4 ms·

A reminder that there is no such thing as "the Vikings". Really. There's no specific culture or social group in a particular time and place you can point to and

by bragr 4y ago

A reminder that there is no such thing as "the Vikings". Really. There's no specific culture or social group in a particular time and place you can point to and say they are "the" vikings. The idea of the Vikings is basically an invention of middle age scholars, and includes a huge variety of cultures and languages. You might compare the Vikings to the mythical "sea peoples" of the bronze age collapse.

whatshisface 4y ago
Grammatically, that's like saying "there's no such thing as tourists."
- asvitkine 4y ago
  I think they were getting to "there's no such thing as the tourists". The "the" is significant. But also it's not in the title of the article...
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    Why can't there be "the tourists"? When I lived in NYC, at any given time, there was a significant population of people who were "the tourists". The fact that it's a highly dynamic group and not like an ethnicity doesn't invalidate their group validity or the use of the word "the".
aksss 4y ago
Asia is neither a country or a culture.
acjohnson55 4y ago
Is that really true? I agree that there's no ethnicity known as the Vikings, and certainly not "Viking runes". People really mean certain groups of Norse people who have taken up the Viking lifestyle or profession. It's more like being a pirate. But there were Vikings. I don't think Norse travelers to Oklahoma would have been Vikings, though. More likely traders or settlers.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  It’s overstating the point that Viking was more of a job description and the people doing that job while primarily Scandinavian peoples tended to include people from other places too. It’s generally a bit vague but so is just about every other division of people into groups. At the time there weren’t so many clear large groups of people with a common identity in that general area in europe. You were pretty likely to be attached to a town that would be led by a king and going to war with the next town over would be a common occurrence.
  - enkid 4y ago
    But there certainly were Scandinavian explorers, conquerors, and mercenaries. And these pushed into non-Scandinavian territories across Europe in a way that reshaped the political landscape at the time. For example, the Normans set up kingdoms in England, France, and even Sicily, and were an important player in Byzantine politics. Other Scandinavian conquerors helped establish dynasties in Ukraine and the area around the Black Sea. I'm not saying it wasn't complex, but there does seem that there was genuine phenomenon of Scandinavian raids and conquest in the late first millennium separate from the expected local raids between neighboring peoples.
    - acjohnson55 4y ago
      It's a bit of a stretch to lump all of that in with the term Viking, though. I think the actual settlement and conquest is a different phenomenon. Like, I wouldn't consider the Normans Vikings. When people think of the Viking age, it's more of the phenomenon of groups of men going on expeditions from Scandinavia to make amphibious assaults on soft targets. Most of the men who did this did a couple big scores and returned to village life back home. This transformed into settlement, adoption of Christianity, and then the carving out of the niches you identified. The Magyars had a similar arc. The Arabs, too, except that their raiding ended up steamrolling through the ailing Roman and Sassanian empires, leading to their own intercontinental empire and religion, rather than settling into existing systems.
janmarsal 4y ago
Norsemen who went viking are called vikings these days.
CamperBob2 4y ago
This doesn't seem to reflect mainstream scholarship, or at least I can't find evidence of it in a quick check of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings . What classification would be better applied to historial figures like Leif Ericsson? "Viking" may be a modern colloquial term, but at the same time, just saying "Norse" doesn't seem specific enough.

by bragr 4y ago

whatshisface 4y ago

Grammatically, that's like saying "there's no such thing as tourists."

asvitkine 4y ago
I think they were getting to "there's no such thing as the tourists". The "the" is significant. But also it's not in the title of the article...
- acjohnson55 4y ago
  Why can't there be "the tourists"? When I lived in NYC, at any given time, there was a significant population of people who were "the tourists". The fact that it's a highly dynamic group and not like an ethnicity doesn't invalidate their group validity or the use of the word "the".

aksss 4y ago

Asia is neither a country or a culture.

acjohnson55 4y ago

Is that really true? I agree that there's no ethnicity known as the Vikings, and certainly not "Viking runes". People really mean certain groups of Norse people who have taken up the Viking lifestyle or profession. It's more like being a pirate. But there were Vikings. I don't think Norse travelers to Oklahoma would have been Vikings, though. More likely traders or settlers.

colechristensen 4y ago
It’s overstating the point that Viking was more of a job description and the people doing that job while primarily Scandinavian peoples tended to include people from other places too. It’s generally a bit vague but so is just about every other division of people into groups. At the time there weren’t so many clear large groups of people with a common identity in that general area in europe. You were pretty likely to be attached to a town that would be led by a king and going to war with the next town over would be a common occurrence.
- enkid 4y ago
  But there certainly were Scandinavian explorers, conquerors, and mercenaries. And these pushed into non-Scandinavian territories across Europe in a way that reshaped the political landscape at the time. For example, the Normans set up kingdoms in England, France, and even Sicily, and were an important player in Byzantine politics. Other Scandinavian conquerors helped establish dynasties in Ukraine and the area around the Black Sea. I'm not saying it wasn't complex, but there does seem that there was genuine phenomenon of Scandinavian raids and conquest in the late first millennium separate from the expected local raids between neighboring peoples.
  - acjohnson55 4y ago
    It's a bit of a stretch to lump all of that in with the term Viking, though. I think the actual settlement and conquest is a different phenomenon. Like, I wouldn't consider the Normans Vikings. When people think of the Viking age, it's more of the phenomenon of groups of men going on expeditions from Scandinavia to make amphibious assaults on soft targets. Most of the men who did this did a couple big scores and returned to village life back home. This transformed into settlement, adoption of Christianity, and then the carving out of the niches you identified. The Magyars had a similar arc. The Arabs, too, except that their raiding ended up steamrolling through the ailing Roman and Sassanian empires, leading to their own intercontinental empire and religion, rather than settling into existing systems.

janmarsal 4y ago

Norsemen who went viking are called vikings these days.

CamperBob2 4y ago

This doesn't seem to reflect mainstream scholarship, or at least I can't find evidence of it in a quick check of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings . What classification would be better applied to historial figures like Leif Ericsson? "Viking" may be a modern colloquial term, but at the same time, just saying "Norse" doesn't seem specific enough.