The name "Viking" was first used by foreign authors in the 11th century AD. Its origin is probably the Swedish word for bay, "vik". This shows the close connection between the people and the sea, of which they were totally dependent for their livelihood. They had a mythology of their own. Their gods were called "asar", The Vikings are often considered wild, drunken, merciless robbers. In fact, their main occupation was farming and trade. The Viking expeditions were mostly trade expeditions that sometimes degenerated to looting. But to be honest, there were also expeditions whose main purpose was to loot foreign coastal regions.Vikings also founded kingdoms in Russia and built trade stations along the rivers all the way down to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. They went to Constantinople and Bahgdad.

One of the main reasons for their success is the fact that Europe at the time had a hard time getting united. As it was, many small kingdoms fought with each other to form a big country. The Vikings, who from birth were taught how to fight well (and encouraged by their religion to do it) and how to manouvre a boat (which by the way was by far the best ever built in Europe by that time, possibly even the best in the world), were given rather easy targets.To measure the sailed distance they used their experience when studying the wash (The flow of water around the stem). But there were no exact methods to measure the speed. Usually the Vikings followed the coasts as closely as possible, but they weren't afraid to make long voyages over the open sea without any contact with land if they had to.