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Viking: Beyond The Conquest

Vikings:
Beyond the Conquest

Looking back to the early middle ages, we can see that medieval Europe was plagued with conflict stemming from both internal matters, as well as foreign attackers. For the European inhabitants, one of the most dreaded and feared forms of external attacks came from the ferocious Norsemen, or more commonly know as Vikings.
When identifying and labeling a group of people as "terrifying", it becomes historically important to look into that group's culture and background to determine how their civilization promoted and bread such brutish and violent warriors. These are the warriors who would successfully loot and terrorized all of Europe during the Middle Ages. However, despite this fierce reputation, it would be a mistake to believe that the Vikings were such one dimensional people, who's only role in life was to seek out and destroy those around them. It can be seen, in fact, that the Scandinavian people who were attributed to having raped, pillaged and plundered all through Western Europe, were also land loving, and cultured individuals, many of whom led lives comparable to those throughout Europe. "Discussion of the Viking Age has all too often been dominated by the picture of fierce, pitiless barbarians spreading terror and destruction in their boundless lust for loot, while many less sensational but equally important aspects of the period have been overlooked. This is largely due to the one-sided view… who very understandably, saw the Vikings solely as plunderers and extorters of tribute." As one can deduce after studying the people who inhabited the land of Scandinavia, the lives of the Vikings populous was much more sophisticated and had more purpose than that of looting the lands of the medieval Europeans.
As we investigate the Vikings and their heritage, we must first look at their place of origin and their way of life to see what type of individual come from the "Northlands". When looking at any culture, by...