Editing Vikings (section)

===End of the Viking Age===
While the Vikings were active beyond their Scandinavian homelands, Scandinavia was itself experiencing new influences and undergoing a variety of cultural changes.<ref>Roesdahl, pp. 295–97</ref>

==== Emergence of nation-states and monetary economies ====
By the late 11th century, royal dynasties were legitimised by the [[Catholic Church]] (which had had little influence in Scandinavia 300 years earlier) which were asserting their power with increasing authority and ambition, with the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden taking shape. Towns appeared that functioned as secular and ecclesiastical administrative centres and market sites, and monetary economies began to emerge based on English and German models.<ref>Gareth Williams, "Kingship, Christianity and coinage: monetary and political perspectives on silver economy in the Viking Age", in ''Silver Economy in the Viking Age'', ed. [[James Graham-Campbell]] and Gareth Williams, pp.&nbsp;177–214; {{ISBN|978-1-59874-222-0}}</ref> By this time the influx of Islamic silver from the East had been absent for more than a century, and the flow of English silver had come to an end in the mid-11th century.<ref>Roesdahl, p. 296</ref>

==== Assimilation into Christendom ====
[[Christianization of Scandinavia|Christianity had taken root]] in Denmark and Norway with the establishment of dioceses in the 11th century, and the new religion was beginning to organise and assert itself more effectively in Sweden. Foreign churchmen and native elites were energetic in furthering the interests of Christianity, which was now no longer operating only on a missionary footing, and old ideologies and lifestyles were transforming. By 1103, the first archbishopric was founded in Scandinavia, at [[Lund]], Scania, then part of Denmark.

The assimilation of the nascent Scandinavian kingdoms into the cultural mainstream of European [[Christendom]] altered the aspirations of Scandinavian rulers and of Scandinavians able to travel overseas, and changed their relations with their neighbours.

One of the primary sources of profit for the Vikings had been slave-taking from other European peoples. The medieval Church held that Christians should not own fellow Christians as slaves, so [[chattel slavery]] diminished as a practice throughout northern Europe. This took much of the economic incentive out of raiding, though sporadic slaving activity continued into the 11th century. Scandinavian predation in Christian lands around the North and Irish Seas diminished markedly.

The kings of Norway continued to assert power in parts of northern Britain and Ireland, and raids continued into the 12th century, but the military ambitions of Scandinavian rulers were now directed toward new paths. In 1107, [[Sigurd I of Norway]] sailed for the eastern Mediterranean with Norwegian crusaders to fight for the newly established [[Kingdom of Jerusalem]]; the kings of Denmark and Sweden participated actively in the [[Baltic Crusades]] of the 12th and 13th centuries.<ref>The Northern Crusades: Second Edition by Eric Christiansen; {{ISBN|0-14-026653-4}}</ref>