Born Then793–1066
Life during the Viking raids
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
From the raid on Lindisfarne in 793, Scandinavian seafarers plundered, traded and later settled along the coasts and rivers of Britain, Ireland, Francia and eastern Europe. They took silver and people; captives were sold in slave markets as far as the Islamic world. Many raiders later became farmers in England, Normandy and Ireland.
Deaths: unknown; raids killed or enslaved thousands, chiefly at coastal and river sites.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from our model, estimated from the sources.
Around the same time
- Indian Ocean slave trade 700–1799
- Abbasid prosperity (Islamic Golden Age) 786–1000
- Viking raids 793–1066
- Classic Maya collapse 800–950
- Norse settlement of Iceland 874–930
- Song dynasty commercial revolution 960–1270
- Chola expansion 985–1070
- Polynesian settlement of Hawaii 1000–1200