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Comment by Stranger43 | Hacker News Reader

It's widely known to academia (but often ignored by popular history works) that the vikings (especially the Swedish vikings) spend more time trading with the Arabs then raiding England to the point where several sultan's had viking mercenaries as their private bodyguards.

In fact the best contemporary description of an viking burial comes from an arab trader who observed one in what is today Ukraine.

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I was surprised to learn that Baltic/Arab trade dates all the way back to neolithic times and was prevalent during the second century BC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road

See also the Varangian Guard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard

The Vikings really got around.

Two years ago I attended a friend's wedding near Uppsala, Sweden and had the chance to speak with a retired man who was now volunteering time on Viking archaeology digs in the country and a little in some other Baltic nations. He said much the same as you: that Vikings did a lot of exchange with Arab traders, which was surprising. That there were Vikings traveling at least as far as Ukraine is really interesting!

I'm pretty sure that depends on which "Vikings" you are talking about, Swedes vs Danes & Norwegians. Also vikings refers to people engaged in raiding, so people who were engaged in trade would not be vikings.

Did the vikings travel through what is now called Russia?

Yes. Arguably, they founded what is now called Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

Yep. Russia (now: Ukraine, Belorussia, and small western part of Russian Federation) got it name from vikings, which are from "Russia" town (now: "Old Russa", but town moved up by river, so original town is at other place down the river).

Yes, they did. It is argued that they were early rulers of "the Kievan Rus": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27

Yes, in fact the first dynasty of rulers -- the Rurik dynasty [1] -- were vikings.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty

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