[BugBrother]

Scandinavia at the time (and a few centuries after) was a violent clan society. War, raids etc were what people did instead of playing football and ice hockey. And business.

The trips to (e.g.) England were business, it is documented that boats were recruited from all over Scandinavia.

The "real" Europe at the time had [to a large part] gone on beyond that stage [of clan societies].

What to learn from this is not to be neighbour with violent clan societies. Think old Scandinavia or in the present day -- Afghanistan, Somalia and eastern Iraq.

(Incidentally, Sweden has the world's largest refugee immigration per capita from exactly those places... We will see how that ends up.)

Edit: I guess the down votes are my parallel with modern clan societies? Time will tell, I hope I'm wrong.

[rmc]

The "real" Europe at the time had [to a large part] gone on beyond that stage [of clan societies].

What was the real Europe in (say) 850? The (Eastern) Roman Empire (aka Byzantine Empire), with it's head quarters in modern day Turkey?

[BugBrother]

I was talking about the destinations "visited" in West Europe by vikings at the time. That was what the quote marks indicated. (It is a bit simplified, Ireland still had partly a tribal society of course.) Sorry I was unclear.

If I should say anything else on the subject, it is that the frustration about all this, like most history, is all the things we will never know.

I read ~ 10 years ago a fascinating theory about berserkers using self suggestion and being influenced by Roman warrior cults (the Roman empire had camps quite close to Denmark a few centuries before the viking age.) It was so frustrating that we almost certainly never will know.