Posted on 05/27/2022 10:03:36 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
I hear the Danes were kinda great.
Bear shirts.
Brilliant explorers and traders.
Got a bad rap.
I also have British and a bit of Viking in my ancestry DNA test. Natural, because part of my family was in York, a Viking stronghold for centuries.
A lot of my ancestry can be traced back to the British isles. The genetic testing my brother did said we were about 15% Scandinavian which puzzled us at first. Then we remembered the Danelaw....
Its impossible to know how much of that 15% is Viking, how much were “Danes” (Nordic settlers), how much is Norman...who were just Vikings a couple generations removed from Scandinavia. Those 3 groups were all the same people.
A lot of North Germans were Vikings too by the way. It wasn’t just Norwegians, Swedes and Danes.
When in the military and traveling between the UK, Denmark and Norway, we used to say that the Vikings took away all the pretty British girls.
Absolutely. It’s not a myth or a rumor, it’s a fact.
L’Anse aux Meadows
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Anse_aux_Meadows
L’Anse aux Meadows is an archaeological site first excavated in the 1960s of a Norse settlement dating to approximately 1,000 years ago (carbon dating estimates 990–1050 CE).[1][2][3] The site is located on the northernmost tip of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador near St. Anthony.
With tree-ring analysis of three structures at the site dating to the year 1021[4] and a mean carbon date of 1014 overall,[2] L’Anse aux Meadows is the only undisputed site of pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact of Europeans with the Americas outside of Greenland.[3] It is notable as evidence of the Norse presence in North America and for its possible connection with Leif Erikson as mentioned in the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red,[5] which were written down in the 13th century.[3] Archaeological evidence found at the site indicates that L’Anse aux Meadows served as a base camp for Norse exploration of North America, including regions to the south.[6]
Spanning 7,991 hectares (30.85 sq mi) of land and sea, the site contains the remains of eight buildings constructed with sod over a wood frame. In excess of 2,000 Norseman objects have been unearthed at the site. Evidence of iron production and bronze, bone and stone artifacts have been identified. The site was designated a National Historic Site of Canada in 1968 and a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1978.[7] Parks Canada manages the site as outlined under the Parks Canada Agency Act (1998) and the Canada National Parks Act (2000).[8] It is the only confirmed Norse site in or near North America outside of the settlements found in Greenland.
There is a statue of three(?) Vikings in Kiev to honor them as the Founders of Kiev.
Netflix was right!
The construction of a Viking Dragon Ship (105’ long, crew of 100)
Jan 18, 2012
Dragon ships were large longships that had carved heads of dragons and other magical beings mounted on their bow. This video shows some glances from the construction of such a ship: Dragon Harald Fairhair. We are using the best of the old Norwegian clinker-building tradition and combining this with knowledge obtained from archaeological material, Norse literature etc. Our aim is to recreate a ship with superb seaworthiness - as described in the Old Norse sagas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ3u0jjWCkc&t=492s&ab_channel=DragonFairhair
Storm in The Labrador Sea (Viking long ship between Greenland and Newfoundland)
2,223,033 views Aug 20, 2016 8 minutes with the amazing Draken Viking Ship. This is the film we showed in our exhibition tent on the festivals around the Great Lakes, filmed between Greenland and Newfoundland on the crossing of the North Atlantic Ocean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XORSpUUy0lQ&t=411s&ab_channel=DrakenHaraldH%C3%A5rfagre
Vikings roamed the entire known world. Vikings from Denmark met Vikings from Sweden in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, Vikings who had come via the Atlantic and Gibraltar, and via Russia and the Dnepr River.
Fascinating, and thanks. Curious if there’s any identifiable lineage.
>> Many Vikings actually had brown hair not blonde hair.<<
The red hair that the Irish are so famous for? That’s the Vikings. There’s a reason the most famous Viking of all time was called Eric the Red. And those Vikings, not Communists, are also why that huge former-and-desperate-to-be-future superpower in Eastern Europe is called, literally, “Land of the Red.”
I don’t think so. The Vikings in North America probably made the same mistake the British and French made later on, thinking a similar latitude as “home” would have a similar climate. Big mistake.
Also, the Vikings in Newfoundland discovered only extremely hostile and aggressive natives. There was no chance to really leave any progeny. All the Vikings left, or died, as far as is known. If a few Vikings “went native” they would not have left a discernable DNA footprint.
But if Vikings had sailed further south, say to Long Island or the Chesapeake Bay, history could have been radically changed with the introduction of iron making, the wheel, and the horse into North America 500 years before Columbus.
Diversity rules require at least 10% of that DNA be African-American. I saw nothing about any African-American DNA. Vikings were racist?
>> Also, the Vikings in Newfoundland discovered only extremely hostile and aggressive natives. There was no chance to really leave any progeny. All the Vikings left, or died, as far as is known. If a few Vikings “went native” they would not have left a discernable DNA footprint. <<
Actually, the Vikings penetrated DEEPLY into North America. I don’t know if the team name, Minnesota Vikings, was named for later Scandinavian immigrants, but the Vikings DID reach Minnesota. And enough went native to give the tribes that gave me a very small amount of Indian hair a propensity for red hair and creation myths similar enough to Christian ones to inspire idiot ufologists.
The Diocese of Greenland (I know, not L’anse aux Meadows, but much closer to Newfoundland than Iceland) included Labrador and existed until shortly before Christoper Columbus, 500 years later. In fact, LEIF ERICSSON* WAS A CATHOLIC BISHOP. (*Around these parts, we go with Erikson, but it’s legit.)
The Minnesota Vikings are still hotly disputed. “Rune stones” are probably faked, other evidence is apocryphal.
Makes for a good story, though, and certainly it’s possible unknown Vikings penetrated very far into North America.
“Minnesota’s Kensington Runestone: An ancient Viking secret or a fake artifact?”
https://mysteriesrunsolved.com/2021/09/kensington-runestone.html
That’s not surprising, that been well known forever. ‘Viking’ is the name of a profession, not an ethnic group. Its one of the many annoying ahistoricities of the Netflix Viking’s series, that Norse are constantly referring to themselves generally as ‘Vikings’.
I would presume that The close of the Viking Age (c. 800-1050) had less to do with the Norman conquests of England (1066) than the Christianization of Scandinavia (c. 975-1160).
They ran Sicily for awhile too.
Whatever the case may be, they were badasses.
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