In 765 a Viking fleet from Norway attacked Lindisfarne in England, and that event is usually seen as heralding the Viking Age. During the following three hundred years or so Scandinavia played a prominent part in many important and dramatic events in Europe. Sweden, Norway and Denmark had each their own sphere of interest to suit their location. For the Swedes it was easy to cross the Baltic Sea and settle on the Baltic shore, from where they proceeded down the Russian rivers to the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The Norwegians dominated the Atlantic Isles, Scotland and Ireland; they also settled in Iceland and Greenland and visited "Vinland" in North America. The Danes sailed along the coast of western Europe and to the eastern coast of England. Often men from more than one of the countries would join on these voyages. Recent findings have revealed that the Vikings weren't the bloodthirsty hoodlums that historians have branded them as over the centuries. Rather, they were first and foremost tradespeople and farmers, albeit with piracy as a lucrative sideline. The three Viking centuries changed Denmark fundamentally from being an almost unknown heathen area into a well-defined kingdom belonging to the European Christian societies. Around the year 1000 CE Denmark emerged as an independent state with one ruler, King Harald I Blaatand, and the Viking raids, being mostly individual profiteering enterprises, gradually died out. Svend Tveskжg (aka Swegn/Swein Forkbeard) was in control of England for a two-year period in 1014. He is the father of Knud den Store (aka Canute the Great), the first to truly unit England as one kingdom. Vikings had large areas of eastern England under their control, gaining and losing territory in various skirmishes, until Knud managed to gain full control in 1016. King Hardicanute's death in 1042 marked the termination of the epoch during which Danish kings occupied the English throne. During the late 1100's and early 1200's, Denmark established enclaves along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea; even, in 1219, briefly conquering Estonia. But a long period of civil wars and struggles with north German cities, beginning in the 1240's, greatly weakened the country. Denmark still remained a power to be reckoned with on the European scene, but as the constituent elements of Europe gradually changed from small dukedoms to big and strong centralized powers, Denmark's political and military importance waned.

Oh, shit vikinga - very interesting!