1205hg+Ancient+Civ+Report 

Hugo Gini

ome people may think that Vikings are just crazy people from Scandinavia who run around, and scream whatever they want to say. Or the football team. Well it is a tactic, when fighting, but not when they are at home, building ships or helping around the house. And it’s not the football team. The Vikings have a few names Norse, Northmen, and what we like to call them, Viking. They lived in what is now present day Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. These countries altogether are called Scandinavia. The Vikings also conquered Iceland and Greenland. If you don’t know where Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland is, it is adjacent to Germany and Russia. Iceland and Greenland are near Canada. Their culture lasted from A.D. 780- A.D. 1070. You might wonder why a football team would name themselves the Vikings, but it’s because they are mean, gross, and tough.

An equally important and fascinating part of Viking culture, however, was its warfare. It’s what the Vikings are known for. Weapons and warriors was important to the Vikings because this is how they got to conquer places, keep their dignity and legacy, and get more food and money. We can learn more about this cultural aspect by looking at the Viking’s weapons, ships, and tactics.

A Vikings prize possessions were his axe, sword, spear and shield. A typical Sword or axe were made from stone if the Vikings did not have iron. Most of them were made of stone because iron was hard to find where they lived. Axes could be as long as 3 feet to 6 feet long. The Spear and Bow were the other prize possessions for the Viking Warriors. If you couldn’t use the spear to throw into a persons body, then you will use it to hunt. But that is a whole new story. It was made out of a 5 foot wooden pole, with an iron arrowhead tied to it. A bow was made out of wood and a piece of string. An arrow was made just like a spear, but with three feathers at the end, and it is shorter. With all of those weapons of course you need a shield. A shield protected the Viking when they were getting attacked. You may know that it has colors. Some people may think that they all put colors on their shields to look cool and nice, but it actually means where they are from. A Viking crew could have people from other parts of Scandinavia. Viking weapons and shields are very cool.

If you were wondering how the Vikings got to Iceland and Greenland, or how they attacked people across the river? Well, they used ships. The Ships are called longships. they are made from wooden planks, and the distance from the top to the gunwale is only six feet deep. It’s enough to go up rivers. There are 32 oars paddling the 65- 100 feet ship. Most of the time the Vikings never know where they’re going. they will set sail going somewhere, but sometimes end up somewhere else. That is how they ended up at New Foundland. Since they don’t have a lot of space in the boat, they can only take a few things with them. They would take weapons, tools, casks of water, hens, and goats. Would you want to go on a voyage with Vikings?

The Vikings had special tactics when fighting, and I am going to explain what they did to you. One of the tactics that they had was that they would put on a bear skin shirt. It would either be over the armor, or just over their skin. It always had to be bear skin. The second tactic was that when they were ready to fight they would howl like a wolf, just to scare off the enemy. Also if they split up when attacking, they would howl so the men could come back and help fight. You may think that when people fight, especially in Medieval times, that they would run straight ahead at their enemy, but the Vikings would side step going around their enemy. Wow, these are weird tactics, but they worked. Even though, there aren’t as many Vikings today, they were not conquered, or they did not disappear. The Vikings that were left established new colonies. The colonies, actually, formed into countries. Something that we still use today that the Vikings used before, was their language. The countries, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, tweaked it just a little bit, but the base word came from the Viking language. Some lessons that we learned by the Vikings is how to build a longship, and how to learn how to attack people. Even though the Vikings didn't last long, or teach us many lessons, they still started new colonies, and improved their culture.

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