Most people have heard the stories of the viking conquest of Normandy and England around year 1000, and the expeditions seems fairly straightforward. Cross the sea without dying, and finding the right place. Preferably also return. This might have something to do with the countless pop culture depictions of vikings in Western Europe.
My question however, is about the eastern, lesser known, vikings, and inland travel. How did the vikings manage to sail to the Caspian sea? What evidence do we have of their furthest extensions, and how did they carry their ships (if that was indeed what happened?) I've heart about the Varangians, but this seems to be the furthest reach that is well documented. Are there any other examples outside of Western Europe and the North Atlantic?
An additional hypothetical question: If the vikings had stayed in Newfoundland, would they have been able to make it to the great lakes with their ships?
OP certainly seems to forget to mention the notorious 13th Warrior (1999) for their appearance in the pop culture.
I summarized the basic geographical range of their expansions in: I have a friend who constantly jokes that "Vikings were just cold Phoenicians". To what degree is he correct?
As for the furthest eastward destination, researchers usually identify 'Serkland' mentioned in several 11th century Swedish runic stones (check /u/Platypuskeeper's allusion in: Viking exploration rumors?, with somewhere in the Caucasus (east to the Caspian Sea).
>How did the vikings manage to sail to the Caspian sea?
By large waterways in now Russia, such as the Dnieper and the Volga. That's probably at least partly why the capital of Kievan Rus' [Kiev] was founded alongside this river route between Scandinavia and the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea as well as Constantinople.
A 10th century Byzantine text, De Administrando Imperio, mention a few big waterfalls in course of the Dnieper at which the ships cannot pass. In such a case, the Vikings (or I rather prefer the Scandinavians) carried their ship on a short bypassing land route, probably on their shoulder. This 16th century woodcut might not be so accurate, though, but the Viking ship was not too heavy to carry in such a short distance since it had the bare minimum inner structure.
There are also some records of the Scandinavians who took a visit in Syria-Palestine region in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 11th century, but some of them mainly did so when they were hired as the Varangian guards by Byzantine Empire, as I explained before in: Have the vikings interact with the Egyptians at all throughout their history?.
>If the vikings had stayed in Newfoundland, would they have been able to make it to the great lakes with their ships?
Put it simply, the predominant majority of scholars suppose that the Norse settlers did not permanently settle in the New World, as I summarized the recent academic consensuses in: Why didn’t the Vikings further colonize Vinland and why did they leave?.
The westward-most 'Vikings' aka Norse Greenland settlers were primarily hunters looking for the exotic animal as well as bird products highly prized for the European Market, so Newfoundland was probably far too distant from the main market for them.
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