Hey everyone! I was a history major and mainly focused on the Viking Age, but was completely flummoxed by this question from a friend the other day. Say a Norwegian family had 3 sons, what were the odds that at least 1 of them would be, at some point in their life, a Viking?
I hope the post (s) of /u/textandtrowel (and possibly mine) in During the "Viking Age", how comm on was it for Danes, Swedes and Norwegians to become vikingr? Was this something many people did, or just a small group? What was the social class of the people who went? How did normal farmers in their society see them? can inspire you something to answer to your friend on this topic.
Any question of the percentage/ involved statistics in pre-modern period tend to be highly speculative, though.