What region did the Vikings come from?

The story behind the answer

Vikings were seafaring peoples from the northern European peninsula comprising modern Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. Rugged coasts and fjords fostered expert shipbuilding and navigation, enabling them to raid, trade, and settle widely between the 8th and 11th centuries.

They later colonized Iceland (settled around 870), so it wasn’t their birthplace, and they impacted Britain and parts of Germany mainly through raids, trade, and settlement. Norse longships carried them to Normandy, the rivers of Eastern Europe—shaping the Kievan Rus—and even to North America at L’Anse aux Meadows around 1000 CE.