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The Viking Age is the period A.D. 793–1066 in European history, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, following the Germanic Iron Age.〔Forte, p. 2〕 It is the period of history when Scandinavian Norsemen explored Europe by its seas and rivers for trade, raids and conquest. In this period, the Norsemen also settled in Norse Greenland, Newfoundland, and present-day Faroe Islands, Iceland, Normandy, Scotland, England, Ukraine, Ireland, Russia, Germany, and Anatolia. Though Viking travellers and colonists were seen at many points in history as brutal raiders, many historical documents suggest that their invasion of other countries was retaliation in response to the encroachment upon tribal lands by Christian missionaries, and perhaps by the Saxon Wars prosecuted by Charlemagne and his kin to the south.〔Simek, Rudolf (2005) "the emergence of the viking age: circumstances and conditions", "The vikings first Europeans VIII — XI century — the new discoveries of archaeology", other, pp. 24–25〕〔Bruno Dumézil, master of Conference at Paris X-Nanterre, Normalien, aggregated history, author of conversion and freedom in the barbarian kingdoms. 5th – 8th centuries (Fayard, 2005)〕〔"Franques Royal Annals" cited in Sawyer, Peter (2001) ''The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings''. ISBN 0-19-285434-8. p. 20〕〔Decaux, Alain and Castelot, André (1981) ''Dictionnaire d'histoire de France''. Perrin. ISBN 2-7242-3080-9. pp. 184–185〕〔Boyer, R. (2008) ''Les Vikings: histoire, mythes, dictionnaire''. R. Laffont. ISBN 978-2-221-10631-0. p. 96〕 or motivated by overpopulation, trade inequities, and the lack of viable farmland in their homeland. Information about the Viking Age is drawn largely from what was written about the Vikings by their enemies, and primary sources of archaeology, supplied with secondary sources like the Icelandic Sagas. ==Historical considerations== In England, the beginning of the Viking Age is dated to 8 June 793,〔Swanton, Michael (1998). ''The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle''. Psychology Press. ISBN 0415921295. p. 57, n. 15.〕 when Vikings destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, a centre of learning on an island off the northeast coast of England in Northumberland, and famous across the continent. Monks were killed in the abbey, thrown into the sea to drown, or carried away as slaves along with the church treasures, giving rise to the traditional (but unattested) prayer—''A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine'', "From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, Lord."〔Albert D'Haenens, ''Les Invasions Normandes en Belgique au IX Siecle'' (Louvain 1967) asserts that the phrase cannot be documented. It is asserted that the closest documented phrase is a sentence from an antiphon for churches dedicated to St. Vaast or St. Medard: ''Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna'', "Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realms." Magnus Magnusson, ''Vikings!'' (New York: E.P. Dutton 1980), ISBN 0525228926, p.61.〕 Three Viking ships had beached in Portland Bay four years earlier (although due to a scribal error the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicle'' dates this event to 787 rather than 789), but that incursion may have been a trading expedition that went wrong rather than a piratical raid. Lindisfarne was different. The Viking devastation of Northumbria's Holy Island was reported by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin of York, who wrote: "Never before in Britain has such a terror appeared".〔Jones, p. 195. Simeon of Durham recorded the raid in these terms: And they came to the church of Lindisfarne, laid everything waste with grievous plundering, trampled the holy places with polluted feet, dug up the altars and seized all the treasures of the holy church. They killed some of the brothers; some they took away with them in fetters; many they drove out, naked and loaded with insults; and some they drowned in the sea." Magnus Magnusson, ''Vikings!'', p. 32.〕 Vikings were portrayed as uniformly violent and bloodthirsty by their enemies. The chronicles of medieval England portrayed them as rapacious "wolves among sheep". The first challenges to the many anti-Viking images in Britain emerged in the 17th century. Pioneering scholarly works on the Viking Age reached a small readership in Britain. Archaeologists began to dig up Britain's Viking past. Linguistics traced the Viking-Age origins of rural idioms and proverbs. New dictionaries of the Old Norse language enabled more Victorians to read the Icelandic Sagas. In Scandinavia, the 17th century Danish scholars Thomas Bartholin and Ole Worm and Swedish scholar Olaus Rudbeck were the first to use runic inscriptions and Icelandic Sagas as primary historical sources. During the Enlightenment and Nordic Renaissance, historians such as the Danish-Norwegian Ludvig Holberg and Swedish Olof von Dalin developed a more "rational" and "pragmatic" approach to historical scholarship. By the latter half of the 18th century, while the Icelandic Sagas were still used as important historical sources, the Viking Age had again come to be regarded as a barbaric and uncivilized period in the history of the Nordic countries. Not until the 1890s, during Victoria's reign in Britain, did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to extensively reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship. Until recently, however, the history of the Viking Age was still largely based on ''Icelandic Sagas'', the history of the Danes written by Saxo Grammaticus, the Kyivan Rus' ''Primary Chronicle'' and ''The War of the Irish with the Foreigners''. Today most scholars take these texts as sources not to be understood literally and are relying more on concrete archaeological findings, numismatics and other direct scientific disciplines and methods.〔Jones, pp. 8–10〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Viking Age」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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