So the Vikings became sea rovers, or pirates, as sea robbers are often called. Those early Vikings believed that the riches of the world belonged rightly to the people who were strong enough to take them for themselves.
During the long winters, the Vikings stayed at home. In the daytime, they mended their boats, or built new boats. In the evenings they gathered around the feast table and listened to tales of adventures at sea. But when the warm days of sunshine came, they hastened to plant their crops and then to sail away to rob their neighbors.
The Vikings had no instrument with which to tell the direction they were sailing. They had no glasses through which to sight land. They took big birds, called ravens, with them on their boats to help them. When they wanted to find land, they would turn loose one of the birds. The raven would fly to land. By following the bird, the seamen too found land.
THE OLD VIKING SHIP REBUILT
When one of the dragon-like ships came near the shores of another land, the people on the shores were filled with fear. Sometimes they tried to keep the robbers from landing on their shores. Then the Vikings would get their battle axes and their shields and fight their way into the land. They were cruel fighters. Often they left whole towns in ruin—people dying, and homes and crops in flames. For years the Vikings kept up their life as sea robbers.
After a time, some of the Vikings thought, “We will take our families and build new homes for ourselves in the rich lands we have visited.”
So Viking boats sailed away from the northland carrying whole families. Some went to nearby lands where the English live. Others went to live on lands that belong to the French. But many others sailed farther away and built homes on an island which is called Iceland. Other families followed them to Iceland. Before many years there were more than a thousand Vikings living on the island.
Some of the Vikings who had gone to live in Iceland still liked to sail the seas. Stories say that one of them, a very daring seaman called Lief Ericsson, sailed and sailed a very long way from his home. He found a land with many green trees and green grass and grapevines loaded with fruit. Lief called the land Vinland because of the grapes. But now people believe that the shores which Lief Ericsson found were really the shores of our land, America. Lief’s voyage to Vinland was made about five hundred years before Columbus found the new world.
Some people have said, “The story that Lief Ericsson found America cannot be true. A Viking ship could not have crossed the big ocean.”