The Kingdom of the Franks under Charlemagne was especially hard-hit by Viking raiders, who could sail down the Seine without much difficulty. Near the end of Charlemagne's reign and throughout the reigns of his sons and grandsons, a string of Viking raids began, leading to a Scandinavian conquest and settlement of the region now known as Normandy.
In 911, French King Charles the Simple made an agreement with the Viking warleader Rollo, a chieftain of either Norwegian or Danish origin. Charles gave Rollo the title of duke and granted him possession of Normandy. In return, Rollo swore fealty to Charles, converted to Christianity, and swore to defend the northern region of France against raids by other Viking groups. Several generations later, the Norman descendants of these Viking settlers identified themselves as French and brought the French language and their variant of French culture to England in 1066. With the Norman Conquest, they became the ruling aristocracy of Anglo-Saxon England, leading to the change from Old English to Middle English language.
At the start of the Viking age, the Vikings believed in the Norse religion. They believed in a of gods and goddesses, as well as "Valhalla", a heaven for warriors. The lower class of society would go to a place called "hel", similar to life on earth. According to Viking beliefs, Viking chieftains would please their war-gods by their bravery, and would become "worth-ship"; that is, the chieftain would earn a "burial at sea". They also performed land burials which often still included a ship, treasure, weapons, tools, clothing and even slaves and women buried alive with the dead chieftain, for his journey to Valhalla and adventure in the after-life. Poets composed sagas about the exploits of these chieftains, keeping their memories alive.
Freyr and his sister Freya were gods of "fertility", which means being able to grow. They made sure that people had many children and that the land produced plenty of crops. Some farmers even called their fields after Freyr, in the hope that this would ensure a good harvest. Toward the end of the Viking Age, more and more Scandinavians were converted to Christianity, often by force. The introduction of Christianity did not immediately end Viking voyages, but it may have been a factor that helped the Viking Age to an end.
Some of the most important trading ports during the period include both existing and ancient cities such as Jelling (Denmark), Ribe (Denmark), Roskilde (Denmark), Hedeby (Denmark, now Germany), Aarhus (Denmark), Vineta (Pomerania), Truso (Poland), Kaupang (Norway), Birka (Sweden), Bordeaux (France), Jorvik (England), Dublin (Ireland) and Aldeigjuborg (Russia).
In the late 19th century (1800s), Richard Wagner and other artists in the Romantic period made operas and other artwork about ancient Germanic culture. They liked the Vikings because they were not Greeks or Romans. They came up with the idea of Vikings wearing fur clothes and helmets with wings or horns on them and drinking out of hollowed-out animal horns. Some ancient Germans wore helmets with horns on them, but real Vikings did not. Wagner and his partners deliberately dressed the actors in the opera "Ring des Nibelungen" so they would look like ancient Germans and so the audience would feel like modern Germans came from medieval Vikings.
Collusion
A collusion is a secret agreement between two or more people or groups, usually to create unlawful advantages over other groups. Collusions often organize secret agreements to gain an advantage by modifying the market unfairly. In businesses, this is often done by intentionally by secretly changing the supply and demand of goods and services.
Sometimes major companies will use collusions to make significant advantages over other companies by the use of cartels (the creation of unfair trade deals).
Claret
Claret is a type of French red wine. It is also known as Bordeaux after its region of "appellation d'origine contrôlée". This is the French system which certifies where food and drink comes from.
The wine from Bordeaux was a dark rosé spiced drink in the Middle Ages. That's why it was called "claret", from the French "clairet". It changed to the present dry dark red in the 18th century.
The wine industry in Bordeaux has economic problems. It faces fierce competition from New World wines. Also, the French drink less wine nowadays.
In 2004, exports to the U.S. dropped 59% in value over the previous year. Sales in Britain dropped 33% in value during the same period. The UK, a major market, now imports more wine from Australia than from France. Chilean red wine is also extremely popular now.
Probably there is no single reason for these changes. Bordeaux wines are almost always blends from two or more types of vine. Many New World wines are single vine strains such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot noir, Syrah (Shiraz), and the white wine grapes Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc. Bottles labelled by type of grape (and so by taste) has caught on with the public. Also, the cheaper French wines are much more expensive when exported. All wines and spirits into countries like the UK are heavily taxed. A cheap French (or Spanish or Italian) wine which might sell in at home fore under £1, will sell for £4 or more in the UK. Customers have evidently decided that wine from elsewhere is a better deal.
The situation is quite different for sophisticated Bordeaux wines. The Waitrose wine list for 2015/16 lists 11 red Bordeaux wines which sell for over £100 a bottle, and the top prices are:
Infinite monkey theorem
The infinite monkey theorem says that a monkey randomly hitting keys on a typewriter will eventually type out one of William Shakespeare's works. When people talk about the infinite monkey theorem, the "monkey" is not always a real monkey. Instead, it is an example of a device that produces random letters. However, the chances of a monkey actually typing a text, like Shakespeare's "Hamlet", are very small.
For example, let it be that Shakespeare wrote "Wikipedia is the best website in the world". If the monkey does not have extra characters like numbers (example: 4, 2) and symbols (example: #, ~) then the monkey will only have 53 things on is keyboard to press. Those are: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r, s, t, u, v, w, x, y, z, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and the spacebar.
Since there are only 53 buttons the monkey is allowed to press, eventually, he will hit the "W" button. This is because the monkey has infinite time to press the buttons and has a 1 in 53 chance of pressing the W button. Then, he will probably hit another button and not type the sentence "Wikipedia is the best website in the world".
But, the monkey has infinite time. That means, in total, he will press the "W" button infinity times. After every time the monkey presses the "W" button, he has a 1 in 53 chance of pressing the "i" button. But, since the "W" button will be pressed infinite times, the word "Wi" will appear infinite times too. This is because the chance of "i" following "W" is equal to the chance of "W" which is 1/53 multiplied by the chance of "i" following it which is 1/53. That is 1/2809. That is really small, but since "W" and "i" appear an infinite amount of times in the monkey's words it becomes certain. Meaning there is a 100% chance that "eventually", the word "Wi" will appear. However, since "W" and "i" both will be presses by the monkey an infinite amount of time, "Wi" will actually appear an infinite amount of times too.
This goes on and on. Eventually, after even longer time, there will be the word "Wik" because "Wi" appears infinite times and "k" has a 1 in 53 chance of following it. Now, since "Wik" appears infinite times, we know that "Wiki" will eventually appear too. Not only that, we know "Wiki" will appear an infinite amount of times.