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The Norsemen (or Northmen) were a Germanic cultural group in the Early Middle Ages, originating among speakers of Old Norse in Scandinavia. During the late eighth century, Scandinavians embarked on a Viking expansion in all directions, giving rise to the Viking Age. In English-language scholarship since the 19th century, Norse seafaring traders, settlers and warriors have commonly been referred to as Vikings.
Historians of Anglo-Saxon England often use the term "Norse" in a different sense, distinguishing between Norse Vikings (Norsemen) from Norway, who mainly invaded and occupied the islands north and north-west of Britain as well as Ireland and western Britain, and Danish Vikings, who principally invaded and occupied eastern Britain.
. Accessed 10 September 2018. As with modern use of the word viking, therefore, the word norseman has no particular basis in medieval usage."Viking, n." OED Online, Oxford University Press, July 2018, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/223373 . Accessed 10 September 2018.
The term Norseman does echo terms meaning 'Northman', applied to Norse-speakers by the peoples they encountered during the Middle Ages."Northman, n." OED Online
. Accessed 10 September 2018. The Old Frankish word Nortmann ("Northman") was Latinised as Normannus and was widely used in Latin texts. The Latin word Normannus then entered Old French as Normands. From this word came the name of the Normans and of Normandy, which was settled by Norsemen in the tenth century.Michael Lerche Nielsen, Review of Rune Palm, Vikingarnas språk, 750–1100, Historisk Tidskrift 126.3 (2006) 584–86 ( pdf pp. 10–11 ) Louis John Paetow, A Guide to the Study of Medieval History for Students, Teachers, and Libraries, Berkeley: University of California, 1917, , p. 150, citing Léopold Delisle, Littérature latine et histoire du moyen âge, Paris: Leroux, 1890, , p. 17.
The same word entered Hispanic languages and local varieties of Latin with forms beginning not only in n-, but in l-, such as lordomanni (apparently reflecting nasal dissimilation in local Romance languages).Ann Christys, Vikings in the South (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 15–17. This form may in turn have been borrowed into Arabic: the prominent early Arabic source al-Mas‘ūdī identified the 844 raiders on Seville not only as Rūs but also al-lawdh’āna.Ann Christys, Vikings in the South (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), pp. 23–24.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, written in Old English, distinguishes between the pagan Norwegian Norsemen ( Norðmenn) of Dublin and the Christian Danes ( Dene) of the Danelaw. In 942, it records the victory of King Edmund I over the Norse kings of York: "The Danes were previously subjected by force under the Norsemen, for a long time in bonds of captivity to the heathens". (1979). 9780415143660, Routledge. ISBN 9780415143660 (1986). 9780859911030, D. S. Brewer. ISBN 9780859911030
The Norse were also known as Ascomanni, ashmen, by the Germans, Lochlanach (Norse) by the Gaels and Dene (Danes) by the Anglo-Saxons.
The Gaelic terms Finn-Gall (Norwegian Viking or Norwegian), Dubh-Gall (Danish Viking or Danish) and Gall Goidel (foreign Gaelic) were used for the people of Norse descent in Ireland and Scotland, who assimilated into the Gaels culture. Dubliners called them Ostmen, or East-people, and the name Oxmanstown (an area in central Dublin; the name is still current) comes from one of their settlements; they were also known as Lochlannaigh, or Lake-people.
The Slavs, the Arabs and the Byzantine Greeks knew them as the Rus' or Rhōs (Ῥῶς), probably derived from various uses of rōþs-, i.e. "related to rowing", or from the area of Roslagen in east-central Sweden, where most of the Northmen who visited the Eastern Slavic lands originated.Thunberg, Carl L. (2011). Särkland och dess källmaterial. Göteborgs universitet. CLTS. pp. 20–22. .
Archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the East Slavic lands formed the names of the countries of Russia and Belarus.
The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them (, meaning "sworn men"), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine Empire emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.Sverrir Jakobsson, The Varangians: In God's Holy Fire (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Modern descendants of Norsemen are described as Scandinavians.
The Norse Scandinavians established polities and settlements in what are now Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales), Ireland, Iceland, Russia, Belarus, France, Sicily, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, Greenland, Canada, and the Faroe Islands.
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