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The part of history know as the "Viking Age" is considered to have started in the year 793. This was the year of the first large Viking raid. It occurred at the monastery of Lindisfarme on the northeast coast of Britain. Viking movements occurred both to the east and the west of the Scandinavian countries. The Swedish Vikings went east while the Danish and Norwegian Vikings went to the west. The cause of this expansion of Viking peoples most likely was the result of two factors. One was the consolidation of power under kings in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. This new authority may have caused many of the people of these lands, who had previously enjoyed the freedom that comes with highly decentralized authority to seek independence and liberty elsewhere. The other factor may have been the necessity to colonize because of the overcrowding of the limited arable lands in Scandinavia, just as the ancient Greek city states in the millennium before the Viking age had done.
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