This is a cool post thanks for putting it up. I always love to learn new things about the Vikings there society was a very unique society in western europe in my opinion.

Excellent Post, just read the link :-)

Cool stuff.

Personally, I wouldn't call it a capital though as doesn't a capital imply they already had taken over the country? The settlement itself demonstrates that that wasn't true. It's a large, somewhat remote, heavily fortified raiding base. It wouldn't have had to be quite so isolated and fortified if they really did run the whole country already.

But it's amazing in that people tend to think of raiding as being a boat showing up and grabbing stuff and people and chopping up and burning the rest of it and then leaving. This is a much more industrial scale operation.