The Vikings Were More Complicated Than You Might Think | Hacker News Reader

The Vikings Were More Complicated Than You Might Think

nytimes.com

60 pointsbenbreen66 comments

In some ways more, but in other ways they were less complicated than most think. I'm reminded of an interview with one of the historians attached to the Vikings TV series: "...but historically they would all have been blonde, ALL of them, and that would look strange on TV today."

It is funny, because just last week there was an article about them not all being blonde. Popular sentiment on HN was "that is strawman actually no one says they were all blonde and it would be dumb to expect them all to be blonde".

The argument was that given all the rape and slavery they engaged in, some gene mixing is to be expected.

It depends when in the historical record you look. The Vikings didn't just raid, they settled. Dublin, York, and Kyiv were all Viking cities. Early Scandinavian Vikings were almost assuredly blonde, as their influence grew so did their genetic pool.

Not all Scandinavian populations had blonde hair. I know a blonde person of unmistakable Scandinavian extraction who, it turns out, possesses a Y chromosome haplogroup from Northern China, presumably inherited via the Sami or a similar herding society that moved across Siberia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_people AFAIU, because of how the inheritance traits for hair and eye color work, a population could have a relatively persistent fraction of people exhibiting non-typical phenotypes for some time even with a temporary infusion of alleles, not to mention regular contact.

In general, people got around more than one might think. The Inuit reached Greenland shortly after the Vikings from the opposite direction; both ended up displacing the existing inhabitants. The Age of the Vikings is pretty much modern times in terms of speed of migration and population mixing; not much different from today as compared to when many stereotypical phenotypes originally arose.

> Early Scandinavian Vikings were almost assuredly blonde, as their influence grew so did their genetic pool.

By the early Scandinavian Viking era, Germanic-speaking peoples had been carrying out raids to the east and southeast for centuries, and bringing back slaves. Even the earliest Vikings were not as “pure” a population as you imagine.

> Early Scandinavian Vikings were almost assuredly blonde

No. Recent DNA analysis on Viking-age burials (as alluded to in the article) has laid this myth to rest.

They certainly did return home with slaves, who they were entitled to rape. But on average, the vast majority of Viking rape would have occurred during raids (mostly in continental Europe and the British Isles). The Norse villages would have remained quite genetically insular.

This is disproven by the study in question. Scandinavia had significant infux of genes during the Viking age, influx corresponding to the areas where Vikings raided/traded/settled.

The early viking who raised were from home populations. The ones that settled afar (normandy etc) were different. The ones raiding scotland from the east, the ones on the show, were blonde.

You guys are obsesses about the vikings being blonde, but there is just no evidence for it. DNA evidence shows there were plenty of dark hair among viking age Scandinavians back from the iron age.

Funny what gets categorized as strange. On the Witcher show, medieval villages as diverse as San Francisco were portrayed as the norm: https://avatars.mds.yandex.net/get-zen_doc/1587012/pub_5e283...

The more I read about the Middle Ages now that I'm an adult, the more I learn that the whole time period from 500-1500 is more complicated than I was taught in school. It makes sense that the Vikings would be more complicated too.

Isn't it less documented than the following time, and therefore containing more surprises as we keep literally digging into the past?

So, for example: what I learned in school is "the time between 500-1500 (roughly) did not have a lot of written records" and that was the end of story. Since reading on my own, I've found:

* Really, the time where there weren't any written records were mostly concentrated to 500-750 or so. Even though I had learned about Charlegmagne in school, I hadn't really learned much about all he did to encourage reading and writing (obviously, to the extent that it was possible given the cost of vellum at the time). The amount of written records were also not uniform geographically. As the original article says, Scandinavians wrote less than people in souther Europe.

* There actually are decent-for-pre-modern records of England from the time around the Vikings. The story in school was mostly "Things were great under the Roman empire, then things fell off a cliff and stayed that way for 1000 years." In reality though, there are the Domesday Book or the writings of Venerable Bede (just to mention two examples) that record events of the time.

Of course, there wasn't the printing press so it is technically true that things were less documented, I think this is just less so than commonly believed.

There are some factors to call out here:

The first is that most historians are not dispassionate observers concerned with recording literal truths; they are concerned with narratives containing moral truths. And, especially historically, lying about the facts to arrive at the moral truths was not beneath them. The history of Sparta is a classic example: our Greek sources here all talk up how wonderful Sparta is with its notions of equality and avoidance of luxury, and contain postscripts saying "but of course, this is the Sparta of yesteryear and not the Sparta of today, which is exactly the kind of wastrel that I'm condemning." I do want to be clear that this kind of moralism-over-literal-truth does happen all the time today, and it's definitely visibly strong in the textbook version of history taught today. Consider how US history courses at the grade school level tend to present the US as a moralizing force of liberty and democracy and manage to completely omit traumatic events such as King Philip's War, the deadliest war ever fought on (then-future) US soil, perhaps partly because it is rather inconvenient for the narrative of pious Pilgrims peacefully coexisting with Native Americans.

Specific to the Middle Ages, though, the humanism and Enlightenment movement that happens after that time did try quite hard to discredit any idea of progress in that time period and draw push their modernism as a rebirth of the glory of Rome, Greece, and the Classical Age. Like most historians, they had a particular narrative of the Middle Ages that mattered more than the truth, and they pushed it hard. And subsequent historians repeat that narrative verbatim without considering if perhaps their sources might not be telling the truth. Some of our notions about how the Middle Ages works actually applies much better to the Early Modern period instead--for example, it was during the Early Modern that bathing was restricted because "modern science" (the miasma theory of disease) knows that bathing is how you get sick.

A final point is that there is a particular axe to grind with the question of religion. Many Protestants sought to deny anything that the Catholic pope did. The Middle Ages, being an era where the Catholic Church and the pope had far greater political power than he holds today, then becomes a prime target of criticism. Indeed, this criticism did reach the point that the Christianization of the Roman Empire was blamed for its fall (cf. Edward Gibbon).

I often comment that to learn history, you should first forget everything you learned in school about it. It feels to me that it's more often wrong than right.

This blog has an excellent breakdown on the Spartan myths

https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...

'The Vikings' weren't a people; it's a term. The people who went a-viking were from several countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Frisia, some others), and were (of course) somewhat varied in their genetic makeup. And, they often took wives from other lands, and had children with them. It's a familiar story throughout history--peoples intermingling, defying easy modern classification.

The stereotype of 'blonde Vikings with horned helmets' wasn't perpetuated by historians or scientists, it was perpetuated largely by 19th century artists and others. Yet pop media seems to write false antagonisms like this:

"They also found considerable genetic variety in the ancient remains, indicating migration of Southern Europeans, before the Viking Age, to the area of Denmark, which undermines any idea of a single Nordic genetic identity."

Of course. If even a single foreigner mixes with a population, that populations genetic, ethnic identity becomes entirely invalid, and using it as something to unite around becomes illegitimate.

After all, if a thing has fuzzy edges, that's the same as the thing not existing at all.

Fortunately every other ethnicity will be equally rigorous on what they use as a basis for common identity, so there's no risk this approach leaves you atomized against a unified competitor.

Even the term "Viking" seems shrouded by time and their cultural influence today seems outsized to their relatively short <300 year period of influence.

The etymology of "viking" is uncertain. In the Middle Ages it came to mean Scandinavian pirate or raider, while other names such as "heathens", "Danes" or "Northmen" were also used.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Etymology

The etymology isn't mysterious. The primary sources clearly indicate that the first appearance was the Anglo-Saxon word "wicing", meaning "pirate." The Wikipedia references to the other names are from the Middle Ages, a time period that almost entirely post-dated the Viking era. It is unsurprising that the word Viking should originate from Anglo-Saxon, since the Anglo-Saxons are the source of the vast majority of written records about the vikings. The Norse did not keep written records of themselves unless you count runes, which wouldn't have contained such a word. Indeed, the earliest written records of the Viking "skalds" (poems), in the Codex Regius, were written some time in the 1200's.

The Vikings really do deserve their "out sized" influence, though. They were an incredible lot, ranging geographically further than any human civilization until the Portuguese discovered Australia. They could be found at various times in present day Canada, Turkey, Russia, and parts of Africa.

> The etymology isn't mysterious. The primary sources clearly indicate that the first appearance was the Anglo-Saxon word "wicing", meaning "pirate."

Sure, if you believe that the act of writing something down in one place retroactively causes it not to have happened in another place, this is an argument that makes sense.

Though even then, you haven't actually made a case that the etymology isn't mysterious. Where did the Anglo-Saxons get their word from?

They weren't writing it down "retroactively" but contemporaneously. The first priests on the British isles who escaped being slaughtered in their monasteries by Vikings straight away wrote down that the perpetrators were "pirates" and promptly sent notice out to the rest of what was then England.

We aren't talking about where the Anglo-Saxon word for "pirate" came from. We're talking about where the word "Viking" came from. It clearly came from the Anglo-Saxon word, "Wicing."

> We aren't talking about where the Anglo-Saxon word for "pirate" came from. We're talking about where the word "Viking" came from. It clearly came from the Anglo-Saxon word, "Wicing."

They appear to be the same word. That's not an answer. I could tell you that the modern word "laser" came from the older form LASER, but that would be stupid. You're trying to terminate the question before it's even begun.

Note that in fact the modern word "Viking" is not obviously related to the Old English "wicing"; that term died out. Modern "Viking" is taken directly from later Norse by modern historians. Unless you're claiming the Norse borrowed it from the British?

> They weren't writing it down "retroactively" but contemporaneously.

You are simultaneously arguing that

1. The British referred to Norse pirates using a term that looks like "Viking", which we know because they wrote it down at the time.

2. The Norse, hundreds of years later, also had a term that looks like "Viking".

3. We know the Norse didn't use that term at the time the invaded Britons were using it, because they didn't write it down. ("The primary sources clearly indicate that the first appearance was...")

4. In fact, interesting side note, the Norse of the time didn't write anything down.

I could go on to conclude that they couldn't speak. Or I could conclude that the primary sources don't have anything to say about where this word first appeared, because it is closely related to an almost entirely illiterate culture.

There is no primary evidence that the word Viking originated from some word other than the Anglo -Saxon word. If you’ve found some feel feel to share.

I mean, I can refer you to https://www.etymonline.com/word/Viking :

> Scandinavian pirate, 1801, vikingr, in "The History of the Anglo-Saxons" by English historian Sharon H. Turner; he suggested the second element might be connected to king: But this later was dismissed as incorrect. The form viking is attested in 1820

The word "wicing" of Old English has no modern descendant; it was not used for the period of several centuries between then and 1800. This is well known. As noted in the entry, in modern use it first appears with the Norse nominative -r suffix included!

What kind of primary evidence were you thinking of?

I'm taking you up on your bet. I just downloaded that Turner book. It doesn't say where the word came from at all. The earliest primary citation for the word "vikingr" is in reference to a saga written by Snorre/Snorri (an Icelandic historian), who was born in the late 12th century. "Wicing" dates to the 11th century (see Sea Wolves, A History of the Vikings; you're welcome to go down that primary cite rabbit hole yourself).

The word "vikingr" can only come from Norse, as I already mentioned, because it includes a Norse inflection, the nominative case suffix.

The modern word "viking" similarly cannot come from an Old English word "wicing", because Old English /w/ does not become modern /v/. The only words beginning with /v/ in modern English that come from Old English began with /f/ then.

Compare "wit", "will", "water", "wife", etc. etc. etc. etc.

My point is simply this: As far as the primary sources go, we have, as of the 1000's, an Anglo-Saxon word "wicing" that looks nearly identical to "viking" and would have been pronounced "wy-ching." As of at least 100 years later, in what may have been an Icelandic dialect of Old Norse, we have a word "vikingr", which would have been pronounced "veek-een-grr" with a trilled "r". The only other thing we know is that Old Norse had a word "vic". I don't think we can rule out that the word "viking" was invented by the Norse, but based on the above information alone, I don't think we can reasonably conclude that it must have been.

> we have, as of the 1000's, an Anglo-Saxon word "wicing" that looks nearly identical to "viking" and would have been pronounced "wy-ching."

Do you have a source for palatalization of the "c"? To know how the word would have been pronounced, you need to know whether it was native to Old English or borrowed from Norse.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_English_phonology :

> (Although this palatalization occurred as a regular sound change, later vowel changes and borrowings meant that the occurrence of the palatal forms was no longer predictable, that is, the palatals and the velars had become separate phonemes.) Both the velars /k, ɣ/ (including [ɡ]) and the palatals /tʃ, j/ (including [dʒ]) are spelled as ⟨c⟩, ⟨g⟩ in Old English manuscripts.

> In modern texts, the palatalized versions may be written with a dot above the letter: ⟨ċ⟩, ⟨ġ⟩. (As just mentioned, it would otherwise not generally be possible to predict whether a palatal or velar is meant, although there are certain common patterns; for example, ⟨c⟩ often has the palatalized sound before the front vowels ⟨i⟩, ⟨e⟩, ⟨æ⟩. Note that Old English had palatalized ⟨g⟩ in certain words that have hard G in Modern English due to Old Norse influence, such as ġiefan "give" and ġeat "gate".)

Modern pronunciation (or Middle English confusions) would be a good guide to that question, if the word had survived, which it didn't.

> I don't think we can rule out that the word "viking" was invented by the Norse, but based on the above information alone, I don't think we can reasonably conclude that it must have been.

How do you get from here to "the etymology isn't mysterious"?

[1] The languages are closely related enough that some borrowings were given the "correct" native pronunciation instead of the borrowed pronunciation. But as we see, this was not universal.

No, viking didn't originate with Anglo-Saxon; the term's origin is not certain, but it goes something like this:

from Old Norse víkingr, from vík ‘creek’ or Old English wīc ‘camp, dwelling place’.

There are Norse grave markers that use the term víkingr as a verb and a name, for example.

More information: https://www.etymonline.com/word/viking

What date? It’s eminently possible that they adopted the Anglo word for themselves.

What date for what? Here's more information: https://www.etymonline.com/word/viking

The date of the appearance of “vikingr.” The fact that the old norse word "vic" meant inlet or bay doesn't establish that vikings called themselves vikings prior to the appearance of "wicing." If it did, the literature would just say that they called themselves "vikings" from the word "vic" and point to some primary record of it.

I still find it an arch historical irony that the descendants of Vikings have built some of the most robust welfare states in the West.

Most Norse in the 8th to 12th centuries were not Vikings. The word Viking comes from the word “wicing”, meaning “pirate”. It was obviously not an entire civilization of pirates.

Funny you should say that, because some Vikings became Normans and occupied England which later became the British Empire.

Sure. It's true that some Vikings settled, including in Normandy (in exchange for guarding the Seine against other Vikings, just like in the TV show). And yeah, they also settled pretty large swaths of England, beginning with York, and founded Dublin, among other cities. The whole of England very nearly became run by the Norse but for a single battle at the end of a very long war of attrition.

The TV show was actually extremely historically accurate in terms of specific events (like jumping out of the coffin and murdering the priest). It was just also extremely inaccurate in terms of the characters, time periods, and geographic locations in which those events occurred.

England did get conquered by people of Viking descent much later: the Normans.

Of whom Queen Elizabeth is a descendant

And, by now, the rest of the population as well: https://youtu.be/Fm0hOex4psA

To be fair, only some of them were of Viking descent. Although the Viking settlers were granted control over Normandy, the people who previously lived there weren't all expelled. It would be more accurate to say that England was later conquered by people who were a mix of Norse and Frankish descent.

They also founded the Kingdom of Sicily.

From what I’ve read the word viking derivates from the word vik which basically means ’bay’ - viking is hence one that travels by the bay.

The best answer anyone seems to have about that is "maybe." Yes, there was an Old Norse word "vic" meaning "bay". There was also an Old Norse word "vig" meaning "battle". Is that why they're called "vikings"? Nobody seems to know. Did vikings call themselves "vikings" at all prior to the emergence of the Anglo-Saxon word "wicing"? No one seems to know that either.

The Swedish Academy Word Book gives the "wicing" etymology from old Frisian and old English, but also says that the etymology has "disputed origin".

"Road trip" a labspring break

The descendants of Vikings are scattered all over the western world, including millions of people in the UK and the US.

And Russia and Ukraine

It's easy to be robust when 20% of the GDP is simply pumped out of the ground and is used to fund the government.

Actually, resource rich countries tend to have worse developmental outcomes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

You're just thinking of Norway. Sweden, Denmark and Finland do not have the same oil riches

The world first economy also pump oil and gaz from the ground, and it contributes to a significant part of its GDP.

Except it isn't. I assume you're referring to the Norway Oil Fund, but literally the entire point is that it wasn't simply spent in country, to avoid the "Dutch Disease". You can read the McCrone report to see the principles. It was written for Scotland but Norway actually followed the principles.

Also, you're ignoring Sweden and Denmark. Many countries have discovered oil - the USA is a massive producer, far more than Norway - they just didn't create a fund with it, preferring to give the profits to the few.

> Norway Oil Fund

Used to fund the government pension system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...

It doesn't detract at all from the point that it's oil revenue supporting it, not economic activity. It's currently worth $195,000 per Norwegian.

> the USA is a massive producer, far more than Norway

Not remotely 20% of the GDP.

> preferring to give the profits to the few.

The US government, in contrast, is mostly funded by taxes on wealthy people:

"the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent."

https://taxfoundation.org/summary-of-the-latest-federal-inco...

Norway is quite a bit wealthier than Sweden, pretty much entirely due to the oil:

https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/norway.sweden/ec...

>The US government, in contrast, is mostly funded by taxes on wealthy people: "the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97 percent of all individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 3 percent."

This isn't painting the full tax picture though. It only looks at a subset of federal taxes and ignores non-federal taxes (maybe you meant 'federal' when you said 'U.S.'?). For example, payroll taxes fall disproportionately (on a percentage of income basis) on the non-wealthy and make up 36% of federal taxes but aren't included in income tax stats.[1]

[1]https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-tax/policy-basics-wher...

> payroll taxes fall disproportionately (on a percentage of income basis) on the non-wealthy and make up 36% of federal taxes but aren't included in income tax stats.[1]

That's because it's a pension fund, not a general government funding tax. Even so, if you look at FICA payouts to the wealthy, you'll find that the wealthy pay disproportionately far more into the program per benefit received than the poor.

>That's because it's a pension fund

I don't think that's the most accurate way to view social security given the benefit structure. E.g., it's not necessarily typical for a pension to cover disability insurance, healthcare, etc. Regardless, it's a digression from the original comment point which is about the proportion of taxes.

Taxes need to be viewed in the context of the entire tax structure, not just a subset of taxes known as the federal income tax. While I don't disagree that the wealthy pay disproportionately more, it's not nearly as much as the GP post suggests when you look at the entire tax structure. As an example, in that context, the top 1% account for 20.9% of the total income and pay 24.3% of the total taxes [1]. The point being, we need to be careful not to cherry-pick from subsets of the overall tax structure. Only reporting federal income tax statistics can be accurate and misleading at the same time.

[1]https://itep.org/who-pays-taxes-in-america-in-2020/

> it's a digression from the original comment point which is about the proportion of taxes.

Obamacare is also set up so that the wealthier pay a disproportionate amount in premiums relative to the benefits they receive. Should that be counted?

Any way you want to slice it, the wealthy are supporting this country in taxes, and in Norway it's oil revenue.

>Should that be counted?

Yes. The Supreme Court ruled the mandate is a tax.

”The mandate is an amendment to the Internal Revenue Code, and it is calculated based on a percentage of adjusted gross income or a fixed amount, whichever is larger. Starting in 2014, it will be collected on your form 1040 just like your other taxes.” [1]

The issue wasn’t with your claim that wealthy pay a disproportionate share. That’s literally what the intent of a progressive tax regime is supposed to ensure. The issue was with the biased representation of a subset of taxes to make your point.

Would you claim that long distance commuters pay unfair levels of taxes because they are disproportionately represented in gasoline taxes? Or does it make more sense to frame it in the overall context of total tax revenue?

I’m not quite sure if your stance is that the tax code is wrong morally or pragmatically but it’s doing exactly what a progressive tax schedule is supposed to do.

[1] https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/256706/

The point I was making was a response to:

> Also, you're ignoring Sweden and Denmark. Many countries have discovered oil - the USA is a massive producer, far more than Norway - they just didn't create a fund with it, preferring to give the profits to the few.

Are you insinuating the US’s tax structure is preferential, worse, or just different? Again, you stated a statistic but it wasn’t immediately clear what the larger point you were getting at

The Wikipedia article on the fund is wrong on a rather crucial point. It states: "Norway can withdraw up to 3% of the fund's value each year."

However this is incorrect, as the spending rules were changed in 2001. The correct statement is that the government can withdraw 3% of the real return[1] of the fund. The 3% figure was adjusted down from an initial 4%.

[1]: https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/okonomi-og-budsjett/norsk...

That's only the case for Norway. And even then not really; it's not used for direct government spending. And, erm, I'm not sure _how_ easy it is (see Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Indonesia, etc etc)

NZ has a robust social security system, and fairly minimal oil reserves.

I read a theory of that that posited that when the New World opened up, all the individualists left for opportunity, shifting society in the Old World to collectivism

https://www.ehs.org.uk/press/long-term-cultural-impact-of-in...

If only we wouldn’t forget to afford the same nuance to each other in the present...

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