9781422283424

CHAPTER 1

OH NO, HERE COME THE VIKINGS T horstein Cod-Biter, Ulf the Unwashed, Einar Belly-Shaker, Aud the Deep-Minded—no, these aren’t comic book characters. These are real people who lived more than 1,000 years ago in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. And if you saw them coming your way, you wouldn’t be laughing. Today, we call the

people of these northern lands “Vikings,” a word that probably once meant raider . Many people still think of Vikings as simply fierce invaders, but there was much more to them than that. They were also farmers, explorers, traders, and skilled craftspeople. The age of the Vikings lasted from about AD 780 to 1100. In that time, they left their homelands in

Explore the Vikings’ world in this video from the National Museum of Denmark.

Chapter 1: OH NO, HERE COME THE VIKINGS 7