Germanic fringe peoples who lived close to the sea, in the 9th and 10th centuries, were more or less one people in language, laws, and ways of living (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden). These Norse peoples lived a tribal life with no overall political government. They enjoyed battle. They fought among themselves as much as with foreigners. Most Norsemen were freemen (peasants) with land scattered on the countryside. On raids they manned rowing benches instead of using slaves.
The Norse:
The Norse did have slaves, called “thralls.” They were mostly war captives, criminals, peasants and nobles who gambled away their freedom. Granting freedom was frequent, especially when they went on raiding expeditions. The need of young strong men for fighting was the main reason, and freemen fight better than slaves do.
Slaves taken in raids served no function in Scandinavia. There were no workshops or plantations that needed slave labor. The thralls became household servants and used for noble prestige. But most of the captives became merchandise that the Norsemen traded mainly in the eastern slave markets.
The Swedes:
They penetrated Russia via the Baltic Sea. They set up trading posts and raided villages for slaves, and took them along with furs, hides, and wax down rivers to the Black Sea or Constantinople for trade for silks, spices, wine, fruits, and various metal products. (During the Feudal times, peasants in Western Russia, Poland, and Hungary were not ruled by men of their own stock and traditions, but by outsiders, like the Swedes, who looked upon them as a wolf looked upon sheep.)
The Danes:
They were the other outsiders who preyed on the peoples of Russia, Poland, and Hungary. Danes also preyed on each other. The tribe that lost in warfare was enslaved. Furs and slaves were the two chief commodities that these Scandinavians exported to Southern Europe, and most of the slaves were women. On the raids, the Danes took women prisoners and reduced the men to serfdom. This was the Age of the Vikings. The chieftains had harems, and when the chieftain died, by custom his favorite slave woman would be killed and burned on a funeral pyre along with her master.
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