American Vikings?

For a thousand years, legends claimed that Vikings settled in North America. In my book American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America, I explore the evidence for this in the literary sources and archaeology; and, also, in the way this idea has fed into the cultural DNA of North America and especially the USA.

What’s in a word?

First, a matter of terminology. “Viking” is something you did rather than what you were. In Old Norse, going “viking” involved taking part in muscular free enterprise. However today, in popular usage, “Viking” has come to describe both those involved in raiding expeditions, as Scandinavians originally used the term, and Scandinavians generally during the “Viking Age” (as it was never used in the past). Nevertheless, it is now the label-of-choice for most people. However, we need to remember that Scandinavian merchants and settlers would not have thought that it applied to them, since it was not what they did. Many modern experts prefer the term “Norse” to that of “Vikings” as a group term, but I have used “Norse” when describing the language or culture (as in “Norse mythology”), but “Viking” for the people and the period (as in the “Viking Age”) in reflection of popular usage.

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