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Viking activity in Italy
There is little evidence for Viking activity in Italy as a precursor to the arrival of the Normans in 999, but some raiding is recorded. Ermentarius of Noirmoutier and the Annales Bertiniani provide contemporary evidence for Vikings based in Frankia proceeding to Iberia and thence to Italy around 860.
Some modern scholars have connected this event with a much later account by the infamously unreliable Dudo of Saint-Quentin, who had a Viking fleet led by one Alstingus land at the Ligurian port of Luni and sacking the city. The Vikings then move another 60 miles (97 kilometres) down the Tuscan coast to the mouth of the Arno, sacking Pisa and then, following the river upstream, also attack the hill-town of Fiesole above Florence and win other victories around the Mediterranean (including in Sicily and North Africa).
Building modern speculation on medieval invention, some scholarship has identified the leaders of this expedition as Björn Ironside and Hastein. Dudo's account, however, probably adds no historically reliable information to the brief contemporary annals.
Other contact between Italy and the Viking world occurred via Eastern Scandinavians coming to Italy via the Austrvegr (the river routes from the Baltic to the Black Sea) and working as Varangian mercenaries fighting for Byzantium. In particular, three or four eleventh-century Swedish Runestones mention Italy, memorialising warriors who died in 'Langbarðaland', the Old Norse name for southern Italy (Langobardia Minor). Varangians may first have been deployed as mercenaries in Italy against the Arabs as early as 936.
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