Why the Vikings Were Feared

[Judi Lynn]

April 08, 2014
Nazis of the North

Why the Vikings Were Feared

by PATRICK COCKBURN


Journalism is said to be the first draft of history, but it is often disappointing to find that the second or third drafts, by historians, move little further in establishing the truth about what happened. Errors made by reporters in the heat of the moment, instead of being eliminated, have become part of the authorised version. Factors that are crucial in creating the context within which events occurred go unmentioned.

That context is the mix of hopes, fears, hatreds and habits, frequently the fruit of an individual’s or a community’s previous history, which are so important in determining how they will act. This is particularly true of wars when, even a few seconds after being truly frightened, it is so difficult to evoke in one’s mind what those moments of terror felt like. “Can a man who is warm understand a man who is freezing?” Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously asks in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

The experience of mass fear, when large groups of people believe they are in danger of extermination or enslavement, is so important in shaping the historical instincts of countries and governments. Most European countries have suffered devastating war, foreign occupation or both over the past century, with exceptions being the British who remained unmarked by any recent experience of being wholly at the mercy of another’s armies.

For all the current focus on 1914 and the mass slaughter on the Western Front, the British experience of the First World War was, in many respects, not as bad as what is happening to the Syrians today. Britons were not driven from their homes and their whole families were not threatened, whatever death toll from the trenches. Most people are more frightened for their children than themselves, which is why the Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese wars created such all-embracing terror.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/08/why-the-vikings-were-feared/

[De Leonist]

1. Not entirely sure I agree with this.....

I'll admit I'm not an academic but I think I have a fairly good understanding of the subject for a layman. While certainly I don't deny that the Vikings had quite a capacity for violence to say that it's the equivalent of the modern conflict in Syria is quite a stretch,IMHO. For starters most raiding parties weren't that large. No where near the size of most forces fighting in Syria. Also at the beginning of the Viking Age Scandanavia was split into many different regional Petty Kingdoms.

The Author of that article makes it seems like he thinks that the Vikings were attempting a systematic mass slaughter of the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon Britain. I doubt that, mainly because Viking Age Scandanavians just weren't that politically or militarily organized. Norway, Denmark, and Sweden didn't come under anything even resembling centralized government until well into the Viking Age. Not to mention that there is very little evidence of any kind that the blood eagle thing was actually a real practice. I know of no archaeological or literary evidence outside of a few Sagas that the Blood Eagle Ceremony was actually practiced. I've read most of the source literature and certainly haven't seen anything like the Blood Eagle described and that goes for both Eddas and most of the Sagas I've read.

Again don't misunderstand me, The Vikings were warlike and violent, brutally so at times. I just don't buy the idea of equating the Vikings with Nazis. Especially when you take into consideration the fact that the Nazis were conducting what was a deliberate, systemic attempt at Genocide. While the Vikings were for the most part seeking to raid and/or colonize areas. Was it violent ? Yes Is it something that is totally against modern values ? Yes. But comparing a culture from a 1000 years that while violent wasn't actually all that more violent than many other Christian and Pagan Cultures on the Continent to the Nazis is just ridiculous.

I mean hell, Charlemagne killed 4200 people at the Massacre of Verdun just because they didn't want to be Christian. Not to mention he drove literally thousands of people from their original homeland and religiously suppressed thousands more. All this before the Viking age even started. In fact some historians posit that this is why Vikings started raiding Christian Europe to begin with. One of Charlemagne's worst victims were the Saxons living in what is now called Old Saxony. The Saxons were cultural cousins to the Vikings and practiced a faith very similar to theirs. Charlemagne conducted wars of Cultural and Religious Suppression of the Saxons that were far more systematic and organized.

Lastly, for the third time please don't get me wrong I am trying to say that it's okay or dismiss it. But dude the early middle ages were a very violent time. I honestly think this is unfairly singling the Vikings out. Now I don't deny that they raided the British Isles a lot and yes invaded it. But could somebody please tell me how what they did that was so much more violent or atrocious than every other Dark Age Culture in terms warfare ?

[Sunlei]

2. Perhaps not large force (except around their homelands) but very efficient in their boat travels.

Vikings must have traveled very far in their boats with their horses.( horses are very powerful boost to any attacker) . Recent DNA proof has shown a north American female Indian, DNA in Iceland's people Iceland's Sagas can trace their history back to the original Vikings who settled Iceland.

There was Icelandic horse DNA in one of the east coast USA island horses tested. Some of the original east coast of the USA, settlement homes were built over ancient stone lined,' cellars'?? that some say may have been built by Vikings.

I bet they used the abundant ocean seafood, never starved (like a lot of other east coast settlers did) and were brutal in taking what they wanted from any people they encountered.

[Orsino]

3. War is always terrifying in exact proportion...

...to the mobility and power of invaders preying on settled societies. The longboats projected just the right amount of force just quickly enough that coastal settlements could not depend on reinforcements by land or sea.

Men willing to go a-viking will probably always be able to terrorize civilized people in this manner.

[theHandpuppet]

4. Couple of articles that might interest you

Years ago I subscribed to a magazine called The Highlander and an article in one of those issues focused on the Vikings raids of Iona. I would imagine I could find it if I had the energy but goodness knows where I stored it. In the meanwhile, here are a couple of articles about those Viking raids:

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandshistory/britonsgaelsvikings/vikingraids/index.asp
http://www.ivargault.com/vikingene/iona/klostrene_en.html

[blackspade]

5. I think that Cockburn needs to stick with his area of expertise.

This passage stood out to me and undermines his whole thesis:

"The pro-Viking lobby claim this is exaggerated stuff and there is no proof of such Viking atrocities. But the absence of evidence is scarcely surprising. The invaders, themselves illiterate, were so destructive that almost no writings survive from the conquered Anglo-Saxon kingdoms."

The pro-viking lobby? WTF? And the absence of evidence is just that, an absence.
And the vikings were not illiterate, they had a system of writing.
And where does he think that much our knowledge of the vikings comes from? The Anglo-Saxons, who were the ultimate cultural winners even over the Normans, themselves descendants of Vikings.

There are just so many holes in his equivocation of Vikings to Nazis and Viking Age Europe to Syria it is hard to know where to start.