The Vikings, as the Norse are commonly (and erroneously) called, are often seen as an entire race of huge, brawny men who went around constantly drunk armed with axes and wearing gigantic horned helmets atop their blonde, bearded heads. This, however, is a representation based solely on what the enemies of the Norse encountered from their race. In fact, the Norse were actually regular humans, believe it or not, who did not sleep in mail shirts on beds of mangled baby corpses. The rest of Christian Europe lived in total ignorance of what actually happened in Viking Age Scandinavia until they sent missionaries to convert those disgusting pagans to the One True Faith. Until then, all they ever saw were big, burly men who wanted to ransack monastaries.