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Who exactly were the vikings?

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Argentum Draconis View Drop Down
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  Quote Argentum Draconis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Who exactly were the vikings?
    Posted: 08-Jan-2006 at 12:03
Where was their capital? All scandinavians are thought to be vikings but as i know the ones raided England, Greenland and Iceland were from Norway. Is there any particular role of Swedes and Danes in Viking history?
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  Quote Paul Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jan-2006 at 14:46

In reality there's no such thing as vikings, it's just a word meaning 'pirates' and was applied to all Scandinavians and many others.

When a people are organised enough to form and army, supply, train and transport them, invade another land, settle and rule it. They're no-longer pirates.

In reality, the raids on Britain along the Saxon shore from about 0 CE to 400 CE and then again 793 CE to 840 CE were viking raids.

The Norwegain, Danish and Swedish invasions of Britain, Ireland, Russia, France and so on were organised international campaigns no different from any other war.

 

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  Quote Argentum Draconis Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Jan-2006 at 15:46
where was their capital city and how did they become christians?

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  Quote Scealai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2006 at 02:56

Well, Swedes and Danes are included in Beowulf, if you've ever read it.  It is thought to be very loosely based on fact.  And. . . .there was a Danish Queen of some signifigance--oh man.  I'm loosing my memory. 

To my knowledge, the Scandinavians (Vikings) didn't have a capital, because there were so many different tribes, with different leaders. 

Vikings were converted into christianity much the same way the Irish and the Scots were.  Christians came and spread knowledge of Christianity, and the funny thing about that, is before the Vikings were Christian, they worshipped Thor, and wore Thor's Hammer around there neck.  When they were converted into Christianity, they attatched a little extra piece of metal at the top of their Thor's Hammer's, so as to make it a Cross.  

 

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  Quote Scealai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2006 at 03:00

"When a people are organised enough to form and army, supply, train and transport them, invade another land, settle and rule it. They're no-longer pirates."

That's true.   "Vikings" have such a bad reputation as pirates who plundered and pilfered for nothing--but it wasn't the case.  As Paul said, they were civilized enough to settle and rule another land, and the reason they went to England and Greenland is because the land in Scandinavia was really horrible for trying to grow crops.  And if I remember right, they had frequent famines.

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  Quote Maju Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2006 at 06:12
Originally posted by Argentum Draconis

Where was their capital? All scandinavians are thought to be vikings but as i know the ones raided England, Greenland and Iceland were from Norway. Is there any particular role of Swedes and Danes in Viking history?


Danes were as active or more than Norwegians in the activity of raiding, pillaging and trading, typical of Vikings. Danes were much more important that Norwegians when raiding and even invading England, which they dominated partly for some time. The Vikings of Frankish chronicles are almsot for sure Danes as well (at least in most cases).

Swedes instead were active in the East, where their activity was central in the foundation of Russian principalities and the first pan-Russian state of Kiev. They are not usually called Vikings but Varangians or Rus.

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  Quote Mangudai Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Jan-2006 at 07:28

As stated by others here, the term viking doesn't imply any ethnicity, but it was a term for scandinavians in general who went to sea in the role as warriors and/or merchants. Therefore there were no "Viking women" och "Viking children" - but Norse women and children.  

The scandinavians at that time were mainly farmers, hunters and fishermen, they had no real cities and no centralized states - thus no capitals. If a chief could gather enough support and be chosen king, his position was nevertheless loose and he often had to travel around his domains, assuring support from his otherwise rather independant subjects. Since the kings had to travel around, there could be no fixed capitals until much later in the Middle Ages. There were a few trading towns though, such as Birka in Sweden and Hedeby in Denmark (these were however largely independent from kings or chiefs). Otherwise viking settlers prefered to found towns and cities on foreign soil together with the native inhabitants, like Dublin and Novgorod

The most powerful norse kings usually came from Denmark, since that region was more densely populated and richer than Norway and Sweden (at that time Denmark was much larger than today and included large areas of modern day Sweden). Since there were no real borders or fixed national allegiances, norwegians and swedes often joined the danes (and sometimes vice versa) in their westward campaigns. Since the scandinavians at that time spoke virtually the same languange, foreign scribes didn't care to make any differance and refered to all of them as "Danes", despite the fact that many serving under the danish kings actually came from Sweden and Norway (a fact proved by numerous runic inscriptions). 

Roughly you could say that the danes dominated the British Isles and Normandy, the norwegians populated Iceland and Greenland whereas the swedes went east to the Byzantine empire and present day Russia. But keep in mind that the members of all Viking raids or campaigns were of mixed nationality - it was then not uncommon for non-scandinavians like saxons, finno-ugrians, slavs and others to participate as well.

The scandinavians became christians gradually at different times. Many vikings came in contact with christianity during their voyages, some were baptized although few seem to have brought the new religion home. Missionaries came to Scandinavia to seek followers, but without support and protection from powerful men they had no success. It was mainly the conversion of chiefs and kings which rooted christianity in Scandinavia. In Denmark king Harald Gormsen Bluetooth became a christian and are supposed to have made all his subjects christian already in the mid 10th century. In reality the common men adopted christianity somewhat later first after churches and monestaries had been established. In 1104 the first scandinavian arch-diocy was founded in the danish town of Lund. The norwegians king Olav Tryggvason became christian in the late 10th century and invited missionaries, but it was first after king Olav Haraldsson died as a martyr at the battle of Stiklestad in 1030 that the new religion became popular in Norway. In Sweden the german missionary Ansgar founded a small congregation at the trading town Birka as early as the mid 9th century, but when he left most reverted to paganism. The swedish king Olof Eriksson Sktkonung was the first to become christian at the beginning of the 11th century, and many swedish chiefs and others became christian during that century, proved by many christian rune-stones from that time. But it was first after the death of the rebellious pagan king Blot-Sven ("Sven the sacrifier") in the 1080's that christianity became more firmly established here. In 1164 a swedish arch-diocy was demonstratively founded at Uppsala - at the very place where an important pagan place-of-worship had been situated. Then swedish kings brought christianity to Finland in the 13th century. Nevertheless, strong traces of paganism remained in the rural areas of Scandinavia right up to the lutheran reformation during the 16-1th century

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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 15:29
Originally posted by Maju

Danes were as active or more than Norwegians in the activity of raiding, pillaging and trading, typical of Vikings. Danes were much more important that Norwegians when raiding and even invading England,
which they dominated partly for some time. The Vikings of Frankish chronicles are almsot for sure Danes as well (at least in most cases).

Swedes instead were active in the East, where their activity was central in the foundation of Russian principalities and the first pan-Russian state of Kiev. They are not usually called Vikings but Varangians or Rus.


Indeed, Norwegians mostly sailed west, colonizing Iceland, Greenland, Ireland and a few other British isles like the Orkneys and the Isle of Man. Danes sailed southwest, to the Anglo-Saxon and Frankish realms, while the Swedes sailed east, as elaborated on in detail by Maju.

However, the Viking band that conquered Normandy consisted of both Norwegians and Danes, the chief of them being a Norwegian. Rollo was the son of a western Norwegian Jarl who was alienated during the unification of the realm by Harold Fairhair, he went viking in his exile and ended up in Normandy. What a profound effect on European history that would later have.

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  Quote Styrbiorn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 15:48
It has never been established whether Gnge-Rolf was Danish or Norwegian.
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  Quote Jorsalfar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 15:52

Argentum Draconis

The most important of their towns were

For Denmark    Hedeby (in what is today northern Germany)

For Sweden      Birka  ( on a small island in the lake Mlaren close to Stockholm IIRC)

For Norway   (Tnsberg in southern Norway)

 

All these were trading towns.

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  Quote Reginmund Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 17:51
Originally posted by Styrbiorn

It has never been establishedwhether Gnge-Rolf was Danish or Norwegian.


I never heard it disputed in any of the primary or secondary sources I've come across. Indeed, the icelandic sagas tells explicitly of both him and his father, the Earl Ragnvald of More in western Norway.

Saga of Harold Fairhair

Read chapter 24, it's on Rollo.
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  Quote Styrbiorn Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2006 at 17:55

Originally posted by Reginmund

Originally posted by Styrbiorn

It has never been established whether Gnge-Rolf was Danish or Norwegian.


I never heard it disputed in any of the primary or secondary sources I've come across. Indeed, the icelandic sagas tells explicitly of both him and his father, the Earl Ragnvald of More in western Norway.

Saga of Harold Fairhair

Read chapter 24, it's on Rollo.

 

There are a number of primary and secondary sources that state his origins. Scroll down here for a summary: http://sbaldw.home.mindspring.com/hproject/prov/rollo000.htm

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01-Mar-2006 at 01:15
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  Quote Hexmaster Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 06:36
Originally posted by Jorsalfar


For Norway (Tnsberg in southern Norway)




Is that Kaupang? That was the major city in Norway, as far as I know.


(As been noted, our borders rarely have much to say about matters a thousand years ago. Denmark was considerably larger, the west coast of Sweden counted as Norway, northern regions were somewhat fuzzy, and at least Sweden certainly didn't exist as a nation at the time.)

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  Quote Jorsalfar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 13:22

Hexmaster

Yes i think you are right.Kaupang was the name.Tnsberg is not far from Kaupang.I always confuse those.

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