feel like farming were out pillaging because they couldn't come up with anything better to do. Maybe one reason why the pillaging and raiding was done during the farming seasons and not during the rest of the year was that when the seasonal vikings that had farm plots and families and stuff were on the trips, they could calm the hotheads so that less pillaging were done? What if...? Some good points Lost. There may well have been an intrepid Viking getting to Miklagaard via the Atlantic - even though this is the longer route - but none are recorded. The furthest any chronicler mentions a Viking getting in the Mediterranean is to Pisa on the western side of the Italian penninsula. But who knows. As for your other points: You said "And if the raiding parties were out on the seas during farming season, wouldn't that suggest that it could very well have been boredom that sparked it?" Well, the reason that they were out in this season is that this is really the only time that one can carry out ocean-going voyages in the north Atlantic (and even in the Mediterranean). The seas are just too heavy otherwise - and this is well-recorded in both later Icelandic and contemporary Christian Chroniclers - they did not sail when the seas were high. They would usually stay home in winter for this reason, and only began to "over-winter" in England for example after 850 (and thsn things started to get