Garðaríki in the context of "Viking Age"

Yngvars saga víðförla (also known as Sagan om Ingwar Widtfarne och hans Son Swen) is a legendary saga said to have been written in the twelfth century by Oddr Snorrason. The tale tells of a Viking expedition to somewhere in southern Rus, probably the present day region of Georgia in the Caucasus.

The Viking Age (about 800–1050 CE) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their homeland of Scandinavia but also to any place significantly settled by Scandinavians during the period. Although few of the Scandinavians of the Viking Age were Vikings in the sense of being engaged in piracy, they are often referred to as Vikings as well as Norsemen.

Voyaging by sea from their homelands in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, the Norse people settled in the British Isles, Ireland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Normandy, and the Baltic coast and along the Dnieper and Volga trade routes in eastern Europe, where they were also known as Varangians. They also briefly settled in Newfoundland, becoming the first Europeans to reach North America. The Norse-Gaels, Normans, Rus' people, Faroese, and Icelanders emerged from these Norse colonies. The Vikings founded several kingdoms and earldoms in Europe: the Kingdom of the Isles (Suðreyjar), Orkney (Norðreyjar), York (Jórvík) and the Danelaw (Danalǫg), Dublin (Dyflin), Normandy, and Kievan Rus' (Garðaríki). The Norse homelands were also unified into larger kingdoms during the Viking Age, and the short-lived North Sea Empire included large swathes of Scandinavia and Britain. In 1021, the Vikings achieved the feat of reaching North America—the date of which was not determined until a millennium later.

Svitjod (also spelled Svithiod; Old Norse: Svíþjóð, Old Swedish: Svethiudh) was an early name for both the people known as the Svear and the land they inhabited. In medieval times, the name usually referred to their central territory in what is now Uppland in eastern Sweden. The name is composed of the ethnonym Svear and the word *thiudh, meaning "people".

Over time, it was also used more broadly as a poetic or historical name for the whole Swedish kingdom. In Norse literature, Svitjod could also refer to a vast eastern region, including parts of what is now Russia, known as "Great Svitjod" (see Garðaríki).