Religious, cultural and socio-economic aspects of Vikings in medieval Europe

While Germanic people existed in the middle and southen parts of Scandinavia, Finno-Ugric peoples lived in eastern and northern parts of it. The topic of ourt hesis is the Scandinavians that ruled the great part of the region. That people, called by various names during the history, was nown generally as "Vikings" between IX. and XI. centuries. We can say that while the Vikings lived simply in their mainland, they made a brilliant entrance into history stage at the beginning of the IX. century. Until the middle of the XI. century they started many attacks which had social, political and economical consequences in the Continental Europe and Britain. Besides founding their own kingdom, they made great contributions to the formation of political existences of Britain, France and Russia. After all these journeys and raids, they entered into commerce and had an important place in this area in the Northern Europe. At that period there had been many concepts identified with this people. The leadings of those concepts are their being warriors, raids in many parts of the world, light, fast-travelling and good-looking ships, commercial talents, sagas, runic scripts and mythology. It draws our attention that although the Scandinavians were from Germanic family, Oriental influence in their culture differentiated them from the other European societies. When we study these influences well, it can be seen that these people benefited from a widerange of cultures, from Ural-Altaic culture to Indian culture. All these foreign elements showed themselves in many areas from Runic scripts and mythological narratives until belief system and art of decoration. But they did not copy these elements similarly. On the contrary, they processed every element they took in such a way that these elements were identified with the Scandinavians from that period. Consequently while the Vikings were regarded a part of barbarian world, after that period, they had some learnings from the people of the Continental Europe and they added learnings from the Orient and became the part of a world defined as "civilized" by the Europeans.