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Comment by dmos62 | Hacker News Reader

Someone might find this interesting. Viking is a term for Scandivanians in a specific time-period, and it's also a term for pirates from the wider North European area in that specific period, because, interestingly, it wasn't only the Scandinavians that raided, but people living East of the Baltic sea raided the Western Baltic too. In other words, Vikings were getting Vikinged by non-Vikings, thus making them Vikings too. To be less tongue in cheek, there were a lot of similarities between the Western and Eastern Baltic cultures: both pagan, both had runes and somesuch, built similar ships, so as to say they had more in common than the raiding.

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Viking just meant raider/pirate.

> both pagan, both had runes and somesuch, built similar ships, so as to say they had more in common than the raiding.

No, they did not have runes. The runes were only used by various Germanic peoples. As far as I know the Baltic and Finnic pagans lacked a written language.

I've seen archaelogical artefacts from East Baltic graves with runes. The commentary in the exhibition stated that runes and rune-related shamanic practices were imported across the Baltic sea. I'm not a historian, I'm only conveying what I've been told by enthusiasts or casually ran into.

I suspect it might be neopagan wishful thinking. There is no knowledge of any such practices among the Norse at least. There is some weak connection between runes and magic through Odin but from what we know runes were used for every day stuff like accounting, who owns an object, contracts and personal letters. And of course the mostly Swedish practice of praising the exploits of your relatives on rune stones.

By the way, Viking is a historian term, as far as I know. It was not used in the period or at least not as it is used now. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Also, surely you wouldn't call (now or then) Mediterranean-born pirates Vikings.

Not an expert on the matter, just a Swede but it was used about pirates in general from any country in medieval Swedish and I think Icelandic. And it was used in period English and Frisian sources too, though there it might not have been about all pirates. It is also on a couple of rune stones but on the one I know of it is used to refer to the activity of going raiding.

> Viking is a term for Scandivanians in a specific time-period

Perhaps but culturally it's more widely used as a term for scandivanians "pirates/invaders" of said era. It is a well known term. Hell, we even have a football team named in their honor.

> it wasn't only the Scandinavians that raided

Did anyone say it was only the scandinavians who raided? Pretty much everyone raided. But the Vikings were just the most successful of the bunch and hence historically significant enough to remember.

Sigtuna got burned down by Finnish, Karelians, Estonians or Estonian Vikings, and this was 1187...

I wouldn't be surprised if Stockholm started out as an attempt to protect the cities around Lake Mälaren from raids. It is not known why the city is called Stockholm but one theory is that ot comes from logs driven into the lake to control who goes in and out of the lake.

Yes, and I think this specific incident may have motivated it, since it was founded not that much later.

What is 'pagan' here?

Everything before abrahamic religions is pagan or something more specific?

by definition, yes

Yes, from the context of Abrahamic religion and the cultures descended from it, all religions and cultures which are not Abrahamic are by definition pagan.

this sounds about right - the same yardstick was used by the British to define Hindus in India - people who are neither christian nor muslim.

In the context of European Antiquity and Middle Ages - this means the original polytheist religions of the Romans, the Greeks, the Slavs, the Celts, the Germanic people...

That's a somewhat sad question, because we hardly know. Not enough written record exists and "paganism" was increasingly outlawed during the past millenia to the point where we're out of people that had it handed down to them. The missionaries doing most of the recording were also the ones actively suppressing its survival. I'm aware of at least one revival movement that was active during the last 50 years, but the main instigator seems to have died without leaving a meaningful succession, and thus the preservation may very well have failed. Unless someone invents a time-machine a la Assassin Creed.

The etymology of the word 'pagan' originally meant hillbillies / dumb country people. It was a slur because the towns and cities adopted Christianity before the country people did. So, 'pagan' typically means the pre-Christian religions of Europe.

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