Decapitated bodies found in Dorset burial pit were executed Vikings - mirror.co.uk

[jdriskill3]

Now in the U.K. they would be pampered and released to go and sack again. "Slainte" You All.

[Woodsheal]

I always thought "Viking" should be presented with a a small "v", representing an activity or "avocation", i.e. some Northmen were vikings the same way that some Englishmen were pirates. Heading out "in viking" represented a raiding expedition carried on by only a minority of the so-called "Vikings." Calling an entire culture "Vikings" is like calling one "Soldiers," or "Dairy Farmers"....

[NewGuise]

I always thought "Viking" should be presented with a a small "v", representing an activity or "avocation.

Yep. Until it disappeared from use in Middle English it was often used as a verb; writers in the C19 revived the term as a capitalized noun (and so apparently a proper noun) with a romanticized image.

[tulloch]

I always thought "Viking" should be presented with a a small "v", representing an activity or "avocation", i.e. some Northmen were vikings the same way that some Englishmen were pirates. Heading out "in viking" represented a raiding expedition carried on by only a minority of the so-called "Vikings." Calling an entire culture "Vikings" is like calling one "Soldiers," or "Dairy Farmers"....

I understand that my ancestors may have been immigrants from the North to Scotland. Lots of the Islands and Highlands have Norse blood. I have read that Ross comes from one of the Norse languages and that any location with the suffix "shire" in it is of Norse origin. The world they inhabited and the pressures that led them to travel are very interesting. There is Norse, Danish, Pictish, Gallic blood all through the land and culture of the Highlands. Whether they came as marauders or as farmers and traders their story must be an interesting one.

Thomas de Tulloch, I think Bishop of Ross, actually worked a little magic getting Orkney returned to Scotland from Denmark in the fifteenth century.

[Lallans]

Vikings, when used as a proper noun, should surely be capitalized? In Canadian grade school history books the V word was carefully banned (strangely, since this was 'way before PC and of course eliminating the 'Vikings' and substituting something apparently nonsensical that we had never heard of meant that all of us sixth grader boys immediately lost interest)... Anyway, in our texts they were called Northmen- but not 'northmen'.