Viking historical achievements.

Yes the first time I also believe involved the Kievian price Sviatoslav who commanded the Rus to plunder the villages around Byzantiom after he couldn't successfully siege it because of the protection it had from deadly royal navy. Norwich writes that this prince was particularly cruel and impaled many people to steaks in order to intimidate the Byzantines. Later on the Emperor John Tizimikes met and negotiated an end to the war after Sviatoslav was besieged by the royal army.

 Thank you Hellios, the links, the description, and even the video, were all very informative and cool. Overall a great thread, good responses from everybody, and I am proud of my ancestral heritage (Swedish from my mother's side), considering that my parents named me "Eric" from my mother's uncle, who in turn was named after Eirik the Red by his.

Edited by Preobrazhenskoe - 14-Oct-2006 at 05:02

Originally posted by Aelfgifu Originally posted by pinguin Vikings were those Norse that worked as pirates. Now, some of those Norse settled in France and become the Normands. OK?  Those were not Germanic, Celtic or Anglo people, less Gauls or Latins. They were Norse. Pinguin.  Boy, you are so lucky Quetzalcoatl is not around anymore... He called me a Germanic supremacist and a Nazi over suggesting much less.

Originally posted by pinguin   Well, I believe that deserves an explanation. I am Latin American, therefore I do have an universal mentality. We are acustumed to consider that people all over the world are the same, perhaps by the influence of Catholicism in our society. Therefore, for me, Vikings (or Norse) are an interesting people but they are nothing less and nothing more than just a human group more, with all its defects and virtues.   That Nazis copied Norse symbology, starting from proto-Nazis like Wagner, is not the fault of the ancient or modern Scandinavian people. Nazi also copied the buddist swastica, for instance, and that's not the fault of the buddists.

You're right. In the ASC on the year 896 it says:

What the English have to boast is the medieval Lincoln Cathedral, the first building in Europe to tower over the Grand Pyramid at Giza in Egypt, and the tallest building in Europe for quite some time after it was erected. England also has the Roman era Wall of Hadrian, and many other great architectural feats, but let's face it, they don't overshadow the rest of Europe. And if anything, Gun Powder Ma, I would relate the British to the Japanese when it comes to the East, simply because the Japanese have this idea that they are not part of the continental Asian world, something special on their island alone (rediculous considering how much they borrowed from ancient China and Korea), while the British hold themselves in the same high esteem, not part of continental Europe, with their pounds instead of Euros, etc.

Edited by Preobrazhenskoe - 14-Oct-2006 at 15:59

This Viking ship appears to be carrying 1 or 2 small boats on board.  Is this just the artist's imagination or probably true?

There might have been longships far longer than anything that has come down to us. Pure speculation of course, but in the sagas longships that far outsize those we have found are mentioned on several occasions, I guess Olaf Tryggvason's Long Serpent is the most famous.

Depends on what you mean by "romanticism", I take it you're using the term somewhat widely, seeing as the sagas were written many centuries before the artistic direction known as romanticism developed.

In the Vikingskipsmuseet it was suggested the ships were deliberately sunk in the fjord to block an attack from Norway. It would be a too big coincidence if one storm sunk 6 ships on the exact same spot on top of each other.... And all the ships are estimated to have been quite old and stripped when they sunk.