Vikings went to Mediterranean for ‘summer jobs’ as mercenaries, left graffiti
sciencenorway.no
sciencenorway.no
The works of Icelandic historian/poet Snorre Sturlason, he is most famous for what in English would be called 'Snorre's sagas of kings', which is widely regarded to be one of the most important books for Norway.
The Danelaw is also pretty interesting, but what I personally find even more interesting is the colonization and settlements in Ireland by vikings. Dublin, Cork, the Isle of Man and much more was settled by vikings. The Danelaw and settlements caused words from Old Norse to become fairly influential on English.
Someone else has mentioned Ibn Fadlan, who met vikings which came from the river Dnipro, which runs through modern day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Vikings traveled from Sweden towards Russia, giving the country it's name. The name Rus was first used about the Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, but later referred to the Kievan Rus.
The region of Normandie in France has it's name from the vikings, as Rollo the Walker was made ruler of the region by the king of France. This was allegedly after the vikings had tried to sack Paris for the n-th time. This deal was made on the premise that the people of Normandie would defend the rest of France from vikings and other raiders. Rollo the Walker is a direct ancestor of William the Conqueror, and by extension the British royal family.
The title jarl is often translated into English as earl, but the correct translation would be duke. Jarl is simply just etymologically related to earl.
Hope this random list wasn't too confusing, if anyone is interested in this I would gladly help with finding good English language sources!
I agree that the history of Vikings is way more fascinating and complicated than what's typically paraded about.
Shoutouts to Tore Hund!
> The men came with shields and sticks. She was given a cup of intoxicating drink; she sang at taking it and drank. The interpreter told me that she in this fashion bade farewell to all her girl companions. Then she was given another cup; she took it and sang for a long time while the old woman incited her to drink up and go into the pavillion where her master lay. I saw that she was distracted; she wanted to enter the pavillion but put her head between it and the boat. Then the old woman siezed her head and made her enter the pavillion and entered with her. Thereupon the men began to strike with the sticks on the shields so that her cries could not be heard and the other slave girls would not seek to escape death with their masters. Then six men went into the pavillion and each had intercourse with the girl. Then they laid her at the side of her master; two held her feet and two her hands; the old woman known as the Angel of Death re-entered and looped a cord around her neck and gave the crossed ends to the two men for them to pull. Then she approached her with a broad-bladed dagger, which she plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled her with the cord until she was dead.
Even without the Norman invasion, the British Royal family would be descendent from Norsemen through Godwinson's mother, daughter of Sweyn Forkbeard, grandchild of Harold Bluetooth (King of Denmark/Norway and inventor of frustrating wireless protocols).
After 1066, England was pretty awful for the Anglo-Saxon warriors/noblemen, a good number of them also fecked off to Byzantium and joined the Varangian guard like Vikings before them. They also created settlements in what is now Ukraine.
And the story of what happened to his heart is pretty interesting as well:
In the sources they show up just as often fighting in battles where the emperor was there and when he was not.
The did protect him on campaign, but that might just be because the were the primary infantry arm.
Some people think of them like the Praetorian guard, but that isn't really accurate.
Can you name something googlable or wikipediable so I can read more about this?
Free, high-quality history content, can't recommend highly enough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz...
[1] https://murtonpark.co.uk/for-schools/at-murton-park/viking/
The deal was also conditioned on religious conversion and allegiance to the King of France, and he also married the King's daughter.
Win-win.
This is not so simple. Titles and their significance change over time. During the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain, an "ealdorman" was the ruler of one or (later) more shires; during the end of the period the title was shortend into "earl". The title lost later more and more of its importance. "Duke" was originally a French title (from French "Duc") and started to be used in England from the middle of the 14th century -- long after the Viking Period. Therefore it would be very anachronistic to translate "jarl" with "duke". If you were looking for the highest official of a shire in todays England you may prefer the translation "High Sheriff" (a title created in the early 1970s), but which is more or less only ceremonial. So no, a "jarl" is best to be left an "earl".
Do you have a source for this, please?
The OED says that "Ealdorman" is cognate with "Alderman", while "Jarl" is cognate with "Earl". The titles were used interchangeably, but one did not come from the other. The distinction being that earls held power under Danelaw. Earl replaced ealdorman as the title of distinction in the mid-11th century due to the extension of the power of earls outside of Danelaw.
Instead of writing:
"during the end of the period the title was shortend into 'earl'"
I should have written:
"during the end of the period 'ealdorman' was replaced by the etymologically unrelated, but phonetically close and shorter 'eorl', that later turned into 'earl'."
What I wanted to say is that "earl", though somewhat anachronistic, can still be an exceptable translation of "jarl". When the emphasis is on contemporary jargon, it might perhaps best be left untranslated. Another alternative would be to translate it with "count", because contemporary Latin sources sometimes use the word "comes" to refer to a jarl; but this translation has its own difficulties because "count" entered the English language also late via the French "comte". The only criteria in favour of "duke" is the fact that this title was later often used in Scandinavia instead of "jarl" for functionally similar offices. Another option is to translate "jarl" with "chief", which corresponds to a more general early usage of "jarl"; however, this would indicate too low a status for most of the Anglo-Saxon period.
My personal preference for the Anglo-Saxon period is to leave it untranslated. If someone insists on a translation, "earl" would still be the best fit in my opinion.
Apparently the Anglo-Saxon chronicle refers to Ealdormen as "Duces", plural of Dux, same Latin root as Duc and then Duke. It just means leader. As far as actual meaning then "second highest noble rank to a King" would mean that Jarls and Dukes are equivalent noble titles.
The spanner in the works is after 1066, Earls became equivalent to Counts, below the rank of Dukes. I wonder if this is due to King William still being a Duke in fealty to the King of France? Maybe the Shires were smaller/less-powerful than Duchies like Aquitaine, Normandy etc.?
So it sounds like it went: Ealdormen==Duke then after Cnut, Ealdormen==Jarl==Earl==Duke and then after 1066, (Earl==Count)!=Duke.
Anything that covers that would be great,
The reason the French King gave them the region as a duchy, is because the Seine river, which passes in the middle of Paris, ends its course in present day Honfleur, Normandie. So Vikings would move their drakkars ships upstream from there and sack the city. Having Rollo installed as Duke put an end to the raiding.
It is said that when Rollo was made to kneel before Charles the Simple, to swear allegiance, he grabbed onto the king’s feet and threw him in the air. I don’t know if this is a true story, but it’s always amused me!
If you drive around Normandie today, you’ll see plenty of cars with drakkar stickers on their bumpers. A sign that many still identify with this heritage.
It's worth mentioning that Russia is only one population that branched from the Rus', and it did not claim the name Russia until the ~1700s when the Duchy of Moscow entered an expansionist period... Rus' = Russia is an oversimplification that implies Russian dominance of Belarus and Ukraine.
Roslagen comes from skeppslag, skepp as in ships, administrative regions which were required to each contribute one fully manned and equipped ship along with supplies.
A similar levy was taxed inland, called hundare (hundreds). There are three still remaining, the Chiltern Hundreds in Buckinghamshire.
“The name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (*Ruotsi), supposed to be descended from an Old Norse term for "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe […]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Rusʹ,_Russia_and_Ruth...
hǫfn is "old norse" for harbour or port. Now going to wiktionary and following the etymology:
hǫfn: From Proto-Germanic *habanō, *habnō (“harbour, haven”).
habanō: From Proto-Indo-European *kh₂póneh₂ or *kh₂pnéh₂, from the root *keh₂p- (“to take, seize, grasp”).
Other germanic words (like german "Hafen") for harbour/port also have a very similar lineage and derive from this "to take, seize, grasp".
So basically the harbour is the place you go to, when you are going "to take, seize, grasp", like when you invade other countries by sea.*
I'd say this is almost an understatement[0], its rather shocking how many very average, day-to-day intellectual items are Norse in origin. Almost as if English is some sort of creole when you add the massive simplification of Old English on the way to Middle English; the Norman host was a tiny fraction of the population of speakers in England.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_N...
Viking resumes and Viking guidance counselors must've been interesting.
"I'm sorry, I lied. I only have 1 year of experience of plundering at sea. And I wasn't captain of a fleet of pirate ships. My references are real though."
Maybe someone else knows his name and the letter reference better.
Some things never change, yeah.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001112875700300...
There's a lot of "I think..." in this so obviously this is totally based on speculation and from what I've seen in my encounters with Gen Z, where they generally seem pretty good and certainly no worse behaved than my fellow millenials :)
Have to admit that the movie Black Phone was much better than I thought because the children were portrayed very realistically in their dynamics and yet still we were reminded of their vulnerability in society as those without many rights or privileges that adults have. Furthermore, the child abuse… I don’t even flinch at some of the most brutal violence in media anymore because it seems so comical typically but I felt sick during that part.
Horror to me is reality oftentimes I guess and much of why I watch horror is to desensitize myself a bit about the horrors of our world.
That's because at least the "have it easy" part is factually true on a large scale. At least until now, it was a constant given that over generations, technical progress would make life easier for society as a whole. An example is the distribution of jobs by sector - in Germany, the generation of my father (born in the 70s) grew up with 50% of jobs being in agriculture and heavy industry, today 75% of jobs are classified as "service jobs" [1].
Add on top of that something that is incredibly common across migrant communities... they know they got treated badly and had to jump through tons of ridiculous hoops to immigrate to Germany, and so they strictly oppose relaxations of these rules because their trauma hasn't been recognized at all, much less made whole. And that mindset is similar in education - we still suffer through "frontal education", pointless selection after the 4th grade and other education crap because boomers think it would devalue their own sufferings.
[1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/275637/umfrag...
For the older generations, they do see it as a bad thing that society didn't make them whole on past transgressions. Taking the concept of "generational trauma" seriously is only a thing of the last 20-30 years.
> Cicero hoped that his son Marcus would become a philosopher like him, but Marcus himself wished for a military career. He joined the army of Pompey in 49 BC and after Pompey's defeat at Pharsalus 48 BC, he was pardoned by Caesar. Cicero sent him to Athens to study as a disciple of the peripatetic philosopher Kratippos in 48 BC, but he used this absence from "his father's vigilant eye" to "eat, drink and be merry."
It covers 200-1200 AD (roughly) with stories from around Europe and the middle-east, highlighting the access, travel, science, and art of the time, in a way that really shows that it was far less "dark ages" than commonly thought.
There really was a steep decline in civilization, cities emptied, many completely, literacy rates in the tank, many many people regressed to subsistence agriculture.
No it wasn’t the whole world, the successful successor states to the Roman Empire didn’t experience it. It was also not complete, but don’t make the naysayers mistake of overstating the contrary evidence.
I read a local book about violin makers. I was shocked at how many there were, in the almost entirely rural community around here. To me, making a violin requires some pretty serious, specialised woodworking skills. But they document hundreds of local farmers - subsistence farmers - apparently having those skills. And they don't even count those who "just made a fiddle or two".
Which isn't to say there can be no such thing as dark ages. When there's so much war and chaos that no one has time to build much of lasting value, whether materially or culturally, that's pretty dark. Yet the few things that come out of such times and places (the English border ballads comes to mind, or the hymns of Paul Gerhardt) can be all the more beautiful.
Acknowledging the byzantine empire means that you have to deal with an unbroken line to Rome and also Christianity
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard
Edit: Oh, the article actually mentions the same. I find it endlessly fascinating how interconnected the ancient worlds really were.
And there were Buddhists in the Roman empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarmanochegas
https://www.timesofisrael.com/groundbreaking-study-ancient-t...
"They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for a long course of time in Spain among the most savage tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race, however barbarous."
https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_Text...
Of course, this is a bit bizarre - but a good story!
And it's amazing to me how much work we need to do to understand the past. Though it seems like not all past cultures had it so difficult - those with e.g. strong oral traditions. Some Australian Aboriginal oral traditions recount accurately geographic features from thousands of years before.
Necessarily so - bronze required materials from different parts of the world.
I'm waiting for the sequel in the mail, "Master of the Revels: A Return to Neal Stephenson's D.O.D.O." by Nicole Galland herself. It appears Neal dropped off.
- Building housing and barns
- Chopping firewood
- Shipbuilding
- Wood working
- Weaving fabric (linen) from the summer harvest
- Ropes
- Leatherworking
- Metalworking/blacksmithing
- Pottery
- Animal husbandry
- Hunting
- Fishing
... and probably lots of other things that were necessary during those times. Of course Viking raids are a different means of acquiring a lot of the above.
(summer working holiday with potential for a long residency visa? also as old as the business of being mobile, and capable of fighting. The romans did it.)
Many animals mark their domain by peeing around. So "tagging" may have biological roots
Everything anyone does has biological roots. There is no part of any living thing that doesn't have biological roots. That's what "biology" is.
But, personally, I think if a behaviour is learned rather than e.g. a genetically programmed reflex, it's useful to draw a line between them and say that the former isn't biological in origin.
Going upthread a bit, I would expect tagging to be genetic, as it seems similar to other territorial markings created by other species. But I don't expect e.g. the specific shapes of Futhark runes to be, as the straight edges look like merely the easiest shapes to carve into rock and other writing systems aren't limited to those shapes even when (e.g. Egyptian hieroglyphics) they are carved.
Don't worry, I'm agreeing with you — I chose to use the example of shapes of runes as something unambiguously on the "learned" side, not as something close to the dividing line :)
> Socially taboo behaviors were used as a baseline as there are things that people will not tell each other but will tell a search engine.
That's piqued my curiosity. While on the basis of past experience I may regret asking… do you have a link to any results of this research?
It has a more personal link for me as I have one of the more distinct and rare genetic personalities and come from a long line of unusually smart assholes. It turns out clEDS causes a great deal of pain and when you complain about it people will tell you it’s normal, and how are we to know it’s not. Overtime it’ll change your brain chemistry and sabotage your life to the point you do become an asshole. There is also a strong link to intelligence, there is a fringe theory of RCCX genes explaining giftedness and I was one of those profoundly gifted children (clEDS is a recessive TNXB mutation, though I believe the official classification is wrong and the particular sub type of TNXB mutation matters). At school I was warned that people that gifted usually hit a wall pretty early on due to burnout, but really it’s chronic fatigue that starts to get really bad in the mid 20s. So it seems to be a Faustian bargain and I guess if given the choice I would chose it again, it certainly makes life more interesting. I hope that overtime I can figure out a solution to the pain, I’ve done much better than most and hope I’ll be able to avoid turning into an asshole, though some may say too late…
Fair enough; I can think of at least four things that might reference, so congratulations on remaining ambiguous ^_^
That will lead you into all kinds of obvious mistakes. The things you're capable of learning are set by your biology too.
(Rather the opposite: I have a long-standing fascination with the idea of genuinely unthinkable thoughts, thoughts which cannot be had no matter what).
So, while I would for example say that my capacity for complex language is biological in origin, I think it is more useful to describe my knowledge of Esperanto as not biological in origin.
The Lion of Piraeus actually originates from the Athens port city of Piraeus.
It was carved out of marble in ancient Greece. The lion is almost 2,400 years old.
The Venetians took the lion from Piraeus in 1688, after wresting control of the port city of Athens from the Turks in the Ottoman Empire.
The Vikings who had tagged the lion 700-800 years earlier were most likely Swedish and Norwegian mercenaries — called Varangians— in the service of the emperor in Byzantium.
@dang can we get a ( ~ 788 - 888 CE ) tag here please?
One really interesting tidbit was the route they took.[0] At first blush, I'd expect them to have sailed/rowed their longboats counter-clockwise around Europe, through the straights of Gibraltar and into the Med. But they actually took much more direct route--straight through Europe! They'd go east through the Baltic Sea, up a navigable river like the Daugava to a point where that river neared the Dneiper river, at which point they'd jump out and hump their boats down to the Dneiper, which would carry them to the Black Sea.
The world has small for a very long time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_from_the_Varangians_to_t...
Careers for graphic artists with BA degrees
Prehistoric art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art
1. "Encino Man" (1992) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encino_Man https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05fc8m&hl=en-US&q=Enc...
What surprised me is that Egypt and Israel were on the "probably" list.. which seemed plausible if they just kept going down the coast of North Africa.
Is that true? I mean the other inquisitions ended up with labeling other native people as savages or not fully human. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is true that they were just called bad because they had a pagan religion.
Any way, what I wanted to say was that the Vikings (strictly referring to the warrior class here) tended to be fairly abusive and brutal. Ibn Fadlan’s writings document some of the rather barbarous acts they engaged in.
According to wikipedia, no. Vikings were gone a good century before the inquisition existed at all.
> Is that true?
Probably not. The dates don't seem to even match for it to have happened.
And no, it isn't true. First, remember that by the time the first churches were built on the Scandinavian peninsula, Christianity had existed for about 700 years. Before that time, Christian ideas had perculated up and been incorporated, in garbled form, in Norse religion.
And even after that, they had 300 years to get to know what it was about until being Christian became a civic obligation like it was in the rest of Europe.
The viking raiders absolutely were savages, but the Norse did not identify with them, the way we equate them today. For them, viking was just the word for pirate, and if you did it - as could be tempting, seeing your neighbours come home with loot - you still probably wouldn't want to brag about it.
Is this really a thing or BS?
Those were the guards of the byzantine emperor, which were vikings that travelled to miklagard/constantinopolis/istanbul for such "summer jobs".
I have not come this far
To end, but to pursue my own thread
To join The Varangian Guard