Sublime

In the modern Nordic languages, vikingar or vikinger is still used only in the exact sense of seaborne raiders,

Whereas the broader ships of the early Viking Age seem to have been multipurpose, capable of transporting both crews and cargo, from the late 800s, there is evidence of specialised vessels ranging from offshore patrol boats to the equivalent of royal yachts, deep-sea cargo haulers, fishing smacks, and—of course—a range of slim, predatory warships o

In practice, the Viking raiders were never a bolt from the blue, unknown barbarian sails on a North Sea horizon. Their victims had encountered Scandinavians many times before, but as traders rather than agents of chaos; the surprise was in the violence, not the contact.

“One of the fundamental elements of Viking-age society was honor,”

Larger ships would have been commissioned either by major landowners and their families, consortia of merchants, or the nobility. They were long known only from images on coins, wall hangings such as the Bayeux Tapestry, and graffiti. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the post-medieval world got its first glimpse of the real thing.