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Not sure if the title is clear, but are there any particular oceanic regions in the world that might have witnessed a large or long-lasting piracy activity if certain criteria are met? What I have in mind is for a "Viking Age" of sorts protagonized by other peoples more or less dedicated to naval enterprises, and limited to the pre-Great Navigations period.

I mean, any coastal region, specially with a fairly enclosed geography (the Mediterranean and the Baltic come to mind) and politically diverse (with many countries or peoples engaged in hostile activity against one another) might witness the appearance of pirates and naval invaders of any kind, but what I mean is that some areas in the period before 1500s might have become like the 9th to 10th Century Viking Era with a high intensity of raids and invasions, perhaps with some "colonialist" purposes against the foreign peoples.

Some historical examples to clarify my purpose: the Norsemen (Norwegians, Swedes and Danes) between the 8th and 11th Centuries; the Wokou pirates of Japan in the Yellow Sea; the Arabs between 7th and 10th Centuries in the Mediterranean, and so forth; the infamous Barbary Pirates during the modern era.

How plausible are the following suggestions? I'm particularly interested in Asia and Africa, but don't really now about it.

  • non-Viking Ireland or Scotland - perhaps the closer we could get to a Viking Age parallel is with the Irish, whose seafaring culture seems a bit more dedicated than the Picts and later Scots; the English and even the Welsh. Could we see Ireland or perhaps Scotland as the springboard for a series of raids and invasions across Europe by ambitious crews of warriors? How much Christianity would be a deterrent against attacking other Christian nations for plunder? Perhaps they might have used a religious excuse to attack Muslim Spain, Africa, and pagan peoples in Eastern Europe.
  • pre-Christian Baltic and Ugric peoples - after the end of the Viking Age, perhaps one of these pagan peoples living by the Baltic Sea could have launched their own invading sprees (the Livonians, the Old Prussians, perhaps, the Samogitians). Not sure about demographic potential to expand, the region doesn't seems to have been too populated.
  • pre-Christian Finns - also in the Baltic. This one I find particularly problematic, as I'm not sure if the Finns (even those living nearer to Sweden) had a seafaring culture of sorts.
  • Egypt (in any historical period, but how about the pre-Ptolemaic or post-Islamic period?). It would be interesting to discuss other polities in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
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