In 795 AD, Viking longboats arrived at the monastery on the Scottish island of Iona. The raiders killed the monks who lived there and stole anything of value. For the next few hundred years ...

Far surpassing contemporary English or Frankish vessels in lightness and efficiency, longships carried Viking raiders from northern England to north Africa. Viking expertise in naval craftsmanship ...

For centuries—indeed, ever since Viking raiders savagely attacked England's Lindisfarne monastery in A.D. 793—the Vikings have seemed to many to have been little more than blue-eyed barbarians ...