Between the 8th and 11th 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 go on an adventure—to seek wealth and fame. Vikings would take to the sea in a long ship, sometimes for 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.