Oh, and yeah, it is RIDICULOUS to present the Vikings as being unaware of the existence of the British isles.
All I know is A.P. is PO’d they got rid of Percy Harvin.
From what I remember being taught the vikes use to travel to the British isles and for the most part sneak in to their small coastal towns at night, kill most of the men folk and take the ladies for their own pleasure and plunder or destroy what they left.
I was thinking the same thing. The Vikings would have been pretty stupid planning a plundering raid on 5,000 miles of open ocean.
Allegedly, Mel Gibson is producing a Viking film.
It is a great series. Some liberties are taken for sure. I don’t know if the early Vikings knew of the British Isles or not. It is clear they did in fact raid into Russia first. I don’t think whether that or not the Earl knew is really relavant, though it the conflict should make of a better story.
Thank God “How to Train Your Dragon” got it right!
Ragnar wanted Intel. He got it. Sounds about right.
From what I’m seeing, they are getting a lot more of the details right than I’ve seen in a long time. Even current research on weapons use and manufacture.
A few anachronisms, but nothing that ruins my enjoyment of the show.
I watched two episodes and then I was done. Stupid beyond belief.
The Danes came to Ireland with nothing to do
But dream of the plundered old Irish they slew
"Yeh will in your Vikings", said Brian Boru
And threw them back in the ocean
The sea, oh the sea is the gradh geal mo croide
Long may it flow between England and me
It's a sure guarantee that some how we'll be free
Oh! thank God we're surrounded by water
They were victims of unscrupulous Spring vacation tour operators.
If they wanted to put out a crappy Viking story they could have saved a bunch of money and just shown “The Norsemen” starring Lee Majors in a porn ‘stasche and Roman centurion costume.
Their amazingly seaworthy yet shallow draft ships enabled the Vikings to sail far and near, up rivers to raid inland cities such as Paris, down the rivers of Asia to interact w. the Arabs, raid Constantinople (or was it Istanbul by that time?). I’ve read that they pacified the warring tribes of the Rus, thus establishing the Russian nation. Vikings liked to establish civic order, after having had their way by force of arms, so to speak.
Suggest reading “The Vikings,” by Rob’t Ferguson, 2009 Viking Penguin.
However, the Viking Age did not begin until the day the Norse got a boat design that would take the pounding of the sea and the great rivers they were to travel in the future.
There is, off course, a reason the Greeks in the Classical Age came to the Northland on the routes out of the Black Sea ~ even they didn't have ships capable of handing the North Sea.
However, the Sa'ami had clinker built boat hulls that could handle the wild rivers in the far north AND the Arctic near the coast. Permanent contact began between the Sa'ami and the Norse sometime in the 8th century, but some place it later when it comes to trade. Still, a Norseman tired of rowing around in the Baltic region raiding his neighbors could see the advantages of that improved design.
With a few efforts at scaling up, the Norse finally mastered a real ocean going boat that could handle the worst that could come on large inland rivers. The Viking Age began ~ and life was never the same again in Scandinavia.
The remains of ancient Sa'ami built clinker built boats have been found along mountain rivers ~ they are obviously not as big as the later Viking craft, but they could handle mountain streams ~ which nothing else could.
It is entirely possible that the Norse were generally unaware of England in the early 8th century, but by the 9th century they were engaged in gripping encounters with Irish settlers moving into Alba! Eventually all those problems were worked out so today your typical highlander has no idea where his ancestors came from or how they got there! (See: MacBeth, his wife. He's a typical laird of his day ~ probably of mostly Irish and Welsh ancetry but his wife is the daughter of a Viking king ~ meaning a guy from Norway ~ and she's practicing the old tymme religion where you mix up an evil brew and see visions).
Iceland seems to have had some 8th century monks, but there's no sign of human habitation there before that time ~ of course 100% of everything on that island is regularly destroyed by massive overflows of lava.
The History Channel has become a joke....much like National Geographic.
Many years ago we were taught that the vikings were little more than barbarians whose first act upon meeting a new group of people was to hit them with a sword or axe to see if they were gods. We also learned that they cared nothing about personal hygiene, education, modesty or authority. It would be interesting to hear if any of that is considered accurate these days.
They at least didn’t put horns on their helmets, did they?
“Oh, and yeah, it is RIDICULOUS to present the Vikings as being unaware of the existence of the British isles.”
I don’t know. It seems kind of reasonable to me given that so many liberals are unaware of the existence of the United States Constitution.
The series certainly hasn’t touched on how the ancient aliens provided the Vikings their advanced knowledge of seafaring and navigation.
Those who enjoy Viking culture and history would be hard pressed to find a better narrative than in the book, The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. It is truly one of the great novels of the Century, and a very good read.
Hugely popular in Sweden, it has been translated into 23 languages, and though there have been efforts to make it into a movie, they have never quite worked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Ships