![]() ![]() This seems to indicate there was space enough for everyone. These hit and run raids were made possible because the Vikings were master boat builders and they created flat bottomed boats ideal for journeys up rivers, where many monastic sites lay, ready for plundering. They turned to looting, then returning home. ![]() The earliest raiders did not seem to want to move out of Scandinavia. But a popular theory is the populations had grown to the point there was not enough food to feed everyone. Why the Vikings suddenly began raiding is not completely clear. The first recorded raid in the west was at Lindisfarne in 793. This is when the Vikings first entered into written history. As the later Carolingian Empire expanded into northern Germany they came into contact with the Danish people. The Frankish Empire that succeeded them in Gaul became more and more aware of the northern threat. The northern menace survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The Roman historians Jordanes described the destructive Ostrogoths and Visigoths as having come from Gotland. ![]() But the Romans suspected they were only a part of a greater threat located further north. ![]() The Romans believed these war-like tribes came from Jutland. This is when the Cimbri and the Teutons moved into southern Gaul. The people of the far north, later called Vikings, were first noticed by the Romans around the year 100 BC. ![]()
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