Viking Age Impact and Events

Maps

• Maps show Viking trading/raiding routes, homelands, and settlements.
• Modern political boundaries are shown for reference only.
• Viking maps used oral knowledge, environmental observations, and rudimentary navigational tools.

Singularity

• Concept captures small, cumulative changes leading to systemic transformation.
• Societies change through accumulation of events, not individual events.
• Minor shifts (trade routes, seafaring techniques, social norms) coalesce into large-scale societal restructuring.
• Viking Age emergence resulted from interconnected minor adjustments.

Lindisfarne (AD 793, NE England)

• Beginning of the Viking Age.
• Monastery in Northumbria (Anglo-Saxon kingdom in Northern England).
• Monks were killed or enslaved.
• Viking raids increased frequency on Britain, Ireland, and France.
• Scandinavian armies overwintered in England by AD 850.
• Danish conquest of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England by AD 870.

Salme Ship Burials (Estonia, ca. AD 750)

• Earlier example of a Viking raid to the east.
• 42 individuals buried in two Viking longships.
• Shield mound burial.
• Males killed in battle (trauma).
• DNA shows family relations.
• Ships embedded with arrowheads.
• Stable isotopes and artifacts indicate origin in central Sweden.
• Occurred 50-100 years earlier than the Lindisfarne raid.
• Possibly a failed raiding party or alliance attempt.
• Baltic Sea (not the Atlantic) was the initial phase of Viking history.

Documentary Accounts of Raids (Late 700s)

• Vikings came to raid, not trade.
• Surprise was that they came to raid.
• Religious dimension: Most of England was Christian, Vikings were "Seaborne pagans".
• Isolated, undefended, rich monasteries.
• Coastal monasteries in Scotland and Ireland were targets.

Maritoria: Viking Raids Part of Political Economy

• Political economy: Study of how economic systems and political systems are linked.
• Maritoria: New form of power combining aspirations of kings with control of territory and new markets.
• Linked by relations with the sea.

Economic Changes during Early Medieval Period (AD 476 – 1000)

• Warlord elites were at the end of the Roman Empire.
• Trade was initially localized.
• New market forces included the addition of long-distance trade leading to the establishment of trading towns.
• Trading towns became gateways to interior trading networks.

Ladoga

• Medieval trading town founded ca AD 750 in today's Russia.
• Ethnically mixed (Slavs, Scandinavians, Finns, Balts, Sami).
• Scandinavians dominated trade early.
• Later ethnically blended, melting pot.
• Frontier settlement.
• Raiding and trading were two components of the same phenomenon.

Sea Kings of Viking Age

• Critical to the beginnings of the Viking Age.
• Initially turned east (Baltic Sea) before turning west (North Sea).
• Vikings combined violent raiding with trading across ethnic lines.

Explore the significant events and transformations during the Viking Age, including the beginning of Viking raids at Lindisfarne, societal changes due to cumulative shifts, and key geographical insights. Understand how these factors contributed to the Viking Age's emergence and expansion across Europe.