Scandinavian peninsula - a vast area in the north of Europe.It is known in history as the birthplace of the Vikings.But Scandinavia became a place where to go camping and famous travelers and explorers of modern times.
Who were the Vikings?
Vikings - are participants of the Scandinavian sea voyages.Most scientists believe that it was the Vikings in Russia called the Vikings, and in Western Europe - the Normans.They became famous in history as the intrepid explorers, discoverers of many lands.They also talk about how the cruel conquerors and pirates.At the same time the Vikings were experienced traders.
Reasons sea voyages
Marine squads Vikings journeyed for several reasons.The first - the search for suitable land to the treatment, which in Northern Europe is not enough.The development of new sites here has always been associated with hard labor for cleaning stones, uprooting trees and shrubs.And of course, they wanted to find a more convenient and fertile land.
second reason - trade.The Vikings were the first who traded with the northern and the southern peoples.Not for nothing because there was a way "from the Vikings to the Greeks."
And the third reason - the conquest of fame and glory.It was of great importance at a time when the rights of the elected rulers - the kings.In order to keep the power in their hands, they had to get lucky miners, whether by trade or sea robbery.They needed to find a good place for the relocation of its people and to defend them from attacks as strangers and their "colleagues".
Viking Age Scandinavia
history remembers the names of famous Vikings.This Hastings, bringing terror to France and Italy, Rollo - the first Duke of Normandy, and others.
Warlike Normans not scared even the title of Charlemagne.Participants sea voyages from Scandinavia appeared regularly off the coast of France, since 799 years.Karl, who created a huge Frankish Empire was seriously concerned about the Viking raids.On his orders, measures were taken to strengthen the coast.In all sea ports and at the mouths of navigable rivers were put cruisers to prevent the appearance of the enemy.Built parking for military courts.Comes in many ports were blocked with chains.
Subsequently, after the devastating campaigns of the Vikings in Europe, plundering Rouen and many other cities, it was found that it is easier to give up portions of the Vikings on the coast and make them defenders of the land from the sea raids.This practice proved to be more effective.
In 966, King of Norway Harald Bluetooth embraced Christianity.Behind him he was baptized and his warriors.This Vikings-Christians subsequently seized the royal power in England, on the throne proved Svein Forkbeard.And in 1130 the Norman Roger II sat on the throne of the kingdom of Sicily.With the blessing of the Pope, he managed to combine ownership of the Vikings, in the south of Italy and Sicily.
Duke Wilhelm - a descendant of Rollo of Normandy - defeated the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings.He became the monarch of England and is known as William the Conqueror.
So participants sea voyages from Scandinavia gradually settled in the conquered land, intermarry with the local nobility and even received royal power.By the end of the 11th century the warlike Vikings almost ceased.
Discovery Viking
But the era was marked by the Vikings and the large geographical discoveries.The first is the discovery of Greenland and the foundation of the first settlement in her Eirik Ginger (Eirik Torvaldsonom).Exiled with his family in Norway, and then forced to flee from Iceland under threat of vendetta, he traveled west on the Atlantic Ocean.After landing in an open area of a newly discovered shore of the island, Eirik Red founded the two settlements.This site he gave the name "Green Land", later became known as the Greenland entire island, despite its ice cover.
settlers to establish trade with the motherland.There were carrying fur of polar bears, arctic foxes, walrus tusks, whale oil, and back - missing the forest in Greenland, grain, iron, fabric.
sons Erik - Leif (nicknamed "Happy") and Torvald - also came from Scandinavia, the participants of sea voyages.Their names associated discovery of America five centuries before Columbus.
When Leif returned from Norway to Greenland, he is caught in a storm.Thoroughly battered the ship approached the coast, and the sailors saw the hills covered with vines, fields of wild wheat.It was in the year 999.The land called Vinland - Country grapes attracted their warm climate, forests full of game, and fertile soil.
Not surprisingly, after his return to Greenland, they talked about land seen.Word of the new rich earth interested Thorfinn Karlsefni, who in 1003 sent an expedition to Vinland.Several times having made landing this Labrador, Newfoundland, after a winter they reached Vinland.Here the Vikings met with local residents.Their second meeting ended in a collision.In 1006 Karlsefni returned to Greenland.
So America was discovered by the Vikings, but then the way to Vinland was abandoned.Europeans took half a millennium to Columbus again opened for them the New World.
"Calling Vikings"
According to most historians, the beginning of the Russian state also put the Vikings - the Vikings."Tale of Bygone Years" tells that to stop civil strife representatives of Slavic and Finnish tribes went hiking in Scandinavia, where called Rurik to rule.
believed that Rurik came to Russia with his brothers - and Truvor Sineus.Later he began to reign alone, first in Staraya Ladoga, then founded Novgorod.He went from the Rurik dynasty.
members sea voyages from Scandinavia in modern
Viking Spirit still lives in the hearts of the Scandinavians.Probably, therefore among the names of the great travelers so many Norwegian and Danish.
list can be opened with the name of Fridtjof Nansen, the famous polar traveler.The most famous he was the first pedestrian crossing of the Greenland and the expedition to the North Pole, which ended in failure.
Roald Amundsen - the great polar explorer, the man who discovered the South Pole, first visited at both poles of the world (along with Oscar Adolf Wisting), has committed more than one expedition to the Arctic and Antarctic waters.
famous Thor Heyerdahl - a worthy heir to the Vikings to sail across oceans in ships, modeled on the ancient means of navigation.Carsten Borchgrevink
who studied Antarctica, became the leader of the first wintering on the ice continent.
among Russian sailors also have the descendants of the Vikings.Vitus Bering, swim strait separating Eurasia from North America, was a native of Denmark.
These are just some of the names of sailors - natives of Scandinavia, the descendants of famous sailors and conquerors.
