The trouble with a statement like that is that "technology" is such an all-encompassing term. A plough is as much a piece of technology as is a crane or a printing press. The Vikings, for example, were great users and developers of maritime technology and shipbuilding techniques. The longboats are specially designed with a shallow draft enabling them to sail up the rivers of North West Europe or to be easily beached and refloated.

In England, the Vikings readily adapted elements of Anglo-Saxon technology. In the late ninth century, for example, the Vikings of the Danelaw started imitating the silver penny currency of Alfred of Wessex, far more sophisticated than their own hacksilver. They also copied Anglo-Saxon designs for material culture items like brooches, strap ends and pendants, as well as introducing their own, and seem to have focused the production of these for export in proto-industrial workshop areas in larger port sites in Scandinavia, Ireland and Northumbria, similar to English and Flemish wic sites.

Excavations of rune-inscribed tablets from Bergen indicate that pre-Christian Viking society was in fact far more literate than previously thought, and post-conversion Scandinavia rapidly adopted the technologies of the Latin alphabet and books.

The Saga of Haakon the Good, who was fostered by King Æthelstan in England, notes that when Haakon returned to Norway, he implemented a series of reforms based on what he'd learned in England, not least the establishment of a network of signalling sites across the country to rapidly spread news or call men to arms.