Paul Freedman closes his Yale course on the Early Middle Ages with the Vikings, tracing their emergence from Scandinavia in the ninth and tenth centuries. He covers their raids on the Carolingian Empire, their trading contacts with Byzantium and the Caliphate, and their settlements in Greenland and Iceland, arguing that these wide-ranging ventures built networks linking previously disconnected parts of the world. The lecture moves geographically, from Viking activity in England and the Continent to their eastern trade routes and western settlements. Freedman ends by weighing what changed between 284 and 1000: Europe in the year 1000 still faced population decline and weak urbanization, much as the late Roman Empire had, but the period also saw Christendom and Europe take shape as cultural constructs, setting up the later rise of the West. This is the final lecture of Yale's HIST 210 course on the Early Middle Ages.