Posted on 01/30/2019 2:30:22 PM PST by Kaslin
Throughout history, there have been groups who have struck fear into the hearts of those who heard their name… and those who saw them coming. The Vikings were one of those peoples, renowned in their own time for their brutality and the devastation their longboats brought.
They first landed on British shores in 789, and according to the BBC, the people of Wessex first extended the hand of cautious peace. They sent a reeve — a local magistrate — to meet them, and he was immediately killed. That pretty much set the tone for the decades of Viking incursions that would follow, and when they returned to sack Lindisfarne on June 8, 793, there were no doubts about just what these strangers from a strange land wanted.
That first raid was so brutal and so bloody that the date went down in history, and when word spread across the known world, monks from as far away as Germany sent long letters of condolences… that also claimed the raids were a sign the people of Lindisfarne were living a sinful life. Viking raids may not have been a punishment delivered by an angry deity, but one thing is for certain — the worst part probably wasn't what most people think.
This isn't to say that dying in the middle of a Viking raid wasn't brutal and bloody, but for the most part, it was quick. The National Museum of Denmark says that early Viking raids were relatively small, extremely brutal, and were over very quickly. It wasn't until the ninth century that they got organized, and started coordinating larger groups and expeditions to head out during what was essentially raiding season (Viking raids and their return home was dependent on the seasons — spring winds blew predominantly east-to-west, pushing their ships toward Britain, and autumn winds blew west-to-east, carrying them home).
The BBC describes Viking raids as, for the most part, "hit-and-run affairs," and they also note that really, Viking raids weren't anything people weren't used to already. It was the eighth century when the Vikings appeared in Britain, after all, and day-to-day life was already filled with everything from massive, large-scale battles to skirmishes between rival families and towns. Heck, there was a decent chance of dying or at least getting severely injured just playing medieval games, like mob football. It wasn't an easy time to live, and the Vikings were just one more headache… one that happened to kill quickly, then leave.
It was the survivors that had it worse.
According to the National Museum of Denmark, monasteries and churches were always favorite targets. For the rest of the world, any group who would defile sacred places and murder God's servants was nothing short of wicked. Remember, too, that this was a time when religion was at the very center of life for many towns and people — and that made the Vikings' disrespect of God's domain even worse. Anglo-Saxon chronicles describe Vikings as "wild heathens [who] trampled upon saints' bones and destroyed God's house." That's some powerful imagery.
Historians know Vikings looted many of the monasteries and churches they raided, even taking things like ornate reliquaries once used to hold sacred saints' relics (via Irish Archaeology). That would have been unthinkable.
Medieval people struggled to discern the Vikings' motivations, and many came to the conclusion they were the manifestation of God's wrath (via The Ancient History Encyclopedia). Scribes and monks lamented the violence and crime they saw in the world around them, and wrote that the Vikings had been sent to deliver retribution on the morally corrupt people of the world. Others spoke of omens — great lightning storms, famine, and even dragons — that heralded the coming of the Vikings. It had to be a terrible time to believe that the God everyone worshiped was so suddenly and violently angry His most brutal hordes were descending on His subjects… faithless and faithful alike.
Viking raids weren't just about looting treasures and killing, they were also about reinforcing a vital part of the Viking economy: slavery. According to the National Museum of Denmark, most Viking slaves were taken from the British Isles and Eastern Europe. Occasionally, native Vikings who committed crimes at home were also reduced to the status of slave. While there's not a lot of contemporary evidence regarding what kind of lives Viking slaves lived, archaeologists have been able to piece together some pretty awful details.
Thousands of people could be enslaved in a single raid, says National Geographic, and some were sold to the Vikings' countrymen, who stayed at home to work the fields. Wool was a huge industry, as it was needed for the ships' sails, and archaeological evidence suggests many slaves ended up laboring on huge plantations. Ancient poems suggest they were given names like Bastard, Stumpy, and Stinker, and that when they died, they were left "as food for the dogs and the birds."
Slaves had no rights, generally lived with the animals, and could be used and abused by masters as they saw fit. For some idea of how much — or little — a human life was valued, consider this: the National Museum of Denmark says Viking trade records show a female slave was worth the same as a cow and an ox, while four male slaves had the same worth as a full suit of chainmail or two horses.
Say a slave is sold to someone back home. There's no doubt that every other day of this poor soul's life is going to be filled with fear, starvation, abuse, and back-breaking labor… but Viking beliefs held that it wasn't just the rest of a slave's life that was going to be hard. The afterlife wouldn't be much better.
ScienceNordic says researchers have found numerous Viking burial sites where both men and women were interred with grave goods. The idea of grave goods is that they're offerings the deceased could take into the afterlife (via History), and they're commonly things like weapons and jewelry. But many Vikings share their graves with other bodies — bodies that show signs of malnourishment, injuries, and a brutal death. Those are the slaves, sacrificed and buried with their masters so they can serve them for eternity in the afterlife, too.
It gets worse. Almost every Viking slave burial site has been different, and that's led archaeologists to a terrifying conclusion. They believe part of the burial ritual was the recreation of important events from the deceased's life, with the slave standing in for the dead man. Did the deceased lose a limb? Suffer some other catastrophic injury? Get all their teeth knocked out? Their skull cracked open? Guess who had to recreate all that before they were sacrificed and tossed in the ground.
You definitely didn't want to be a monk
Historian Mary Valente has made a compelling — and disturbing — argument (via Medievalists) when it comes to just what else Vikings were looking for when they raided the monasteries of the Britain and Ireland. She says they were looking to capture — not kill — monks for a very specific reason.
Buried in writings and biographies from the era are mentions of a huge number of slaves being transported from Western Europe, through Italy, and finally to Byzantium and the Middle East. Many weren't destined for the fields. Instead, they were put to work as teachers, guards, and even harem servants. Those roles were important, because there were a few requirements these slaves needed to fill: they needed to be literate, they needed to be educated, and they needed to be eunuchs.
Valente argues many of the monks, scribes, and acolytes taken from monasteries during Viking raids were young men who had the first few requirements covered, and when they were shipped off to Italy, they were castrated to fulfill that last one. Throughout the era of the Vikings, demand for these eunuch slaves rose steadily, and there's a good chance many of the men who didn't die in Viking raids were wishing they had… right around the time they were taken to Venice for castration.
Historians have been trying to figure out for a long time just why Vikings started raiding, and one still-popular theory was suggested around 1,000 years ago by Dudo of St. Quentin (via LiveScience). The basics are this: Vikings practiced polygyny, which is the idea a man could not only take multiple wives, but also keep concubines. The more powerful the man, the more women he had. To each his own, right? Well, that's the problem — so many powerful Vikings were taking so many wives, that each man didn't have his own.
Research suggests it was the large numbers of unmarried Viking men that helped drive not just raiding parties, but the taking of female captives. There's a good chance those female captives were forced to return home with their Viking bachelors, where they would be put to work as domestic slaves and child-bearing concubines.
Live Science also says these unfortunate women were sometimes seen primarily as sex slaves, and when they did have children, they could see one of two things happen to them. They could either be acknowledged as official children of their father, or they could be forced into a life of slavery themselves. Medievalists adds a footnote that's just as terrible: if a man got another man's female slave pregnant, his only punishment was to be responsible for her until the baby was born and she was once again "strong enough to carry two pails of water from the well."
According to The Postgrad Chronicles, there's a lot of lore about Viking torture methods that walks the line between fact and fiction. It's unclear just how fictionalized some contemporary writings about the Vikings are, but the legends are a testament to how creative they seem to have been when it came time to torture those who crossed them.
First, there's the Blood Eagle. It's been described as the fate of several Vikings, but just how widely it was practiced — and indeed, if it ever was — is still up for debate. It involves carving the shape of an eagle into the victim's back, then cutting the ribs away from the spine and pulling out the lungs so they look like an eagle's wings.
There's also another sort of torture-turned-execution method described in Njals saga. After the Battle of Clontarf, Ulf Hraeda reportedly visited some ungodly amount of pain onto a fellow Viking named Brodir in retribution for killing Brian Boru. Ulf, it was said, sliced open a bit of Brodir, pulled out some intestine, then ordered him to walk around and around a tree, pulling out the rest of his innards as he walked. Fictional? Hopefully.
But a third torture method — which the victims survived — seems to be very real. It involved cutting holes through the victims' ankles behind their Achilles' tendons, then running ropes through the holes and stringing them upside-down. Death isn't looking so bad, is it?
The mass deforestation of Iceland
Along with other misconceptions, the stereotypical image of a Viking is a warrior carrying a fairly primitive battle-ax, club, sword, or something not particularly well crafted. Viking enthusiasts, fear not—the Nordic people sported some fine pieces of weaponry that were anything but dull.
According to BBC, all free Viking men were expected to carry weapons—like some romantic, Norse-version of the Wild West—and wealthy magnates were required to provide weapons to their men. They wielded finely crafted spears, swords, and battle-axes, often decorated with inlays and precious metals, such as silver, copper, and bronze. Spears were the most common weapon, though some more privileged Vikings had swords with personalized hilts and names, such as Leg-biter and Gold-hilt.
The famed Viking battle-ax was indeed used, though at the disadvantage of not being able to hold a shield—thus forcing those favoring the massive axe to wait behind a wall of shield-bearers, only able to strike at the opportune moment. Their shields were wooden, heavy, and effective, and some warriors were likely decked out in leather armor made from reindeer hide, said to be even more effective than the rare chain-mail armor possibly worn by leaders or more important individuals. Furthermore, helmets were, in all likelihood, not used at all, as they'd have been too expensive and required too much skill to make.
Though their weapons may have been a step behind some of those used by the Saxons or the Franks, Viking weaponry was still badass enough to strike fear—or blades—into the hearts of their enemies.
Along with other misconceptions, the stereotypical image of a Viking is a warrior carrying a fairly primitive battle-ax, club, sword, or something not particularly well crafted. Viking enthusiasts, fear not—the Nordic people sported some fine pieces of weaponry that were anything but dull.
According to BBC, all free Viking men were expected to carry weapons—like some romantic, Norse-version of the Wild West—and wealthy magnates were required to provide weapons to their men. They wielded finely crafted spears, swords, and battle-axes, often decorated with inlays and precious metals, such as silver, copper, and bronze. Spears were the most common weapon, though some more privileged Vikings had swords with personalized hilts and names, such as Leg-biter and Gold-hilt.
The famed Viking battle-ax was indeed used, though at the disadvantage of not being able to hold a shield—thus forcing those favoring the massive axe to wait behind a wall of shield-bearers, only able to strike at the opportune moment. Their shields were wooden, heavy, and effective, and some warriors were likely decked out in leather armor made from reindeer hide, said to be even more effective than the rare chain-mail armor possibly worn by leaders or more important individuals. Furthermore, helmets were, in all likelihood, not used at all, as they'd have been too expensive and required too much skill to make.
Though their weapons may have been a step behind some of those used by the Saxons or the Franks, Viking weaponry was still badass enough to strike fear—or blades—into the hearts of their enemies.
Sometimes, the Vikings stuck around, like they did in Iceland. When groups of Vikings first set foot on Iceland's shores and decided to make it their home, they destroyed the country's forests. Trees were turned into buildings, heat, and charcoal for forges, while the land was used for planting crops and grazing animals. Within a few hundred years, The New York Times says, Iceland was left with a landscape that was almost entirely treeless.
That was fine for the Vikings, but in the 21st century the repercussions have been devastating. With no trees to secure the soil against Iceland's brutal winds, erosion is a major problem. Their soil — which is made up of a large percentage of volcanic rock and ash — blows away with a force that could strip the paint off cars. It's made farming impossible, grazing land scarce, sandstorms a way of life, and it's even impacting Iceland's ability to regulate their emissions. With no trees to absorb carbon dioxide, they're playing a major role in climate change.
Iceland has been trying to reestablish their forests since just after 1882, when a devastating sandstorm buried much of Gunnarsholt, killed hundreds of livestock animals, and completely filled in an entire lake. But even though they've planted millions and millions of trees, Iceland is still — barely — around 1.5 percent forested. It's impossible to tell just how much Vikings have contributed to climate change in the 21st century, but the undeniable answer is: a lot.
By the time of Aethelred the Unready's rule at the turn of the 11th century, the Vikings had been raiding and pillaging their way up and down the British coast for around 200 years. People had already had enough, and even worse? Some of them didn't leave. Aethelred's Britain was deeply divided, says Archaeology, with Anglo-Saxons in the south and Danish Vikings in the north, and that had to be terrifying.
Even though Viking settlers intermarried with their Anglo-Saxon neighbors, there was still a massive amount of tension not just in Britain, but between Britain and what Archaeology calls the "Viking superstate" of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. It all came to a head when, after being informed that the Vikings were trying to kill him, Aethelred issued a call-to-arms. On November 13, 1002, he ordered his faithful subjects to kill all Danes living in Britain.
It's unclear how many died during the St. Brice's Day Massacre, but the Smithsonian says that multiple mass graves dating to the time likely hold the bodies of those dead at Aethelred's decree. Among them were a group who sought shelter in an Oxford church that was burned down by the angry mob outside, as well as Gunnhild, the sister of Denmark's King Svein. Her death added still more fuel to the fire, and led to the largest assault Britain had ever seen.
Some of the people Vikings didn't kill on their raids were just too valuable to sell into slavery, says ScienceNordic, and there was no telling how life was going to turn out for the captives.
One researcher found evidence that Theon Greyjoy-style hostages were recorded in some of the Icelandic sagas, including the tale of Olaf Tryggvason and Sigurd the Stout. Olaf took Sigurd's son hostage as a guarantee he'd fall in line, but when the boy died, Sigurd had nothing to lose. Others add that the taking of political hostages happened more often than most would expect, and according to research from the New University of Lisbon (via Medievalists), it was pretty common for Vikings to take hostages that would then be ransomed back to their families. Everyone's fine then, right? Sort of. Paying the ransom would often devastate entire families, leaving them destitute and in debt.
And sometimes, it just didn't work out for the hostages. The Postgrad Chronicles says one of the most well-documented instances of brutality against hostages comes from Cnut the Great. He was forced to flee England for the safety of Denmark when the Anglo-Saxons refused to acknowledge him as his father's heir, and he took the hostages the Vikings had been given as a token of goodwill. He dropped them off at Sandwich, then sliced off their ears, noses, and hands. Anything else, the sagas wrote, would have been weakness.
Imagine sitting in your ninth-century village, watching as some hostile longships make their way toward shore. You've heard of these brutal pagans. Everyone's heard of these brutal pagans! It's the Vikings, coming to plunder your village, defile your church, and enslave some villagers.
Not a particularly pleasant situation for anyone to be in, that's for sure, as the Vikings certainly terrorized the many lands they explored. But who were these Norse pirates, really? What did they look like? What kinds of weapons did they use, and what exactly did they do? For centuries, there's been a lot of false information about these seafaring folk, riding the waves of our imagination and creating images at odds with historical reality.
When you think of Vikings, you think of horned helmets. Don't even act like you don't. It's ingrained in our mind, thanks in part to the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings and their iconic helmet design, as well as the long-running Hägar the Horrible comic strip. However, the Vikings did not, in fact, wear horned helmets … though other people did.
The origin of the horned helmet–sporting Viking goes back to fin-de-siecle Europe, or a bit earlier, to legendary composer, conductor, and theatre director Richard Wagner. The German opera man wrote his epic, Norse-inspired Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1876, in which costume designer Carl Emil Doepler decided to stick some horns on his epically badass—at least for the opera—outfits, thus spawning the myth that Vikings wore horned helmets.
Though the Vikings may not have sported horns on their headgear, others did—including the warriors of ancient German mythos. According to Vox, late-19th-century Germans—well into nationalism already, by this point—found Viking history appealing, "in part because they represented a classical origin story free from Greek and Roman baggage." So, thanks to Doepler, "stereotypical ancient and medieval German headdresses—like horned helmets" were melded together with Viking imagery, and thus "Norse and German legends were intertwined in the popular imagination, and we still haven't untangled them."
In other words, we can all blame the Germans for lying to us about Vikings and their horned helmets. Furthermore, horned helmets wouldn't have been particularly protective in close combat, as they'd allow the enemy to more easily snap your neck. The Vikings were probably more clever than that. But the hats still look badass.
We all know what the Vikings did best. They showed up in England on June 8, 793 and began roughly 300 years full of violence, brutality, raping, and pillaging. Just because this is what the Vikings are known for, however, doesn't mean that's all they did.
That being said, we definitely shouldn't pretend the Vikings weren't brutal. Says Simon Keynes, an Anglo-Saxon historian at Cambridge University, "There's no question how nasty, unpleasant, and brutish they were. They did all that the Vikings were reputed to have done." According to Keynes, they stole everything they could get their hands on. They looted and defiled churches, carried off women, burned down settlements, and kept coming back for more. They were, indeed, quite cruel. Still, there was more to these marauding invaders than meets the eye.
For starters, the Vikings didn't always just take what they wanted. Sometimes, they traded goods with the people they came in contact with. According to James Montgomery, professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, the Vikings' contact with the Khazar empire, expeditions to Baghdad, and contribution to the formation of Kiev allow for a reevaluation of the violent Viking stereotype. With recent scholarship, it becomes easier to view some Vikings as global traders. They also clearly had a penchant for storytelling, with the Norse sagas sometimes being likened to the world's first soap operas. And while many Vikings raped and pillaged, so too did many stay behind, settle, assimilate, and influence culture—with many accepting and embracing Christianity. In fact, according to Chris Tuckley, head of interpretation at the Jorvik Center, the Vikings weren't nearly as bad as the Normans, who systematically "oppressed the local populace rather than integrating as the Vikings did."
Still, the image of Vikings as marauding and terrorizing raiders makes for more engaging movies. Nobody really wants to watch a bunch of Norsemen farming, after all.
Along with the imagery of Vikings as rapists and pillagers comes the view that they were exceptionally bloodthirsty—much more so than the poor people they terrorized. History, however, proves this isn't really the case.
Contrary to what some might foolishly believe, the world was not a particularly peaceful place until the Vikings showed up and despoiled paradise. Eleven years before the Vikings showed up in Lindisfarne, Charlemagne committed a brutal war crime in Lower Saxony, Germany. Known as the Massacre of Verden, Charlemagne ordered the beheading of some 4,500 Saxons, effectively eradicating their tribal leadership and forcing them to become subjects of Frankish authorities—exhibiting a level of systematic brutality well above any showed by the Vikings. And, according to BBC, the Anglo-Saxons didn't necessarily take the high road against their heathen enemies, noting, "the Anglo-Saxons were hardly upholders of a prototype Geneva Convention. In 2010 it was reported that 50 decapitated bodies had been found in Weymouth, thought to be executed Viking captives."
The Vikings may have been great warriors and brutal to their victims, sure, but history is a long and bloody subject, with the Vikings merely occupying a one violent stage, sandwiched between other violent chapters.
he Vikings may have enjoyed raping, pillaging, and busting open skulls with axes while under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms—but they liked to look fresh to def while doing it.
According to The Telegraph, Cambridge University scholars are convinced the Vikings were all about that personal hygiene. In fact, the Danes were almost too clean, according to medieval chronicler John of Wallingford, who alleged that they combed their hair every day, bathed once a week, and even went so far as to change their clothes on a regular basis. Furthermore, the Vikings' baggy pants were apparently all the rage, raising the stylistic bar and being cool enough to make even '90s high schoolers jealous.
Carolyn Emerick argues that the Vikings were totally "metrosexual," exhibiting a penchant for grooming and style, with hairstyle being especially important to Viking men. Emerick even claims the Vikings bleached their hair and beards blonde, while—like a college sophomore showing off in the quad—also enjoying some good poetry and conversations about love. The National Museum of Denmark has evidence that Vikings used well-designed combs, toothpicks, ear picks, and tweezers—in addition to both sexes sporting some serious makeup—with the men having little lady-trouble abroad.
So the next time you're watching Ragnar Lothbrok and Lagertha slay some Saxons, you can rest assured that they probably did look that cool while doing it.
As badass as it is to imagine Vikings drinking blood or mead from the skulls of their defeated enemies, this classic image of the barbarian Viking is simply untrue.
Like much throughout history, the truth of this myth seems to have gotten lost in translation. According to Heather O'Donoghue's English Poetry and Old Norse Myth: A History, "The celebrated image of Vikings drinking from cups made from the skulls of their enemies arose from a misunderstanding of a kenning in the Death Song." More specifically, O'Donoghue writes that the translator in question, Ole Worm, "seems to have mistaken a kenning for drinking horns, "the curved trees of skulls," as denoting skulls themselves, explaining in a Latin note that the verse depicts warriors drinking "ex craniis eorum quos occiderant." Damn it, Ole Worm!
In reality, Vikings drank from more boring utensils, like wooden and metal cups—though there's sufficient evidence to suggest that they did, in fact, drink from a good goat or cow horn every now and again. And should one be lucky enough to enter Valhalla, they might be offered a horn of mead from a Valkyrie.
Along with other misconceptions, the stereotypical image of a Viking is a warrior carrying a fairly primitive battle-ax, club, sword, or something not particularly well crafted. Viking enthusiasts, fear not—the Nordic people sported some fine pieces of weaponry that were anything but dull.
According to BBC, all free Viking men were expected to carry weapons—like some romantic, Norse-version of the Wild West—and wealthy magnates were required to provide weapons to their men. They wielded finely crafted spears, swords, and battle-axes, often decorated with inlays and precious metals, such as silver, copper, and bronze. Spears were the most common weapon, though some more privileged Vikings had swords with personalized hilts and names, such as Leg-biter and Gold-hilt.
The famed Viking battle-ax was indeed used, though at the disadvantage of not being able to hold a shield—thus forcing those favoring the massive axe to wait behind a wall of shield-bearers, only able to strike at the opportune moment. Their shields were wooden, heavy, and effective, and some warriors were likely decked out in leather armor made from reindeer hide, said to be even more effective than the rare chain-mail armor possibly worn by leaders or more important individuals. Furthermore, helmets were, in all likelihood, not used at all, as they'd have been too expensive and required too much skill to make.
Though their weapons may have been a step behind some of those used by the Saxons or the Franks, Viking weaponry was still badass enough to strike fear—or blades—into the hearts of their enemies.
Most people tend to view Vikings as one people, or as a homogenous race of human beings, but this isn't really true.
According to the History Channel, the Vikings were not a race of people, nor were they "linked by ties of common ancestry or patriotism, and could not be defined by any particular sense of 'Viking-ness.' Most of the Vikings whose activities are best known come from the areas now known as Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, though there are mentions in historical records of Finnish, Estonian and Saami Vikings as well." The only thing that these various Vikings had in common was that they were foreign, weren't civilized by European standards, and—most importantly—were definitely not Christian.
In reality, the Vikings probably didn't even refer to themselves as Vikings, as the word itself simply refers to someone who went raiding or exploring overseas. The lands comprising modern-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were not unified, and tribes were certainly not strangers to battling each other for land and power. Though it might not be the best literal translation, calling someone a Viking would have been akin to calling them a Scandinavian explorer, or pirate, or raider—not so much who they are, but what they do.
But, for the sake of ease, let's just keep referring to them all as Vikings, shall we? It's just so much easier than differentiating between Danes and Geats and Goths and Icelanders. Nobody's got time for that.
You may be forgiven for thinking that all Vikings lived in Scandinavia, as they certainly seemed to originate from there. However, contrary to popular belief, Vikings established settlements in all directions—assimilating, influencing, and shaping a variety of non-Scandinavian cultures.
The so-called Viking Age is said to have lasted roughly 300 years, and in this time, they certainly did more than merely raid. There should be little doubt that many individuals chose to stay in their newly discovered lands, influencing said cultures. In addition to England, Vikings made their way to modern-day Newfoundland, France, Germany, Ukraine, Russia, central Asia, and the Middle-East, leaving at least some sort of mark in each of these places—from Baghdad to Kiev. Some Viking settlers bought what Christianity was selling, and there was surely a fair amount of intermarriage. According to BBC, King Cnut was the king of England for 25 years, bringing in Norse influence without putting a stop to regular English life.
Sure, loads of Vikings went back to their homelands, only to raid and pillage more later. Many, however, were surely interested in the opportunity to start a new life in a new land, and influential settlements speckled the landscapes the Norsemen visited. It's always good to have friends or relatives in foreign countries, so you have a place to crash after a night of pillaging and looting.
Thye chraged with Capital One?.......................What's in Your wallet?...................
is it the damn horn they amplify at USBank Stadium?
Vikings ended up in Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. Old ways die hard.
In an earlier part of my life in the military, my group had the chance to fly back and forth between Denmark, Norway, and the UK among other places. We used to joke that the Vikings took all the great looking women home with them, leaving the UK depleted.
Awesome videos are on youtube of the biggest Viking longship built in a many centuries. It’s visited the USA, and can cross oceans at speeds which would not be repeated until the 18th century. This incredible wooden ship was built using all original methods.
Draken Harald Hårfagre
Published on 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
Islam has a similar dynamic. Polygamy results in lots of excess males, who go out raiding elsewhere. Like Europe.
Great article. I (regrettably) just finished the final season of Last Kingdom.
Geesh, Metrosexuals? The author of this piece obviously has issues with Aasgardians.
Talk about getting a bad rap. They were just bad chaps all the way around but with a dash.. merciless, relentless, fearless, all the things you want in your Congre$$ional representative.
All the Viking blood has apparently been bred out of Swedish men. It’s a shame.
There are a lot of interesting pieces in there, but the writing style leaves me feeling like my brain is being drug in loop-de-loops as they structurally cross over the same forms again and again and again.
tl;dr
This question actually came up on Quora today:
“Back in ancient times, how did people swim since there were no swimsuits?”
Of course the Vikings never traded or sold slaves into the huge European salve market run by enterprising Europeans and their muslim masters ...
Pretty high price for a slave. Prices dependent on supply so this price would argue it is from one of the seasons that the raiding was good. After Rome completed the conquest of Greece slaves for common labor were far cheaper. A trained sheep dog was worth far more than a couple of herdsmen. The history of ‘unfree labor systems is one of endless fascination and is one of the most enduring human organizations. No society ever enslaved as many members of its own population as the Soviet Union, touted for decades for its progressive domestic programs. Also the Zeks probably lived lives worse than Viking or any slaves as the GULAG wanted a s many as possible to die after squeezing the maximum labor out of the state prisoner.
But Ndamukong Suh just might. (That's why I cannot root for the Rams)
Since we are faced with a resurgent Islam, where are the Vikings when they are really needed?
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