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Norsemen are the group of people who spoke what is now called the Old Norse language between the 8th and 11th centuries. The language belongs to the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages, and is the earlier form of modern Scandinavian languages.
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Norseman means "man from the North" and applied primarily to Old Norse-speaking tribes living in southern and central Scandinavia. In history, "Norse" or "Norseman" could be any person from Scandinavia, even though Norway, Denmark and Sweden were different sets of people by the Middle Ages.
Typically the term Norse refers to the West Norse, meaning mainly Norwegians when reading about settlements in and colonization of America, Normandy, Iceland, Greenland, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Shetland, Orkney, the Hebrides, the Faroe Islands and Mann. In some other historical references, the term may also refer to the East Norse, meaning mainly Danes and Swedes, for instance, Cnut's Empire and Swedes adventures East.
The Norse Scandinavians established states and settlements in England, Scotland, Iceland, Wales, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Ireland, Russia, Greenland, France, Belgium, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, and Canada as well as southern Italy.
Connection with Normandy
The Old Frankish word Nortmann "Northman" was Latinised as Normanni and then entered Old French as Normands, whence the name of the Normans and of Normandy, which was settled by Norsemen in the 10th century.
Other names
In the early Medieval period, as today, Vikings was a common term for attacking Norsemen, especially in connection with raids and monastic plundering by Norsemen in the British Isles and Ireland. 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 Gaelic 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.
However, British conceptions of the Vikings' origins were not quite correct. Those who plundered Britain lived in what is today Denmark, Scania, the western coast of Sweden and Norway (up to almost the 70th parallel) and along the Swedish Baltic coast up to around the 60th latitude and Lake Mälaren. They also settled on the island of Gotland. The border between the Norsemen and more southerly Germanic tribes, the Danevirke, today is located about 50 kilometres (31 mi) south of the Danish-German border. The southernmost living Vikings lived no further north than Newcastle upon Tyne, and travelled to Britain more from the east than from the north.
The northern part of the Scandinavian Peninsula (with the exception of the Norwegian coast) was almost unpopulated, but the few who lived there were Sami, the native people of northern Sweden and large areas of Norway, Finland and the Kola Peninsula in today's Russia.
The Slavs, the Arabs and the Byzantines knew them as the Rus' or Rhōs, 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 Vikings who visited the Slavic lands originated. Archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the Slavic lands formed the names of the countries of Russia and Belarus.
The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them Varangians (ON: Væringjar, meaning "sworn men"), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the Byzantine emperors were known as the Varangian Guard.
Modern Scandinavian usage
In the Old Norse language, the term norrœnir menn (northern men), was used correspondingly to the modern English name Norsemen, referring to Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Faroe Islanders, Icelanders, etc.
The modern Scandinavian languages have a common word for Norsemen: the word nordbo, (Sw.: nordborna, Da.: nordboerne, No.: nordboerne or nordbuane in the definite plural) is used for both ancient and modern people living in the Nordic countries and speaking one of the Scandinavian Germanic languages. The modern people of Norway, Sweden and Denmark never identify themselves as skandinaver (Scandinavians), as they are Norwegians, Swedes and Danish.
The word Vikings: Vikinger in Danish and Norwegian Bokmål, and Vikingar in Swedish and Norwegian Nynorsk is not used as a word for Norsemen by natives, as "Viking" is the name for a specific activity/occupation (a "raid"), and not a demographic group. The Vikings were simply people (of any ethnicity, or origin) partaking in the raid (known as "going viking").
On occasions Finland is also mentioned as a "Scandinavian country". The Finnish language is not Germanic or even Indo-European, but Finland was for around six centuries a part of Sweden (late 12th century to 1809), and around 6% of the Finnish population still use Swedish as their first language. In the Åland islands Swedish is by far the dominant language, but elsewhere in Finland the share of Swedish-speaking people has been dropping ever since Finland gained independence in 1917, after the Russian Revolution. Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands are also geographically separate from the Scandinavian peninsula. The term Nordic countries is therefore used to encompass the Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes and Finland.