The first thing coming into our minds, when evoking the word “viking” is obviously those bloodthirsty barbarian people, thirsting for power and wealth.

And yet vikings were, at the beginning, some merchants, who had admittedly as a common objective to accumulate wealth, yet never intended to pillage, invade or torture any village or anybody.

Vikings were Scandinavians (Swedish, Danes, and Norwegians), very well organized and at the head of a powerful fleet at that time: they were outstanding sailors who opened up new navigable paths.
However, even though to most people vikings are nothing but mustachioed, blond-haired warriors who wore helmets decorated with horns and sailed the seven seas with their ships, it seems that we are wrong! They were not any blonder than other people, and there are no traces of horns on their helmets...

At the beginning just some marine merchants, a series of events resulted in them being attracted to other countries' wealth. The most likely hypothesis would be that of Emperor Charlemagne's death, which lead to the Carolingian empire weakening, and gave Vikings new ideas about how to show their skills...
And another interesting fact: Vikings may have been the first to discover America. Viking sailors went along the eastern coasts, probably from Canada down to the United-States. After several discoveries in the late 19th century, two archaeologists finally discovered relics of viking habitations on the Newfoundland Island! This means 500 years before Christopher Columbus!

It is only then that they decided to make “good” use of their maritime and fighting knowledge: they started a long campaign of pillage throughout Europe (it lasted around 2 centuries).

You can also try and conquer other people and territories by playing at one of our games on our TomsGames.com website!