Viking shipwrecks are amongst the most abundant and best preserved archaeological remains of a culture which has always exercised a strong hold on the imagination. Underwater archaeology therefore provides the key to understanding a people that have been portrayed in historical sources as a marauding and pillaging horde who arrived in their longships to terrorise communities on the coasts of Britain, France and Ireland. In recent decades, archaeological discoveries have presented us with a more balanced picture of a seafaring culture that established a network of trade and settled urban life across a vast region from the Black Sea to Newfoundland from around AD 750 to 1150.