A reader reminded me that the " National Geographic " recently had an article on the Vikings. The exact issue is May 2000. The home bases or sites of the Vikings were decentralized under a multitude of small chieftains. Today, these sites are to be found in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
In the middle of the first millennium, central Europe lay divided after the tribal migrations that had followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. People were on the move and pressure was exerted on the earliest inhabitants, who generally tended to move to the north and west. One such original group consisted of the autonomous tribes who spoke Norse, a Germanic language. Their arable land had become scarce, and the people turned to the sea to find their livelihood. Pillage became a way of life. In fact, the word Viking is the Norse word for piracy .
The range of their excursions is fantastic, even by today's standards. They covered what was called the civilized world then, plus other regions. With population pressures, and with some political consolidation, many chieftains turned to forming colonies in other parts of the world. Today the Viking legacy is to be found in fourteen nations, even though the Vikings themselves left few written records.
As to whether the Vikings were borrowers or lenders of cultural traits, it is now recognized they were some of both. They left a permanent mark in Iceland, England, Normandy, and along the coasts of the Baltic Sea. They visited Greenland, North America, the Mediterranean, and Russia, and closed the loop through Russian to their compatriots who had taken the southern route through the Mediterranean Sea.
The interaction of these northern Germanic tribes with England was the invasion and domination of England in the fifth and sixth centuries. They remained in power until the Norman conquest in 1066. But, the Normans merely brought another strain of the Vikings out of northwestern Europe. Groups who contributed blood lines to England were the Frisians, Dutch, Danish, and the more general Vikings.
The native Brits were the Cornish, Welsh, and Scotch people, who were widely different in language and race from the European invaders who settled in the southern, central, and eastern parts of England, chiefly from the low German tribes.
Those of us who came from places such as Austria have a more varied genetic background and perhaps fewer German genes than the English.
(26 Feb 01)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.