Vikings in Iberia
The first incursion of the Vikings in Iberia has been characterised as 'probably the most significant episode of the whole period of Viking activity in the South'. It is mentioned in "Annales Bertiniani", and dated August 844, when a group from a plundering expedition entered the Garonne and reached Galicia. Despite storm damage, some proceeded to South-West Spain. This account is consistent with several later, but independent sources in Latin and Arabic. In particular, the late ninth- or early tenth-century "Chronicle of Alfonso III" adds that after plundering a number of coastal villages they were ultimately repulsed in the vicinity of "Farum Brecantium" (i.e. the Tower of Hercules). Ramiro I of Asturias gathered troops in Galicia and Asturia for the counter-attack. After the Asturian victory, the Vikings continued their voyage in direction of Lisbon. While some authors consider that the reliability of this chronicle is open to doubt, others consider that other local chronicles confirm the arrival of the Norsemen.
Viking metal
Viking metal features the Vikings as its subject matter and for evocative imagery. The Vikings were Northern European seafarers and adventurers who, during the Middle Ages, relied on sailing vessels such as longships, "knerrir", and "karvi" to explore, raid, pirate, trade, and settle along the North Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Caspian coasts and Eastern European river systems. The Viking Age is generally cited as beginning in 793, when a Viking raid struck Lindisfarne, and concluding in 1066, with the death of Harald Hardrada and the Norman conquest of England. During this two-hundred-year period, the Vikings ventured west as far as Ireland and Iceland in the North Atlantic and Greenland and what is now Newfoundland in North America, south as far as the Kingdom of Nekor (Morocco), Italy, Sicily, and Constantinople in the Mediterranean, and southeast as far as what are now Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine in Eastern Europe, Georgia in the Caucasus, and Baghdad in the Middle East.