In AD 789, three strange ships arrived at Portland on the southern coast of England. The
             "Reeve" or representative of the King of Wessex rode out to meet these visitors. He took with him only a small group of men under the impression that the strangers were traders. The strangers slew them.
             According to Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, "the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne with plunder and slaughter" in June of the year 793. The Christian monastery communities of Jarrow and Iona, lying on Britain's exposed northern coasts, were looted immediately afterward. In 795 raids were recorded near Dublin and in 799 on the coast of southwest France. As far as we know this was all the work of Vikings, otherwise known as Northmen or Norsemen, from Scandinavia in northern Europe. This was also the beginning of the period of history known to us as the Viking Age, dating around AD 800 - 1050, when Scandinavian people from the modern countries of Denmark, Norway and Sweden influenced much of northern Europe and beyond.
             Vikings traveled further out in the globe than any European had ever gone before. They exploited the riches of the East and explored the uncharted waters of the North Atlantic. They settled as farmers in the barren western lands of Greenland and discovered America five hundred years before Columbus. They served as mercenaries at the court of Byzantium. They ravaged Christian Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and they penetrated the very heart of the Carolingian Empire and deep into Russia. They stole and extorted large quantities of silver and gold from their victims. "Viking" comes from the Norse language, meaning a pirate or raider. Vikings were and still are, viewed as crazy wild barbarians. This is partly true. Although they were indeed feared for these actions, it is misleading to describe these people that way. They were not as brutal as they appeared to be. Vikings lived in small villages in South an...