In school I was taught the usual story of the Viking age. That was that it began in 793 with the raid on lindisfarne and ended in 1066 with the Norman’s winning Hastings.
For me personally, these dates feel too specific for such a large group of disunited people who covered such a vast area. Surely raids occurred before 793 and didn’t completely stop after 1066? Why are such specific dates taught when teaching such a vast period of European history?
Your argument certainly makes sense, and I also agree to it.
"Viking Age" itself is a historiographical (that is to say, defined later primarily by modern authors and historians) rather than a concrete historical periodization, as is often the case of such a periodization, and Scandinavians (especially archaeologists) employs different dates to mark this period (they customarily use this term to denote the later phase of the Iron Age Scandinavia), as I clarified before in: What were the societal/religious/political factors that lead to the end of the Viking age?.
This traditional date of beginning/ end from 793 to 1066 focuses on two symbolic events only occurring in England, and we can find exceptions (raids (possibly) before 793 and after 1066) even in the English cases, as also noted by my previous posts: