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Facts About Vikings

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Another known term for Vikings was Norsemen. Norsemen means “people who come from the North”. They were great travellers and sailed to different parts of Europe, where they would trade, raid, and often settle. The Vikings came from the three countries in Scandinavia (in Northern Europe) Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. They set out for journeys, travelling thousands of miles across the ocean from their home Scandinavia where they had labour like farming, fishing, seafaring, and trading.
Most Vikings were simply scouting for better land for their farms, considering their land was not too suitable for growing crops or rearing animals. Norway contained many hills, Sweden had a large number of forests, and in Denmark there was a lot of sandy soil. Some historians believe the Vikings left their homes due to overcrowding. Good land was too limited for everyone to share. In a Viking family, only the eldest son would inherit the family farm. Younger brothers had to make their living elsewhere. The Vikings also searched for treasures to make them rich. Britain was particularly a good place to raid, as there was much to steal. They obtained a great attraction to the …show more content…

They prevailed on the land for the next 300 years, until the Normans arrived in 1066. Despite having been such a dominant force they seemed to have left behind little evidence of their reign. This was believed to be true up until the second half of the nineteenth century, when philologists began investigating English. Their investigations successfully established specific evidence of the Vikings language in English. The Vikings spoke a language called “Old Norse”, which today is an extinct language. Old Norse and Old English were in many ways similar since they belonged to the same language family, Germanic. Therefore, Old Norse integrated with ease into Old English. These borrowings went undetected for centuries but remain in the language up to the

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