Why Vikings were feared in Europe from 700–1000

History Of the Vikings

The Vikings were warriors in Europe who terrorized the people in Europe and specifically emerged in the mid 8th Century attacking the island of Lindisfarne located off the coast of England (History World, 2012). Vikings were all over the coast of Europe, North Atlantic and even occupied some parts of America. They mainly lived in Scandinavia which is located in the Northern part of Europe. Most of the Vikings were

The Vikings were farmers who grew fruits and vegetables as well as barley and oats. They also raised cattle, goats, pigs and sheep. Bearing that they lived along the coast, many Vikings were fishermen and yet others specialized in building ships. In bigger villages Vikings lived as merchants. They also ventured into trade which made them to sail a lot and traded fur, gold, silver among other merchandise.

Because the Vikings lived near the sea, they travelled a lot by boat and they were known to be the best ship builders of their time. Viking ships could sail better than others because they laid a long piece of wood at the bottom of the ship which was known as the keel. It made the ship stable in the storm.

The Viking age began due to lack of enough land to live on in Scandinavia whereby they were forced to move out of Scandinavia and find larger farmland to live on since the population was growing very fast hence congestion. They had to find a new way to sustain the fast growing population. Some of the Vikings took to becoming pirates, stealing from any small ships they came across. When this strategy proved successful it encouraged them to continue the new found habit.

The Vikings were grouped into three groups which included the Nobles who were the kings or chiefs of the village, the freemen who were the farmers or merchants and slaves who were captured by the Vikings the time of the war.

The Vikings were feared by the rest of Europe from 700-1000 because they liked fighting.They conquered parts of England, France, and Germany and even extended to the South country such as Spain and Italy showing how powerful they were in fighting . They also went as far as Russia and Africa until fighting became their culture.

They were very brave and liked new adventures and conquest most of which were brutal and involved mass killing. The Vikings knew how to execute well planned ambushes and could raid certain territories with their ships carrying thousands of warriors and quickly disappear.

The Vikings were also feared by the Europeans because of their surprise attacks to the Europe dwellers. They were famous for attacking the people surprisingly and they did it in style, rowing their light boats into shallow rivers for the villagers not to detect their coming, hence attacking the people abruptly without them noticing their appearance making it difficult for them to defend themselves.

The Vikings were feared by the Europeans for long because they made the Europeans so insecure in such a way that as they went to sleep, the Vikings would appear at the bays at dawn and what they could see were tall blonde men jumping out from the ships armed with dangerous weapons such as swords and battle axes which they used to chop off people's heads as the villagers were sleeping. The raids led to the killing of so many people and even captured some youth and maidens who were forced to pack for them all that they had looted which included food stuffs and merchandize in their ships.

Vikings were inhuman in that they went ahead to attack the Christian churches and monasteries where they robbed them and even set the buildings on fire burning the innocent and peaceful villagers who didn't know what was happening. They would rape women at will and take their children as slaves.

At times they could pretend to be normal traders where they stopped to do trading but unfortunately they turned to be pirates without the other traders knowing because they could attend to their traders without discriminating but at the end they suffered hence fearing the Vikings. One notable Viking was the fierce 10th century warrior Eric the Red. He led many raids in Europe and was formidable in battle.

All the time that the Vikings came for war and to raid the people in Europe, they took all the people that survived death as slaves most of whom were Irish, Finns and Germans. But later on many of those slaves were voluntarily freed by their masters and this happened mostly after they accepted to be introduced as Christians where they even went ahead intermarrying. The Vikings worshipped many gods the chief god being Odin but as Christianity spread they embraced Christianity and prayed to Christ repenting their stealing ways.