People have strange heroic ideas about the Viking Period.
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People have strange heroic ideas about the Viking Period. The reason is that they specifically read *heroic* literature, much of it written as historical semi-fiction hundreds of years later. It's like basing your ideas about the 1100s on Walter Scott.
Viking Period archaeology in Scandinavia is deeply unheroic. It concerns itself overwhelmingly with the non-Viking activities of farmers.
Most runestones deal with modest land inheritance.
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People have strange heroic ideas about the Viking Period. The reason is that they specifically read *heroic* literature, much of it written as historical semi-fiction hundreds of years later. It's like basing your ideas about the 1100s on Walter Scott.
Viking Period archaeology in Scandinavia is deeply unheroic. It concerns itself overwhelmingly with the non-Viking activities of farmers.
Most runestones deal with modest land inheritance.
"Viking" was a job, not an ethnicity. Most Scandinavians at the time were never Vikings, and only the short-livedest, unluckiest young men were Vikings for their whole lives. The aim of most Vikings was to buy a farm and get married.
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@mrundkvist and a verb! We go a-viking
Quite liked Assassin's Creed Valhalla for representing that better (though it is obv still a story of heroism among other things)
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@mrundkvist and a verb! We go a-viking
Quite liked Assassin's Creed Valhalla for representing that better (though it is obv still a story of heroism among other things)
@noodlemaz
Ah, yes. The game where you're a big man named Eivor. The one where Norse buildings are decorated indoors in a mid-1800s National Romantic style.
Eivor Fisher, textile artist:
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@mrundkvist i like that goal. Add a workshop to the list, and I'd be happy with that as my goal in life...
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The more I learn about the Viking Period, the more I am secure in my conviction the best job during that period was any-job-but-Viking.
Shore based admin support sounds like a Viking Period dream job.
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@noodlemaz
Ah, yes. The game where you're a big man named Eivor. The one where Norse buildings are decorated indoors in a mid-1800s National Romantic style. Eivor Fisher, textile artist:
@mrundkvist fair points.
But anyone who plays the male Eivor is seriously missing out -
The more I learn about the Viking Period, the more I am secure in my conviction the best job during that period was any-job-but-Viking.
Shore based admin support sounds like a Viking Period dream job.
>The aim of most Vikings was to buy a farm and get married.
Is this comparable to Roman centurions and legionaries receiving a plot of land as a retirement pension for the "second part of their life"?
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@noodlemaz
Ah, yes. The game where you're a big man named Eivor. The one where Norse buildings are decorated indoors in a mid-1800s National Romantic style. Eivor Fisher, textile artist:
@mrundkvist @noodlemaz Or you could choose to play as a woman named Eivor like I did. Made more sense
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@mrundkvist fair points.
But anyone who plays the male Eivor is seriously missing out@noodlemaz @mrundkvist It seems choosing to play as a female character is better in AC, thinking of Odyssey as well.
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>The aim of most Vikings was to buy a farm and get married.
Is this comparable to Roman centurions and legionaries receiving a plot of land as a retirement pension for the "second part of their life"?
@Pepijn
The sources aren't super strong on this. But no, my impression is that you get out of the Viking game ASAP. Because you want that farm above Dublin and that Irish-speaking girl who seems to like you. -
@Pepijn
The sources aren't super strong on this. But no, my impression is that you get out of the Viking game ASAP. Because you want that farm above Dublin and that Irish-speaking girl who seems to like you.@Pepijn
Scandinavian society was way, way less organised than the Roman Empire. There were no standing armies. -
@mrundkvist Sounds like a kind of "pirates" or "almogavars".
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>The aim of most Vikings was to buy a farm and get married.
Is this comparable to Roman centurions and legionaries receiving a plot of land as a retirement pension for the "second part of their life"?
@Pepijn @mrundkvist Not really, because there wasn't a term of service, whereas you had to serve as many as 25 years as a legionary to get your diploma and qualify for land and settlement bonuses in a colonia.
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The more I learn about the Viking Period, the more I am secure in my conviction the best job during that period was any-job-but-Viking.
Shore based admin support sounds like a Viking Period dream job.
@Pepijn @mrundkvist same with any gold rush. The best job is selling to those involved. Whether it's selling spears to vikings, shovels to gold prospectors, or graphics cards to stochastic parrots...
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@Pepijn
Scandinavian society was way, way less organised than the Roman Empire. There were no standing armies.@mrundkvist @Pepijn I've read part of the Icelandic Saga of the Burnt Njáll and what surprised me was that there seemed to be quite a few kings and queens around the sea routes, whom they visited, so kind of loose "nations" or "administrative areas". Maybe the beginnings of current Scandi states? And the Icelandic seemed to call only part of their Scandi peers as "vikings"?
I'm Finnish so we didn't have this seafaring folk unless some Western Finnish dudes joined some Scandi crews. -
@Pepijn
The sources aren't super strong on this. But no, my impression is that you get out of the Viking game ASAP. Because you want that farm above Dublin and that Irish-speaking girl who seems to like you.@mrundkvist The sources thing is what made me wonder. I remember reading about a "Senior-Viking", as in someone who clearly did the Viking thing for a long time (decades) and did so alongside a somewhat fixed group of others.
But it does seem likely then that was more the exception than the norm. And maybe the sources kinda favour the not-boring-stuff.
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@Pepijn @mrundkvist Not really, because there wasn't a term of service, whereas you had to serve as many as 25 years as a legionary to get your diploma and qualify for land and settlement bonuses in a colonia.
@Pepijn @mrundkvist And often Vikings weren't so much about directly pillaging (though they did plenty of that too), but using the threat of violence to extort money or land concessions out of local rulers. There is a phrase from Kippling about once you've paid a Danegeld, you'll never rid yourself of the Dane.
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In the 790s, the Scandinavians put sails on their ships and went to raid their first literate area, England. Thus opens the so-called Viking Period, which is an artefact of written history.
Archaeology has demonstrated that before that time, the Scandies had been raiding *each other* at shorter range with rowing ships for at least 1100 years.
From Hjortspring c. 340 BC to Salme c. AD 750.
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@mrundkvist The sources thing is what made me wonder. I remember reading about a "Senior-Viking", as in someone who clearly did the Viking thing for a long time (decades) and did so alongside a somewhat fixed group of others.
But it does seem likely then that was more the exception than the norm. And maybe the sources kinda favour the not-boring-stuff.
@Pepijn
None of the written sources were produced as a sober, general narrative account of a period.
