Did the Vikings do anything good?

[Gifu]

It seems like for about 200 years the Vikings just kept sailing to Britain and pillaging everything. I could understand it more if they wanted to conquer (which, I realise, they eventually did decide to do), but for most of those 200 years they were just plundering and murdering. They weren't even stealing from rich lords and noblemen, they were mostly just burning peasant villages and destroying monasteries and taking slaves. Every time anyone tried to create anything or learn anything or write anything or have any sort of peace for 200 years, the bloody Vikings would sail up, destroy everything, and then sail home again.

I recently read a book called the Story of Scandinavia by Stein Ringen - the first few chapters are about the Vikings in their wider context eg the Rus as pp's have said.

Provided me with about 4% of my dna! I feel it is where my passion for conquest and adventure comes from!

Also, our language! Especially in Yorkshire.

Sounds like we might be related. Probably need to change my Username now.

The great sailors and travellers who were the first proven Europeans in America (Celtic monks may have got there first)? Sailed all down the rivers of East Europe and began the Kievan Rus who are somewhat significant at the present time? The story tellers? The crafters and traders? The great settlers and farmers who raised the soil levels wherever they created farms? The people who left women to look after those farms and gave women a debatably and complex higher status than many other people, following northern tendencies? The free peoples who probably began the ‘Viking age’ in response to the spreads of imperialism in the north with Charlemagne? Who formed the Varangian guard helping to defend Byzantium (which later crusaders sacked? The people who gave us modern Scandinavia and almost almost almost brought England into that fellowship?

Are there some clues in there? Seriously they’re a mixed bag but fascinating. Always remind me of the word ‘freedom’…

Weirdly the only horned helmets provably on record were worn by a group within the ‘Peoples of the Sea’ who went pillaging around the eastern med and caused, or were a symptom of the Bronze Age collapse. Possibly brutal enough to create a very long lived folk memory!

I remember history classes where they were portrayed as raiders of monasteries. There are many theories about the round towers of many monasteries (bell towers), one suggesting they were useful for both spotting raiding parties approaching and ringing bells to warn people in the surrounding areas. The monastic settlements were like little agricultural towns at the time.

The Vikings who raided and settled in Ireland were mainly Norwegian. DNA studies testify to the fact that they either enticed or carried off a lot of Irish women to Iceland.

Dublin was a very rich settlement established by the Vikings, and a hub of trade in slaves, gold, and horses. Slaves were traded to Moorish Spain, to Scandinavia, to Russia, and taken to Iceland.

I've seen articles mentioning graves that have been discovered that contained non Scandinavian remains, with the deceased clearly buried in Viking style, suggesting that Viking bands or settlements sometimes attracted locals, and that the identity was a matter of choice or adoption of a lifestyle, as opposed to birth or descent.

@mathanxiety thanks for that. I didn't realise they traded slaves.

Their relationship with various countries changed over time, but they were definitely very much feared at one point.

A poem written by an Irish monk on the margins of a manuscript he was transcribing around AD 850 attests to this. The danger lessened on stormy nights.

‘Is acher ingáith innocht .
fufuasna faircggae findḟolt
ni ágor réimm mora minn
dondláechraid lainn oua lothlind’

‘Bitter is the wind tonight
It tosses the ocean’s white hair
Tonight I fear not the fierce warriors of Norway
Coursing on the Irish sea’.