Sublime

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

the largest longship ever found—thirty-two metres long, with a single-watch crew of eighty that could have been doubled for war. Dating to the early eleventh century, it is of the dimensions the sagas give for the highest rank of royal warships.

The exact derivation of the term is unknown, but the most widely accepted interpretation today builds on the Old Norse vík, a bay of the sea. Thus Vikings may originally have been ‘bay-people’, their ships waiting in concealment to strike at passing marine traffic.

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

The Scandinavians of the eighth to eleventh centuries knew the word—víkingr in Old Norse when applied to a person—but they would not have recognised themselves or their times by that name. For them it would perhaps have meant something approximating to ‘pirate’, defining an occupation or an activity (and probably a relatively marginal one); it was

In poetry, the English called them wælwulfas, ‘slaughter-wolves’, and with good reason—but the Vikings even said it themselves. Here is the great tenth-century Icelandic warrior-poet Egil Skalla-Grímsson, describing his raiding experiences (in an effort to impress a woman at a feast, which also tells you something about him): Farit hefi ek blóðgum