The Viking World — Interactive Viking Map, 793–1066 AD
From Vinland to Miklagarðr: every marker is a real place from the Viking Age — raids, trade roads, settlements and homelands. Click a marker to read its story.
The coloured dashed lines are the six guided journeys — hover to trace one, click to sail it. Places without a line are stand-alone sites. Historically attested places only — no fiction, no TV-show inventions: every location cites a museum or academic source.
Every place on the map
Birkac. 750–980 AD
Sweden's first town, where Byzantine silk met northern fur. Founded around AD 750 on the island of Björkö in Lake Mälaren, Birka was one of northern Europe's great Viking-age trading hubs, linking Scandinavia to the Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate via the eastern river routes. The missionary Ansgar brought the first recorded Christian mission to Sweden here around 829–831. After more than two centuries of trade, the town was abandoned around 975–980, as nearby Sigtuna rose in its place. View on the map →
Hedebyc. 770–1066 AD
The largest town of the Viking world — burned, rebuilt, and finally left in ashes. Set at the base of the Jutland peninsula on the Schlei inlet, Hedeby was the Viking Age's largest trading town, a portage crossroads where goods moved between the North Sea and the Baltic. First mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals in 804, it grew after the Danish king Godfred forcibly resettled merchants there in 808, and at its height around 900 held roughly 1,500 people behind semicircular ramparts linked to the Danevirke. It was sacked around 1050 and destroyed by West Slavic forces in 1066, after which its role passed to Schleswig across the fjord. View on the map →
Ribec. 705 AD
Scandinavia's oldest town was trading beads and silver before the Viking Age even began. A planned marketplace was laid out on the north bank of the Ribe river around AD 705 — decades before the raid on Lindisfarne — making Ribe the oldest town in Scandinavia. Its regular plots hosted craftsmen and traders handling Frankish glass, pottery and quernstones, tying Denmark into western European trade networks. Unlike Birka or Hedeby, Ribe never died: it has been continuously occupied ever since. View on the map →
Kaupangc. 800–950 AD
Norway's first town rose beside the hall-lands of kings — then quietly vanished. Kaupang, on the Viksfjord near modern Larvik, was Norway's first urban settlement, founded around AD 800 — probably at the initiative of the Danish king, then the dominant power in the region. Its densely plotted waterfront housed perhaps 400–600 people engaged in trade and craft, leaving behind Arabic dirhams, Frankish coins, glass beads and amber. For unclear reasons the town was abandoned around the mid-10th century. View on the map →
Gamla Uppsala6th–12th century AD
Three great mounds mark the seat of kings — and, if Adam of Bremen is believed, a temple decked in gold. Gamla Uppsala was the political, religious and assembly centre of the Svear. Its three monumental Royal Mounds were raised in the 6th–7th centuries, and the site remained a royal and cultic focus through the Viking Age. Writing in the 1070s, Adam of Bremen described a great pagan temple here with sacrifices held every ninth year — a famous but contested account. After Christianization, Gamla Uppsala became Sweden's first archbishopric in 1164. View on the map →
Jellingc. 950–965 AD
A king carved his kingdom's name in stone — and Denmark had its birth certificate. At Jelling, King Gorm the Old and his son Harald Bluetooth raised a royal monument complex of two enormous burial mounds and two runestones, later joined by a church. Around 965, Harald's great stone proclaimed that he had won all Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian — the oldest surviving record naming Denmark within Denmark. The complex was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994. View on the map →
Trelleborgc. 980 AD
A fortress of geometric perfection — the timbers themselves say autumn 980. Trelleborg is the best preserved of Harald Bluetooth's ring fortresses: a precisely circular rampart with four gates at the compass points and sixteen identical longhouses arranged in four square courtyards. Dendrochronology dates its timbers to trees felled in the autumn of 980. In 2023 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together with Aggersborg, Fyrkat, Nonnebakken and Borgring as the 'Viking-Age Ring Fortresses'. View on the map →
Lejrec. 550–1000 AD
Legend placed Beowulf's hall here; the spade found halls fit for kings. At Gammel Lejre on Zealand, archaeologists have uncovered a succession of monumental timber halls spanning roughly AD 500–1000, at the sites of Fredshøj and Mysselhøjgård. Medieval tradition — the Beowulf poem's Heorot, the Chronicon Lethrense and Saxo Grammaticus — names Lejre as the seat of the legendary Skjöldung (Scylding) dynasty of Danish kings; that link is legend, but the archaeology confirms a real, long-lived centre of power. In 2009 the remains of a hall over 60 metres long were excavated, the largest Viking-age building known from Denmark. View on the map →
Borg, Lofotenc. 500–950 AD
North of the Arctic Circle stood the largest Viking building ever found. At Borg on Vestvågøy in the Lofoten Islands, a chieftain's seat flourished from around AD 500 through the Viking Age. Its longhouse — 83 metres long — is the largest building known from the Viking world, discovered in 1981 when a farmer's plough turned up ancient remains. Excavated by a joint Scandinavian team in 1986–89, the site is now home to the Lofotr Viking Museum with a full-scale reconstruction of the hall, opened in 1995. View on the map →
Vestfold Ship Burials (Oseberg & Gokstad)9th century AD
The finest Viking ships ever found were buried in Vestfold clay — one of them with two women aboard. The Vestfold coast around Tønsberg and Sandefjord holds the world's most famous ship burials. The exquisitely carved Oseberg ship was hauled ashore and buried in the autumn of 834 as the grave of two high-status women; the sturdier Gokstad ship was buried around 900 with a powerful man. Excavated in 1904 and 1880 respectively, both ships survive almost intact and are displayed at the Museum of the Viking Age at Bygdøy, Oslo. View on the map →
Roskilde & the Skuldelev Shipsc. 1070 AD
To save their city, Danes sank five ships — and accidentally preserved them for 900 years. Around 1070, at the very end of the Viking Age, five ships were deliberately scuttled at Skuldelev in Roskilde Fjord to block the main channel and shield the royal town of Roskilde from seaborne attack. Excavated in 1962 inside a purpose-built cofferdam, the five wrecks — from stout cargo traders to a 30-metre warship — revealed the full range of late Viking shipbuilding. They are displayed today at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. View on the map →
Lindisfarne793 AD
The lightning strike that opened the Viking Age. On 8 June 793, seaborne raiders sacked the monastery of St Cuthbert on Lindisfarne, then the most important centre of Christianity in the kingdom of Northumbria. The scholar Alcuin, writing from Charlemagne's court, described the church spattered with the blood of its priests and stripped of its treasures. The attack shocked Christian Europe and is the conventional starting point of the Viking Age. View on the map →
Portlandc. 789 AD
Before Lindisfarne, three strange ships put in at Portland. Around 789, three ships of Northmen landed at Portland on the Wessex coast — the first recorded Viking landfall in England, some four years before Lindisfarne. The king's reeve rode out from Dorchester to escort the strangers to the royal town, as trade protocol required, evidently taking them for merchants. They killed him. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls them 'the first ships of the Danish men that sought the land of the English nation'. View on the map →
Iona Abbey795–825 AD
The holiest island in the Gaelic world, raided again and again. Founded by St Columba in 563, Iona was one of the most influential monasteries in the British Isles — and its wealth and exposed position made it a repeated Viking target from the 790s. The Annals of Ulster record the monastery burned by 'the heathens' in 802, and in 806 sixty-eight members of the community were killed. Early in the 9th century the monks carried Columba's relics to safety at Kells in Ireland and Dunkeld in Scotland. View on the map →
Jorvik (York)866–954 AD
The Great Heathen Army didn't just raid this city — it moved in. In 866 the Great Heathen Army captured the Northumbrian city of Eoforwic, which under Scandinavian rule became Jórvík, capital of a Viking kingdom that lasted until 954. Excavations at Coppergate (1976–81) revealed the waterlogged, astonishingly well-preserved remains of the Viking-age city — timber buildings, workshops, textiles and leather — now showcased at the Jorvik Viking Centre built on the site. View on the map →
Repton873–874 AD
A Viking army wintered here — and left a mound of its dead. In the winter of 873–74 the Great Heathen Army camped at Repton, seat of the Mercian royal church, and drove King Burgred of Mercia into exile overseas. Excavations at St Wystan's Church found a charnel deposit of at least 264 people, mostly men aged 18–45, buried under a low pebble mound beside the church. In 2018 new radiocarbon analysis confirmed the remains are consistent with a single late 9th-century event — the Great Army's winter at Repton. View on the map →
Battle of Edington878 AD
The battle that saved the last English kingdom. In early 878 the Danish leader Guthrum's surprise winter attack drove Alfred of Wessex into the Somerset marshes — the Chronicle says all the West Saxons submitted 'all but Alfred the king'. That May, Alfred rallied the men of Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire and decisively defeated Guthrum's army at Edington (Ethandun). Guthrum accepted baptism, with Alfred as his godfather, and withdrew; the resulting settlement left the Vikings ruling much of northern and eastern England — the Danelaw. View on the map →
Dublin841 AD
A Viking ship-camp that grew into Ireland's capital. In 841 Viking raiders established a longphort — a fortified ship harbour — at Dublin, from which, the Annals of Ulster say, the surrounding kingdoms were plundered. Expelled in 902, the Norse returned in 917 and rebuilt Dublin into a true town, which became one of the most important trading hubs — including slave trading — in the Viking world. The Wood Quay excavations (1974–81) revealed its fenced plots, streets and timber houses in extraordinary detail. View on the map →
Waterford914 AD
Ireland's oldest city was founded by a Viking fleet. Waterford was founded in 914 by Norse raiders who established a longphort on the tidal estuary of the River Suir, and it grew into Ireland's oldest continuously inhabited city. The apex of the original triangular Viking settlement is still marked by Reginald's Tower — named after the city's Viking founder — an area known to this day as the Viking Triangle. Rebuilt in stone by the Anglo-Normans, the tower has been in continuous use for over 800 years. View on the map →
Jarlshofc. 800s–1200s AD
A Norse farm that ran for sixteen generations — hidden under sand for centuries. Norwegian settlers arrived at this southern tip of Shetland in the 800s and built a farmstead whose longhouses were occupied, rebuilt and extended for some 12 to 16 generations, into the late 1200s. Jarlshof contains the most extensive Viking-age remains visible anywhere in Britain — and they sit atop more than 4,000 years of earlier settlement, from Neolithic houses to a Bronze Age smithy and Iron Age broch, all sealed and preserved by wind-blown sand. View on the map →
Maeshowec. 1150s AD
Norse crusaders broke into a 5,000-year-old tomb — and left graffiti. Maeshowe, built around 5,000 years ago, is the finest Neolithic building to survive in north-west Europe. In the mid-12th century, Norsemen — including men linked to Earl Rognvald's Jerusalem expedition — broke into the long-sealed mound and carved runes across its walls: boasts, names, jokes and treasure tales. The chamber now holds the largest collection of runic inscriptions to survive anywhere outside Scandinavia, and the Orkneyinga Saga records Norse shelter at 'Orkahaug' in the winter of 1153. View on the map →
Battle of Stamford Bridge1066 AD
The last great Viking king of the age fell here, an arrow in his throat. On 25 September 1066, King Harold Godwinson's English army surprised the Norwegian invasion force of King Harald Hardrada and Earl Tostig at Stamford Bridge, east of York. In a long and bloody fight Hardrada was killed — by an arrow to the throat, tradition holds — along with Tostig and most of the Norwegian host. Harold's exhausted army then marched south, to defeat and death at Hastings less than three weeks later. Stamford Bridge is the conventional endpoint of the Viking Age. View on the map →
Paris845 & 885–886 AD
Twice the dragon ships came for Paris — once the king paid, once the city fought. In March 845 a fleet of about 120 ships under a chieftain the Frankish annals call Reginherus sailed up the Seine and plundered Paris around Easter. King Charles the Bald bought the raiders off with 7,000 pounds (livres) of silver — the first recorded danegeld paid in West Frankia. Forty years later, in November 885, a far larger Viking army besieged the city for roughly a year; Count Odo and Bishop Gauzelin held the fortified Île de la Cité until relief came, and Odo's fame carried him to the West Frankish throne in 888. View on the map →
Dorestad834–863 AD
The richest port of the north was raided so often the emperor finally hired Vikings to guard it. Dorestad, at a river junction of the Rhine delta, was one of the largest trading emporia of early medieval northwestern Europe, funnelling Frisian, Frankish, and Scandinavian trade. From 834 it was struck by Viking raids in quick succession — 834, 835, 836, and 837 — and attacks recurred until a final raid recorded in 863. The Carolingians eventually granted the town as a benefice to Danish warlords, including Rorik of Dorestad, on condition they defend it against other Norsemen. View on the map →
Noirmoutier799–843 AD
The island monastery the Vikings raided so relentlessly that its monks fled — and the raiders moved in. The monastery of Saint-Philibert on the island of Noirmoutier, at the mouth of the Loire, suffered what its own monk-chronicler Ermentarius records as the first Viking raid on continental Europe, in 799. Raids became so routine that from 819 the monks evacuated to the mainland each raiding season, and in 836 they abandoned the island for good, carrying Saint Philibert's relics with them. In 843 a Viking fleet made Noirmoutier the first recorded overwintering base in Gaul, turning seasonal raiding into year-round occupation. View on the map →
Nantes843 AD
On a midsummer feast day, the Vikings cut down a bishop at his own altar. On 24 June 843 — the feast of St John the Baptist — a Viking fleet sailed up the Loire and stormed Nantes while the city, drained of defenders by Frankish civil war and Breton conflict, was crowded with festival-goers. Bishop Gohard was killed as he celebrated mass, along with many clergy and townspeople, and the city was pillaged before the raiders withdrew downriver with plunder and captives. The attack announced a new intensity of Viking activity on the Loire, anchored by the base at nearby Noirmoutier. View on the map →
Rouen & Normandy911 AD
The raiders were given the land they had ravaged — and their grandsons conquered England. After a Viking defeat near Chartres in 911, King Charles III 'the Simple' negotiated the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte with the Norse chieftain Rollo: lands around Rouen in exchange for baptism, fealty, and defense of the Seine against other raiders. Scandinavian settlers followed, adopted Frankish language and religion, and the region became Normandy — the land of the Northmen. From Rollo's line came William the Conqueror, who took the English crown at Hastings in 1066. View on the map →
Seville844 AD
The Vikings sailed into the heart of Islamic Spain — and met an empire that hit back. In late September 844 a Viking fleet, having already raided Lisbon and Cádiz, forced its way up the Guadalquivir and took Seville in the first days of October, plundering the city of the Umayyad emirate for weeks. Emir Abd al-Rahman II of Córdoba mobilized rapidly; his forces under the chief minister Isa ibn Shuhayd crushed the raiders in November. Arabic chroniclers, who call the Vikings 'al-majus' (roughly, fire-worshipping pagans), record that the emir then built walls, a naval arsenal, and a standing fleet — defenses that made al-Andalus one of the hardest targets in Europe. View on the map →
Lisbon844 AD
Thirteen days of battle on the Tagus — the Vikings' bloody first stop in Iberia. In August or September 844, en route south along the Atlantic coast, a Viking fleet fell upon Muslim Lisbon (al-Ushbuna) and fought running battles with its defenders for some thirteen days. The city's governor sent urgent warning to Emir Abd al-Rahman II in Córdoba — intelligence that helped al-Andalus organize the counterblow that would smash the same fleet at Seville weeks later. The Lisbon attack opened the first confirmed large-scale Viking campaign against the Iberian Peninsula. View on the map →
Lunic. 859–862 AD
The Vikings who sailed for Rome — and, the story goes, sacked the wrong city. Around 859 a fleet of some 62 ships left the Loire under leaders later Norman tradition names as Hastein and Björn Ironside, and spent roughly three years raiding around Iberia, North Africa, the Rhône delta, and Italy — the deepest Viking thrust into the Mediterranean on record. Norman chroniclers tell how the fleet attacked the Ligurian port of Luni believing it to be Rome, taking it by a famous ruse. Battered by an Andalusi fleet on the return voyage, the survivors limped back to the Loire in 862, rich in plunder and slaves. View on the map →
Staraya Ladogac. 753 AD
Decades before Lindisfarne burned, Norsemen were already building in the East. On the Volkhov River near Lake Ladoga, Scandinavian traders founded the earliest known Norse settlement in Eastern Europe around the 750s. Reachable by ship from the Baltic via the Neva River, Aldeigjuborg became the gateway to the great river routes toward the Volga and Dnieper. A multi-ethnic emporium of Norse, Finnic, and Slavic peoples, it thrived as a trade town for some 450 years. View on the map →
Novgorod862 AD (chronicle tradition)
'Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it' — so the Slavs, says the chronicle, invited a Viking to rule. According to the Russian Primary Chronicle, in 862 the quarrelling tribes of the north invited the Varangian Rus chieftain Rurik to reign over them, and he seated himself at Novgorod — a founding legend of the Russian state. The Norse knew the place as Holmgarðr, a wealthy hub where Baltic silver, furs, and slaves changed hands on the route south to Constantinople. View on the map →
Gnezdovo10th century
Thousands of burial mounds line the Dnieper here — one of the largest Viking-age cemeteries anywhere. At a key portage point on the Dnieper route 'from the Varangians to the Greeks', a Norse-Slavic trade settlement flourished in the 10th century, peaking between about 920 and the 960s. Its vast kurgan cemetery — originally an estimated 3,500 to 4,000 mounds — held warriors, traders, and craftsmen, some cremated in boats in Scandinavian fashion. The site was abandoned in the early 11th century as nearby Smolensk rose. View on the map →
Kyiv882 AD (chronicle tradition)
Oleg seized this hilltop town by trick and crowned it 'the mother of Russian cities.' In 882, according to the Primary Chronicle, the Varangian prince Oleg sailed down the Dnieper from Novgorod, killed Kyiv's rulers Askold and Dir, and made the city his capital — the founding act of Kievan Rus. Perfectly placed on the Dnieper, Kyiv became the marshalling point where the Rus fleet gathered each spring for the run to Constantinople, and the seat of a dynasty that ruled the East Slavic world for centuries. View on the map →
Constantinople860–1040s AD
The Norse called it Miklagarðr — 'the Great City' — and they came first to plunder it, then to guard its emperor. In 860 a Rus fleet burst out of the Bosporus and besieged the greatest city in Christendom. Within 150 years the relationship had flipped: from 988 Emperor Basil II staffed his personal bodyguard, the famed Varangian Guard, with 6,000 Norse warriors sent by Vladimir of Kyiv. Trade treaties recorded in the chronicle for 907 and 911 gave Rus merchants privileged access to the city's markets, making Miklagarðr the glittering southern terminus of the Dnieper route. View on the map →
Bulghar922 AD
Here an envoy from Baghdad watched the Rus burn a chieftain in his ship — and wrote it all down. Capital of Volga Bulgaria, the great middleman state of the fur-and-silver trade, Bulghar is where the Abbasid envoy Ahmad ibn Fadlan met Rus merchants encamped on the Volga in 922. His Risala records their appearance, their trading rituals, and — uniquely in all medieval literature — a complete eyewitness account of a Viking ship funeral, including the sacrifice of a slave girl and the burning of the vessel. View on the map →
Berezan Island & the Dnieper Rapids10th–11th century
On a bare Black Sea island, a grieving Viking raised the only runestone ever found in Eastern Europe. Berezan, at the Dnieper's mouth, was the last rest stop on the Rus route to Constantinople — the island Emperor Constantine VII called St. Aitherios, where crews re-rigged their dugout boats with sails, masts, and rudders for the open sea. Upstream lay the dreaded Dnieper rapids, which Constantine named one by one in both Norse and Slavic around 950 — linguistic proof that Scandinavians worked this river. Here in 1905 archaeologists found a runestone raised by a trader named Grani for his dead partner Karl. View on the map →
Baghdad9th–10th century
The silver in a Viking hoard on Gotland was struck in the mints of the caliphs. Baghdad, capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, anchored the southern end of the Viking Age's greatest economic engine: the silver trade. Islamic dirhams — minted in Baghdad and across the caliphate's Central Asian provinces — flowed north by the hundred thousand in exchange for furs, slaves, wax, and honey, passing hand to hand up the Volga until they were buried in hoards from Russia to Denmark. Few Norsemen ever saw the city itself; its coins, though, reached every corner of their world. View on the map →
Tórshavn & the Faroe Islandsc. 825 AD
On a rocky point named for parliament, Norse settlers built one of the oldest assembly sites on Earth. Norse settlers colonized the Faroe Islands around 800–825 AD, using the archipelago as a stepping stone across the North Atlantic. According to tradition, they held their ting (open-air assembly) on the Tinganes peninsula in Tórshavn from the Viking Age onward, making it one of the oldest parliamentary meeting places in the world. Excavations at Kvívík on Streymoy uncovered a classic Viking-age farmstead — a curved longhouse and byre — with spindles, fishing gear and children's toys. View on the map →
Reykjavíkc. 871–874 AD
A settler threw his carved pillars into the sea and let the gods choose where Iceland's capital would rise. According to Landnámabók, Ingólfr Arnarson left Norway and became Iceland's first permanent settler around 874 AD, building his farm where his high-seat pillars washed ashore at a steaming bay he named Reykjarvík. In 2001, archaeologists digging at Aðalstræti in downtown Reykjavík found a Viking-age longhouse and a turf wall lying beneath the 'settlement layer' of volcanic ash, dated to 871±2 AD — placing real people on this spot almost exactly when the sagas say they arrived. View on the map →
Þingvellir (Thingvellir)930 AD
In 930 AD, a nation with no king made a rift valley its parliament. Around 930 AD, Iceland's chieftains founded the Althing at Þingvellir — an open-air general assembly that made laws and settled disputes for the whole island, held for two weeks each summer. It met on these plains until 1798, and the modern Althing that descends from it makes Iceland's parliament the oldest surviving national assembly in the world. The site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004. View on the map →
Brattahlíðc. 985 AD
An outlaw named a frozen island 'Greenland' — and made his farm its capital. Exiled from Iceland for killings, Erik the Red explored the fjords of southwest Greenland and returned in about 985 AD leading a fleet of 25 ships of settlers; only 14 arrived. He claimed the best land at the head of Eriksfjord and built his estate, Brattahlíð, which became the chief farm of the Eastern Settlement — the largest Norse colony in Greenland and the springboard for the Vinland voyages of his son Leif Erikson. The site, at modern Qassiarsuk, is part of the UNESCO World Heritage property Kujataa (inscribed 2017). View on the map →
Garðar1126 AD
The Catholic Church's most remote medieval outpost had its cathedral on a Greenland fjord. In 1126 Greenland's first resident bishop, Arnald — consecrated two years earlier under the see of Lund — arrived to take his seat, and his seat was fixed at Garðar in the Eastern Settlement. A red-sandstone cathedral dedicated to St Nicholas, patron of sailors, rose beside the fjord, together with great byres and the largest farm complex in Norse Greenland. Its stone foundations still stand among the houses of modern Igaliku, part of the UNESCO Kujataa World Heritage property. View on the map →
Western Settlement (Sandnes)c. 985–1350 AD
A priest sailed north in the 1350s and found farms, cattle — and not a single person. The Western Settlement (Vestribyggð) was the smaller, more northerly of Norse Greenland's two colonies, founded in the fjords behind modern Nuuk around 985–1000 AD with roughly 90 farms centered on the great estate of Sandnes. It was the true edge of the medieval European world — and it ended first. When the Norwegian churchman Ívar Bárðarson visited around 1350, he reported the settlement empty of people, with livestock roaming loose. The Eastern Settlement held on perhaps a century longer before Norse Greenland vanished entirely. View on the map →
L'Anse aux Meadowsc. 1021 AD
Five hundred years before Columbus, Norse axes were felling trees in Newfoundland — in exactly 1021 AD. L'Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland, is the only authenticated Norse site in North America — physical proof of the Vinland voyages described in the Saga of Erik the Red and the Greenlanders' Saga, launched from Greenland by Leif Erikson and his kin around 1000 AD. Discovered in 1960 by Helge Ingstad and archaeologist Anne Stine Ingstad, the site preserves eight timber-and-sod buildings of Icelandic style, used briefly as a base camp for exploration further south. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978. View on the map →
What Is the Viking World Map?
This is an interactive, historically grounded map of the Viking Age (roughly 793–1066 AD). Every one of its 45 markers is a real, documented place — a raid site, trading town, settlement or royal seat — with its story, dates and a citation to a museum or academic source. Six guided journeys let you sail the era's greatest voyages stop by stop, from Leif Erikson's crossing to Vinland to the river road that ended at the walls of Constantinople.
How Far Did the Vikings Actually Travel?
Farther than almost anyone else of their age. Westward, Norse sailors crossed the open North Atlantic in stages — Shetland, the Faroes, Iceland (settled c. 874), Greenland (c. 985) and finally Vinland — the Viking settlement in Newfoundland, North America, at L'Anse aux Meadows, scientifically dated to exactly AD 1021. Eastward, Swedish traders and warriors followed the rivers of eastern Europe to the Black and Caspian Seas: their silver-trade network reached Constantinople and the markets of the Abbasid Caliphate. South, fleets raided along Iberia and into the Mediterranean as far as Italy. Use the map's filters to trace each direction.
Viking Raids on the Map — Lindisfarne, Paris, Seville
The red markers trace the raiding age: Lindisfarne in 793, where the Viking Age conventionally begins; Iona and Dublin's longphort; the sieges of Paris — yes, the Vikings really did raid Paris, in 845 under a leader the annals call Reginherus and again in 885–886 — and the astonishing southern strikes on Seville in 844 and into the Mediterranean as far as Luni in Italy. Each card tells you what the sources actually say, and what is later legend.
Viking Trade Routes on the Map
Two great eastern arteries are drawn as guided journeys: the Volga route, which carried furs and slaves south and returned millions of Arab silver dirhams north to towns like Birka and Hedeby, and the Dnieper route — "from the Varangians to the Greeks" — which ran through Novgorod and Kyiv, over the portages and the rapids, to Miklagarðr: Constantinople. The inland legs follow rivers, which is exactly how the Norse travelled them — dragging their ships across the watersheds between one river system and the next.
Where Did the Vikings Settle?
The map's green markers show the great settlements: Dublin and Jórvík (York) in the west, the farm-republics of Iceland with their open-air parliament at Þingvellir, Erik the Red's Brattahlíð in Greenland, Normandy — granted to the Norse leader Rollo in 911 — and the river towns of the east that grew into Kievan Rus. Settlement, not raiding, is the Viking Age's most lasting legacy: several of these places are still capital cities.
How We Keep It Accurate — Our Method
Accuracy is the point of this project. Every location cites a source — museums, UNESCO listings, universities and peer-reviewed work are preferred — and the primary-source quotes on the cards (Alcuin's letter on Lindisfarne, Rimbert on Birka, Ibn Fadlan on the Rus) are taken verbatim from public-domain translations you can check yourself. Where scholarship is uncertain or a story is semi-legendary, the card says so plainly. Nothing on this map comes from television fiction.
45documented locations
119unique sources cited
22primary quotes, verified verbatim
263fact-checks on coordinates, dates & quotes
Our process, in short: the dataset was researched location-by-location against museum and academic pages; every coordinate, date and quotation then went through an independent verification pass (263 checks across three review batches, July 2026); claims that rest on chronicle tradition rather than archaeology — Ragnar at Paris, Rurik in 862, Lejre as Heorot — are labelled as tradition on their cards; and the sailing-time estimates in the voyage tool are anchored to recorded medieval passages (Ohthere's account, c. 890; the Landnámabók sailing directions). Spotted an error? Tell us — we correct the map and credit you. Want the writing system too? Try our free rune translator and read the rune poems on the same page.
Wear the Saga
If a place on this map speaks to you, you can carry its story. Our pieces draw on the same attested symbols and craft traditions you meet on these cards — explore Viking rings, Viking necklaces and the 925 sterling silver collection.
The Viking World Quiz — 10 Questions
Every answer is somewhere on the map above. Score 10/10 and you have earned your sea legs.
Viking World Map FAQ
Is this map historically accurate?
Yes — every location is a documented historical site with dates and a citation to a museum, UNESCO or academic source, and semi-legendary traditions are labelled as such on the cards. The route lines are schematic reconstructions: medieval sources record sailing times and stops, not exact tracks, so the lines show the attested corridors rather than GPS paths.
When was the Viking Age?
Conventionally from the raid on Lindisfarne in 793 AD to the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066 — both are on the map. Scandinavian trading towns like Ribe were already active decades before 793, which is why some markers carry earlier dates.
Did the Vikings really reach America?
Yes. L'Anse aux Meadows on Newfoundland is the only authenticated Norse site in North America — a UNESCO World Heritage site whose worked wood was dated to exactly AD 1021 using a solar-storm signature in the tree rings. Click the Vinland marker, or take Leif Erikson's guided journey, to read the story.
Why is there no Kattegat town on the map?
Because it never existed. Kattegat is the real sea strait between Denmark and Sweden, but the town of that name in the Vikings TV series is fiction. This map only shows places that are historically attested — the real seats of power were places like Jelling, Lejre and Gamla Uppsala, all of which you can visit here.
Did the Vikings raid Paris?
Yes, twice on a grand scale: in 845 a fleet sailed up the Seine and was bought off with 7,000 pounds of silver — often counted as the first danegeld paid in West Frankia — and in 885–886 a great army besieged the city for a year. Both events are marker stops on the map, with the primary sources quoted on their cards.
Can I use or embed this map?
Yes — teachers, students, writers and history sites are welcome to embed the map for free with attribution. Use the "Copy embed code" button above; the snippet includes a credit link back to this page.
How do the guided journeys work?
Pick a journey above the map and a longship sets sail (a raven banner marches for the Great Heathen Army). It travels stop by stop while the card narrates each place. You can skip ahead or end the journey at any time, and every stop you visit counts toward your explored total.