Vikings

Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.

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Quotes

• In this year [793] dire portents appeared over Northumbria and sorely frightened the people. They consisted of immense whirlwinds and flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine immediately followed those signs, and a little after that in the same year, on 8 June, the ravages of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church on Lindisfarne, with plunder and slaughter.
  • The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation, eds. Dorothy Whitelock and David C. Douglas and Susie I. Tucker (1961), p. 36

• Norwegian pirates, buccaneering Danes,
  Whose red-haired offspring ev’rywhere remains.
  • Daniel Defoe, The True-born Englishman (1701)

• With Hengist, Saxons, Danes with Sueno came,
  In search of plunder, not in search of fame.
  • Daniel Defoe, The True-born Englishman (1701)

• Lie still! Thy mother-land herself
    Would know thee not again: no more
    The Raven from the northern shore
  Hails the bold crew to push for pelf,
    Though fire and blood and slaughter’d kings
    ’Neath the black terror of his wings.
  • Francis Turner Palgrave, "A Danish Barrow (On the East Devon Coast)", st. 3, in A Lyme Garland (1874)

• Thorkill and Thorston from Jutland came
  To torture us Saxons with sword and flame.
  • George Walter Thornbury, "A Dorsetshire Legend", st. 1, in Historical & Legendary Ballads & Songs (1876)

• Bring me my armour, Sigurd,
    I'll die as my fathers died,
  Not like a wolf in a shepherd's trap,
    But in all a warrior's pride.
  Strike on the brazen targets,
    And let our clarions ring;
  I'll meet this Death they talk of,
    As a King should meet a King.
  • George Walter Thornbury, "The Dying Viking" st. 1, in Historical & Legendary Ballads & Songs (1876)