Excerpted and adapted with permission from American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock, published November 7, 2023 by Pegasus Books. All rights reserved. Beginning in the eighth century, raiders exploded out of Scandinavia in a way that shocked their contemporaries in Western Europe. Their victims used various names for their attackers from the north. In Anglo-Saxon (Old English) writings the terms “Danes,” “Northmen,” “pagans,” or “heathens” were the ones most often used. But one term, “viking,” is resoundingly absent. What is…
