In modern scholarship,
Vikings is a common term for attacking Norsemen, especially in connection with raids and
monastic plundering by Norsemen in the
British Isles, but it was not used in this sense at the time. In Old Norse and Old English, the word simply meant 'pirate'. The Norse were also known as ,
ashmen, by the Germans, (Norse) by the Gaels and (Danes) by the Anglo-Saxons. The Gaelic terms (Norwegian Viking or Norwegian), (Danish Viking or Danish) and (foreign Gaelic) were used for the people of Norse descent in Ireland and Scotland, who assimilated into the
Gaelic culture. Dubliners called them Ostmen, or East-people, and the name
Oxmanstown (an area in central Dublin; the name is still current) comes from one of their settlements; they were also known as , or Lake-people. The
Slavs, the
Arabs and the
Byzantines knew them as the ''
Rus''' or (), probably derived from various uses of , i.e. "related to rowing", or from the area of
Roslagen in east-central Sweden, where most of the Northmen who visited the Eastern Slavic lands originated. Archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the
East Slavic lands formed the names of the countries of Russia and
Belarus. The Slavs and the Byzantines also called them
Varangians (, meaning "sworn men"), and the Scandinavian bodyguards of the
Byzantine emperors were known as the
Varangian Guard. Modern descendants of Norsemen are described as Scandinavians. == Geography ==