| "Sea Stallion" Worlds Largest Reconstruction of a Viking Age Warship |
Topics on the Page
Who Were the Vikings?
The Little Ice Age in Europe
Viking Settlements in North America
Erik the Red, Leif Erikson and Vinland
Archeological Evidence
Viking Women
Hands on games for students to play
Crash Course overview of Viking culture in World History.
FUN FACT: Bluetooth Technology is named for Viking King Harald (958 - 985) who united the tribes of Denmark and Norway.
- One view is that he loved blueberries and had blue stained teeth; more likely, he had a dark, diseased tooth that appeared blue.
- Bluetooth means to unite digital devices.
Focus Question: Who were the Vikings?
Click Here for the wiki article this timeline was pulled from to view other relevant pictures.
The Vikings: A Memorable Visit to America (Smithsonian Magazine)
An article about the old Pagan religion of the Vikings.
Coming to America: Who Was First? NPR (October 8, 2007).
Vikings Razed the Forests. Can Ireland Regrow Them? The New York Times (October 20, 2017)
New Evidence of Viking Life in America? BBC Article (March 31, 2016)
Leif Erikson Discovers Vinland; Painting from 1892
Teaching and Learning Resources
- Click here for guiding questions for teaching about the Vikings
- Click here for an interactive map detailing the many exploration achievements of the Vikings.
The Little Ice Age in Europe
Overview of the Little Ice Age
Little Ice Age abruptly triggered by intrusion of Atlantic waters into the Nordic Seas
Climate change during the late 700s through 900s caused food shortages throughout much of Northern Europe.
- The people who lived there, Vikings, were forced to go in search of food and land in some other way.
- They raided Great Britain starting in the summer of 793, and sailed up the rivers into the heart of Europe every summer thereafter, looting and pillaging.
- They brought all of their pirated goods back to their home settlements. Eventually though, this was not enough to sustain their growing population, so large populations were forced to leave. Some settled further south, in modern day Norway and Sweden.
- Some set up island colonies north of Great Britain, and in Iceland. Another group however, led by Eric the Red, settled Greenland, starting in 980s
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Did the Rising Sea Levels or Cows Cause the Vikings to Abandon Greenland?
Many historians and scientists have made connections between the Little Ice Age and the Viking abandonment of settlements such as Greenland:
Others have theorized that cows were one of the leading factors in the Vikings leaving Greenland:
Focus Question: What evidence is there of a Viking presence in early North America?
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| Viking Map Wikimedia Commons, "Territories and voyages of the Vikings" |
The Norse had two main settlements in Greenland, one in the North called “West Settlement,” and one in the South called “East Settlement.”
- Farmland was, and still is, relatively poor in Greenland, and it is difficult to sustain large populations. The growing season is only 5 to 7 months and the only crops that can be grown are hearty ones, like cabbages, beets, lettuce, and much later, potatoes.
- The colonists mostly ate seal, walrus and birds that migrate to Greenland to breed at predictable parts of the year. They also kept cows, but they were very hard to maintain because it was difficult to grow enough hay to keep them alive through the very long and cold winters.
- The population of Greenland likely never exceeded 5,000 because of the difficulty in finding food. The colonists in Greenland also kept up steady trade with Europe because Greenland does not have a lot of readily accessible natural resources such as metals and lumber.
- The fall of Norse Greenland was likely due to the “Little Ice Age” which started in the early 1300s and didn’t end till the 1800s. The Greenland settlement lasted from the 980s CE to the middle of the 1400s.
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| Erik the Red |
Click Here for the Canadian Encyclopedia's biography on Erik the Red, including his significance to Canadian history.
Click Here for an article on Erik the Red
The Children of Erik the Red Explore the West: The Norsemen Encounter Indigenous People of North America
Leif Erikson and Vinland
The scarcity of lumber is what caused Viking explorers to venture further west into modern day Canada, which is abundant in natural resources like timber and furs.
Leif Erikson
Click here for a overview of both Erik the Red and Leif Erikson
Click here for a lesson plan from PBS Learning Media about Lief Erikson and Erik the Red.
1986 U.S. postage stamp
- Vikings made visits every summer for up to two decades starting just after they colonized Greenland. They set up small temporary camps that could house no more than a few dozen people, one of which has been found and excavated by archaeologists.
- They called this new land “Vinland,” likely in reference to the one of the small settlements that they founded in open meadowland (Vin can mean either meadow or wine in their language, depending on the way the i is stressed).
- Unfortunately for the settlers, the land they had “discovered” was already occupied by the Native Americans. As already described, the Vikings were a violent culture by our standards, and invasion and warfare was nothing new to them. They attacked the Native Americans, but their numbers were not great enough to defend themselves for long.
- Their hostility to the Native Americans, and their distance from Greenland and especially from their European metropole made it impossible to set up a permanent settlement south of Greenland.
Click Here for the Canadian Encyclopedia's biography on Leif Erikson, including his significance to Canadian history.
Proclamation 3610: Leif Erikson Day ( Issued by President Lyndon Johnson, September 2, 1964)
Is the Vinland Map a Fake? from NPR examines the controversy surrounding a supposed map showing Viking presence in the New World.
The Vinland Sagas are the first known European narratives about encounters with native peoples in North America.
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| File:L'Anse aux Meadows, Recreated long house |
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| How the Norse likely viewed the New World in relationship to Europe. |
Archeological Evidence
There has been evidence found of the Vikings in North America, mainly in parts of Canada.
- In 1999 archeologist Patricia Sutherland found what she believed to be Viking yarn on Baffin Island. It was not similar to the Arctic yarn, but identical to the yarn that Viking women made in the 14th century. When reviewing this area, they found more Viking yarn,a whalebone shovel, and pelts from Old World rats. These are all associated with the Vikings.
- In 2012 Sutherland announced she and her team had discovered whetstones with grooves to sharpen blades. The grooves had traces of copper alloys, metals the Vikings had been known to use.
- In 2000, Agnar Helgason and Sigridur Sunna Ebenesersdottir were researching the population of Iceland. They found that some Icelanders had a linage that is usually found in Asians and Native Americans. Once tracing the linage, they found that it descended from a woman from around 1700. It is hypothesized that she was a Native American woman who encountered the Vikings and was brought to Iceland. This theory is still under investigation, but is interesting to note.
Evidence of Viking Outpost Found in Canada for the story on Sutherland from National Geographic.
Click here for an interactive article that allows one to examine the Viking map of Vinland and see evidence on whether or not it is authentic.
Click here for the Wikipedia page on "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" by Jared Diamond.
- This book uses evidence to provide a history of Viking expansion and speculates on what might have led to the downfall of their colonies. (Pages 178-277).
Women's History
Famous Viking Warrior Was a Woman, DNA Reveals
Viking Women Colonized New Lands, Too, an article from LiveScience about Viking women and colonization (December 7, 2014).
What Was Life Like for Women in the Viking Age? History.com (March 5, 2019)
- "Women in the Viking Age enjoyed more freedom and held more power in their society than many other women of their day."
The Valkyrie’s Gender: Old Norse Shield-Maidens and Valkyries as a Third Gender
Multimedia Resources
- The Vikings from Nova offers information about the Vikings including a video tour of a Viking village.
- Click here for a youtube video about the L'Anse aux Meadow site as a modern tourist attraction.
- Click here to read about the Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage site for L'Anse aux Meadows
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Multimedia Resources and crafts for hands on learning
- Click here for the game "Viking Quest" from BBC. In this game, you have to build a ship, chose your crew and route, and go to raid a monastery. The game gives a good overview of how Vikings raided other lands.
- Click here to play "Nine Men's Morris", a game that has been played for centuries that Vikings would play on their ships. Students are able to play with each other sharing a computer, or play against a bot.
- Click here for instructions for building a Viking ship for a school project.
- click here for a video showing how to build a viking ship
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Click Here to learn more about homosexuality during the Viking Age
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