The average ten-year-old boy knows more about Vikings than I do, but what he knows probably came from either Looney Tunes or Hagar the Horrible. Or that History Channel series he's not really allowed to watch. The Vikings were a Scandinavian people who raided and traded all over the world from the 8th to the 11th centuries. They did not have a written language, so whatever was documented about them was written by people who were terrified of them, or else was written long afterward. They didn't even call themselves Vikings; that was a word that referred to their raids. We actually know very little about them, but we do know that a lot of the things everyone knows about Vikings came from dubious sources or were just made up for dramatic effect. This TED-Ed lesson busts five myths that have grown up around the Vikings. -via Geeks Are Sexy
That History Channel series I was allowed to watch (well, I'm an old fart and can watch whatever the hell I want), taught me more about Vikings then anything before it (including Prince Valiant in the Age of King Arthur). Not directly of course. But it was so well done that I started researching names, and events, and places. So English history too. Pretty cool stuff.
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