsewhere. In the Byzantine Empire, they settled as traders, covering the whole of the Black Sea area; and they provided the Emperor of Byzantium with a long-standing lifeguard regiment. In what is now the Baltic and Russia, they were the main importers and exporters of goods and an important factor in the early economic development of those countries.