British Isles naming dispute "British-Irish Isles" and the Islands of the North Atlantic. In documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as "these islands". To some, the dispute is partly semantic, and the term is a value-free geographic one, while, to others, it is a value-laden political one. The Crown dependencies of the Channel Islands may also for geo-political reasons be included in the British Isles, despite not being geographically part of the archipelago. United Kingdom law uses the term British Islands to refer to the UK, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man as a
Norse activity in the British Isles to navigating around much of Europe during the Early Mediaeval period. The Norse populations of Scandinavia had developed trade links with many areas of Europe, obtaining large quantities of gold in the late 5th century, most of which had been found in Sweden, and to a lesser extent, Norway. In the final decade of the 8th century AD, Norse raiders attacked a series of Christian monasteries located in the British Isles. In the British Isles, Christian monasteries had often been positioned on small islands and in other remote coastal areas so that the monks could dwell there in seclusion, devoting