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Comment by jankotek | Hacker News Reader

I dont get why this gets so much attention. Of course there was a contact.

Vikings conquered Sicily, south Italy and other meditarinian locations since 8th century. There was a slave trade. At some point Islam conquered 20% of Europe.

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People projecting their own value of multi-culturalism onto historical artifacts and cultures. Multiculturalism and tolerance are valuable, wonderful additions to our world, but we shouldn't desperately try to find evidence of it where it isn't. It's desperate and embarrassing, and taints the institutions doing it as simply being publicity seekers first, and scientists second.

My country has quite a few castles which were destroyed by Turks. It is written on welcoming billboards along with other important dates. Some multiple times. Some castles were build specifically to defend against turks and families who ruled them became "famous Turk killers".

So you know, Islam conquering parts of Europe happened.

And Vikings did attacked north of Europe and I think they ruled Russia basically at one point.

So I still don't know whether there are details that makes their meeting impossible or whether you just chalked away possibility of Turks and Islam attacking Europe in the past impossible without studying it.

No one doubts contact occurred. But articles like the original are often interpreted to mean 'see a thousand years ago Islam was peaceful, everything was great then white people screwed it up.' Whether that interpretation is warranted is of course dependent on how you feel about where it was published- if the original article was just in some journal somewhere no one would care. But because it was turned into a story by the BBC, it is immediately cast in the light of current politics regarding Islam.

The parent says that there was contact and used the word "conquered" and "slave trade".

Downvoting it for political reasons that have zero to do with history being discussed, because some unrelated discussions about tolerance something is textbook suppressing of historical truth for political reasons.

Agreed.

There is nothing controversial/political about that.

They were neighbours because they conquered Sicily and Spain

"Cultural exchange" in past happened mostly thanks to slave trade. Teachers were mostly foreign slaves, who converted young elite to their culture. For example Greek culture spread in city of Rome mainly by this.

Equating Turks (not sure if you mean that or Ottomans?) conquering armies with "Islam conquering parts of Europe" (Greece?, Spain?) seems likely to be problematic; the latter would suggest willful adoption en masse of Islamic religion, political structure, warring.

Did the conquerors instigate Sharia, did they do the Mohammedean standard "pay jizya, convert, or die" offer to the populous? Did the conquered people convert and then seek to forcibly "convert" others?

Yes they did. That's how we've got Bosnians (and other Serbian-language people of Muslim Nationality), and Albanians, and there's a subset of Bulgarians too as far as I remember.

They tried to convert people everywhere, there was resistance. Not in the ISIS style, I have to admit. But by hindering Christians and giving preferences to Muslim converts.

Do you realize about 100 years ago, the Ottomans genocided a few million Christians in Greece and Armenia?

Boys taken to serve in their army all had to convert. Or die.

You think they were spreading atheism or christianity? Of course not, they pushed for their own religion.

Contact or goods exchange does not mean multiculturalism, that is the frequent online reaction to articles like this, but it is incorrect. When we talk about Anglo-Saxon objects found in Viking graves, we would not automatically equate that with a multicultural society, it could be as a result of pillaging, or trade, or some more intimate cultural connection, or a combination of all three, and might also include third parties.

The idea presented in the original article was that a Viking was buried with a piece of fabric carrying an Islamic design, which had been incorrectly copied by a third party. They in fact said a Muslim Viking "could not absolutely be ruled out" but was unlikely. How you go from this to "Viking-Islamic multiculturalism projected into the past" is beyond me.

Edit: Just googled around and did find a Guardian article with the subheading "University researchers’ ‘staggering’ claim appears to contradict theories that Islamic objects in Viking graves are result of plunder", although that wasn't replicated in the BBC article which was posted to HN.

> At some point Islam conquered 20% of Europe.

A lot of people don't realise that the high points of Islamic European expansion were Poitiers & Vienna — less than 800 miles apart.

That's technically true, but a bit misleading. The battle of Poitiers was in 732; whereas the siege of Vienna was in 1529, 8 centuries later, when the reconquista had ousted the arabs from Spain.

How about, "20% of Europe has at some point been conquered by Muslims."

I kinda wish people argued against instead of down-voting this one.

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