The Vikings explored, raided and traded across a vast area stretching from North America to the Middle East between roughly the late eighth and mid-11th centuries.
In Old Norse, the language the Vikings spoke, “a Viking was a sea-borne raider, and to go-a-viking was to undertake sea-borne raiding,” Angus Somerville and Russell Andrew McDonald, both professors at Brock University in Canada, wrote in their book “The Vikings and Their Age)” (University of Toronto Press, 2013). “The word is a job description but it applied only to a small minority of the population,” as many people in Scandinavia would not have taken part in raids.
Among those who did raid, “being a Viking was a part-time job since Viking expeditions were undertaken seasonally by small farmers, fishermen, merchants, chieftains, and aristocrats as a means of supplementing their income and winning fame,” Somerville and McDonald wrote.
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