(Jody Gray) The history of Europe is provided by members of the clergy or men commissioned by kings; and, often foreign visitors -as such, their presentation is biased (written to “present specific events and persons in a positive way and their opponents in a negative way”). Note: this is an on-going project; I’m certain I’ll be adding more...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_of_Bremen Adam of Bremen, was a German medieval chronicler; he lived and worked in the 2nd half of the 11th Century -he is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesia Pontificum (Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gesta_Hammaburgensis_ecclesiae_pontificum Covers the period known as the Viking Age, from the foundation of the bishopric under Willehad in 788 until the rule of prince-bishop Adalbert in Adam’s own time (1043-1072). The text focuses on the history of the Hamburg-Bremen diocese and its bishops (who also had jurisdiction over the missions to Scandinavia), it also gives a report of the Norse paganism of the period. The text is one of the most important sources of Northern German and Scandinavian history and geography in the Viking Age and the beginning of High Middle Ages. It covers the relations between Saxons, Wends (West Slavs) and Danes (Vikings)... The text was presented to bishop Liemar was completed in 1075/6. The Archdiocese of Bremen was designated the “Mission of the North” and had jurisdiction over all missions in Scandinavia, and the entire scope of Viking expansion in the north (Russia, Iceland, Greenland), throughout the Viking Age, until the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen had a falling-out with the pope, and separate archbishopric for the North was established by Lund in 1105.
Adam is also an important source of Viking Age Norse paganism, including the practice of human sacrifice. The description of the temple at Uppsala is one of the most famous excerpts of the Gesta: “In this temple, entirely decked out in gold, the people worship the statues of three gods in such wise that the mightiest of them, Thor, occupies a throne in the middle of the chamber; Wotan and Frikko have places on either side… Thor, they say, presides over the air, which governs the thunder and lightning, the winds and rains, fair weather [and] crops. The other, Wotan, that is Fury [Wodan] -carries on war and imparts to man strength against his enemies. The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals. His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus.” *References: “There is a festival at Uppsala every nine years. The sacrifice is as follows; of every kind of male creature, nine victims are offered. By the blood of these creatures it is the custom to appease the gods. Their bodies, moreover, are hanged in a grove which is adjacent to the temple. This grove is so sacred to the people that the separate trees in it are believed to be holy because of the death or putrefaction of the sacrificial victims. There even dogs and horses hang beside human beings.”
The fourth book describes the geography of Scandinavia and the Baltic region… a description of the coast of Scandinavia and of the “northern isles” including Iceland, Greenland and notably Vinland (North America), being the oldest extant written record of the Norse discovery of North America. Adam of Bremen had been at the court of Danish king Sven Estridson and was informed about the Viking discoveries in the North Atlantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org Sweyn II of Denmark, Reign 1047-1076; son of Estrid Swendsdatter and Ulf Jarl… *https://en.wikipedia.org The Deeds of the Saxons is a three-volume chronicle of 10th century Germany written by Widukind of Corvey. Widukind, proud of his people and history, begins his chronicon, not with Rome, but with a brief synopsis derived from the orally-transmitted history of the Saxons (he omits Italian events in tracing the career of Henry the Fowler and he never mentioned a pope). His Gesta is known from five manuscripts… The work was first completed in 967/8, when it was dedicated to Mathilda, the young daughter of Otto I and newly appointed abbess of Quedlinburg (it is likely that the dedication was not originally part of Widukind’s design and that he consequently had to make a number of adjustments to suit other needs… He starts book one with the fall of the Germanic Thuringian dynasty… he ends.... An allusion to the conversion of the Saxons to Christianity under Charlemagne brings him to the early Saxon dukes and details of the reign of Henry the Fowler. The second book opens with the election of Otto the Great… Book three tells the story of Liudolf, Duke of Swabia and Otto’s Fanconian campaign.
https://en.wikipedia.org Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish historian, theologian and author, is the author of the first full history of Denmark… He lived in a period of warfare and Danish expansion, led by Archbishop Absalon and the Valdemars. The Danes were also being threatened by the Wends who were making raids across the border and by sea… Saxo comes from a warrior family and writes that he is himself committed to being a soldier. He tells us that he follows “the ancient right of hereditary service,” and that his father and grandfather “were recognized frequenters of your renowned sire’s (Vlademar I) war camp.” (Some suggest the title “Grammaticus” refers not to his education but rather his elaborate Latin style.)
Gesta Danorum. In the preface, Saxo writes that his patron Absalon, Archbishop of Lund had encouraged him to write a heroic history of the Danes. The history is thought to have been started about 1185. The goal was as Saxo writes “to glorify our fatherland,”... His history of the Danes was compiled from sources that are of questionable historical value. He drew on oral tales of the Icelanders, ancient volumes, letters carved on rocks and stones, and the statements of his patron Absalon concerning the history of which the Archbishop had been a part. Saxo’s work was not strictly a history or a simple record of old tales, rather it was “a product of Saxo’s own mind and times,” he combines the history and mythology of the heroic age of Denmark and reworks it into his own story that exemplifies the past of the Danes.
The history is composed of sixteen books and extends from the time of the founders of the Danish people, Dan I of Denmark and Angul into about the year 1187. The first four are concerned with the history of the Danes before Christ, the next four with the history after Christ, books 9-12 Christian Denmark and 13-16 promote Lund and the exploits early before and during Saxo’s own lifetime.
https://en.wikipedia.org Dan I of Denmark; with whom the stock of the Danes begins, were begotten of Humble, their father, and were governors and not only the founders of our race… by the wish and favor of their country they gained the lordship of the realm, and, owing to the wondrous deserts of their bravery, got the supreme power by the consenting voice of their countrymen… https://en.wikipedia.org Snorri Sturluson; 1179-1241, was an Icelandic historian, poet, and politician. He was author of the Heimskringla, a history of the Norwegian kings that begins with legendary material in Ynglinga saga and moves through to the early medieval Scandinavian history. He proposes the hypothesis that mythological gods begin as human war leaders and kings whose funeral sites develop cults. As people call upon the dead war leader as they go to battle, or the dead king as they face tribal hardship, they begin to venerate the figure. Eventually, the king or warrior is remembered only as a god. He also proposed that as tribes defeat others, they explain their victory by proposing that their own gods were in battle with the gods of others.
Meaning and Use of the word Viking: Viking was a verb used by Danes to describe the type of raiding, pillaging, and sacking they did. When one went on a raiding trip such as this, one said “We are going viking.” People who were engaging in this type of activity at the time were referred to as Vikings.
(illustration, left) Rune Stone inscription: Toski the Viking raised the stone in memory of Gunnarr, Grimr’s son, May God help his soul.
https://www.quora.com Were the Vikings really as brutal as pop-history likes to portray them? Some of the legendary Viking deeds of cruelty probably result from misunderstandings of poetry. Poetry in Old Norse could be extremely hard to follow because of its heavy use of obscure synonyms and figures of speech. Anyone who’s read Beowulf will have seen kennings: “whale-road” for the sea, “ring-bearer” for a king, and so on. Some forms of Norse poetry use so many kennings that figuring out the poem is like solving the crossword puzzle… “The tree of the storm of shield-serpents” means a warrior (“shield-serpent” = sword of shield-serpents” = “storm of swords” = battle; “tree of the storm of shield-serpents” = “tree of battle” = warrior).
Anyway, there’s a long poem called Krakumal (“Words of the Raven”), supposedly recited by Ragnar Lodbrok (yes, that Ragnar Lodbrok) as he is dying from being flung into a pit of venomous snakes by King Ælle of England. He refers to a quaffing beer from “bent trees of the skull”. That’s a kenning for cattle horns, which grow from the skull and are bent. But when the poem was translated in the 1600s, someone misread the verse and translated it as “drinking beer from skulls of the slain”. (Warriors are often called “trees of battle”; this is probably how “bent trees” was read as “fallen warriors”.) Thus the Vikings got the reputation for using the skulls of their enemies as drinking vessels, which they didn’t actually do.
The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok quotes another poem about Ragnar’s sons’ vengeance on King Ælle. It’s hard to understand because of its quirky word order, but it probably means “Ivar and Ælle’s back carved by an eagle”. Which is a poetic way of saying “Ivar killed Ælle and allowed eagles to scavenge his body.” That’s gross, but it’s a very common image in Norse (and Old English) poetry; when you kill enemies, you “feed the ravens” or “feed the wolves” or “feed the eagles”, those three species being the Beasts of battle, the usual battlefield scavengers. But the verse was read “carved with an eagle” by the writer of the saga prose who describes someone taking a knife and carving the picture of an eagle on Ælle’s back. That evolved into the “blood-eagle” rite, in which, allegedly, Vikings killed people by slicing through the ribs along either side of the backbone and then pulling the lungs out through the gashes. Hideous, gory, and horrifically cruel - and probably not something the real Vikings ever did; it’s a misinterpretation of a difficult verse. Even other references to the blood-eagle in sagas like Orkneyinga saga are probably the result of medieval saga-writers misreading old poems. . (See Roberta Frank's 1984 article for details: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle . -Notes and Documents. Viking atrocity and Skaldic verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle.)
So: The Vikings could indeed be killers. But at least two of the most infamous blood-soaked atrocities attributed them them are probably misunderstandings of old poetry (which is amazingly easy to misunderstand, and I say this as someone who’s attempted to translate it).
Other "historical" Vikings: *https://en.wikipedia.org Thorkell the Tall, is a historical figure… his associations with the legendary Jomsvikings (see, following)... Thorkell took part in the Battle of Hjorungavagr in 986… Battle of Swold in 1000… attacked England in 1010… Entered the service of King Ethelred the Unready, whom they fought under in 1013 against the invasion of (Danish) king Sweyn Forkbeard and his son Cnut…
*https://en.wikipedia.org Jomsvikings, a legendary order of Viking mercenaries -staunchly Pagan… Since the site of their headquarters has never been conclusively located, confirming the tales of their exploits is somewhat difficult… There are no contemporary sources mentioning the names Jomsviking or Jomsborg, but there are three contemporary runestones…
https://www.quora.com Which modern day people are descended from the Vikings? (Christopher Gilmore) Plenty! The Vikings travelled and settled far and wide.
1. Inhabitants of Scandinavian countries, obviously (the Norwegians, Swedes (House of Munso, Rurik, Varangian tribe), Danes, Islanders, etc.). Iceland was basically a Viking Colony, so too was Greenland but Medieval climate change forced its Nordic inhabitants to abandon the Eastern and Western settlements.
2. Many Scottish people (particularly those of Shetland and Orkney Islands, which are largely Norse and not really Celtic at all in their cultural character and ethnic descent; a hybrid Nordic-Gaelic culture emerged in much of the Outer Hebrides).
3. Many English people, England was routinely raided and invaded by the Vikings and the English had three Danish kings (most famously, Cnut the Great) (Sweyn Forkbeard, Cnut the Great). Several centuries later (the 11th century) England was invaded by the Normans, who were basically the francophone (francia) descendants of Vikings from northern France (Normandy) (Rollo, William the Conqueror).
4. Many Irish people, as the Vikings routinely raided Ireland and established several colonies that are still around today (the cities of Dublin (Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan Ragnarsson), Wexford and Waterford - “ford” or actually a corruption of “fjord” in this case). Viking political power in Ireland remained until the victory of the Irish King Brian Boru at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.
5. Many Canadians, Americans, Australians and New Zealanders -obviously those of direct Scandinavian descent, but even those of Irish, Scottish, English and French descent (which accounts for a large proportion of their respective populations).
6. Many French people (particularly the inhabitants of Normandy) (Rollo, William the Conqueror).
7. Many Russians (Russia itself was founded by the “Volga Vikings”) (Varangian tribe, Rurik Dynasty)
Related - Blog Post: House of Denmark. http://historicalandmisc.blogspot. *
xxx
What does the word Viking mean? It appears in both noun and verb forms on rune stones. The runic inscriptions suggest that a viking was a man who left his homeland for adventure and profit abroad, with the implication that he planned to return home with his newly won fortune and fame. The word existed in both noun form (vikingr, the person traveling for adventure) and a verb form (viking, to travel or participate in one of these adventure). In the Old Norse language, vikingr means a man from vik, where vik may have a sense of a bay, or the specific bay called Vikin in the south of Norway. Perhaps the name was applied because the first Viking raiders were from Vikin, or perhaps because the raiders waited in sheltered bays for their victims.
By the time the Sagas of Icelanders came to be written, after the end of the Viking age, the word vikingr still had the sense of a raider, or an adventurer, who traveled overseas looking for fame and fortune. Many saga-age Icelanders and saga heroes are said to have gone on Viking adventures.
Some Vikings in the sagas are described as reprehensible men: evil-doers and trouble-makers of the worst kind. Many “bad guys” in the stories are introduced “Hann var vikingr mikill” (he was a powerful Viking)...
In some early Christian works, contemporaneous with the sagas, the word vikingr is used to mean murderer or plunderer. The Old Icelandic Homily Book, which dates from the early part of the 13th century, paraphrases one of the parables told by Jesus, using the word vikingr. “And when the king was told what they had done, he sent his army and ordered them to kill the vikings and burn their city.
Later, the word lost the sense of adventurer and came to mean only the worst king of evil-doers. The word came back into wide circulation during the Romantic era in the 19th century, when the study of Viking-age history became fashionable. Artists painted romantic pictures of Viking-age tales. Many ordinary people fancied themselves as latter-day Vikings, decorating their homes in the “Viking” style and dressing in “Viking” clothing.
More serious scholarship in the 20th century suggested that these northern adventurers were not the depraved killers, looters, and rapists depicted in popular stories and tales. And so, for many people, and especially for many English-speaking people, the word Viking was fully rehabilitated. Yet, for some people, the word Viking retains all of the ugly connotations of casual murder and wanton destruction and horrific brutality… It’s worth noting that many other Europeans were also raiding at this time in history, and, like the Vikings, were taking advantage of the changes occurring in the European political and mercantile scenes at this time. Viking-age documents from other cultures suggest that some Europeans would rather be raided by Vikings than by some of the other raiders active during this period. The Vikings tended to be less interested in sacking towns or in destroying buildings or in mass killings. They were more interested in grabbing the valuables and moving on, and so, for example, they didn’t destroy the vineyards at Aquitaine, the way that the Frankish raiders did… they probably behaved no worse, and possibly some better, than other European raiders of the time.
(Jody Gray): there are links to articles by the website owner; “As discussed in the articles about Viking-age farming and about the end of the Vikings, most of these northern people were farmers. And, as discussed in the article about Viking raids, only a small percentage of these people participated in raids, driven by the importance placed on honor by the society, and by the religious beliefs of these pagan people.
https://www.quora.com Were the Vikings really as brutal as pop-history likes to portray them? Some of the legendary Viking deeds of cruelty probably result from misunderstandings of poetry. Poetry in Old Norse could be extremely hard to follow because of its heavy use of obscure synonyms and figures of speech. Anyone who’s read Beowulf will have seen kennings: “whale-road” for the sea, “ring-bearer” for a king, and so on. Some forms of Norse poetry use so many kennings that figuring out the poem is like solving the crossword puzzle… “The tree of the storm of shield-serpents” means a warrior (“shield-serpent” = sword of shield-serpents” = “storm of swords” = battle; “tree of the storm of shield-serpents” = “tree of battle” = warrior).
Anyway, there’s a long poem called Krakumal (“Words of the Raven”), supposedly recited by Ragnar Lodbrok (yes, that Ragnar Lodbrok) as he is dying from being flung into a pit of venomous snakes by King Ælle of England. He refers to a quaffing beer from “bent trees of the skull”. That’s a kenning for cattle horns, which grow from the skull and are bent. But when the poem was translated in the 1600s, someone misread the verse and translated it as “drinking beer from skulls of the slain”. (Warriors are often called “trees of battle”; this is probably how “bent trees” was read as “fallen warriors”.) Thus the Vikings got the reputation for using the skulls of their enemies as drinking vessels, which they didn’t actually do.
The Saga of Ragnar Lodbrok quotes another poem about Ragnar’s sons’ vengeance on King Ælle. It’s hard to understand because of its quirky word order, but it probably means “Ivar and Ælle’s back carved by an eagle”. Which is a poetic way of saying “Ivar killed Ælle and allowed eagles to scavenge his body.” That’s gross, but it’s a very common image in Norse (and Old English) poetry; when you kill enemies, you “feed the ravens” or “feed the wolves” or “feed the eagles”, those three species being the Beasts of battle, the usual battlefield scavengers. But the verse was read “carved with an eagle” by the writer of the saga prose who describes someone taking a knife and carving the picture of an eagle on Ælle’s back. That evolved into the “blood-eagle” rite, in which, allegedly, Vikings killed people by slicing through the ribs along either side of the backbone and then pulling the lungs out through the gashes. Hideous, gory, and horrifically cruel - and probably not something the real Vikings ever did; it’s a misinterpretation of a difficult verse. Even other references to the blood-eagle in sagas like Orkneyinga saga are probably the result of medieval saga-writers misreading old poems. . (See Roberta Frank's 1984 article for details: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle . -Notes and Documents. Viking atrocity and Skaldic verse: The Rite of the Blood-Eagle.)
So: The Vikings could indeed be killers. But at least two of the most infamous blood-soaked atrocities attributed them them are probably misunderstandings of old poetry (which is amazingly easy to misunderstand, and I say this as someone who’s attempted to translate it).
Related, *https://en.wikipedia. *Old Icelandic Homily Book. aka Stockholm Homily Book. One of the two main collections of Old West Norse sermons; the other being the Old Norwegian Homily Book, with which it shares eleven texts. Written ca 1200, both based on earlier exemplars, together they represent some of the oldest examples of Old West Norse prose. (in this case, “sermons”).
History. Nothing of the history of the OIHB is known for certain until 1682 when it was bought by Jon Eggertsson for the Swedish College of Antiquities. In 1789 it was moved, along with the other manuscripts of the college, to the Royal Library of Sweden. Description. Written on 102 leaves of parchment, bound in a sealskin cover… (with) a number of signs carved into them, most of which can be identified as runes. The back cover has three signs which appear to be in Gothic script. The text is predominantly in Carolingian minuscule script with insular thorn and wynn, written in brown ink. There are numerous marginal entries; some contemporary with the manuscript and others dating from the 16th-19th centuries. ...the OIHB also made use of material available in other homilaries; e.g. it contains a close translation a sermon included in the “Pembroke-type homiliary”: a Carolingian preacher’s anthology. ...It makes use of abrupt changes in tense and from indirect speech, particularly in paraphrases of the gospels. It occasionally uses “native proverbs and everyday similitudes” which contribute to its simple, practical style. However, rhetorical devices are sometimes used to achieve high style and some sentences can be scanned as verse. ...This implies that at least some material in the manuscript belongs to before 1150.
*https://en.wikipedia.. Homily. A commentary that follows a reading of scripture. In Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox Churches, a homily is usually given during Mass (Divine Liturgy, Divine Service) at the end of the Liturgy of the Word. Many people consider it synonymous with a sermon.
*https://en.wikipedia. *Gothic alphabet is an alphabet for writing the Gothic language, created in the 4th century by Ulfilas aka Wulfila for the purpose of translating the Bible.
*https://en.wikipedia. *Ulfilas (ca 311-383) aka Ulphilas and Orphila) , all Latinized forms of the Gothic Wulfila, literally “Little Wolf”, was a Goth of Cappadocian Greek descent who served as a bishop and missionary, translated the Bible, and participated in the Arian controversy. He developed the Gothic alphabet in order to translate the Bible sans Kings due to the war narratives he feared would entice the Goths, into the Gothic language. (illustration, left,) Wulfila explaining the Gospels to the Goths ca. 340.
https://www.quora.com How long was a boat trip between Normandy and England in the time of the Vikings -was it days or weeks? -
Answer. About three days under good condition. This was proven by Havhingsten (seahorse). A viking longship replica in 2007 (video available, see, Related, below)
Answer. Days if the weather was good… if a viking ship with average speed runs at 10 knots, it will take 56 hours…
Answer. Viking longships were capable of as high a speed as 15 knots by sail power under ideal conditions… more realistically their speed was closer to 5-10 knots… 120-240 nautical miles per day… from Hordaland to England could theoretically have been done in 2 or 3 days. From Bergen to London is about 560 nautical miles, for example. But the Vikings probably wouldn’t have made a direct trip like that very often. They’d have maybe gone first to Ireland and then the the Orkneys, and then to England. With probably some time spent in ports, and then also, some time spent traveling near to the coast… so maybe nine or ten days would be a more realistic and more common travel time. But the time would certainly be measured in days I imagine, not in weeks.
Answer. The winds were usually adverse and the long-ships were largely driven by oars in those conditions. In light seas they could possibly make 10 knots for short bursts under oars, but generally averaged - 5 knots continuous under oars. Navigation was not at all precise and a shortest distance course wasn’t achievable in general practice, but navigation was obviously good enough to get there. On the lee-side of Britain the wind shift from more northerly direction wold sometimes allow fast sailing down the coast. If all went well, a voyage of 3-4 days would get them to mid-Britain.
Answer. To sum up what has already been said: In the Viking age, raiders or traders would be gone for weeks to a few months, but they would not be at sea for weeks on end. A week would be more like it, for the longer stretches. You could make the trip in three days if the wind was favorable, but this usually only worked for the return trip since the prevailing winds were from the west.
To add something of my own: Also because of the near constant west wind, it was not actually much shorter from the southern edge of Norway than from further up the west coast. The Viking ships had a keel and could tack against the wind, but if they sailed straight west, they would have zig-zag, whereas from further north they could sail steadily in the same direction, at an angle where they could still get a good boost from the side wind. They would have a longer trip home, but again the side wind would still give them a comfortable speed.
http://www.normandescendants.org/. Viking Voyages. The sagas mention that crews would wait for weeks even months waiting for favorable winds… The reality is good sailing conditions weren’t very common. The sailing typically took several weeks. Anyone who did two trips within the summer would be praised. Merchants and Vikings alike would only sail between May and September for the best conditions. A very common sailing speed is about 3 to 6 knots. A knot equals to about one nautical mile per hour. A nautical mile is about 1.8km.
Related, Reenactment of Viking Longship Sea Voyage.
https://en.wikipedia. a reconstruction of Skuldelev 2, one of the Skuldelev ships and the 2nd largest Viking longship ever to be found. The original was built in the vicinity of Dublin around 1042, using oak from Glendalough in County Wicklow, Ireland… The reconstruction was built in Denmark at the shipyard of the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde between 2000 and 2004 and is used for historical research purposes.
Other "historical" Vikings: *https://en.wikipedia.org Thorkell the Tall, is a historical figure… his associations with the legendary Jomsvikings (see, following)... Thorkell took part in the Battle of Hjorungavagr in 986… Battle of Swold in 1000… attacked England in 1010… Entered the service of King Ethelred the Unready, whom they fought under in 1013 against the invasion of (Danish) king Sweyn Forkbeard and his son Cnut…
*https://en.wikipedia.org Jomsvikings, a legendary order of Viking mercenaries -staunchly Pagan… Since the site of their headquarters has never been conclusively located, confirming the tales of their exploits is somewhat difficult… There are no contemporary sources mentioning the names Jomsviking or Jomsborg, but there are three contemporary runestones…
https://www.quora.com Which modern day people are descended from the Vikings? (Christopher Gilmore) Plenty! The Vikings travelled and settled far and wide.
1. Inhabitants of Scandinavian countries, obviously (the Norwegians, Swedes (House of Munso, Rurik, Varangian tribe), Danes, Islanders, etc.). Iceland was basically a Viking Colony, so too was Greenland but Medieval climate change forced its Nordic inhabitants to abandon the Eastern and Western settlements.
2. Many Scottish people (particularly those of Shetland and Orkney Islands, which are largely Norse and not really Celtic at all in their cultural character and ethnic descent; a hybrid Nordic-Gaelic culture emerged in much of the Outer Hebrides).
3. Many English people, England was routinely raided and invaded by the Vikings and the English had three Danish kings (most famously, Cnut the Great) (Sweyn Forkbeard, Cnut the Great). Several centuries later (the 11th century) England was invaded by the Normans, who were basically the francophone (francia) descendants of Vikings from northern France (Normandy) (Rollo, William the Conqueror).
4. Many Irish people, as the Vikings routinely raided Ireland and established several colonies that are still around today (the cities of Dublin (Ivar the Boneless, Halfdan Ragnarsson), Wexford and Waterford - “ford” or actually a corruption of “fjord” in this case). Viking political power in Ireland remained until the victory of the Irish King Brian Boru at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.
5. Many Canadians, Americans, Australians and New Zealanders -obviously those of direct Scandinavian descent, but even those of Irish, Scottish, English and French descent (which accounts for a large proportion of their respective populations).
6. Many French people (particularly the inhabitants of Normandy) (Rollo, William the Conqueror).
7. Many Russians (Russia itself was founded by the “Volga Vikings”) (Varangian tribe, Rurik Dynasty)
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