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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.

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.

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

Because they weren't Christians.