It is also possible that a decline in the profitability of old trade routes drove the Vikings to seek out new, more profitable ones. Nor is it clear why such pressures would have prompted expansion overseas rather than into the vast, uncultivated forest areas in the interior of the Scandinavian Peninsula, although perhaps emigration or sea raids may have been easier or more profitable than clearing large areas of forest for farm and pasture in a region with a limited growing season. However, no rise in population, youth bulge, or decline in agricultural production during this period has been definitively demonstrated. Peter Sawyer suggests that most Vikings emigrated due to the attractiveness of owning more land rather than the necessity of having it. Īlternatively, some scholars propose that the Viking expansion was driven by a youth bulge effect: Because the eldest son of a family customarily inherited the family's entire estate, younger sons had to seek their fortune by emigrating or engaging in raids. This may have been true of western Norway, where there were few reserves of land, but it is unlikely that the rest of Scandinavia was experiencing famine. Illustrated by French painter Évariste Vital Luminais in the 19th century.Ī different idea is that the Viking population had exceeded the agricultural potential of their homeland. Viking men often kidnapped foreign women for marriage or concubinage from lands that they had pillaged. Ī depiction of Vikings kidnapping a woman. According to the historian Peter Sawyer, these were raided because they were centers of wealth and their farms well-stocked, not because of any religious reasons. However, the first target of Viking raids was not the Frankish Kingdom, but Christian monasteries in England. Those who favor this explanation point out that the penetration of Christianity into Scandinavia caused serious conflict and divided Norway for almost a century. Īnother theory is that it was a quest for revenge against continental Europeans for past aggressions against the Vikings and related groups, Charlemagne's campaign to force Saxon pagans to convert to Christianity by killing any who refused to become baptized in particular. The Annals of Ulster states that in 821 the Vikings plundered an Irish village and "carried off a great number of women into captivity". Polygynous marriage increases male-male competition in society because it creates a pool of unmarried men who are willing to engage in risky status-elevating and sex-seeking behaviors. Viking men would often buy or capture women and make them into their wives or concubines. Due to this, the average Viking man could have been forced to perform riskier actions to gain wealth and power to be able to find suitable women. Rich and powerful Viking men tended to have many wives and concubines, and these polygynous relationships may have led to a shortage of eligible women for the average Viking male. The concept was expressed in the 11th century by historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin in his semi-imaginary History of The Normans. Researchers have suggested that Vikings may have originally started sailing and raiding due to a need to seek out women from foreign lands. There is much debate among historians about what drove the Viking expansion. Longer lasting and more established Norse settlements were formed in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Russia, Ukraine, Great Britain, Ireland and Normandy. To the west, Vikings under Leif Erikson, the heir to Erik the Red, reached North America and set up a short-lived settlement in present-day L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. Viking expansion was the historical movement which led Norse explorers, traders and warriors, the latter known in modern scholarship as Vikings, to sail most of the North Atlantic, reaching south as far as North Africa and east as far as Russia, and through the Mediterranean as far as Constantinople and the Middle East, acting as looters, traders, colonists and mercenaries.
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