How an ancient solar flare illuminated the start of the Viking Age
Improved radiocarbon dating helped archaeologists determine when Norse seafarers went global
The early Vikings set sail from the Scandinavian Peninsula to participate in regional trading, research suggests.
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Calamity after calamity befell Europe at the beginning of the so-called Dark Ages. The Roman Empire collapsed in the late fifth century. Volcanic eruptions in the mid-sixth century blocked out the sun, causing crop failure and famine across the Northern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, the Justinian Plague arrived, killing, by some estimates, nearly half of everybody in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and scores of others elsewhere.