Large ships containing human remains have sometimes been found in barrows of the viking age.
The discovery of new lands in the West by the Norsemen came in the course of the great Scandinavian exodus of the 9th, 10th and firth centuries - the Viking Age - when Norsemen, Swedes and Danes swarmed over all Europe, conquering kingdoms and founding colonies.
Historians of the north have distinguished as the " Viking Age " (Vikingertiden) the time when the Scandinavian folk first by their widespread piracies brought themselves forcibly into the notice of all the Christian peoples of western Europe.
Although, outside the information we get from Christian chroniclers, this age is for the people of the north one of complete obscurity, it is evident that the Viking Age corresponds with some universal disturbance or unrest among the Scandinavian nations, strictly analogous to the unrest among more southern Teutonic nations which many centuries before had heralded the break-up of the Roman empire, an epoch known as that of the Folk-wanderings (V olkerwanderungen).
If we could know the Viking Age from the other, the Scandinavian side, it would doubtless present far more interest than in the form in which the Christian chroniclers present it.
