Findings show that the Vikings' self-image was influenced by Ancient Rome | Hacker News Reader

Findings show that the Vikings' self-image was influenced by Ancient Rome

phys.org

80 pointsdiodorus50 comments

This appears to say they copied Roman-era Norse material culture, not that they copied the culture of Ancient Rome.

Right, I read through the whole thing and the only reference to 'Roman' is to other Scandinavian burials in the 'Roman Era', absolutely nothing to support any claim of influence from 'Ancient Rome' itself.

While ancient Rome almost surely influenced germanic and scandinavian culture. People from those areas served in the Roman military in some cases. In some cases they brought home money and culture after surviving such a life.

Norse mythology and for example week day names show clear similarities with the ancient roman and greek corresponding concepts, which is not a coincidence, and so on.

>>Norse mythology and for example week day names show clear similarities with the ancient roman and greek corresponding concepts

That's more likely due to the two cultures having a common Indo-European origin, from whence they inherited their language and mythology from, as opposed to cultural diffusion during the Roman era, I think.

Surely not considering how intertwined German peoples were with Rome

The seven day week and the connection to planets came from Babylon or Egypt, way back. And then via the Greek and so on. The Romans weren't actually the quickest to adopt it, they had an 8-day week (possibly from the Etruscans), which had to fight with the (also known) 7-day week. It's unclear when the 8-days week completely fell out of favour, but the 7-day week didn't become official until AD 321 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-day_week)

In any case, the 7-day week spread, and much farther than just to the north of Europe. China apparently imported the Hellenistic system as far back as the 4th century (wikipedia), and Japan got it four centuries later (but wasn't made official until 1876. The week day names matches the Latin ones, with Monday as "moon day" and so on).

In the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson describes the Vikings as being descended from Trojans. Much like Virgil claimed the Romans descend from Aeneas (a Trojan prince) in the Aeneid.

So Roman (and Greek) influence wouldn't surprise me.

Can't remember any such thing. Do you have a citation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda#Prologue

> The Prologue is the first section of four books of the Prose Edda, consisting of a euhemerized Christian account of the origins of Norse mythology: the Nordic gods are described as human Trojan warriors who left Troy after the fall of that city (an origin similar to the one chosen by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th century to account for the ancestry of the British nation, and which parallels Virgil's Aeneid).

The introduction of the Prose Edda is really wild. Snorri basically tries to synthesize his understanding of history, the Eddas, and the Bible to explain how many of these are the same people or describing the same events.

Some context -- Snorri has 500 years of dark-ages obscuring whatever he wants to say [1]. I am utterly unconvinced that what Snorri writes is what the original Vikings believed.

[1] The Prose Edda was written in the early 13th century; the earliest recorded Viking raids on Britain are late 8th century; original Viking culture/beliefs must be even older.

Snorri was also a Christian writing about his culture's former pagan beliefs to a Christian audience. Recontextualizing other religions and their practices into a culturally acceptable form (ie other gods were really just powerful sorcerors or demons leading people astray) was standard practice at the time.

totally agree, and you can learn a lot from Snorri, but that doesn’t make what he says about ancient traditions actually true — best to add whatever the archaeology & other forensic science says and take the whole picture.

You cant apply the term “dark-ages” to Scandinavia or Iceland.

> On this site researchers have found detailed similarities between two graves that were built hundreds of years apart

Vikings may have been influenced by the Romans, but burials have followed remarkably similar patterns for thousands of years all over the world with no influence from outside:

The dead are often buried with items to help them in an afterlife - food, money or something to trade to help the journey.

With items that were significant to them or their role in their life - jewellery, weapons, tools.

And are often laid out straight in 'best' clothes, relatives hold vigil over the body until burial/cremation etc.

We also base burials on the burials we've seen - so is it strange that they build tombstones like the old (Roman) one? In the same way that Egyptian rulers wanted a pyramid like their predecessor?

It's a tradition that was carried over from the vegetarian guard often recruited from the nords due to reaching their population limit early, they would often journey south to work in Roman controlled regions though it's different in how it was adapted just like how most groups take in traditions and beliefs from things they've seen elsewhere. It's not really indicative of anything really.

Although a vegetarian guard sounds intriguing (but not as cool as a Vegan Guard), probably this was the Varangian Guard.

Joys of autocorrect

Glad someone fixed that. I was picturing some wizened old man with a staff who can kick ass through some combination of experience, zeal, and healthy living :)

The Varangian guard were in Constantinople. So kinda sorta “Roman-controlled” but not exactly Rome.

Well not exactly it was throughout Roman controlled territories throughout hundreds of years not just a single place. Often times mercenaries and raider groups. In places like the France especially. Many settlements and colonies were established and in places like north Germany it's predominately still Scandinavian. And I don't mean Denmark but Hamburg. It's where Hitler got his whole rhetoric about the superior Nordic race and the inferior slavs even though he was from Austria and Germanic not Scandinavian.

How was it “kinda sorta”? They were the direct, unbroken, legal and institutional continuance of the Roman Empire.

No its exactly Rome. That is what they would have called themselves and they had the provenance to back it up.

Constantinople was part of the Roman Empire (as the name implies, it was 'founded' by the Roman emperor Constantine) and considered itself the Roman empire until it fell.

Sure. I just mean that if you didn’t know better, you might conclude from the parent comment that the Varangian guard were geographically based in Rome.

Quoth They Might Giants, "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)":

Istanbul was Constantinople

Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople

Been a long time gone, Constantinople

Why did Constantinople get the works?

That's nobody's business but the Turks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XlO39kCQ-8

Very interesting connection between Rome and Vikings - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard

If Vikings imitated/emulated the Romans in their funerary practices, arguably they did the same in their living practices too. If that's the case, why are the Vikings persistently dissed, at least in popular culture, as uncouth, violent, hard drinking, fornicating barbarians?

As a resident of New Jersey, I feel for the Vikings.

because history is written by the victors

Or the surviving victims of viking raids that wrote down what happened, probably a bit biased and without any real knowledge of viking society.

Because they weren't Christians.

It's not dissing. The people who portray them as such like them as such, thinking it's badass.

The past is a foreign country, as they say. It may be oddly familiar in some ways, it may even feel better in a few ways, but most of all it's strange. Alien, even, when we're talking as long as go as the Norse Vikings lived. It can never be a home.

It's safe to say that those Norse people who built the faux Roman, faux ancient grave 1000 years ago, were as naive about this as Viking idolizers are today.

Rome was a warrior culture too, especially in the beginning. Even their sports were bloody and gruesome, with people being maimed and dying for the enjoyment of the population.

All those qualities are things to be proud of in my book. Those are desirable and masculine.

Holy Roman Empire? Tryhards. Byzantium? Bunch of posers.

The truth is this: Rome never ended, she just went North. It would explain the Norsemen and their keenness to reconquer Gaul and Britain.

That's not even going into the Norman conquest of Italy.

Sicilian Vespers didn’t work out so well for them.

It went even further north. Finland is the true successor state of the Holy Roman Empire

https://i.imgur.com/tolQ9ih.png

(As this is the internet I have to mention that this is indeed a joke and not even a very good one)

Wait, THIS is the Internet?!

The image has a small mistake. The king of spain did not buy the title. Andreas gifted the title of sucessor to the Crown of Spain, after failing to sell it to anyone on Italy. Spain still owns the letter but has never officially claimed the title, so technically still in hands of the Crown of Spain and not the family that ended up dying. the current Borbon family still owns the title (technically, I guess).

Though through weird buying shenanigans they do have the title of Kings of Jerusalem, they conquered Naples after they had bought the title to the last heir of the kingdom.

Honestly kingdom titles being bought all over medieval europe is kinda hilarious. After centuries of bragging it was god given, you end up with a dude waving a paper saying you can be king by buying it off him.

Like the original selling people a star that is now popular online, a proto nft having the receipt of a kingdom

I mean, if nothing else it makes me feel better that people aren't really getting better at scams, I'm just aware of them because I'm alive today instead of back then.

The diagram says that the HRE became the German and Austrian empires, but really those were two external entities that gobbled up the remains after it fell; Napoleon conquered the HRE, and thus by right of conquest the title of Emperor would go to him. Further, by being proclaimed emperor by the people, being crowned emperor by the Pope, and being recognized as emperor by the emperor in Constantinople, he was the last person to satisfy every historical requirement of being the Western Roman Emperor.

Another mistake: Charlemagne was technically a successor to Constantine VI who was the emperor of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire. After Empress Irene (allegedly) murdered her son and ascended to the throne on her own right the pope in the west did no recognize her (also because she was a woman) and crowned Charlemagne instead.

However unlike most other usurpers throughout Roman history he did not march to Constantinople to depose Irene and therefore both empires coexisted for the 700 years or so. HRE (it was just called the Roman Empire, the word holy was only added in the high middle ages) was not a successor to the Western Roman Empire. That wouldn't really make any sense, since the Roman had already reconquered Italy (and the lost most of it) after the Western Empire had fallen (Rome itself was still formally a part of the (eastern)Empire at the time of Charlemagne.

At a minimum Irene has her son blinded to usurp his throne.

that explains why germany developed 1000 years after the fall of rome

austrian empire only happened because they tried to stop the ottoman empire from expanding

I think Justinian was the last of the people who considered themselves emperors of a Roman empire to actually hold Rome (for a while), so the Byzantines should get at least some credit.

And then, the second Emperor of Russia married a Byzantine princess, taking the title of Caesar (Tsar).

Basically, every empire even close to Europe is Rome.

Yeah, but at that point they were a Greek speaking, Christian monarchy that had been actively hostile to western Rome for a century.

When did Rome die? When the capital was moved from Rome.

> "When did Rome die? When the capital was moved from Rome"

Do you consider end of the Roman Empire to be 286CE? That's when the capital was moved from Rome to Mediolanum (Milan).

Wasn’t Rome really influenced by the Gauls? Emperors purple toges are said to came from the Italian Gauls for example.

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