A nation of seafarers and merchants, the Vikings revolutionised exploration and trading in the Middle Ages and discovered America 500 years before Columbus. This gripping film unveils their bad reputation as wild, murdering and pillaging Norsemen as misguided and reveals a strikingly tolerant people with an elaborate trading network that stretched right through Europe. For 900 years, their light, manoeuvrable sailing-ships could not be matched. As the best seafarers of their time, daring, tolerant explorers and expert merchants, they set new benchmarks and left their mark everywhere.