The term "Viking Age" refers to the period roughly from the 790s to the late 11th century in Europe, though the Norse raided Scotland's western isles well into the 12th century. In this era, Viking activity started with raids on Christian lands in England and eventually expanded to mainland Europe, including parts of present-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.Sprague (2007), p. 10.

While maritime battles were very rare, Viking bands proved very successful in raiding coastal towns and monasteries due to their efficient warships, intimidating war tactics, skillful hand-to-hand combat, and fearlessness. What started as Viking raids on small towns transformed into the establishment of important agricultural spaces and commercial trading hubs across Europe through rudimentary colonization.Fasulo (2011), Viking Warfare. Vikings' tactics gave them an enormous advantage in successfully raiding (and later colonizing), despite their small population in comparison to that of their enemies.

Culture of war Vikings, according to Clare Downham in Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland, are "people of Scandinavian culture who were active outside Scandinavia ... Danes, Norwegians, Swedish, Hiberno-Scandinavians, Anglo-Scandinavians, or the inhabitants of any Scandinavian colony who affiliated themselves more strongly with the culture of the colonizer than with that of the indigenous population."Downham, Clare. Viking Kings of Britain and Ireland the Dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic, 2008. Print, p. xv.

Parts of the tactics and warfare of the Vikings were driven by their cultural belief, themselves rooted in Norse culture and religion, recounted in the Poetic Edda, and vividly recalled in the later Icelandic sagas written in the 13th-14th centuries; after the Christianisation of the Nordic world. Following the path of warriorhood, which was the path of the god Odin, the father of Thor, granted one entrance to Valhalla after death. A relationship with Odin could be seen as a necessary requirement to fulfill a warrior's function.Schjodt, Jens Peter. “The Warrior in Old Norse Religion.” In Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages: Scandinavia, Iceland, Ireland, Orkney, and the Faeroes, edited by Gro Steinsland, 287, 292-93. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Vikings fought in clans with strong bonds of loyalty in which boys were trained in warfare at a young age by their elders.Welsh, William E. “Laying Waste to Everything: VIKING TACTICS IN WEST FRANCIA.” Medieval Warfare 7, no. 1 (2017): 16–19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578076.

In the early Viking Age, during the late 8th century and most of the 9th, Norse society consisted of minor kingdoms with limited central authority and organization, leading to communities ruled according to laws made and pronounced by local assemblies called things. Lacking any kind of public executive apparatus—e.g. police—the enforcement of laws and verdicts fell upon the individual involved in a dispute. As a natural consequence, violence was a common feature of the Norse legal environment. This use of violence as an instrument regarding disputes was not limited to a man, but extended to his kin.Short (2010), pp. 41–42. Personal reputation and honour was an important value among Norsemen, and so actionable slander was also a legal category, in addition to physical and material injuries. Honour could be shamed from mere insults, where Norsemen were legally allowed to react violently. With this prevalence of violence came the expectation of fearlessness.Short (2010), pp. 40–44.

Norsemen believed that the time of death for any individual is predetermined, but that nothing else in life is. Considering this, Norsemen believed there to be two possibilities in life: "success with its attendant fame; or death."Short (2010), p. 42. The necessity of defending honour with violence, the belief that time of death was preordained, adventure and fearlessness were core values to the Viking Age.Short (2010), These principal values and convictions were displayed in the tactics of Viking raids and warfare.

As in most societies with limited mechanisms for projecting central power, Norse society also shared traits of bonding through mutual gift-giving to ensure alliances and loyalty. One of the reasons many Norse went on such expeditions was the opportunity to gather loot and wealth by trading and raiding. This wealth was then brought back to Scandinavia and used for political gain; e.g. Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf Haraldsson both led successful raiding campaigns that served their later claims to kingship. This was one reason that monasteries and churches were often targeted, due to their wealth in relics and luxury goods like precious metals (gold,silver) fine cloths (silk and animal hides), and books such as the Codex Aureus which was stolen by a Viking and then sold to an Anglo-Saxon couple later on (a note was written inside the book after its recovery "I ealdorman Alfred and Wærburh my wife obtained these books from the heathen army with our pure money, that was with pure gold, and that we did for the love of God and for the benefit of our souls and because we did not wish these holy books to remain longer in heathen possession")

Raids

The Vikings regularly attacked coastal regions due to the difficult nature of defending such regions, as well as utilising rivers and stolen horses to raid deeper inland by the mid 9th century.

The Norse were born into a seafaring culture. With the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Baltic and North Sea bordering southern Scandinavia, seafaring proved to be an important means of communication for Scandinavians, and a vital instrument for the Vikings.Fasulo, Viking Shipbuilding

Despite reports since the fifth century of the presence of seafaring Germanic peoples both in the Black Sea and in Frisia, and archaeological evidence of earlier contact with the British Isles, the Viking Age proper is characterized by extensive raiding, entering history by being recorded in various annals and chronicles by their victims." The Annals of St. Bertin and the Annals of Fulda contain East and West Frankish records (respectively) of Viking attacks, as does Regino of Prum's Chronicle - which was written as a history of the Carolingian Empire in its final years. The Annals of Ulster and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles describe raid activity in Ireland and England respectively.Hennessy, William M. ed. Annals of Ulster: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs from AD 431 to AD 1540. Alexander Thom & Co, 1887, 325-89; Swanton, M. J. ed. "The Winchester Manuscript." In The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Routledge, 1998, 68-92.

Raiding to capture slaves to be sold in the slave trade was also a motivation for the Vikings. Some fleets specifically targeted women to be used for their role in craft production or as wives and concubines. It has also been suggested by some historians that raids to capture women were spurred by an uneven sex ratio among the Vikings.Androshchuk, Fedir. “Vikings in the East: Collective Violence and Preventive Strategies in a Comparative Perspective.” In Viking Encounters: Proceedings of the Eightteenth Viking Congress, edited by Anne Pedersen and Søren M. Sindbæk, 52-53. Aarhus University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv34wmrzq.7. The acquisition of slaves also provided a measure of prestige similar to that which was granted from the acquisition of plunder.Raffield, Ben. “HUMAN COMMODITIES: CAPTIVITY AND ENSLAVEMENT DURING THE VIKING AGE.” Medieval Warfare 10, no. 4 (2020): 20–21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48742086.

These raids continued for the entirety of the Viking Age and Vikings would target monasteries along the coast, raid the towns for their booty, and were known to set fires in their wake. While there is evidence that Viking arson attacks did occur, more recent scholarship has cast doubt on quite how severe the physical damages (rather than their psychological impact) truly were. Regino of Prum’s Chronicle records that the palace of Aachen was burned to the ground but there is no archaeological evidence of destruction on such a scale at the site. These attacks caused widespread fear, so much so that the Vikings were thought by some monks to be a punishment from God.Sprague (2007), pp. 10–11. There is also the complication of a lack of direct written sources about these raids from the Viking perspective. This leads to biased views of the raiders from Christians who were being attacked in their churches and lands.

Initially, the Vikings limited their attacks to "hit-and-run" raids. However, they soon expanded their operations. In the years 814–820, Danish Vikings repeatedly sacked the regions of Northwestern France via the Seine River and also repeatedly sacked monasteries in the Bay of Biscay via the Loire River. Eventually, the Vikings settled in these areas and turned to farming. This was mainly due to Rollo, a Viking leader who seized what is now Normandy in 879, and formally in 911 when Charles the Simple of West Francia granted him the Lower Seine.Sprague (2007), pp. 13–15.Christiansen, Eric trans. Dudo of St. Quentin: History of the Normans. The Boydell Press, 1998, 23-54. This became a precursor to the Viking expansion that established important trade posts and agrarian settlements deep into Frankish territory, English territory, and much of what is now European Russian territory.Abels (2009). The Vikings had taken control of most of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms like Wessex and others by the 870s, which was after the time of the Great Heathen Army that swept the Anglo-Saxon rulers away from power in 865. This army focused not on raiding, but on conquering and settling in Anglo-Saxon Britain, being composed of small bands that were already in Britain and Ireland that worked together for a period of time to accomplish their goals.Swanton, M. J. ed. "The Winchester Manuscript." In The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Routledge, 1998, 68-92

The Vikings were also able to establish an extended period of economic and political rule of much of Ireland, England, and Scotland during the Norse Ivarr Dynasty that started in the late 9th century and lasted until 1094.Taylor et al (2007), p. 39. In Ireland, coastal fortifications known as longphorts were established in many places after initial raidings, and they developed into trading posts and settlements over time. Quite a few modern towns in Ireland were founded in this way, including Dublin, Limerick and Waterford.

Warships

Much of the Vikings' success was due to the technical superiority of their shipbuilding. The English and Frankish kingdoms lacked the naval ability to strike at Viking bases.Welsh, William E. “Laying Waste to Everything: VIKING TACTICS IN WEST FRANCIA.” Medieval Warfare 7, no. 1 (2017): 16–19. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578076. Their ships proved to be very fast. Their build was not designed for battle at sea, as this was a form of warfare that the Vikings very rarely engaged in, but these long narrow ships could accommodate 50–60 seamen who powered the ship by rowing, as well as a complement of warriors, and so able to carry sizeable forces at speed to land wherever advantageous. Due to their shallow draft, Viking ships could land directly on sandy beaches rather than docking in well-fortified harbours.Fasulo, Viking Shipbuilding Viking ships made it possible to land practically anywhere on a coast and to navigate rivers in Britain and on the Continent, with raids reported far up rivers such as the Elbe, the Weser, the Rhine, the Seine and the Loire, the Thames, and many more.Welsh, William E. “Laying Waste to Everything: VIKING TACTICS IN WEST FRANCIA.” Medieval Warfare 7, no. 1 (2017): 16–17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48578076. Vikings also navigated the extensive network of rivers in Eastern Europe, but they would more often engage in trade than in raiding.