As a Norwegian I might be biased, but the viking era contains so many weird and interesting facts and happenings. I would strongly recommend checking out more on one of the following things I remember from the top of my head:
The works of Icelandic historian/poet Snorre Sturlason, he is most famous for what in English would be called 'Snorre's sagas of kings', which is widely regarded to be one of the most important books for Norway.
The Danelaw is also pretty interesting, but what I personally find even more interesting is the colonization and settlements in Ireland by vikings. Dublin, Cork, the Isle of Man and much more was settled by vikings. The Danelaw and settlements caused words from Old Norse to become fairly influential on English.
Someone else has mentioned Ibn Fadlan, who met vikings which came from the river Dnipro, which runs through modern day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Vikings traveled from Sweden towards Russia, giving the country it's name. The name Rus was first used about the Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, but later referred to the Kievan Rus.
The region of Normandie in France has it's name from the vikings, as Rollo the Walker was made ruler of the region by the king of France. This was allegedly after the vikings had tried to sack Paris for the n-th time. This deal was made on the premise that the people of Normandie would defend the rest of France from vikings and other raiders. Rollo the Walker is a direct ancestor of William the Conqueror, and by extension the British royal family.
The title jarl is often translated into English as earl, but the correct translation would be duke. Jarl is simply just etymologically related to earl.
Hope this random list wasn't too confusing, if anyone is interested in this I would gladly help with finding good English language sources!
Even without the Norman invasion, the British Royal family would be descendent from Norsemen through Godwinson's mother, daughter of Sweyn Forkbeard, grandchild of Harold Bluetooth (King of Denmark/Norway and inventor of frustrating wireless protocols).
After 1066, England was pretty awful for the Anglo-Saxon warriors/noblemen, a good number of them also fecked off to Byzantium and joined the Varangian guard like Vikings before them. They also created settlements in what is now Ukraine.
Even more randomly: the current British Royals are also descended from Robert the Bruce, which is amusing given how energetically he opposed the Royals at the time.
And the story of what happened to his heart is pretty interesting as well:
The Varangian guard is so interesting and could have been something out of a book or movie. A Roman emperor having an elite squad of viking warriors to protect them!
Totally...although it makes sense in context. The Byzantine court was notorious for conspiracies, cabals, backroom deals, logrolling, and other shady political manuvers. The Eastern emperors were also presumably aware of the history of the Praetorian Guard in the Western empire, so their choice of bodyguard would probably have been a matter they thought carefully about. The logic, then, was to bring in a bunch of foreigners, from further away the better, with no ties to Rome and no interests there besides getting paid. All the better if these foreigners were immense badasses with uncanny pale skin and enormous beards.
Exactly. The Turks never destroyed Byzantium. The Byzantines destroyed themselves, and made life shitty for most of Europe in the process (a la the Crusades).
I mean, it started with Manzikert, where the Turks just did their usual nomad stuff, which the Byzantines could have averted - if they weren't busy fighting amongst themselves and deserting the army.
Varangian guard was not really a elite guard unit. Varangian guard were stationed all around the empire and were more like a normal part of the military.
In the sources they show up just as often fighting in battles where the emperor was there and when he was not.
The did protect him on campaign, but that might just be because the were the primary infantry arm.
Some people think of them like the Praetorian guard, but that isn't really accurate.
Nova Anglia. Perhaps better to say "might have created settlements". There is a tantalising number of crumbs from place names to travellers reports but little written record. The alleged location would make them the first victims of the Mongolian invasion of Europe a few hundred years later.
Timothy Snyder has a great set of lectures about the making of modern Ukraine and he goes into great detail about the impact the Vikings had in the creation of Rus and their interactions with the Byzantines
> The title jarl is often translated into English as earl, but the correct translation would be duke. Jarl is simply just etymologically related to earl.
This is not so simple. Titles and their significance change over time. During the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain, an "ealdorman" was the ruler of one or (later) more shires; during the end of the period the title was shortend into "earl". The title lost later more and more of its importance. "Duke" was originally a French title (from French "Duc") and started to be used in England from the middle of the 14th century -- long after the Viking Period. Therefore it would be very anachronistic to translate "jarl" with "duke". If you were looking for the highest official of a shire in todays England you may prefer the translation "High Sheriff" (a title created in the early 1970s), but which is more or less only ceremonial. So no, a "jarl" is best to be left an "earl".
> Duke" ... started to be used in England from the middle of the 14th century -- long after the Viking Period. Therefore it would be very anachronistic to translate "jarl" with "duke".
Apparently the Anglo-Saxon chronicle refers to Ealdormen as "Duces", plural of Dux, same Latin root as Duc and then Duke. It just means leader. As far as actual meaning then "second highest noble rank to a King" would mean that Jarls and Dukes are equivalent noble titles.
The spanner in the works is after 1066, Earls became equivalent to Counts, below the rank of Dukes. I wonder if this is due to King William still being a Duke in fealty to the King of France? Maybe the Shires were smaller/less-powerful than Duchies like Aquitaine, Normandy etc.?
So it sounds like it went: Ealdormen==Duke then after Cnut, Ealdormen==Jarl==Earl==Duke and then after 1066, (Earl==Count)!=Duke.
>an "ealdorman" was the ruler of one or (later) more shires; during the end of the period the title was shortend into "earl"
Do you have a source for this, please?
The OED says that "Ealdorman" is cognate with "Alderman", while "Jarl" is cognate with "Earl". The titles were used interchangeably, but one did not come from the other. The distinction being that earls held power under Danelaw. Earl replaced ealdorman as the title of distinction in the mid-11th century due to the extension of the power of earls outside of Danelaw.
Yes, my remark was not very precise. The two words seem to have different roots ("jarl"/"earl" < Old Engl. "eorl" = "brave man, warrior, leader, chief") vs. ("alderman" = "ald" + "man" = "old man").
Instead of writing:
"during the end of the period the title was shortend into 'earl'"
I should have written:
"during the end of the period 'ealdorman' was replaced by the etymologically unrelated, but phonetically close and shorter 'eorl', that later turned into 'earl'."
What I wanted to say is that "earl", though somewhat anachronistic, can still be an exceptable translation of "jarl". When the emphasis is on contemporary jargon, it might perhaps best be left untranslated. Another alternative would be to translate it with "count", because contemporary Latin sources sometimes use the word "comes" to refer to a jarl; but this translation has its own difficulties because "count" entered the English language also late via the French "comte". The only criteria in favour of "duke" is the fact that this title was later often used in Scandinavia instead of "jarl" for functionally similar offices. Another option is to translate "jarl" with "chief", which corresponds to a more general early usage of "jarl"; however, this would indicate too low a status for most of the Anglo-Saxon period.
My personal preference for the Anglo-Saxon period is to leave it untranslated. If someone insists on a translation, "earl" would still be the best fit in my opinion.
It just shows how globalized history is, and somehow really cosmopolitan. William the Conqueror was fighting at the battle of Hastings Harold, who's mother was Danish. We know the history because of a Medieval chronicler that was from Meissen in Saxony, and the chronicle is called Deeds of Bishops of the Hamburg Church, because it focusses on Hamburg. As a Saxon living in Hamburg, this is very entertaining.
> Rollo the Walker was made ruler of the region by the king of France. This was allegedly after the vikings had tried to sack Paris for the n-th time. This deal was made on the premise that the people of Normandie would defend the rest of France from vikings and other raiders
The deal was also conditioned on religious conversion and allegiance to the King of France, and he also married the King's daughter.
Also, if you put a guy controlling Normandy, he will control the mouth of the river Seine which runs in Paris. So you secure the biggest city of your kingdom from being raided from this river by enemies rowing it upstream, which was the biggest problem with Vikings raiders back then.
There was a scene in The Northman (2022) which is based on Ibn Fadlan. After seeing the movie I read the account [0] which I found very interesting. This describes the scene in the movie:
> The men came with shields and sticks. She was given a cup of intoxicating drink; she sang at taking it and drank. The interpreter told me that she in this fashion bade farewell to all her girl companions. Then she was given another cup; she took it and sang for a long time while the old woman incited her to drink up and go into the pavillion where her master lay. I saw that she was distracted; she wanted to enter the pavillion but put her head between it and the boat. Then the old woman siezed her head and made her enter the pavillion and entered with her. Thereupon the men began to strike with the sticks on the shields so that her cries could not be heard and the other slave girls would not seek to escape death with their masters. Then six men went into the pavillion and each had intercourse with the girl. Then they laid her at the side of her master; two held her feet and two her hands; the old woman known as the Angel of Death re-entered and looped a cord around her neck and gave the crossed ends to the two men for them to pull. Then she approached her with a broad-bladed dagger, which she plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead.
> Russia, giving the country it's name. The name Rus
It's worth mentioning that Russia is only one population that branched from the Rus', and it did not claim the name Russia until the ~1700s when the Duchy of Moscow entered an expansionist period... Rus' = Russia is an oversimplification that implies Russian dominance of Belarus and Ukraine.
On your point on Normandie, you can even go further!
Ethnologically speaking Normandie, comes from its inhabitants’ name: the normands.
This name is composed of “nor” and “man”, so it’s literally North Men from the French perspective - aka the Vikings.
The reason the French King gave them the region as a duchy, is because the Seine river, which passes in the middle of Paris, ends its course in present day Honfleur, Normandie.
So Vikings would move their drakkars ships upstream from there and sack the city. Having Rollo installed as Duke put an end to the raiding.
It is said that when Rollo was made to kneel before Charles the Simple, to swear allegiance, he grabbed onto the king’s feet and threw him in the air.
I don’t know if this is a true story, but it’s always amused me!
If you drive around Normandie today, you’ll see plenty of cars with drakkar stickers on their bumpers. A sign that many still identify with this heritage.
> The Danelaw is also pretty interesting, but what I personally find even more interesting is the colonization and settlements in Ireland by vikings. Dublin, Cork, the Isle of Man and much more was settled by vikings. The Danelaw and settlements caused words from Old Norse to become fairly influential on English.
I'd say this is almost an understatement[0], its rather shocking how many very average, day-to-day intellectual items are Norse in origin. Almost as if English is some sort of creole when you add the massive simplification of Old English on the way to Middle English; the Norman host was a tiny fraction of the population of speakers in England.
Another fun thing: despite their fierce reputation, the Vikings probably had the best personal hygiene in Western Europe at the time. They spent a lot of time on grooming their hair and beards, and contemporary writers noted that they typically bathed very frequently--which at the time meant once a week.
“The name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), supposed to be descended from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe […]”
I was born in Roslagen so I may be biased, but that is likely where the name Rus comes from.
Roslagen comes from skeppslag, skepp as in ships, administrative regions which were required to each contribute one fully manned and equipped ship along with supplies.
A similar levy was taxed inland, called hundare (hundreds). There are three still remaining, the Chiltern Hundreds in Buckinghamshire.
I”m very much interested in older cultures and their inland history. The Mediterranean cultures get the most coverage in our history studies. I believe the inland culture is probably parallel in its history. And development.
I”m not that attracted to historical fiction. I’m very interested in cultural development and interactions.
It's largely a matter of record keeping. We know all about the Greeks and Romans because they left libraries full of stories and documents. The vikings are almost entirely only known from other people writing about them.
One famous and interesting story that might be new and interesting to those who are already here and aren't middle-aged or older Norwegians is about one of the Viking kings (Sigurd Jorsalfar) who got his horse shod with golden shoes and instructed the blacksmith to make sure one of them would be loose enough to fall off while they rode through Miklagard ("Big Town, today Istanbul) so that he could pretend he didn't care when someone made him aware of it.
Goddamn kids never change. Booze, drugs, and the make out cave with graffiti all over it.
Viking resumes and Viking guidance counselors must've been interesting.
"I'm sorry, I lied. I only have 1 year of experience of plundering at sea. And I wasn't captain of a fleet of pirate ships. My references are real though."
There is a surviving letter from a famous roman writer, complaing about how his son is wasting money in parties and alchool instead of studying in the Athens university.
Maybe someone else knows his name and the letter reference better.
"Even Sumerians complained about the young" sounds like an urban legend but it is not, there's a historical record of a scribe from Ur complaining about his ungrateful son, loitering about public squares rather than dutifully training to become a scribe:
This is why I’m really insistent on pushing back on “kids these days…” complaints. Every single generation has had grumpy people who whine about how the young’uns are unruly, lazy, have it easy, etc. I’m starting to people in my age group (mid 30s) saying it, which is a little bit sad since it was not long ago that we were on the receiving end of a lot of “psssh, typical millennials…” nonsense :-/
This is an interesting topic though, because this generation is the first generation of kids who grew up with social media, so it's not unfathomable that "kids these days" are different, for better or worse. Kids these days might be normal, but with them being the first generation to truly grow up in the internet and social media era, there is a legitimate argument that they are not.
I’m much more upset at the cruelty and hypocrisy kids display (and of course by extension the adults that grow no wiser) in that when I was on the Internet as a kid you were a loser and loner. And now if you’re _not_ on the Internet enough you’re a loser and loner.
Have to admit that the movie Black Phone was much better than I thought because the children were portrayed very realistically in their dynamics and yet still we were reminded of their vulnerability in society as those without many rights or privileges that adults have. Furthermore, the child abuse… I don’t even flinch at some of the most brutal violence in media anymore because it seems so comical typically but I felt sick during that part.
Horror to me is reality oftentimes I guess and much of why I watch horror is to desensitize myself a bit about the horrors of our world.
You're not wrong that there will be some kind of difference in how they grow up, but I think each generation has grown up exposed to new technologies from birth that the previous one wasn't. My thought is that it would be really unusual if, after decades and decades of "kids these days..." that this is the time it is finally right that the current generation are in some way worse or more badly behaved or whatever negative connotation people may be using at any given point.
There's a lot of "I think..." in this so obviously this is totally based on speculation and from what I've seen in my encounters with Gen Z, where they generally seem pretty good and certainly no worse behaved than my fellow millenials :)
I agree in spirit, although I’d put it as „every generation needs to go its youth period, when it tends to behave excessively irresponsible and selfish, before they can mature and more or less join the adult society”. I’m 41 :)
> Every single generation has had grumpy people who whine about how the young’uns are unruly, lazy, have it easy, etc.
That's because at least the "have it easy" part is factually true on a large scale. At least until now, it was a constant given that over generations, technical progress would make life easier for society as a whole. An example is the distribution of jobs by sector - in Germany, the generation of my father (born in the 70s) grew up with 50% of jobs being in agriculture and heavy industry, today 75% of jobs are classified as "service jobs" [1].
Add on top of that something that is incredibly common across migrant communities... they know they got treated badly and had to jump through tons of ridiculous hoops to immigrate to Germany, and so they strictly oppose relaxations of these rules because their trauma hasn't been recognized at all, much less made whole. And that mindset is similar in education - we still suffer through "frontal education", pointless selection after the 4th grade and other education crap because boomers think it would devalue their own sufferings.
Hm so perhaps that phrase is actually a separate issue, but it is still interesting because it still involves treating the younger generation differently. Because in the context I was talking about this "they have it so easy" complaint is usually presented as a bad thing that the younger generation has it "easy". It suggests that despite each preceding generation having progressively "easier" lives, it is wrong that this current generation should also enjoy an easier life than the last.
> Because in the context I was talking about this "they have it so easy" complaint is usually presented as a bad thing that the younger generation has it "easy".
For the older generations, they do see it as a bad thing that society didn't make them whole on past transgressions. Taking the concept of "generational trauma" seriously is only a thing of the last 20-30 years.
In the stone age my friends often complained about their kids spending time painting their hands on cave walls rather than learning how to properly knap a flint knife.
> Cicero hoped that his son Marcus would become a philosopher like him, but Marcus himself wished for a military career. He joined the army of Pompey in 49 BC and after Pompey's defeat at Pharsalus 48 BC, he was pardoned by Caesar. Cicero sent him to Athens to study as a disciple of the peripatetic philosopher Kratippos in 48 BC, but he used this absence from "his father's vigilant eye" to "eat, drink and be merry."
It covers 200-1200 AD (roughly) with stories from around Europe and the middle-east, highlighting the access, travel, science, and art of the time, in a way that really shows that it was far less "dark ages" than commonly thought.
“Dark ages” was limited to the leftover sphere of influence of the western Roman Empire, 200 AD is considerably too early as a start for the period.
There really was a steep decline in civilization, cities emptied, many completely, literacy rates in the tank, many many people regressed to subsistence agriculture.
No it wasn’t the whole world, the successful successor states to the Roman Empire didn’t experience it. It was also not complete, but don’t make the naysayers mistake of overstating the contrary evidence.
It's a lot about what you value. Most of my ancestors were subsistence farmers, probably yours too. Doesn't mean their lives were all dark.
I read a local book about violin makers. I was shocked at how many there were, in the almost entirely rural community around here. To me, making a violin requires some pretty serious, specialised woodworking skills. But they document hundreds of local farmers - subsistence farmers - apparently having those skills. And they don't even count those who "just made a fiddle or two".
Which isn't to say there can be no such thing as dark ages. When there's so much war and chaos that no one has time to build much of lasting value, whether materially or culturally, that's pretty dark. Yet the few things that come out of such times and places (the English border ballads comes to mind, or the hymns of Paul Gerhardt) can be all the more beautiful.
I always thought that "dark" in "dark ages" refers to the lack of written evidence, i.e., more "dark" as in the lights have gone out and you can't see what's happening than "dark" as in grim.
I recently heard an interesting take that the view of this time of Europe might be an intentional slight to the influence of the byzantine empire as it presented an alternative form of Christianity to the roman Catholic one.
Acknowledging the byzantine empire means that you have to deal with an unbroken line to Rome and also Christianity
I've read that the "dark ages" was a misunderstood term and really refers to them being "dark" to the historian due to a relative dearth of written documents from the time.
Yes, the Arabs knew about the Vikings. Similarly old Sanskrit grammar texts in India refer to the Greeks. St. Thomas Aquinas extensively refers to Arab scholars like Avicenna and Averroes. The ancient world was more connected than we realise.
I recently saw a documentary about how Anglo-Saxons invaded the west of England but Cornwal remained celtic and because of its tin-mining kept a strong connection to the Mediterranean. I don't have a link to the documentary but I think this is about the same thing:
Speaking of Celtic connections - the origin legends of the Scots claim that they came here via Spain and Ireland:
"They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous."
Might be, until recently I was unware that the Greeks and Turks also have the same salted cod culture as we have in Portugal, even if they lack 365 + 1 recipes for it. :)
This is actually one of my favorite historical facts. Buddha images are everywhere in modern Thailand and it’s fascinating to me that this likely would not be the case if it weren’t for Greeks in Central Asia
Thailand (and most of SE Asia) is Theravada and received Buddhism directly from India while the Greek Buddhists were Mahayana and spread that thru the Silk Road into East Asia.
> I find it endlessly fascinating how interconnected the ancient worlds really were.
And it's amazing to me how much work we need to do to understand the past. Though it seems like not all past cultures had it so difficult - those with e.g. strong oral traditions. Some Australian Aboriginal oral traditions recount accurately geographic features from thousands of years before.
This is funny, as I just finished a novel that had this as a large plot point. Talk about Synchronicity. It's Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland's "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O". It's a pretty entertaining read, from the point of view of several characters.
I'm waiting for the sequel in the mail, "Master of the Revels: A Return to Neal Stephenson's D.O.D.O." by Nicole Galland herself. It appears Neal dropped off.
I don't think it's meant to literally suggest they just went for the summer. Rather "summer job" ("sommerjobb") is commonly used in Norway to mean a second job done while you have time off from your regular duties. The "summer" bit included because the term is most often used for students who have an extra long summer vacation and so has plenty of time to take a short term job.
At least in crop agriculture the work tends to be concentrated during planting and harvest so there is a big period in between with nothing to do for most of the people involved in planting and harvest. The labor for at least some of the Egyptian pyramids were idle farmers who had free-time available for hire, iirc.
Nothing to do outside of crop agriculture in Viking times gives time for:
- Building housing and barns
- Chopping firewood
- Shipbuilding
- Wood working
- Weaving fabric (linen) from the summer harvest
- Ropes
- Leatherworking
- Metalworking/blacksmithing
- Pottery
- Animal husbandry
- Hunting
- Fishing
... and probably lots of other things that were necessary during those times. Of course Viking raids are a different means of acquiring a lot of the above.
Surprise! Everyone left graffiti. Tagging is as old as going on a pilgrimage.
(summer working holiday with potential for a long residency visa? also as old as the business of being mobile, and capable of fighting. The romans did it.)
Technically correct, in that biology created a brain capable of learning non-genetic information.
But, personally, I think if a behaviour is learned rather than e.g. a genetically programmed reflex, it's useful to draw a line between them and say that the former isn't biological in origin.
Having worked in behavioral analytics at scale the most surprising aspect is how much of it is purely genetic. There is a lot of emergent complexity that looks unique but really isn’t, simply variations on a theme. But an individual is unlikely to meet enough people to see the trends in the long tail. Clustering at scale along with the birthday paradox will give you a bunch of people with the same rare behavior and usually you can drill down and find there is quite a lot of genetic similarities as well.
I can absolutely believe that. In general I wouldn't want to guess which behaviours are in each category, but from e.g. the things dogs and cats do that seem fundamentally weird to humans and vice versa, I expect many genetic behaviours to exist.
Going upthread a bit, I would expect tagging to be genetic, as it seems similar to other territorial markings created by other species. But I don't expect e.g. the specific shapes of Futhark runes to be, as the straight edges look like merely the easiest shapes to carve into rock and other writing systems aren't limited to those shapes even when (e.g. Egyptian hieroglyphics) they are carved.
Oh yeah, specific shapes of runes are not genetic, those are taught, I didn’t think we were drawing the line that far over. Modern society has chosen to underplay the role of genetics for seemingly quasi religious reasons, it’s as if we’ve gone back to using the soul to explain things. Basically every time I spotted unusual behavior in search logs I found out that people searching were way more related then they’re supposed to be. Socially taboo behaviors were used as a baseline as there are things that people will not tell each other but will tell a search engine.
> I didn’t think we were drawing the line that far over
Don't worry, I'm agreeing with you — I chose to use the example of shapes of runes as something unambiguously on the "learned" side, not as something close to the dividing line :)
> Socially taboo behaviors were used as a baseline as there are things that people will not tell each other but will tell a search engine.
That's piqued my curiosity. While on the basis of past experience I may regret asking… do you have a link to any results of this research?
The kind of stuff I wouldn’t even put in an email. I did confer with colleagues from a variety of companies doing similar work and they saw similar things, it’s the kind of thing that pops up quite frequently even when not looking for it. Essentially many of the base assumptions society has agreed upon are wrong. In order to maintain that belief the messengers are crucified, so smart people who know keep it to themselves.
It has a more personal link for me as I have one of the more distinct and rare genetic personalities and come from a long line of unusually smart assholes. It turns out clEDS causes a great deal of pain and when you complain about it people will tell you it’s normal, and how are we to know it’s not. Overtime it’ll change your brain chemistry and sabotage your life to the point you do become an asshole. There is also a strong link to intelligence, there is a fringe theory of RCCX genes explaining giftedness and I was one of those profoundly gifted children (clEDS is a recessive TNXB mutation, though I believe the official classification is wrong and the particular sub type of TNXB mutation matters). At school I was warned that people that gifted usually hit a wall pretty early on due to burnout, but really it’s chronic fatigue that starts to get really bad in the mid 20s. So it seems to be a Faustian bargain and I guess if given the choice I would chose it again, it certainly makes life more interesting. I hope that overtime I can figure out a solution to the pain, I’ve done much better than most and hope I’ll be able to avoid turning into an asshole, though some may say too late…
> But, personally, I think if a behaviour is learned rather than e.g. a genetically programmed reflex, it's useful to draw a line between them and say that the former isn't biological in origin.
That will lead you into all kinds of obvious mistakes. The things you're capable of learning are set by your biology too.
The line I draw has never resulted in me being unaware of that.
(Rather the opposite: I have a long-standing fascination with the idea of genuinely unthinkable thoughts, thoughts which cannot be had no matter what).
So, while I would for example say that my capacity for complex language is biological in origin, I think it is more useful to describe my knowledge of Esperanto as not biological in origin.
Frequently, but even just priming is sufficient to cause that observation. The existence of magnetic hysteresis doesn't make it pointless to draw a line between natural and artificial magnets.
A band of Viking warriors sheltered from a snowstorm in the 5000 years old Maeshowe chambered tomb on Orkney and left quite a lot of graffiti written as runes:
The Lion of Piraeus actually originates from the Athens port city of Piraeus.
It was carved out of marble in ancient Greece. The lion is almost 2,400 years old.
The Venetians took the lion from Piraeus in 1688, after wresting control of the port city of Athens from the Turks in the Ottoman Empire.
The Vikings who had tagged the lion 700-800 years earlier were most likely Swedish and Norwegian mercenaries — called Varangians— in the service of the emperor in Byzantium.
Hmmm.
@dang can we get a ( ~ 788 - 888 CE ) tag here please?
I read a fascinating book about the Vikings recently that touched on this topic.
One really interesting tidbit was the route they took.[0] At first blush, I'd expect them to have sailed/rowed their longboats counter-clockwise around Europe, through the straights of Gibraltar and into the Med. But they actually took much more direct route--straight through Europe! They'd go east through the Baltic Sea, up a navigable river like the Daugava to a point where that river neared the Dneiper river, at which point they'd jump out and hump their boats down to the Dneiper, which would carry them to the Black Sea.
Summer jobs? Considering the climates, I'd expect them to do it as winter jobs. Raid England during summer, serve the Byzantine emperor in the med during winter.
In late 2019, I was at the Viking Museum in Stockholm and they had a map marking where they knew Vikings had visited (and likely raided) and where they had probably visited (and likely raided). Not surprisingly, it was most of the North Atlantic and down through Gibraltar.
What surprised me is that Egypt and Israel were on the "probably" list.. which seemed plausible if they just kept going down the coast of North Africa.
I'm not surprised to hear the Vikings went where the money was. The epic Beowulf describes Hrothgar as a Danish king who would give generously of his treasure in order to recruit the strongest, fiercest warriors (hence the kenning "ring-giver"). I always thought there were considerable parallels between this and the tech industry, at least when times were good and interest rates low.
I read somewhere that Christian inquisition into Nordic region basically washed and labeled the Vikings as barbarians, brutes, and overall abusive people.
Is that true? I mean the other inquisitions ended up with labeling other native people as savages or not fully human. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is true that they were just called bad because they had a pagan religion.
First, you probably mean incursion, there was no Scandinavian inquisition.
And no, it isn't true. First, remember that by the time the first churches were built on the Scandinavian peninsula, Christianity had existed for about 700 years. Before that time, Christian ideas had perculated up and been incorporated, in garbled form, in Norse religion.
And even after that, they had 300 years to get to know what it was about until being Christian became a civic obligation like it was in the rest of Europe.
The viking raiders absolutely were savages, but the Norse did not identify with them, the way we equate them today. For them, viking was just the word for pirate, and if you did it - as could be tempting, seeing your neighbours come home with loot - you still probably wouldn't want to brag about it.
They got that reputation partly because they were pagan, but mostly because of all the sacking, pillaging and brutal murdering. Of course, Christian armies were just as brutal to Jews and Muslims, but the Vikings being pagan made it easier to propagandize them as being a literal satanic horde.
Can't speak to the Christian angle, though probably not an "Inquisition" that term is for when Catholics tried "cleaning house" and I think it may have been a one-off thing in Spain.
Any way, what I wanted to say was that the Vikings (strictly referring to the warrior class here) tended to be fairly abusive and brutal. Ibn Fadlan’s writings document some of the rather barbarous acts they engaged in.
It just occurred to me that these guys must have gotten terrible sunburns from the combination of pale Scandinavian skin and bright Mediterranean sun. No wonder they fought so fiercely: they were always incredibly annoyed.
I think it's interesting to see how they saw themselves, compared to the stereotypes about them: Not great warrior Hausi. Farmer Hausi. Just doing a little side gig for the winter, probably.
>>She went to Venice at three different times of the year, to see how the light from the sun fell at different angles and cast varying shadows on the worn runes.
The works of Icelandic historian/poet Snorre Sturlason, he is most famous for what in English would be called 'Snorre's sagas of kings', which is widely regarded to be one of the most important books for Norway.
The Danelaw is also pretty interesting, but what I personally find even more interesting is the colonization and settlements in Ireland by vikings. Dublin, Cork, the Isle of Man and much more was settled by vikings. The Danelaw and settlements caused words from Old Norse to become fairly influential on English.
Someone else has mentioned Ibn Fadlan, who met vikings which came from the river Dnipro, which runs through modern day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Vikings traveled from Sweden towards Russia, giving the country it's name. The name Rus was first used about the Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, but later referred to the Kievan Rus.
The region of Normandie in France has it's name from the vikings, as Rollo the Walker was made ruler of the region by the king of France. This was allegedly after the vikings had tried to sack Paris for the n-th time. This deal was made on the premise that the people of Normandie would defend the rest of France from vikings and other raiders. Rollo the Walker is a direct ancestor of William the Conqueror, and by extension the British royal family.
The title jarl is often translated into English as earl, but the correct translation would be duke. Jarl is simply just etymologically related to earl.
Hope this random list wasn't too confusing, if anyone is interested in this I would gladly help with finding good English language sources!