Trade, not conquest, initially led Vikings to travel

In popular culture, ancient Norsemen are often depicted as murderous invaders, but a new study published earlier this week in the European Journal of Archaeology suggests that the early days of the Viking Age were more about commerce than conquering.

In the study, Dr. Steven Ashby of the University of York’s Department of Archaeology and his colleagues discovered that the Viking Age may have predated the first raid on England by about 70 years, and that the Scandanavians were travelling to a trading center in Denmark.