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Is it just the length of time that's passed that makes Vikings cool and the British Empire terrible?

fiftyacorn 6y ago
When were the Vikings cool? Certainly interesting but the Viking invasion was multifaceted from robbing down to settling The problem with the British empire is that were still seeing a lot of its negative impact. I mean it officially ended only 24 years ago
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  And the slavery aspect - at one time Dublin was the largest slave market in Europe.
  - wavefunction 6y ago
    Slavery was pretty widespread in Europe until the late Middle Ages, including Christians enslaving other Christians and selling them to slave traders. 10% of the census population of the Domesday Book were slaves, not serfs. This changed when a pope (I can't remember his name off the top of my head) was concerned that Christian slaves owned by Jewish and Muslim slave-owners would convert to their masters' religions. That was just a prohibition against enslaving fellow Christians and selling slaves to Jewish and Muslim slave-traders though.
    - iguy 6y ago
      Yes to slavery being widespread in Europe of the dark ages. The church had something to do with its demise but I'm not sure it's one papal edict. Economics too. But if "late Middle Ages" means say the time of the black death, and after, then at least in Western Europe that's much too late. By then slavery in England is long gone (or so rare as not to matter) and serfdom is in steep decline, and we are still several centuries away from European overseas slavery (no sugar islands before Columbus!) Slavery in the islamic world was (I think) pretty continuous from the beginning until the 20th C. (Perhaps with ups and downs? There were many violent changes of leadership, over the centuries.) In the middle ages this would have been the primary meaning of slavery to Europeans -- the risk of being caught in some coastal raid and sold for labor (or for ransom, if noble). This no doubt horrified the pope but he had little power to stop this.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  Well, today? Why do you think there are so many viking TV shows.
  - hcho 6y ago
    Are they not making British Empire shows?
    - dijit 6y ago
      If they are then I haven’t heard of them. Outside of monarchy specific things which operate in the same time period (but certainly are not the focus)
      - garmaine 6y ago
        https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/
      - phaemon 6y ago
        The series "The Last Kingdom" is based on the books by Bernard Cornwell. He also wrote the "Sharpe" books, which were adapted to several TV films (starring Sean Bean). They're set around the Napoleonic Wars, with some of them in India.
        alexgmcm 6y ago
        Hornblower is decent as well.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      There have been loads of TV series made in the UK set in India, Kenya and other parts of the Empire. Funnily enough they tend to avoid mentioning the brutality of the British in dealing with the locals e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising For some reason these shows aren't quite as popular as they used to be...
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Monty Python.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  The collapse of the roman empire is still visible today as far as I know. Thats a pretty big event that has had a major impact on Europe as we know it, and the world at large.
  - SEJeff 6y ago
    In central london (London Wall is the name of the road), you can see 9-10 turrets from the original Roman city of "Londonium". I've walked this road and seen a handful of them. To be able to reach out and touch something that was built by Roman soldiers over a thousands of years ago is simply amazing to me. One of them is set in a garden behind a church and it is really beautiful. My wife and I had a picnic there and it was surreal.
    - mncharity 6y ago
      > One of them is set in a garden behind a church https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wall_at_St_Alphage_Garden#/media/File:A_r%C3%B3mai_fal_fennmaradt_r%C3%A9sze_St_Alphage_Gardens-n%C3%A9l_(2012).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal... (pictures) I thought these two also interesting: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wall_at_the_Barbican_Estate#/media/File:Bastion_14,_London_Wall.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wall_at_Cooper%27s_Row#/media/File:London_01_2013_Roman_wall_5220.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal...
      - SEJeff 6y ago
        The first link is precisely the one I was speaking of. My employer’s UK office is at 1 London Wall so it wasn’t hard to explore and fine these. Really fun stuff
deleted 6y ago
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flexie 6y ago
I don't know if the Vikings were cool and if they were more brutal or ruthless than the Anglo Saxon. A newly christened society claims the enemy is ungodly, primitive and ruthless. Isn't it always like that? There was probably a good deal of PR already back then. I think we should be careful trusting the sources on Viking brutality all that much as they are almost exclusively from the Christian side.
- PicassoCTs 6y ago
  .. all those hunter gatherers don't know about rule of law and boundaries, all those ancients were tribal goat-fuckers with no perspective for greatness and size, all those roman emperors were vile, cruel, decadent mad-men. All romans were heathens, all christians were primitive religious nut-cases, all renaissance men were clueless, all people back then were imperialistic racists, all the ancestors were decadent, wasteful vandals, ruining a world the mindless thugs they were, worshipping the process that would kill them, because it allowed them to patch there blood-thirsty nature for the moment, all those hunter gatherers..
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > think we should be careful trusting the sources on Viking brutality all that much as they are almost exclusively from the Christian side. Why would Christians have lied about the ferocity of their invaders knowing that they actually ravaged and pilled the whole of Western Europe later on? If anything History has proven they were right.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the primary source for documentation of both the Saxon invasion of Roman Britain, and the Viking invasion of Saxon England (about 500 years apart). The Saxons were very much a similar culture - same use of (very similar) ships for raiding, same weaponry, same battlefield tactics, same civil organisation and even similar languages. The respective invasions were remarkably similar - raiding, mercenary work, followed by progressive occupation. The Viking invasion got complicated - the Danelaw failed and the Saxons beat them off, but then the Normans (Vikings who'd invaded France a couple generations ago) won. In the Chronicle the Saxon invasion is portrayed very much as a "we were invited here!". The Viking invasion as a brutal series of raids. No such thing as bad press I guess - Vikings are cool and Saxons are a bit uncool now ;)
kazen44 6y ago
what about the roman empire? or Carthage? both are seen as cool as well, but we have many historical accounts of their brutality.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  And pirates!
joveian 6y ago
I think (US perspective) mostly that along with Hagar the Horrible and a generic connection between vikings and Scandinavian ancestry (that is common in some parts of the northern US). Although many racists are really into the vikings so it isn't always seen as cool. For that matter, I think the British Empire is unfortunately often seen as cool also.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  I wouldn't consider the British Empire to be 'cool' but I can appreciate that it was a phenomenal military and logistic machine. One tiny country conquered most of the world that was worth conquering. There's something impressive about that.
  - chmod775 6y ago
    Worth conquering? Not really. Arguably there was a lot more to conquer, but the rest of the world might've fought back. So more like: "One country grabs a lot of land too underdeveloped to fight back." The only noteworthy resistance was mounted by other western powers. Whether one slave-master triumphing over another is something to be applauded, I'll leave to the reader to decide.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      India does not strike me as particularly underdeveloped.
      - tadhgf 6y ago
        From wiki: Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other European powers to India. The Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark-Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. As the Mughal Empire disintegrated in the early 18th century, and then as the Maratha Empire became weakened after the third battle of Panipat, many relatively weak and unstable Indian states which emerged were increasingly open to manipulation by the Europeans, through dependent Indian rulers.
iguy 6y ago
They also aren't a useful rhetorical foil for any present-day arguments. In none of their former territory can you make political hay by deflecting present-day problems onto those particular earlier rulers. That's related to time, of course, but also very much related to what else has happened since, or has failed to happen.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  Rest assured, plenty of hay gets made about how "progressive" vikings were with respect to gender (apparently there were female viking warriors) and sex (not so strict about monogamy) compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians. Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups.
  - hguant 6y ago
    >apparently there were female viking warriors This is a MUCH more controversial idea than pop-history would have you believe. There have been Viking women found buried with weapons and armour; however, there are also men who weren't warriors found buried with arms and armour as well. Scholarship on the matter isn't really sure if the women found buried that way were warriors being honored as such, or rich/wealthy/politically powerful people who were buried in the trappings of a martial society. Also, the extrapolation of "a shockingly small number of women were buried with swords" to "the Vikings had gender equality and badass warrior women in every port" is great Netflix fodder, but not really backed up anywhere else. >Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups. Vikings also literally had a slave based economy; the only thing that got the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to unite was "hey, we don't want to be slaves/the main event of excruciatingly brutal human sacrifices." >compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians Interestingly enough, almost all the Vikings converted peacefully to Christianity within a decade or two of settling in Britan.
    - iguy 6y ago
      Yes. The political point being made with this history is different too, it's one of pride, not shame. It's "Our great ancestors were nice social democrats, too! Unlike your cold-war army, grandpa, they let woman have front-line jobs!" Compare: "Those evil germanics who sailed up the Volga and subjugated our ancestors, you know how much silver they took home? And you've seen how wealthy Copenhagen is now? My buddy Igor ran the numbers, and compound interest explains it all!". That's not a speech which will improve your political career in Russia.
helsinkiandrew 6y ago
There seems to be certain period after which horrible things become less horrible, even fun. The London Dungeon tourist attraction has fun exhibits on medieval torture and Jack the Ripper (1888). I've often wondered when more modern serial killers, rapists and atrocities would be acceptable. [edit] in 'polite' society
- garmaine 6y ago
  You ever watched CSI or Criminal Minds?
  - helsinkiandrew 6y ago
    Good point, but they are fiction and those shows are based around catching the 'unsub'. I guess there are also 'real crime' shows that go over recent cases. But my point is that you could dress up as a Ghengis Khan or a Viking to a fancy dress party but a German WW2 SS soldier would be less acceptable. People go on Jack the Ripper tours in London as part of a fun tourist experience. But a more recent serial rapist/murderer tour wouldn't have the same pull.
- Chris2048 6y ago
  https://www.crimemuseum.org/about-us/ https://www.crimemuseum.org/about-us/ http://www.museumofdeath.net/info http://www.museumofdeath.net/info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Museum
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  I had that conversation a while back about wars. We were discussing Napoleonic history, and then the conversation shifted to WW2. For the Brits (and most of the Germans) in the discussion it was all fine. But the Dutch, Danes and French were all "too soon". We were left wondering when it won't be "too soon"? 2045? When the last veteran dies? The last person alive at the time? It's interesting - when does this become acceptable?
  - vidarh 6y ago
74d-fe6-2c6 6y ago
Probably an underdog thing. If I think of Vikings I see a bunch of wild, strong Über-men who won't make compromises. When I think of British Empire I see a handlebar moustache with a pale guy attached to it wearing those puffy pants hitting Ben Kingsely with a stick.
thorin 6y ago
Vikings killed loads to people and nicked stuff, British Empire killed loads of people and nicked stuff, American settlers killed loads of people and nicked stuff. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Now you have to enslave people by restricting their access to cheap mobile devices.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > American settlers killed loads of people and nicked stuff The diseases brought by settlers did more ravage than actual confrontation.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The displacement of whole groups did actually quite a lot. The Indian Removal Act was an actual policy, not an accident. There was whole ideology and policies around who gets to have which rights in the states.
  - Communitivity 6y ago
    When they deliberately gave diseased blankets to indigenous peoples, I think that checked off both boxes. Curiously, the Viking are often portrayed as bloodthirsty brutes raping, pillaging, and burning their way through towns. The reality is different. There was brutality, but it was generally limited. Vikings were more likely to conquer and settle than to burn things down to the ground. They were vengeful though, so any killing of Viking captives or civilians could result in a disproportionate and brutal retaliation. For example, Aella, the King of Northumbria killed Viking King Ragnar Lothbrok not by combat, but by having him thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes. As a result, when Ragnar's son Ivar the Boneless sought revenge and captured Aella a quick death wasn't deemed appropriate. Instead, Ivar created the Blood Eagle ritual and used it on Aella. It was a gruesome and painful method of execution, but one the Viking probably felt justified in using giving the cowardly death Aella gave Ragnar. This is not to say they weren't brutal, but much of what we know about the Vikings comes from their enemies, which colors the history. Some links for more information, the first is a really good rundown by a history professor specializing in Vikings: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dzioe8/were_vikings_really_that_violent_or_is_it_just_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dzioe8/were_... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26431858 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26431858 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140926-vikings-norse-raiding-berserkers-scandinavia-winroth https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140926-vi... My own amateur research shows England and English-colonies had the most violent behavior (Norman raids, Irish subjugation, Botany Bay, violence against Indians, American violence against indigenous peoples (including trail or tears, smallpox blankets, etc.), etc. Essentially, any time a culture sets up a belief in itself as superior to all others a violence against those believed inferior often occurs, sometimes even in the name of helping those believed inferior. E.g., we'll take these poor children from them and give them to god-fearing Christian homes - I could be talking about events during colonial times with native americans, or I could be talking about separating of children at the detention centers.
Bayart 6y ago
There's a lot of ancestral fetishism, anti-christian sentiment and neo-paganism that plays into it.
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  which is kinda interesting because the Vikings converted to Christianity before the end of the Viking Age. There were some interesting bits along the way, where being either pagan or christian could get you killed, but by 1100-ish everyone was converted (at least publicly).
garmaine 6y ago
The British empire is still Viking-levels of awesome among people who like naval stories (e.g. Patrick O'Brian) or the late-19th, early-20th century era of exploration. It's just that the atrocities that come with empire building are recent enough in the case of the British Empire to still have emotional attachment among descendants of the victims. Outside of a place like HN which has a huge South Asian readership, I think the British Empire is still viewed to be a mix of good and bad by most people in the algosphere, and not outright vile.
7952 6y ago
I think the Vikings tap into similar wish fulfillment ideas as zombie fiction. Chopping wood, hunting deer, being in charge, protecting your family. It is everything that bored middle aged suburbanites dream of! The empire is just more complex.
watwut 6y ago
Vikings are cool for the same reason Sparta is cool - "badass" tough mythical society. They are manly men fighters who are seen as aspirational for some ideological groups. Other ideological groups don't care all that much about them, because they are far away in the past. The people who consider Vikings as myth cool are not the same as the people who dislike real history of British Empire. Also, the historical details over how their societies functioned are not important in popular imagination. For many people, Vikings that are cool are not real historical Vikings, it is more of safe imaginary fantasy setup - kind of like Lord of the Rings, Witcher or Star Wars. I mean, people do then project fantasy on real world history, but that is more of accidental thing.
DyslexicAtheist 6y ago
what makes it interesting is that for > 1000 years, the history of vikings has been written and documented by the victors. > Not until the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to seriously reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Medieval_perceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Medieval_perceptions while the Michael Hirst's Vikings doesn't stick to facts, makes use of viking folklore, songs and poems to tell the story, it did an incredibly authentic job putting the audience into a mindset that helps understand how they think and what they believed in. And I hope it makes kids interested in why they should be studied and are important.
gumby 6y ago
The scale was different, but yes. People also now poke fun at Napoleon but in Europe until the 1940s he was the canonical supervillain (apparently before him it was “pharaoh”). You’re identifying a general phenomenon.
ralfd 6y ago
Relevant: The rant of David Mitchell about the Phrase 'Rape and Pillage' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqEKYbh-LU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqEKYbh-LU
seanhunter 6y ago
One historical theory I read was that a lot of the negative stories about vikings were put about by disgruntled Britons who were unhappy because a lot of British women preferred to marry viking men because they used to wash once a week whereas the standard behaviour for British men was to wash once a year. > A later writing often credited to the Abbot of St. Albans > reports that "thanks to their habit of combing their hair > every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly > changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue > of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles > to be their mistresses." https://www.danishnet.com/vikings/cleanliness-did-vikings-take-baths/ https://www.danishnet.com/vikings/cleanliness-did-vikings-ta...
intrasight 6y ago
Why are Viking cool? The fashion and tattoos of course. Haven't you seen the TV series :)

When were the Vikings cool? Certainly interesting but the Viking invasion was multifaceted from robbing down to settling The problem with the British empire is that were still seeing a lot of its negative impact. I mean it officially ended only 24 years ago

Mauricebranagh 6y ago
And the slavery aspect - at one time Dublin was the largest slave market in Europe.
- wavefunction 6y ago
  Slavery was pretty widespread in Europe until the late Middle Ages, including Christians enslaving other Christians and selling them to slave traders. 10% of the census population of the Domesday Book were slaves, not serfs. This changed when a pope (I can't remember his name off the top of my head) was concerned that Christian slaves owned by Jewish and Muslim slave-owners would convert to their masters' religions. That was just a prohibition against enslaving fellow Christians and selling slaves to Jewish and Muslim slave-traders though.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Yes to slavery being widespread in Europe of the dark ages. The church had something to do with its demise but I'm not sure it's one papal edict. Economics too. But if "late Middle Ages" means say the time of the black death, and after, then at least in Western Europe that's much too late. By then slavery in England is long gone (or so rare as not to matter) and serfdom is in steep decline, and we are still several centuries away from European overseas slavery (no sugar islands before Columbus!) Slavery in the islamic world was (I think) pretty continuous from the beginning until the 20th C. (Perhaps with ups and downs? There were many violent changes of leadership, over the centuries.) In the middle ages this would have been the primary meaning of slavery to Europeans -- the risk of being caught in some coastal raid and sold for labor (or for ransom, if noble). This no doubt horrified the pope but he had little power to stop this.
hutzlibu 6y ago
Well, today? Why do you think there are so many viking TV shows.
- hcho 6y ago
  Are they not making British Empire shows?
  - dijit 6y ago
    If they are then I haven’t heard of them. Outside of monarchy specific things which operate in the same time period (but certainly are not the focus)
    - garmaine 6y ago
      https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/
    - phaemon 6y ago
      The series "The Last Kingdom" is based on the books by Bernard Cornwell. He also wrote the "Sharpe" books, which were adapted to several TV films (starring Sean Bean). They're set around the Napoleonic Wars, with some of them in India.
      - alexgmcm 6y ago
        Hornblower is decent as well.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    There have been loads of TV series made in the UK set in India, Kenya and other parts of the Empire. Funnily enough they tend to avoid mentioning the brutality of the British in dealing with the locals e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising For some reason these shows aren't quite as popular as they used to be...
jacquesm 6y ago
Monty Python.
ekianjo 6y ago
The collapse of the roman empire is still visible today as far as I know. Thats a pretty big event that has had a major impact on Europe as we know it, and the world at large.
- SEJeff 6y ago
  In central london (London Wall is the name of the road), you can see 9-10 turrets from the original Roman city of "Londonium". I've walked this road and seen a handful of them. To be able to reach out and touch something that was built by Roman soldiers over a thousands of years ago is simply amazing to me. One of them is set in a garden behind a church and it is really beautiful. My wife and I had a picnic there and it was surreal.
  - mncharity 6y ago
    > One of them is set in a garden behind a church https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wall_at_St_Alphage_Garden#/media/File:A_r%C3%B3mai_fal_fennmaradt_r%C3%A9sze_St_Alphage_Gardens-n%C3%A9l_(2012).jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal... (pictures) I thought these two also interesting: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wall_at_the_Barbican_Estate#/media/File:Bastion_14,_London_Wall.jpg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wall_at_Cooper%27s_Row#/media/File:London_01_2013_Roman_wall_5220.JPG https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal...
    - SEJeff 6y ago
      The first link is precisely the one I was speaking of. My employer’s UK office is at 1 London Wall so it wasn’t hard to explore and fine these. Really fun stuff

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flexie 6y ago

I don't know if the Vikings were cool and if they were more brutal or ruthless than the Anglo Saxon. A newly christened society claims the enemy is ungodly, primitive and ruthless. Isn't it always like that? There was probably a good deal of PR already back then. I think we should be careful trusting the sources on Viking brutality all that much as they are almost exclusively from the Christian side.

PicassoCTs 6y ago
.. all those hunter gatherers don't know about rule of law and boundaries, all those ancients were tribal goat-fuckers with no perspective for greatness and size, all those roman emperors were vile, cruel, decadent mad-men. All romans were heathens, all christians were primitive religious nut-cases, all renaissance men were clueless, all people back then were imperialistic racists, all the ancestors were decadent, wasteful vandals, ruining a world the mindless thugs they were, worshipping the process that would kill them, because it allowed them to patch there blood-thirsty nature for the moment, all those hunter gatherers..
ekianjo 6y ago
> think we should be careful trusting the sources on Viking brutality all that much as they are almost exclusively from the Christian side. Why would Christians have lied about the ferocity of their invaders knowing that they actually ravaged and pilled the whole of Western Europe later on? If anything History has proven they were right.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the primary source for documentation of both the Saxon invasion of Roman Britain, and the Viking invasion of Saxon England (about 500 years apart). The Saxons were very much a similar culture - same use of (very similar) ships for raiding, same weaponry, same battlefield tactics, same civil organisation and even similar languages. The respective invasions were remarkably similar - raiding, mercenary work, followed by progressive occupation. The Viking invasion got complicated - the Danelaw failed and the Saxons beat them off, but then the Normans (Vikings who'd invaded France a couple generations ago) won. In the Chronicle the Saxon invasion is portrayed very much as a "we were invited here!". The Viking invasion as a brutal series of raids. No such thing as bad press I guess - Vikings are cool and Saxons are a bit uncool now ;)

kazen44 6y ago

what about the roman empire? or Carthage? both are seen as cool as well, but we have many historical accounts of their brutality.

bondarchuk 6y ago
And pirates!

joveian 6y ago

I think (US perspective) mostly that along with Hagar the Horrible and a generic connection between vikings and Scandinavian ancestry (that is common in some parts of the northern US). Although many racists are really into the vikings so it isn't always seen as cool. For that matter, I think the British Empire is unfortunately often seen as cool also.

secondcoming 6y ago
I wouldn't consider the British Empire to be 'cool' but I can appreciate that it was a phenomenal military and logistic machine. One tiny country conquered most of the world that was worth conquering. There's something impressive about that.
- chmod775 6y ago
  Worth conquering? Not really. Arguably there was a lot more to conquer, but the rest of the world might've fought back. So more like: "One country grabs a lot of land too underdeveloped to fight back." The only noteworthy resistance was mounted by other western powers. Whether one slave-master triumphing over another is something to be applauded, I'll leave to the reader to decide.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    India does not strike me as particularly underdeveloped.
    - tadhgf 6y ago
      From wiki: Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other European powers to India. The Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark-Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. As the Mughal Empire disintegrated in the early 18th century, and then as the Maratha Empire became weakened after the third battle of Panipat, many relatively weak and unstable Indian states which emerged were increasingly open to manipulation by the Europeans, through dependent Indian rulers.

iguy 6y ago

They also aren't a useful rhetorical foil for any present-day arguments. In none of their former territory can you make political hay by deflecting present-day problems onto those particular earlier rulers. That's related to time, of course, but also very much related to what else has happened since, or has failed to happen.

throwaway894345 6y ago
Rest assured, plenty of hay gets made about how "progressive" vikings were with respect to gender (apparently there were female viking warriors) and sex (not so strict about monogamy) compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians. Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups.
- hguant 6y ago
  >apparently there were female viking warriors This is a MUCH more controversial idea than pop-history would have you believe. There have been Viking women found buried with weapons and armour; however, there are also men who weren't warriors found buried with arms and armour as well. Scholarship on the matter isn't really sure if the women found buried that way were warriors being honored as such, or rich/wealthy/politically powerful people who were buried in the trappings of a martial society. Also, the extrapolation of "a shockingly small number of women were buried with swords" to "the Vikings had gender equality and badass warrior women in every port" is great Netflix fodder, but not really backed up anywhere else. >Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups. Vikings also literally had a slave based economy; the only thing that got the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to unite was "hey, we don't want to be slaves/the main event of excruciatingly brutal human sacrifices." >compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians Interestingly enough, almost all the Vikings converted peacefully to Christianity within a decade or two of settling in Britan.
  - iguy 6y ago
    Yes. The political point being made with this history is different too, it's one of pride, not shame. It's "Our great ancestors were nice social democrats, too! Unlike your cold-war army, grandpa, they let woman have front-line jobs!" Compare: "Those evil germanics who sailed up the Volga and subjugated our ancestors, you know how much silver they took home? And you've seen how wealthy Copenhagen is now? My buddy Igor ran the numbers, and compound interest explains it all!". That's not a speech which will improve your political career in Russia.

helsinkiandrew 6y ago

There seems to be certain period after which horrible things become less horrible, even fun. The London Dungeon tourist attraction has fun exhibits on medieval torture and Jack the Ripper (1888). I've often wondered when more modern serial killers, rapists and atrocities would be acceptable. [edit] in 'polite' society

garmaine 6y ago
You ever watched CSI or Criminal Minds?
- helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  Good point, but they are fiction and those shows are based around catching the 'unsub'. I guess there are also 'real crime' shows that go over recent cases. But my point is that you could dress up as a Ghengis Khan or a Viking to a fancy dress party but a German WW2 SS soldier would be less acceptable. People go on Jack the Ripper tours in London as part of a fun tourist experience. But a more recent serial rapist/murderer tour wouldn't have the same pull.
Chris2048 6y ago
https://www.crimemuseum.org/about-us/ https://www.crimemuseum.org/about-us/ http://www.museumofdeath.net/info http://www.museumofdeath.net/info https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_Museum
marcus_holmes 6y ago
I had that conversation a while back about wars. We were discussing Napoleonic history, and then the conversation shifted to WW2. For the Brits (and most of the Germans) in the discussion it was all fine. But the Dutch, Danes and French were all "too soon". We were left wondering when it won't be "too soon"? 2045? When the last veteran dies? The last person alive at the time? It's interesting - when does this become acceptable?
- vidarh 6y ago

74d-fe6-2c6 6y ago

Probably an underdog thing. If I think of Vikings I see a bunch of wild, strong Über-men who won't make compromises. When I think of British Empire I see a handlebar moustache with a pale guy attached to it wearing those puffy pants hitting Ben Kingsely with a stick.

thorin 6y ago

Vikings killed loads to people and nicked stuff, British Empire killed loads of people and nicked stuff, American settlers killed loads of people and nicked stuff. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Now you have to enslave people by restricting their access to cheap mobile devices.

ekianjo 6y ago
> American settlers killed loads of people and nicked stuff The diseases brought by settlers did more ravage than actual confrontation.
- watwut 6y ago
  The displacement of whole groups did actually quite a lot. The Indian Removal Act was an actual policy, not an accident. There was whole ideology and policies around who gets to have which rights in the states.
- Communitivity 6y ago
  When they deliberately gave diseased blankets to indigenous peoples, I think that checked off both boxes. Curiously, the Viking are often portrayed as bloodthirsty brutes raping, pillaging, and burning their way through towns. The reality is different. There was brutality, but it was generally limited. Vikings were more likely to conquer and settle than to burn things down to the ground. They were vengeful though, so any killing of Viking captives or civilians could result in a disproportionate and brutal retaliation. For example, Aella, the King of Northumbria killed Viking King Ragnar Lothbrok not by combat, but by having him thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes. As a result, when Ragnar's son Ivar the Boneless sought revenge and captured Aella a quick death wasn't deemed appropriate. Instead, Ivar created the Blood Eagle ritual and used it on Aella. It was a gruesome and painful method of execution, but one the Viking probably felt justified in using giving the cowardly death Aella gave Ragnar. This is not to say they weren't brutal, but much of what we know about the Vikings comes from their enemies, which colors the history. Some links for more information, the first is a really good rundown by a history professor specializing in Vikings: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dzioe8/were_vikings_really_that_violent_or_is_it_just_a/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dzioe8/were_... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26431858 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26431858 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140926-vikings-norse-raiding-berserkers-scandinavia-winroth https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140926-vi... My own amateur research shows England and English-colonies had the most violent behavior (Norman raids, Irish subjugation, Botany Bay, violence against Indians, American violence against indigenous peoples (including trail or tears, smallpox blankets, etc.), etc. Essentially, any time a culture sets up a belief in itself as superior to all others a violence against those believed inferior often occurs, sometimes even in the name of helping those believed inferior. E.g., we'll take these poor children from them and give them to god-fearing Christian homes - I could be talking about events during colonial times with native americans, or I could be talking about separating of children at the detention centers.

Bayart 6y ago

There's a lot of ancestral fetishism, anti-christian sentiment and neo-paganism that plays into it.

marcus_holmes 6y ago
which is kinda interesting because the Vikings converted to Christianity before the end of the Viking Age. There were some interesting bits along the way, where being either pagan or christian could get you killed, but by 1100-ish everyone was converted (at least publicly).

garmaine 6y ago

The British empire is still Viking-levels of awesome among people who like naval stories (e.g. Patrick O'Brian) or the late-19th, early-20th century era of exploration. It's just that the atrocities that come with empire building are recent enough in the case of the British Empire to still have emotional attachment among descendants of the victims. Outside of a place like HN which has a huge South Asian readership, I think the British Empire is still viewed to be a mix of good and bad by most people in the algosphere, and not outright vile.

7952 6y ago

I think the Vikings tap into similar wish fulfillment ideas as zombie fiction. Chopping wood, hunting deer, being in charge, protecting your family. It is everything that bored middle aged suburbanites dream of! The empire is just more complex.

watwut 6y ago

Vikings are cool for the same reason Sparta is cool - "badass" tough mythical society. They are manly men fighters who are seen as aspirational for some ideological groups. Other ideological groups don't care all that much about them, because they are far away in the past. The people who consider Vikings as myth cool are not the same as the people who dislike real history of British Empire. Also, the historical details over how their societies functioned are not important in popular imagination. For many people, Vikings that are cool are not real historical Vikings, it is more of safe imaginary fantasy setup - kind of like Lord of the Rings, Witcher or Star Wars. I mean, people do then project fantasy on real world history, but that is more of accidental thing.

DyslexicAtheist 6y ago

what makes it interesting is that for > 1000 years, the history of vikings has been written and documented by the victors. > Not until the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to seriously reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Medieval_perceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Medieval_perceptions while the Michael Hirst's Vikings doesn't stick to facts, makes use of viking folklore, songs and poems to tell the story, it did an incredibly authentic job putting the audience into a mindset that helps understand how they think and what they believed in. And I hope it makes kids interested in why they should be studied and are important.

gumby 6y ago

The scale was different, but yes. People also now poke fun at Napoleon but in Europe until the 1940s he was the canonical supervillain (apparently before him it was “pharaoh”). You’re identifying a general phenomenon.

ralfd 6y ago

Relevant: The rant of David Mitchell about the Phrase 'Rape and Pillage' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqEKYbh-LU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqEKYbh-LU

seanhunter 6y ago

One historical theory I read was that a lot of the negative stories about vikings were put about by disgruntled Britons who were unhappy because a lot of British women preferred to marry viking men because they used to wash once a week whereas the standard behaviour for British men was to wash once a year. > A later writing often credited to the Abbot of St. Albans > reports that "thanks to their habit of combing their hair > every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly > changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue > of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles > to be their mistresses." https://www.danishnet.com/vikings/cleanliness-did-vikings-take-baths/ https://www.danishnet.com/vikings/cleanliness-did-vikings-ta...

intrasight 6y ago

Why are Viking cool? The fashion and tattoos of course. Haven't you seen the TV series :)