Nordic and Norse are different though closely related. Nordic means ‘northern’, from the root word ‘nord’ (north), and refers to the three Scandinavian countries: Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Norse specifically refers to Norwegians (nordmenn, in its Norwegian form).
A Viking group often consisted of two or more nordic groups. Seldom was there a totally Norse, Danish, or Swedish viking expedition. It was and still is easy to mistake one for the other. They look the same and their language sounds almost the same. However, the viking attack at Lindesfarne was likely to have been a mainly Norwegian raid, with some Danes or Swedes in the group. Norse vikings went eastwards, mostly to England, Scotland and Ireland. Vikings from Denmark went westward and southwest, the Vikings from Sweden usually went east and south-east, following routes to Estonia, Poland, and Russia.

A photo of the Ruins at Lindisfarne.
Without warning, a monastery on the island of Lindisfarne fell to the sword of the Vikings. It was the 8th of June in the year 793. A monk who survived the attack wrote: “The same year the heathens arrived from the north to Brittany with a fleet of ships. They were like stinging wasps, and they spread in all directions like horrible wolves, wrecking, robbing, shattering and killing not only animals but also priests, monks and nuns. They came to the church of Lindisfarne, slayed everything alive, dug up the altars and took all the treasures of the holy church”.

The first recorded Viking attack was on Lindisfarne, an island off the east coast of England, quite near the border between England and Scothland. The painting “Norse Marauders Wreak Mayhem” by Tom Lovell show what it must have been like at Clonmacnoise, most celebrated of Irish monasterie, Vikings hacked monks to death, defiled sanctuaries, and robbed churches of their treasures. Nearby Jarrow was the and other monasteries in England, Scotland and Ireland . Monks and nuns were either killed or carried off to slavery as part of many other treasures in the churches and monasteries. The Viking 300 years.

From 800 to 1050 A.D., the Vikings were supreme in Europe.. After the attack on the Lindisfarne Monastery in 793, viking ships went in large and small groups across Europe for the next 200 years. The Vikings sailed up the rivers of France and Spain, conquered most of Ireland and large sections of England, and took control of areas skirting rivers in Russia and the Baltic coast. Viking raids that were recorded in the Mediterranean, as far east as the Caspian Sea included an attack on Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire.
Eventually, the Norsk vikings gave up plunder and began colonization of the lands they had conquered.

Vikings in England

England was then a region of several independent kingdoms that were often at war with each other and without a unified political and military structure. Tht made it easy for the Vikings to raid coastal towns and plunder the countryside. In 873, King Alfred of Wessex won against the Vikings at Edington but peace terms for peace did not completely stop viking attacks. Alfred conceded the northern and eastern counties to the Vikings who built new settlements and merged with the local populations. Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stamford and Leicester became important Viking towns within The Danelaw, or what is sometimes called “Scandinavian England.”. Jorvik (York) became the capital of the Viking Kingdom that extended through present-day Yorkshire.

In the year 1000, the Saxon King Aethelred attacked the Isle of Man and parts of The Danelaw, to try to crush the Scandinavians living there. Two years later, he married Emma, sister of Duke Richard of Normandy. By marrying Emma, Aethelred gained alliance with the Normans. perhaps feeling more secure in his new links with the Norman ruling dynasty. Maybe Aethelred felt stronger with the new alliance and he ordered the massacre of all norsemen in England. It was a big and costly mistake. Svein Forkbeard’s sister and his brother-in-law, Pallig, were amongst those killed. Svein came to avenge their deaths and raided south and east England throughout the years 1003 and 1004. The famine in 1005 forced Svein to bring back his army.

Knut (Canute), the First Viking King of England
Svein carried out many more raids for several years, extracting vast amounts of silver as ‘Danegeld’. In 1013 he returned with his son Knut and this time he intended to conquer England. Danelaw was the first target. After Danelaw, town after town came under Svein’s control until he was recognized as king. Aethelred escaped to Normandy, but when Svein died the next year, Aethelred saw a chance to regain his kingdom. He returned from Normandy and routed Svein’s army that had been under the command of Knut, the son of Svein.

Knut returned to England in 1016 and won over Edmund Ironside, the eldest son and successor of Aethelred, at the Battle of Ashingdon (Ashingdown). Knut and Edmund drew up the Treaty of Olney, which allotted The Danelaw and the English midlands to Knut, while Edmund retained control of southern England. Edmund died shortly after this treaty and Knut became the first Viking king of all England. In 1017 Knut married Emma, Aethelred’s widow, but she let her two sons by Aethelred remain in Normandy. Knut had two children by Emma--Harthacnut and Gunhild, and two other sons--Harald and Svein--with his mistress, Aelfgifu.

When Knut’s brother, Harald, King of Denmark, died in 1018, Knut went to Denmark to secure his hold over that realm. Two years later, Knut laid claim to Norway, and put his son Svein and his mistress Aelfgifu to govern it. Late in the 1020s, Knut who had also conquered Scotland, was king of all England, Denmark, Norway and part of Sweden. It can be said that Knut was the first king to successfully rule over a united England, free from internal and external strife and unrest. As ruler of Denmark and Norway, two of the Viking homelands, he was able to protect England against attacks, maintaining twenty years of badly-needed peace during which trade, Anglo-Scandinavian art and Christianity flourished.

Knut died in 1035 at the age of 40 and was buried in Winchester, the former capital of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex. Unfortunately, Knut’s sons could not keep their father’s empire that began to break up after Knut’s death. Aelfgifu’s other son, Harald, became king of England but died in 1040. Harthacnut then ruled for only two years before he, too, died, leaving only the memory of the huge taxes he forced on his people. None of Knut’s children produced any heirs and it was one of Emma’s sons by Aethelred, Edward (later to be known as ‘Edward he Confessor’, who returned from Normandy to ascend to the English throne in 1042.

The first and last viking empire lasted barely 25 years and, most likely, not many people know that a viking sat on the throne of England. The legacy of the Vikings did not lie in empire; it lay in the social and political institutions, many of which survive in Europe till the present day.