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Hello in 793 the Northumbrian Christian island monastery of Lindisfarne was raided and destroyed by a group of warriors who arrived in amazing boats from Scandinavia

They are the Vikings we know and in the three centuries that followed they plundered and then settled large sues of Europe particularly Britain island

and northern France. The Viking invasions are still a subject of fascination to many of us today

But fewer people know that the Norsemen also traveled thousands of miles east of their homelands to modern-day Russia and beyond

Between the eight and eleven centuries they traded commodities including silver, furs, honey and slaves

With the peoples of central Asia and penetrated as far as Baghdad and even Mongolia

There's a searing eyewitness account of a traditional Viking ship burial written by an Arab scholar

Russia may even have been named after these Scandinavian settlers who were also known as the Rus and because they used the continent's major river system

Australian roots some scholars have dubbed them vulgar Vikings with me to discuss the vulgar Vikings are James one Gomory professor of classical Arabic at the University of Cambridge

Neil Price professor of archaeology at the University of Aberdeen and Elizabeth Rowe lecturer in Scandinavian history of the Viking Age at the University of Cambridge

Can you give us some idea of these so-called vulgar Vikings where they came from and how did they travel and we talked about the 8th century

The vulgar Vikings originate from the eastern seaboard of Sweden

Most of them were channeled through the trading center of Birka which is on the shores of Lake Meileron

They were traveled across the Baltic

Into the Gulf of Finland follow the Gulf of Finland to the point

Of then entering the northern Russian forest zone

They would take the river Volkhov as their primary route

And make their way down south along that river by about 750 they seem to have

Established a trading outpost that's the Raya Ladoga which is near Smolensk

There's evidence of a mixed population there of thin slabs and Scandinavians

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