Vikings

Starting from the Eighth Century A.D., inhabitants of the poor and marginal countries of Scandinavia - known as Vikings - started, in ever greater numbers, to wage piratical raids on the tribes and rudimentrary kingdoms of the Baltic countires to their south as well as on the shores of the kingdoms of Christian West Europe.

For several centuries, the Vikings consituted a major threat, and rulers such as Alfder the great in England spent most of the rign fighting them. Other rulers contented themself with paying danegleld to buy off the raiders, or getting one group of Vikings to fight the others as in Normandie. Finally, the Scandinavian countries were Chritianised and brought into the culture of Christian Europe, and the Viking Age came to an end.

Vikings in Gunpowder Empire
Starting from the Fufteenth Century After the Foundation of Rome, inhabitants of the poor and marginal countries of Scandinavia - known as Vikings - started, in ever greater numbers, to wage piratical raids on the tribes and rudimentrary kingdoms of the Baltic countires to their south, where the Empire of Lietuva was in the process of formation, as well as on the shores of the Roman provinces of Germania, Gallia and Britania.

The Vikings caused great devatation where they hit, especially when Imperial forces were busy elsewhere in external or civil wars. However, the northen provinvial areas were marginal for empires focused on the richer south, and were not considered worthy of the exapnse of maintaining large garrisons or establishing great navies in northern waters. Even less were the poor and distant Scandinavian coutries worth the great effort of oermanent conquest. In genrtal, provincial governors were left to deal with Viking raids by local resources, with such measures as making a summary example of captured Vikings, buying off those who could not be defeated or setting them at the rival empire.

Like many patterns in the world of Agrippan Rome, such as the periodic wars with Lietuva and Persia, this remained essentially unchanged over centuries - even when Vikings eventuall obtained some guns and a bit better ships. Into the Twenty Eights Century after the Foundation the City (21st Century for the Roamn Empire Chritisitna minority), the Danes, Norwegians and Swedes continued to worshio Odin and Thor and set off on Viking raids, as thei ancestors have doe for more than a thousand years.