Vikings in Western Europe

The death of the Emperor Charlemagne in 814 left Western Europe full of vulnerable individual nations - an opportunity for the Vikings to exploit.

The large areas of France, Germany, and northern Italy, which had been united under the emperor, were divided among squabbling leaders.

The Vikings used this situation to their advantage.

They invaded Frisia (now the northern part of The Netherlands) in 834.

In 864, they diverted the course of the Rhine River, which caused the decline of the important trading town of Dorestad.

France

The Vikings sacked Rouen in France in 841.

On Easter Sunday 845,Vikings entered Paris and sacked the city.
The Frankish king paid 700 pounds of silver to persuade them to depart peacefully.

The French kings tried many times to buy the Vikings off with Danegeld, but the easy spoils only encouraged more Vikings to come.

In the 8oo's, Vikings invaded northern France.

In 911, the French king bribed their leader by granting him a large slice of land, which became known as Normandy.

Spain and Italy

The Moors ruled Spain when Vikings attacked Seville in 844. The Moors defeated the Vikings and forced them to return most of their booty.
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In 859, the Vikings Bjorn Ironside and Hastein led two ships that sailed from Brittany to Spain.

When the Moorish forces in Spain proved too strong for the Vikings, the Vikings gave up and instead raided the north African coast in the area of what is now Morocco.

The Vikings continued, by way of the Balearic Islands, to islands at the mouth of the Rhone River, where they spent the winter.

In the spring of 860, they sailed south along the Italian coast with the intention of capturing Rome. They arrived at a city on the coast, which they believed to be Rome. The Vikings tricked the inhabitants into allowing them into the city.

They then discovered that, instead of having captured Rome, they had captured the small, relatively unimportant, seaport of Luna.