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 countries 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 Alfred the Great in England spent most of their reigns 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 Crosstime Traffic
In at least one alternate known to Crosstime Traffic, the Vikings had settled North America.