Viking age in Estonia - background

Sagas and chronicles tell stories about the lands of today's Estonia and their interaction with the Scandinavians. Unfortunately those sources were often written much later than the actual events they describe, involve some fantasy elements and the authors perhaps have never been to Estonia. Therefore they should be seen rather as folklore than history. However, they give evidence that Vikings did come to the eastern Baltic shores for raids and trade and some of the local warriors even fought side by side with the Scandinavians.

Archaeological evidence confirm the strong presence of Scandinavians (mostly from Sweden) on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. A large cemetery with typically Scandinavian burial objects was found nearby Grobina, a settlement in western Latvia.

Later, the Scandinavians established a trading centre in Staraja Ladoga in the lands of the Baltic Finns (present-day northern Russia, nearby Ladoga lake), similar to Birka in Sweden (Svealand) and Hedeby or Ribe in Denmark. The settlement was multi-ethnic - Finns, Slavs and Scandinavians traded there. In Frankish and Kievian chronicles the Scandinavians there were called Rus (most probably derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row"). It is still a debate but majority of Western scholars believe it was the Vikings (from the area of modern Sweden) who set up an early economic and political organisation in what later became Russia. The name Rus might have the same origin as the name for Sweden in Estonian and Finnish: Rootsi and Ruotsi.

Map of Europe after the death of Charles the Great (814 AD). Original map made by Charles Colbeck, The Public Schools Historical Atlas (1905).

The Swedish Vikings kept invading the eastern coasts of the Baltic sea until they were opposed by the Oeselians, inhabitants of Saaremaa, the biggest island of Estonia. Raids of Saaremaa Vikings