The Vikings became assimilated into Irish culture and values.Dublin as a seat of power for the Vikings.The arrival of new Viking leaders change the luck of the Irish.Ireland was unprepared and a tempting target.Viking also called Norseman or Northman, a member of the Scandinavian seafaring warriors who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe from the 9th to the 11th century and reached east to Russia and Constantinople, (referred to as Varangians by the Byzantine sources and by the Russian Primary Chronicle.) For other uses, see Viking (disambiguation). Leif Eriksson, known from Icelandic sagas as a descendant from a line of Viking chieftains, who had established the first European settlement in Greenland in about 985, was most likely the European discoverer of America in about 1000. The first Oxford English Dictionary reference to Wiking dates from 1807.Ĩ00) in Scandinavia meant a man from the Vik, the bay that lies between Cape Lindesnes in Norway and the mouth of the Göta River in Sweden. The spelling viking in Modern English is first recorded in 1840. The word is not found in Middle English but only came into use in modern historical writings. The term Viking Age has come to denote the years from about 800 to 1050 in Scandinavian History. The term Viking has also denoted entire populations of Viking Age Scandinavia and their settlements, as an expanded meaning. For example the traders and raiders of the era that originated from the eastern coast of the Baltic sea were first mentioned in the Icelandic sagas as the (Norwegian: Vikinger fra Estland), Estonian vikings Viking voyages decreased and ended with the introduction of Christianity to Scandinavia in the late 10th and 11th century. The Principles of English Etymology By Walter W. *wik, a creek, bay, with suffix -uig-r, belonging to Skeat, Published in 1892, defined Viking: better Wiking, Icel. In Old Norse, this would be spelled víkingr, a man from the Vik, the bay that lies between Cape Lindesnes in Norway and the mouth of the Göta River in Sweden. It may be noted that Viken was the old name of the region bordering on the Skagerrak, from where the first Norse merchant-warriors originated. The Swedish county bordering on the Skagerrak, which is now called Bohuslän, was previous to the construction of the Bohus fortress also called Vikland. Vikland was once a part of the Norse district of Viken. Later on, the term, Viking, became synonymous with "naval expedition" or "naval raid", and a víking was a member of such expeditions. A second etymology suggested that the term is derived from Old English, wíc, ie. "trading city" (cognate to Latin vicus, "village").Įtymologists trace the word to Anglo-Frankish writers, who referred to " víkingr" as one who set about to raid and pillage, as in the saga of Egil Skallagrimsson. In current Scandinavian languages, the term Viking is applied to the people who went away on Viking expeditions, be it for raiding or trading. In English and many other languages, Viking might refer to the Viking Age Scandinavians in general. The pre-Christian Scandinavian population is also referred to as Norse, although that term is properly applied to the whole civilization of Old-Norse-speaking people. The word Viking appears on several rune stones found in Scandinavia. In the Icelanders' sagas, víking refers to an overseas expedition (Old Norse fara í víking "to go on an expedition"), and víkingr, to a sea-man or warrior taking part in such an expedition. In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the Anglo-Saxon poem, "Widsith", which probably dates from the 9th century. In Old English, and in the writings of Adam von Bremen, the term refers to a pirate, and is not a name for a people or a culture in general. Regardless of its possible origins, the word was used more as a verb than as a noun, and connoted an activity and not a distinct group of individuals. To "go Viking" was distinctly different from Norse seaborne missions of trade and commerce. The word disappeared in Middle English, and was reintroduced as Viking during 18th century Romanticism (the "Viking revival"), with heroic overtones of "barbarian warrior" or noble savage.
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