> -----Original Message----- > From: Damon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, January 14, 2003 11:14 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: Latest pre-Columbus exploration of America > > > > >Actually more like 75-100, but who's counting? ;) > > Wait...how is it 75-100? The great period of the "Vikings" > ended around > 1100 but really started to die down some time before that.
Depends on your definition of "great Viking period". We don't know exactly when the Greenland settlements died out; iirc, in the mid 1300's no one was able/willing to travel there from Iceland for a period of ~8-9 years, and when they finally did they found both the east and west settlements empty (save for a single body of a woman in a farmhouse, but that's one of history's little mysteries..) Of course, the correct term is "mediaeval Norse" - but Viking is nice short-hand. (The division is based less on when they were raiding and more on the Christianization of Scandinavia, and as such is suspect.) > IIRC the word originally meant "pirate." Actually, we're not entirely sure about the entymology of the word, but it probably is related to to Scandinavian (Danish/Swedish/Norweigian) word "vik" meaning "bay", "cove", "shallows", or "small harbor" (and is also a placename, near modern-day Oslofjord), the anglo-saxon word "wic" meaning "warrior camp", or even the Old English term "bikker", or "to fight" (which gives us "bicker".) There's even a theory that it refers to "vike/vika/veke", or "week"; its many of the early raids happened within 7 days' sail. -j- _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
