Between the eighth and eleventh centuries Vikings stormed out of their Scandinavian homelands to raid and loot along the coasts of Europe. In old Norse to ‘go a’viking’ meant to take to sea in a long ship for an adventure. Sometimes this was a trading trip, sometimes a piratical raid. Often it was both. Explorers and traders, warriors and poets, they ranged between Byzantium in the south and Iceland, and even North America, in the North. Their fame lives on.