<P> Vikings themselves were expanding; although their motives are unclear, historians believe that scarce resources were a factor . Vikings wanted to loot the wealthy and become the dominant class . While doing so, they enslaved many and solved them across the sea . </P> <P> The "Highway of Slaves" was a term used to describe a route that the Vikings found to have a direct pathway from Scandinavia to Constantinople and Baghdad while traveling on the Baltic Sea . With the advancements of their ships during the ninth century, the Vikings were able to sail to Russia and some northern parts of Europe . </P> <P> During the Viking Age, Scandinavian men and women travelled to many parts of Europe and beyond, in a cultural diaspora that left its traces from Newfoundland to Byzantium . This period of energetic activity also had a pronounced effect in the Scandinavian homelands, which were subject to a variety of new influences . In the 300 years from the late 8th century, when contemporary chroniclers first commented on the appearance of Viking raiders, to the end of the 11th century, Scandinavia underwent profound cultural changes . </P> <P> By the late 11th century, royal dynasties legitimised by the Catholic Church (which had had little influence in Scandinavia 300 years earlier) were asserting their power with increasing authority and ambition, and the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden had taken 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 . 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 . Christianity had taken root in Denmark and Norway with the establishment of dioceses during 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 . </P>

Where did the vikings come from what country