Viking Routes & Interactive Map

Kaupang connected coastal communities to overseas exchange. Norway here is a modern geographical label.

Birka linked Scandinavian communities to Baltic and eastern exchange networks.

Ribe was a trading centre connecting the North Sea and Scandinavia.

Hedeby lay at the meeting of maritime and overland networks, in an area now in northern Germany.

Scandinavian armies and settlers transformed parts of northern and eastern England. The Danelaw was not the whole of England.

Norse communities and earldoms developed in the northern and western islands alongside existing populations.

Archaeology on Anglesey reveals Viking Age contacts. Their character and the extent of Scandinavian settlement remain debated.

Dublin developed from a Scandinavian fortified base into an important town and trading centre.

Norse fleets attacked communities along the Loire and other Frankish rivers.

Medieval accounts describe Norse fleets reaching Lisbon and the western Iberian coast. This does not establish a permanent colony.

The attack on Seville in 844 illustrates the reach of Norse fleets into al-Andalus.

Frankish annals describe a fleet passing between Iberia and Africa and raiding in the Rhône region.

Norse communities in the Faroes formed part of the North Atlantic settlement network.

Norse settlement created enduring communities in Iceland.

Norse farming communities settled the southwest of Greenland and maintained maritime connections.

Norse seafarers established a short-lived base at L’Anse aux Meadows. It is not proof of every proposed Vinland location.

Objects from Finnish graves reveal connections with wider northern networks, including forms associated with Scandinavian and western contacts.

Salme’s Scandinavian ship burials bear witness to violent maritime encounters before the conventional Viking Age.

Burial and settlement evidence at Grobiņa records Scandinavian communities living alongside Curonian populations.

Truso brought together Scandinavians, Slavs and Prussians in a trading community.

Scandinavian travellers joined the multiethnic networks of the early Rus. Its medieval heritage is shared across modern Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

Kyiv formed part of the Rus world connecting northern river networks with the Black Sea and Byzantium.

Constantinople attracted northern traders and warriors. Scandinavians also served in the imperial Varangian Guard; service was not conquest of Byzantium.

Bolghar was a meeting place for long-distance merchants within the Volga networks.

The Volga connected northern travellers with markets and exchange networks toward the Caspian and Islamic world.

Rimbert describes a Swedish attack on the Curonian stronghold of Apuolė. The community was not a Scandinavian colony.

Arnulf defeated a Viking army near Leuven in 891, within what is now Belgium.

Dorestad linked Frankish and Scandinavian trading networks and suffered repeated Viking attacks.

Polotsk belonged to the Rus river networks. Around 980, Vladimir attacked Rogvolod with forces that included Varangians.

An agreement with Charles the Simple established Rollo’s followers around Rouen and the lower Seine. Normandy expanded in later decades.

Later medieval tradition associates Luni with a Norse Mediterranean raid. The story of mistaking it for Rome is uncertain. Later Norman expansion in southern Italy was a separate development.

Waterford developed among the Norse-founded towns of medieval Ireland.

Wexford formed part of the Norse urban settlement network in Ireland.

Limerick grew among the towns established through Norse settlement and exchange.

Norse occupation at Jarlshof is documented archaeologically within the Northern Isles.

Norse and Norse-Gaelic communities and political influence developed in the western islands.

The Western Settlement occupied suitable fjord environments in the eastern part of the Nuuk region, on Greenland’s southwest coast.

Novgorod participated in the northern Rus networks linking Baltic journeys, rivers and portages.