Interracial marriage
From AD 839, Viking Varangian mercenaries who were in the service of the Byzantine Empire, notably Harald Sigurdsson, campaigned in North Africa, Jerusalem and other places in the Middle East during the Byzantine-Arab Wars. They interbred with the local population as spoils of warfare or through eventual settling with many Scandinavian Viking men taking Arab or Anatolian women as wives. There is archaeological evidence the Vikings had established contact with the city of Baghdad, at the time the center of the Islamic Empire, and connected with the populace there. Regularly plying the Volga with their trade goods (furs, tusks, seal fat, seal boats and notably female slaves; the one period in the history of the slave-trade when females were priced higher than males), the Vikings were active in the Arab slave trade at the time. These slaves, most often Europeans that were captured from the coasts of Europe or during war periods, and sold to Arabic traders in Al-Andalus and the Emirate of Sicily.
The Vikings (reenactment)
The Vikings, previously known as the Norse Film and Pageant Society (NFPS), which was founded in 1971 by Peter Seymour and Alan Jeffery, initially as an extension to their 'Central Focus' WWII film club, with the purpose of bringing an awareness of the Norse Myths and the Viking culture to the public through dramatic entertainment. They are the oldest and largest Dark Ages society in the UK. They are a founding member of the National Association of Re-enactment Societies. In its N.F.P.S days, the society consisted of some thirty core members, including the 'Odin Guard' an elite combat group maintaining Norse Heathen religious practices and values, but which eventually left the society during the leadership of Gerry East, whose recruitment tactics eventually took the membership into the three hundred plus bracket. The Society now has over 1100 members throughout Britain, Europe and North America. While the Society concentrates mainly on the 10th Century, events are often set in the wider period from 790 to 1066, with the appropriate modifications to dress and equipment used.