As excellent seafarers, explorers, merchants, and raiders, much of the Vikings’ legacy today would not have been possible without the help of longships. The longship was the secret to the Vikings’ success: the tool with which they became one of the dominant forces from the Arctic Ocean to the Caspian Sea.

Much of what we know about the Vikings today comes from epic poems, called sagas, most of which were written in Iceland from the 12th to the 15th centuries. The sagas focus heavily on the lives of individuals, usually great kings, or warriors and explorers, who spread Norse rule from Scandinavia, out across Europe, and even to North America...

From academia to pop culture, many of us refer to all men, women and children from 8th to 11th century Scandinavia as ‘Vikings,’ whether they are the vicious warriors from The Last Kingdom or the peaceful villagers from How to Train your Dragon. While that’s how the term is often used today, the original meaning of the word was quite different....