Question: who were vikings and what did they do
Answer: Vikings ( Old English : wicing -- `` pirate '' , Danish and Bokmål : vikinger ; Swedish and Nynorsk : vikingar ; Icelandic : víkingar , from Old Norse víkingar ) , were Norse seafarers , mainly speaking the Old Norse language , who raided and traded from their Northern European homelands across wide areas of northern , central and eastern Europe , during the late 8th to late 11th centuries .