Alan Ericksen, age 12, of Gulfport, Miss., for his question:
WHEN WAS THE VIKING AGE?
A period of time known as the Viking Age ran from AD 800 to about 1100. It was during these years that the Nordic people traveled extensively during a period of dynamic Scandinavian expansion. Taking part were Danes, Swedes and Norwegians.
The Viking Age has long been popularly associated with unbridled piracy, when freebooters came swarming out of the northlands in their predatory longships to burn and pillage their way across civilized Europe. This, however, has long been recognized as a gross simplification. Modern scholars emphasize the achievements of the Viking Age in terms of Scandinavian art and craftsmanship, marine technology, exploration and the development of commerce. The Vikings were more properly called traders, not raiders.
Derivation of the word Viking is disputed. It may be from Old Norse "vik" (meaning a bay or creed) or Old English "wic" (meaning a fortified trade settlement.)
Not every Scandinavian was a professional warrior or Viking, and not every Viking was a pirate. The motives of Viking Age expansion are complex. Land shortage in Scandinavia, improved iron production and the need for new markets probably all played a part.
The first recorded Viking raid was a seaborne assault by Norwegian marauders on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, just off the northeast shoulder of England in 793. Growing evidence, however, indicates that considerable overseas Viking migration, west across the North Sea and east across the Baltic, occurred long before that.
Swedish entrepreneurs penetrated the hinterland of Russia, pioneering new trade routes down the Volga and the Dnepr, founding city states such as Kiev and Novgorod, and opening the way to Constantinople and the exotic markets of Arabia and the Far East.
Vikings discovered and settled uninhabitated lands in the Atlantic, including Iceland and Greenland, and they launched expeditions to North America.
From Greenland the Vikings launched ambitious expeditions to settle on the eastern seaboard of North America, which they called Vinland. But these attempts to colonize the New World about 500 years before Columbus were soon abandoned in the face of hostility from the native Indians.
Stories of the abortive American venture are recorded in medieval Icelandic sagas but little authentic evidence of the Viking presence has been found, apart from substantial traces of a Viking Age settlement in northern Newfoundland.
All other Viking "finds," such as the Kensington Stone, have been exposed as forgeries or hoaxes, or merely wishful thinking.
The impact of the Vikings was less enduring than might have been expected. In general, they had a great capacity for assimilating into local populations. However, a century and a half after settling in Normandy, their Franco Viking descendents were strong enough in 1066 to conquer England and in 1090 to conquer Sicily.