Being a Viking was hard work. There was no such thing as school for Vikings. They lived in large families. A  women  made  butter , cheese and smoked meat and fish for storage for the winter. Girls  were  married at the age of  12 to 15 years old. The marriage was discussed between the two families  . The girl had very little to say juring the discussing. The bride brought cloth , linen, wool and a spinning wheel  to make the dress for the wedding . If the husband of the family was lazy the wife would get a divorce. Babies  and  toddlers  always stay with their mother during a divorce.

Ships were very important to Vikings because they needed them to go a-Viking or raiding and trading in other places. There were two types of ships the knorr and the Longship.
The knorr was a type of cargo boat.It  could carry men and animals with loads of supplies.
The longship was a racing warship . It usually would have a dragons head carved on the top of it to scare their enemies away.It was about 25-80ft long.Each upper edge of the boats side was pierced for oars.And each mast carried a big square sail.This usually gave the longship speed.
The Viking started to sail early each  morning. They would land on a beach and put up a tent cook a meal and go to sleep.On a clear night the north star or guide star would guide the Vikings.The  captains would know the height of the north star.A nd they would keep care of it on their journey.
A Viking  often spotted seaweed the colour of it would tell them how long it had of been their.And that usually would tell you that your close to dry land.The caiptain of  the Vikings noticed that when a cloud  covers over an Island  or even Islands it means that you are close to the nearest landfall.
The gannet was a brilliant navigator during the day for the Vikings.The Vikings would follow the gannet towards dry land.

In Iceland a man was allowed as much land as he could walk around in a day carrying a torch with a woman driving a cow along with her. In the summer some of the family would go and live in a sheiling (a small house in the mountains). They took their herds to the mountains because there was better grass there. As a Viking farmer if you lived in Scandinavia there was enough sunshine to grow oats and barley and perhaps rye and wheat. You kept enough livestock for themselves and sold the rest. Wheat, barley, oats and rye would not grow in Greenland. There you would have to live on grasslands and survive by hunting fish or rearing cattle or sheep. The first people in Iceland owned as much land as they could get. In the winter they needed a warm house for the animals.