The Viking Invasion of Leicestershire (2012) | Hacker News Reader

The Viking Invasion of Leicestershire (2012)

thiswasleicestershire.co.uk

73 pointszeristor102 comments

The village where I grew up in Scotland has a cliff-sided promontory reaching out into the sea called the Green Castle - archaeological digs in the 1970s found remains of iron age and Pictish forts there. One part is eroding away and you can quite clearly see a line of burnt wood particles - one of the theories being that the fort was burned down in a Viking seige:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Castle,_Portknockie

Edit: There was at least one significant battle between the Scots and Vikings in the area, probably a good bit later:

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

Edit2: "Legend has it that within the vicinity, a Scots, a Danish and a Norwegian King are buried" - which is why there is(was?) a Three Kings pub in Cullen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cullen,_Moray

Is it just the length of time that's passed that makes Vikings cool and the British Empire terrible?

They also aren't a useful rhetorical foil for any present-day arguments. In none of their former territory can you make political hay by deflecting present-day problems onto those particular earlier rulers. That's related to time, of course, but also very much related to what else has happened since, or has failed to happen.

Rest assured, plenty of hay gets made about how "progressive" vikings were with respect to gender (apparently there were female viking warriors) and sex (not so strict about monogamy) compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians. Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups.

>apparently there were female viking warriors

This is a MUCH more controversial idea than pop-history would have you believe. There have been Viking women found buried with weapons and armour; however, there are also men who weren't warriors found buried with arms and armour as well. Scholarship on the matter isn't really sure if the women found buried that way were warriors being honored as such, or rich/wealthy/politically powerful people who were buried in the trappings of a martial society. Also, the extrapolation of "a shockingly small number of women were buried with swords" to "the Vikings had gender equality and badass warrior women in every port" is great Netflix fodder, but not really backed up anywhere else.

>Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups.

Vikings also literally had a slave based economy; the only thing that got the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to unite was "hey, we don't want to be slaves/the main event of excruciatingly brutal human sacrifices."

>compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians

Interestingly enough, almost all the Vikings converted peacefully to Christianity within a decade or two of settling in Britan.

Yes. The political point being made with this history is different too, it's one of pride, not shame. It's "Our great ancestors were nice social democrats, too! Unlike your cold-war army, grandpa, they let woman have front-line jobs!"

Compare: "Those evil germanics who sailed up the Volga and subjugated our ancestors, you know how much silver they took home? And you've seen how wealthy Copenhagen is now? My buddy Igor ran the numbers, and compound interest explains it all!". That's not a speech which will improve your political career in Russia.

I don't doubt this, but for the record Scandanavians are not the people in my sphere who are doing a significant share of the Vikings-glorifying. It seems to be oriented on a political axis rather than a national axis.

Relevant: The rant of David Mitchell about the Phrase 'Rape and Pillage'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJqEKYbh-LU

The scale was different, but yes.

People also now poke fun at Napoleon but in Europe until the 1940s he was the canonical supervillain (apparently before him it was “pharaoh”). You’re identifying a general phenomenon.

The British empire is still Viking-levels of awesome among people who like naval stories (e.g. Patrick O'Brian) or the late-19th, early-20th century era of exploration.

It's just that the atrocities that come with empire building are recent enough in the case of the British Empire to still have emotional attachment among descendants of the victims.

Outside of a place like HN which has a huge South Asian readership, I think the British Empire is still viewed to be a mix of good and bad by most people in the algosphere, and not outright vile.

Vikings killed loads to people and nicked stuff, British Empire killed loads of people and nicked stuff, American settlers killed loads of people and nicked stuff. Are you starting to see a pattern here?

Now you have to enslave people by restricting their access to cheap mobile devices.

Not to forget the French (Norman) invasion and complete takeover of the British (Anglo Saxons) by William in 1066.

The effects of that invasion are still with us as pointed out by Gregory Clark. Analysis of Norman Surnames and their predominance in elite families in Britain today, has shown that "Rich families stay rich and poor families stay poor, according to a new study that finds that English people whose ancestors were elite in the 1100s are still likely part of the upper crust today. The study echoes work in other countries that has found that social status budges little over generations, even in the face of massive social changes"

Well I suppose one could say we call the analogue of reparations the welfare state at which point that prospect doesn’t sound quite so ludicrous after all.

Be honest, that's in a culture that holds the Nobility as a different kind of human being above everyone else. This worshipful attitude is a huge factor, not just economics.

And not all the rich, stay rich. That's a mainstay for every British comedy ever. But the ones who do stay rich, are very often those that are held in higher regard than the 'common folk'.

Clark finds this pattern in most societies, IIRC Sweden and China have (in his data) almost identical rates of status persistence. It's not a quirk of English manners.

What varies more is the degree to which ordinary people today descend from the nobility in (say) 1100. In some societies they had many more surviving children than average, e.g. it's easy for them to double every generation, within a basically static total population, implying that their offspring make up a high proportion of people after a few centuries. But in other societies, they did not.

His books are pretty readable, BTW, interesting data.

Interesting choice - those two societies also have 1000 years of respect for nobility? It seems to be a strong factor then.

I don't know about respect. The data is on persistence of status. They can do this in many countries, those are just two I remember (besides England).

Direct records of ancestry are too scattered to piece together long timescales. What he (and collaborators) do is to find very rare surnames, in records at some distant time (e.g. Oxford graduation in 1600, high-status, or common criminals executed then, low-status) and then trace look for the same name in later data (e.g. Victorian wills, or today's tax data). Rare names give you a fairly targeted marker. One which the carriers are often unaware of.

> American settlers killed loads of people and nicked stuff

The diseases brought by settlers did more ravage than actual confrontation.

When they deliberately gave diseased blankets to indigenous peoples, I think that checked off both boxes.

Curiously, the Viking are often portrayed as bloodthirsty brutes raping, pillaging, and burning their way through towns.

The reality is different. There was brutality, but it was generally limited. Vikings were more likely to conquer and settle than to burn things down to the ground. They were vengeful though, so any killing of Viking captives or civilians could result in a disproportionate and brutal retaliation. For example, Aella, the King of Northumbria killed Viking King Ragnar Lothbrok not by combat, but by having him thrown into a pit of poisonous snakes. As a result, when Ragnar's son Ivar the Boneless sought revenge and captured Aella a quick death wasn't deemed appropriate. Instead, Ivar created the Blood Eagle ritual and used it on Aella. It was a gruesome and painful method of execution, but one the Viking probably felt justified in using giving the cowardly death Aella gave Ragnar.

This is not to say they weren't brutal, but much of what we know about the Vikings comes from their enemies, which colors the history.

Some links for more information, the first is a really good rundown by a history professor specializing in Vikings:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/dzioe8/were_...

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26431858

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/140926-vi...

My own amateur research shows England and English-colonies had the most violent behavior (Norman raids, Irish subjugation, Botany Bay, violence against Indians, American violence against indigenous peoples (including trail or tears, smallpox blankets, etc.), etc.

Essentially, any time a culture sets up a belief in itself as superior to all others a violence against those believed inferior often occurs, sometimes even in the name of helping those believed inferior. E.g., we'll take these poor children from them and give them to god-fearing Christian homes - I could be talking about events during colonial times with native americans, or I could be talking about separating of children at the detention centers.

> When they deliberately gave diseased blankets to indigenous peoples, I think that checked off both boxes.

While this event has been documented, it wasn't an everyday occurence. "Normal" violence and raids were much more typical during the 400 years of the conquest of both Americas.

The first infectious diseases were introduced onto the continent in early 16th century. At that time, neither Europeans nor Natives had much understanding about the root causes and applied magical thinking (witches, wrath of heaven, acts of God/Satan, punishment for sins).

Western understanding of epidemics has been a mess, arguably until today - see contemporary Covid deniers etc. I have just read a report about a Slovak member of government (Labor Minister) wanting to open the churches and arguing with a 1710 wave of black plague in Trnava that was purportedly stopped by the citizens praying to the Holy Virgin. And this is a Central European EU member state in 2021! Now try 1521.

And massive die-outs of native population was a cause for concern in the Spanish parts of the empire; the Spanish took two well-operated indigenous empires (Aztec and Incan) with all the infrastructure, resources and mines to get rich off, only to see their workforce melting away. They weren't happy about that - any more than today's Facebook would be about half of their users dying.

I've always been curious about the pit of venomous snakes. We only have one venomous snake in the UK - the common adder. It's bite is nasty, but very rarely fatal. I wonder if the story is made up, based on foreign tales of poisonous snakes, or perhaps they used imported snakes.

The source for that is a Norse legendary saga written hundreds of years later, I doubt it's factual.

> When they deliberately gave diseased blankets to indigenous peoples, I think that checked off both boxes

That's certainly horrific, but the diseases that the colonists brought killed 90% of the indigenous population at the time, most of whom died without ever setting eyes on a European.

As for "which people group was the most evil", that seems like an exercise in subjectivity and bias or worse, so I don't see what good could come from debating it, but I am a little surprised you don't locate it anywhere in the 20th century with its hundreds of millions of deaths between fascism and communism.

This is incorrect and not really supported by the literature. Europeans were intimately involved with most regions that had high fatality rates and moreover, actively created conditions that made these diseases endemic. The "90%" numbers are also highly speculative and include all causes of mortality, including European warfare over a period of centuries. It's not just diseases.

Not according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...

> The loss of the population was so high that it was partially responsible for the myth of the Americas as "virgin wilderness." By the time significant European colonization was underway, native populations had already been reduced by 90%. This resulted in settlements vanishing and cultivated fields being abandoned. Since forests were recovering, the colonists had an impression of a land that was an untamed wilderness

The page you've linked says as much (though it's quite misleading without background knowledge).

> Many Native American tribes suffered high mortality and depopulation, averaging 25–50% of the tribes' members lost to disease.

The line you've linked is discussing the Northeastern colonization and it links to Denevan, who isn't looking at the actual mechanics of depopulation, but rather the pristine myth.

Luckily we can look at this with some simple modeling. Assuming persistent epidemics with constant 25% mortality every 10 years and no developed immunity (big assumptions), while maintaining a 2% growth rate in-between (this is low), over 2 centuries the population would shrink by 88%. At that point, the epidemics stop and populations begin to recover. Using the same numbers, it would recover to pre-epidemic levels in only 85 years. If the growth rate is merely 3%, population actually grows the whole time.

Let's pay closer attention to the Mexican population graph though. Notice the 3 waves of disease? Two of those, labeled "cocolizti", are thought to be (at least partially) Salmonella. You know, that disease of failing sanitation infrastructure? Hopefully it's clear why sanitation issues might have surfaced around then.

> The page you've linked says as much (though it's quite misleading without background knowledge). "Many Native American tribes suffered high mortality and depopulation, averaging 25–50% of the tribes' members lost to disease."

I interpret that as "many tribes lost 25-50%" but that doesn't necessarily mean that this generalizes to all Native Americans, so I took the 90% figure which made the more precise (if inaccurate) claim.

> The line you've linked is discussing the Northeastern colonization and it links to Denevan, who isn't looking at the actual mechanics of depopulation, but rather the pristine myth.

Fair enough, I'm not a subject matter expert. I'm at the mercy of Wikipedia editors here.

> Let's pay closer attention to the Mexican population graph though. Notice the 3 waves of disease? Two of those, labeled "cocolizti", are thought to be (at least partially) Salmonella. You know, that disease of failing sanitation infrastructure? Hopefully it's clear why sanitation issues might have surfaced around then.

Assuming that cocolizti was directly caused by failing sanitation infrastructure, looking at the graph I would assume that the infrastructure failed due to the preceding smallpox-induced population crash. At least without more information there's nothing clearly pointing to Spanish violence, if that's your implication. Of course, the Spanish conquest was abhorrent and devastating, but I don't have any reason to believe that the Spanish military was more effective than disease at devastating the Mexican population. To answer the disease vs violence question, maybe we could find good points of comparison in the Old World Spanish conquests, where disease was presumably much less significant?

The displacement of whole groups did actually quite a lot. The Indian Removal Act was an actual policy, not an accident. There was whole ideology and policies around who gets to have which rights in the states.

False equivalence.

How so? The author invited explanation of why they might or might not be the same. You simply asserted that they were not.

When were the Vikings cool? Certainly interesting but the Viking invasion was multifaceted from robbing down to settling

The problem with the British empire is that were still seeing a lot of its negative impact. I mean it officially ended only 24 years ago

Well, today?

Why do you think there are so many viking TV shows.

Are they not making British Empire shows?

There have been loads of TV series made in the UK set in India, Kenya and other parts of the Empire. Funnily enough they tend to avoid mentioning the brutality of the British in dealing with the locals e.g.

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

For some reason these shows aren't quite as popular as they used to be...

I would watch the shit out of a TV show that really told the story of the British Raj, in all its racist, bloodthirsty, brutal "glory".

perhaps Indian arts can tell that story. it's not like they lack experience with making film. I'd be surprised if there isn't anything?

If they are then I haven’t heard of them. Outside of monarchy specific things which operate in the same time period (but certainly are not the focus)

The series "The Last Kingdom" is based on the books by Bernard Cornwell. He also wrote the "Sharpe" books, which were adapted to several TV films (starring Sean Bean). They're set around the Napoleonic Wars, with some of them in India.

Hornblower is decent as well.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0311113/

And the slavery aspect - at one time Dublin was the largest slave market in Europe.

Slavery was pretty widespread in Europe until the late Middle Ages, including Christians enslaving other Christians and selling them to slave traders. 10% of the census population of the Domesday Book were slaves, not serfs. This changed when a pope (I can't remember his name off the top of my head) was concerned that Christian slaves owned by Jewish and Muslim slave-owners would convert to their masters' religions. That was just a prohibition against enslaving fellow Christians and selling slaves to Jewish and Muslim slave-traders though.

Yes to slavery being widespread in Europe of the dark ages. The church had something to do with its demise but I'm not sure it's one papal edict. Economics too.

But if "late Middle Ages" means say the time of the black death, and after, then at least in Western Europe that's much too late. By then slavery in England is long gone (or so rare as not to matter) and serfdom is in steep decline, and we are still several centuries away from European overseas slavery (no sugar islands before Columbus!)

Slavery in the islamic world was (I think) pretty continuous from the beginning until the 20th C. (Perhaps with ups and downs? There were many violent changes of leadership, over the centuries.) In the middle ages this would have been the primary meaning of slavery to Europeans -- the risk of being caught in some coastal raid and sold for labor (or for ransom, if noble). This no doubt horrified the pope but he had little power to stop this.

The collapse of the roman empire is still visible today as far as I know. Thats a pretty big event that has had a major impact on Europe as we know it, and the world at large.

In central london (London Wall is the name of the road), you can see 9-10 turrets from the original Roman city of "Londonium". I've walked this road and seen a handful of them. To be able to reach out and touch something that was built by Roman soldiers over a thousands of years ago is simply amazing to me.

One of them is set in a garden behind a church and it is really beautiful. My wife and I had a picnic there and it was surreal.

> One of them is set in a garden behind a church

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal... (pictures)

I thought these two also interesting:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Roman_London_wal...

The first link is precisely the one I was speaking of. My employer’s UK office is at 1 London Wall so it wasn’t hard to explore and fine these.

Really fun stuff

Monty Python.

One historical theory I read was that a lot of the negative stories about vikings were put about by disgruntled Britons who were unhappy because a lot of British women preferred to marry viking men because they used to wash once a week whereas the standard behaviour for British men was to wash once a year.

  > A later writing often credited to the Abbot of St. Albans   
  > reports that "thanks to their habit of combing their hair
  > every day, of bathing every Saturday and regularly 
  > changing their clothes, were able to undermine the virtue   
  > of married women and even seduce the daughters of nobles 
  > to be their mistresses."

https://www.danishnet.com/vikings/cleanliness-did-vikings-ta...

I think (US perspective) mostly that along with Hagar the Horrible and a generic connection between vikings and Scandinavian ancestry (that is common in some parts of the northern US). Although many racists are really into the vikings so it isn't always seen as cool. For that matter, I think the British Empire is unfortunately often seen as cool also.

I wouldn't consider the British Empire to be 'cool' but I can appreciate that it was a phenomenal military and logistic machine. One tiny country conquered most of the world that was worth conquering. There's something impressive about that.

Worth conquering? Not really. Arguably there was a lot more to conquer, but the rest of the world might've fought back.

So more like: "One country grabs a lot of land too underdeveloped to fight back."

The only noteworthy resistance was mounted by other western powers.

Whether one slave-master triumphing over another is something to be applauded, I'll leave to the reader to decide.

> One country grabs a lot of land too underdeveloped to fight back

If they were just grabbing a lot of "land too underdeveloped to fight back" then why weren't other empires able/willing to grab up the same amount of underdeveloped lands? Do we really believe that other empires were simply too morally upright to exploit underdeveloped lands? Or is there a more interesting, nuanced explanation?

In whichever case, I find it fascinating that the British Isles went from being an irrelevant archipelago at the end of the known world to being the dominant superpower and the largest empire in human history. One can simultaneously appreciate that historical narrative and also condemn the atrocities accumulated along the way.

> then why weren't other empires able/willing to grab up the same amount of underdeveloped lands?

Except there were. There were dozens of conflicts and wars over the span of multiple centuries for control over territory.

I think you’re mistaken. The British empire was the largest empire that has ever existed. That other empires existed (and had centuries-long conflicts/wars) does not refute this fact.

I tried to interpret your sentence in the only way it would have addressed your quote of myself in a coherent manner. I tried to be charitable.

Okay. So let's interpret it as it was written instead.

> If they were just grabbing a lot of "land too underdeveloped to fight back" then why weren't other empires able/willing to grab up the same amount of underdeveloped lands?

Whether or not there were other empires able or willing to grab up that same amount of land doesn't affect the statement in the slightest. The sentence is nonsense.

If you strike "same amount of" the sentence actually does make some sense, which is why I chose to respond to that when I wrote my first response.

Whatever X may be, you will always find countries that did/have the most X, which however doesn't change the nature of X.

"You are mistaken. China has the highest mountains and also a lot of them. Therefore mountains can't be made of stone!" doesn't make much sense, does it.

Neither does: "Britain grabbed more land than everyone else. Therefore the land that everyone was grabbing can't have been underdeveloped!"

And let's face reality here for a second: Open up a map of the British Empire and tell me straight to my face that the vast majority of that land wasn't underdeveloped.

> I tried to interpret your sentence in the only way it would have addressed your quote of myself in a coherent manner. I tried to be charitable. Okay. So let's interpret it as it was written instead.

Neither of those "interpretations" are "as written". I'm not speaking in subtext here, so I don't know why you're trying to decipher instead of addressing the actual content. In whichever case, hopefully this post clarifies.

> And let's face reality here for a second: Open up a map of the British Empire and tell me straight to my face that the vast majority of that land wasn't underdeveloped.

No one suggested the territory of the British Empire was fully developed pre-conquest. The OP suggested that military and logistic achievements of the British Empire were impressive, and you argued the contrary "[they merely grabbed] a lot of land too underdeveloped to fight back". Of course, the British Empire profited fantastically from those conquests so they were clearly worthwhile and other empires were equally willing to conquer weaker nations so it isn't a question of scruples either. And if it's not a question of worth or scruples then surely it must be a question of ability, contrary to your implication.

Are you doing an efficient market hypothesis for imperialism?

Rejecting the notion that the British were uniquely evil is not the same as supporting any particular hypothesis.

It was underdeveloped to start with. Later the British economy was actually dependent on India. Why? Because India became Britain’s main market for her manufactured goods with 60% of British exports going to India by 1913. Employed Indians were buying that stuff! British investment in India totalled around £400 million or 10% of overseas investments before WW1, Like it or not, the British modernized India during their rule. They built 40,000 miles of railway track plus postal and telegraph systems with employment of millions. It's an unpalatable truth for many that a significant number of Indians found benefit and were willing to accept the rule (at that time and in those circumstances) rather than rebel against the British presence. All this doesn't add up to a PR job for the British because we're all very well aware of the cons of British Rule but objectively we know that's not the whole story. In history we need to see that the past is a done deal which we should examine in all its aspects, pros and cons.

Modernized some of their infrastructure, yes. But India's economy was also destroyed. Whether India would have been able to modernize themselves with a functioning economy and under their own rule is another question.

"There is no doubt that our grievances against the British Empire had a sound basis. As the painstaking statistical work of the Cambridge historian Angus Maddison has shown, India's share of world income collapsed from 22.6% in 1700, almost equal to Europe's share of 23.3% at that time, to as low as 3.8% in 1952. Indeed, at the beginning of the 20th century, "the brightest jewel in the British Crown" was the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita income."

— Manmohan Singh

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Economic_history_of_India

> They built 40,000 miles of railway track plus postal and telegraph systems with employment of millions.

I mean, okay? How nice of them to share some technology progress that was made during colonial rule. It's not like India got a chance to built any of that under their own rule.

I'd call developing the land you are ruling doing the bare-minimum. And we can't exactly say the British did a good job at that considering the state India was in at the end of colonial rule.

After freeing a slave you just don't get to pat yourself on the back and say: "I've been feeding him for 25 years, given him clothing, and even work! What would he have done without me!"

India does not strike me as particularly underdeveloped.

From wiki: Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other European powers to India. The Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark-Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. As the Mughal Empire disintegrated in the early 18th century, and then as the Maratha Empire became weakened after the third battle of Panipat, many relatively weak and unstable Indian states which emerged were increasingly open to manipulation by the Europeans, through dependent Indian rulers.

Yes, India was unstable. That is not the same as underdeveloped.

USA has had several peaks of instability during its existence, arguably is on such a peak right now, but is fairly developed, though very unequally so.

> Yes, India was unstable. That is not the same as underdeveloped.

And it's valid to point that out. But at the end of the day for what reason India was unable to fight back against the western powers doesn't really matter.

In India's case there still was no heroic conquering. Just bullying. And then bullies fighting against each other from relative safety with their colonies as pawns.

Indeed, India represented about a quarter of the world's economy in 1700:

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

It was not at the time from a purely economical point of view, but it had other, political, problems that made it fall to the British (and other colonial powers) without resistance.

Let's also not forget that British controlled a lot of that economy, which they pivoted into political control.

There seems to be certain period after which horrible things become less horrible, even fun.

The London Dungeon tourist attraction has fun exhibits on medieval torture and Jack the Ripper (1888). I've often wondered when more modern serial killers, rapists and atrocities would be acceptable.

[edit] in 'polite' society

People are a bit touchy about Jack the Ripper even today.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/sep/29/jack-th...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jack-ripper-...

https://fyeahhistory.com/2020/09/08/jack-the-ripper-museum-r...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11926093/Jack-... https://web.archive.org/web/20171117055654/https://www.teleg...

I had that conversation a while back about wars. We were discussing Napoleonic history, and then the conversation shifted to WW2. For the Brits (and most of the Germans) in the discussion it was all fine. But the Dutch, Danes and French were all "too soon".

We were left wondering when it won't be "too soon"? 2045? When the last veteran dies? The last person alive at the time? It's interesting - when does this become acceptable?

I'd imagine in this respect to WW2 the distinction has something to do with being occupied. My grandparents all lived through the nazi occupation of Norway, and so I grew up with first-hand stories about that, and so it feels fairly personal.

Also, a lot of British discussion about the Second World War is pretty horrible. There's often a mix jingoism and ignorance of what happened, especially of some of the things Britain did.

Whilst agreeing that much of the discussion of WW2 in the UK is unhealthy - especially in the tabloid press etc - not sure that the "ignorance of some of the things that Britain did " is valid. There has been and continues to be wide awareness of tactics like 'area bombing' and their consequences.

The biggest criticism I think is that there is too much discussion of the war and that it overstates the UK's role.

I'm living in Berlin at the moment, and the whole subject is fascinating and also fraught with difficulties. It's a totally different perspective than British jingoism. The mixture of pride and shame is such a contrast. Berlin tends to focus on the Wall rather than the War and I can understand why.

> tactics like 'area bombing' and their consequences

My grandfather was in the RAF (not bomber command, but still). I visited Dresden recently, and felt a need to apologise to the city.

I think that Britain's relationship with the war is complex and flawed in many ways. Germany has dealt with its role in the war in a much more healthy way.

I suppose that it was the word 'jingoism' which prompted me to reply to the earlier post. I'm not sure that this really captures the prevalent attitude, which is more of being a plucky underdog that fought alone against the Nazi regime. This is obviously rubbish but has then been used as an excuse to gloss over some of the poorer aspects of Britain's behaviour (and not just in the war).

I do think that the perception has changed (or been manipulated) over the years. The films and TV of the 60s and 70s played a big part in creating this myth and more recently the tabloids and certain politicians (who are jingoistic) have exploited it ruthlessly to further their own agendas.

> Germany has dealt with its role in the war in a much more healthy way.

For most of the population, this is probably true. But I think the mixture of shame and pride is feeding the far right in Germany - who then feel the pride without the shame. This is growing as it becomes more politically and socially acceptable to express anything but shame and apologies about the war.

https://www.crimemuseum.org/about-us/

http://www.museumofdeath.net/info

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

You ever watched CSI or Criminal Minds?

Good point, but they are fiction and those shows are based around catching the 'unsub'. I guess there are also 'real crime' shows that go over recent cases.

But my point is that you could dress up as a Ghengis Khan or a Viking to a fancy dress party but a German WW2 SS soldier would be less acceptable. People go on Jack the Ripper tours in London as part of a fun tourist experience. But a more recent serial rapist/murderer tour wouldn't have the same pull.

Vikings are cool for the same reason Sparta is cool - "badass" tough mythical society. They are manly men fighters who are seen as aspirational for some ideological groups. Other ideological groups don't care all that much about them, because they are far away in the past. The people who consider Vikings as myth cool are not the same as the people who dislike real history of British Empire.

Also, the historical details over how their societies functioned are not important in popular imagination. For many people, Vikings that are cool are not real historical Vikings, it is more of safe imaginary fantasy setup - kind of like Lord of the Rings, Witcher or Star Wars. I mean, people do then project fantasy on real world history, but that is more of accidental thing.

what about the roman empire? or Carthage? both are seen as cool as well, but we have many historical accounts of their brutality.

And pirates!

what makes it interesting is that for > 1000 years, the history of vikings has been written and documented by the victors.

> Not until the 1890s did scholars outside Scandinavia begin to seriously reassess the achievements of the Vikings, recognizing their artistry, technological skills, and seamanship. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings#Medieval_perceptions

while the Michael Hirst's Vikings doesn't stick to facts, makes use of viking folklore, songs and poems to tell the story, it did an incredibly authentic job putting the audience into a mindset that helps understand how they think and what they believed in. And I hope it makes kids interested in why they should be studied and are important.

There's a lot of ancestral fetishism, anti-christian sentiment and neo-paganism that plays into it.

which is kinda interesting because the Vikings converted to Christianity before the end of the Viking Age. There were some interesting bits along the way, where being either pagan or christian could get you killed, but by 1100-ish everyone was converted (at least publicly).

Probably an underdog thing. If I think of Vikings I see a bunch of wild, strong Über-men who won't make compromises. When I think of British Empire I see a handlebar moustache with a pale guy attached to it wearing those puffy pants hitting Ben Kingsely with a stick.

I think the Vikings tap into similar wish fulfillment ideas as zombie fiction. Chopping wood, hunting deer, being in charge, protecting your family. It is everything that bored middle aged suburbanites dream of! The empire is just more complex.

I don't know if the Vikings were cool and if they were more brutal or ruthless than the Anglo Saxon.

A newly christened society claims the enemy is ungodly, primitive and ruthless. Isn't it always like that? There was probably a good deal of PR already back then.

I think we should be careful trusting the sources on Viking brutality all that much as they are almost exclusively from the Christian side.

.. all those hunter gatherers don't know about rule of law and boundaries, all those ancients were tribal goat-fuckers with no perspective for greatness and size, all those roman emperors were vile, cruel, decadent mad-men. All romans were heathens, all christians were primitive religious nut-cases, all renaissance men were clueless, all people back then were imperialistic racists, all the ancestors were decadent, wasteful vandals, ruining a world the mindless thugs they were, worshipping the process that would kill them, because it allowed them to patch there blood-thirsty nature for the moment, all those hunter gatherers..

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is the primary source for documentation of both the Saxon invasion of Roman Britain, and the Viking invasion of Saxon England (about 500 years apart).

The Saxons were very much a similar culture - same use of (very similar) ships for raiding, same weaponry, same battlefield tactics, same civil organisation and even similar languages. The respective invasions were remarkably similar - raiding, mercenary work, followed by progressive occupation. The Viking invasion got complicated - the Danelaw failed and the Saxons beat them off, but then the Normans (Vikings who'd invaded France a couple generations ago) won.

In the Chronicle the Saxon invasion is portrayed very much as a "we were invited here!". The Viking invasion as a brutal series of raids.

No such thing as bad press I guess - Vikings are cool and Saxons are a bit uncool now ;)

> think we should be careful trusting the sources on Viking brutality all that much as they are almost exclusively from the Christian side.

Why would Christians have lied about the ferocity of their invaders knowing that they actually ravaged and pilled the whole of Western Europe later on? If anything History has proven they were right.

Why are Viking cool? The fashion and tattoos of course. Haven't you seen the TV series :)

Between the TV shows Vikings and The Last Kingdom this period has had some welcome screen time in recent years. It's a fascinating era in British history and it's great to see it getting more popular attention.

The Isle of Man has an interesting Viking history including monuments/ship burials as well as Viking artefacts and treasure including this one announced a few days ago:

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2021/02/viking-treasure-hoard-...

People unfamiliar with the HN convention of tagging an article with the publication year might be somewhat confused by the title.

If some people in 2020 believe that A) vikings existed in 2012 and B) they would still invade places, then I'd say let them get confused, they'll be confused by anything.

It was only last month that someone dressed up as a viking occupied the US capitol

My immediate thought was some sort of Viking LARP that went wrong

There's been a number of reconstructions of viking ships[1], and some of them like e.g. this one [2] have been sailed, so that would have been an amusing possibility.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_ship_replica

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draken_Harald_H%C3%A5rfagre

As a Norwegian, the title gave me great joy.

I'm during my second play-through of Assassin's Creed Valhalla. So interesting to see this here. The game is not that historically accurate but the general feel and atmosphere is amazing.

Not much mention in the comments about Leicestershire.

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