Vikings

Between all the ahistorical claptrap and the fact they directly went against their earlier saying that they weren't moving past the snakepit, I fully expect everything right down to Ragnarok to eventually happen. Because fuck history, on the History channel, it's all about drama, ratings, and telling Game of Thrones "I wanna be just like you because you're the bestest ever!"

Eh, I actually came across something that I think will be the endpoint of the series: Aethelwulf (despite getting his butt kicked in the Season 4 finale) will be responsible for slaughtering a huge amount of the GHA, likely at some point in the future.

Seriously, I think the Vikings need another slice of humble pie like the time they got their asses kicked by that alliance between Aelle and Ecbert.

He could be. We'll have to wait and see. They're so far off the rails by now that anything is possible.

I mean, in real life the Viking Age lasted at least a century and they almost completely conquered the main isle of Britain. It took the King of Linuis inventing the British stone castle to hold them at bay and turn the tide in real life. And that was a tiny-ass Kingdom.

I know. It just makes me angry at how the Vikings almost never suffer any failures. Attacking one of the greatest cities in Europe during the time period? Surely they'll be defeated-oh wait, they got in because one of their number managed to sneak in and blackmail them into opening the way and surrendering.

The Saxons have better weapons and are more numerous, let's see if-oh wait, apparently no one in Anglo-Saxon England has ever heard of flanking and better swords are completely useless against Plot Armor.

Not to mention their smug Can't Argue With Vikings mentality.

Having not seen The Tudors I can't say whether the writer is good in general. He totally botched this one, but let's face it. . . History Channel never wanted this to be a historical show to begin with. They've been sliding for years into the Historical Fantasy channel, and it's utterly stupid.

History shows and movies are never accurate.

It's funny cause to me, this is one of the few things History Channel is even trying on. I mean c'mon guys, this is a *few* notches above Ice Road Truckers, right? I liked the dry documentary days of History and TLC, Discovery, etc, when you actually got content that tried to be educational (even if it was often dumbed down crap to be honest, sometimes you got groundbreaking work like Desmond Morris's miniseries), but if it's this or grown men building treehouses or pretending that backcountry survival involves building huge campfires by rubbing sticks together while naked, this looks pretty good.

That said even I can't justify the weird crap in the last episode. Almost every major character went off the historical rails. Leads me to think they didn't plan to do another season and several actors had other obligations due to this and refused to return.

However, if we were going true to historical accuracy, the Vikings would have considerably more plot armor than they do. A lot of the variances have been to add conflict and drama to something that would more accurately be a complete domination.

edited 7th Feb '17 10:42:52 PM by lvthn13

I mean in real life the Paris attack was more or less a Viking failure. And Alfred the Great was reasonably successful at repelling the Great Heathen Invasion.

Which Paris attack?

Wikipedia mentions an 845 Siege of Paris led by Ragnar Loðbrók, which it summarizes thusly: "After plundering and occupying the city, the Vikings finally withdrew after receiving a ransom payment of 7,000 French livres (2,570 kilograms or 5,670 pounds) of silver and gold from Charles the Bald." This one would appear to be a pretty decisive Viking victory, since they sailed off with a literal heavy truck's weight in precious metal after making themselves quite at home.

It further mentions an 885-86 Siege of Paris led by Rollo which concluded with a failed Viking attack that nevertheless caused the king to "allow them to sail further up the Seine to raid Burgundy (which was in revolt), as well as promising a payment of 700 livres (257 kg) of silver." This one is listed as a Frankish victory, but if you offered me 257 kg of silver to go mug someone else, I wouldn't feel like I was badly beaten in the encounter. Rollo of course went on to do other interesting things while not being Ragnar's brother.

The siege on the show was a combo of Ragnar's siege, Rollo's siege, and Bjorn Ironsides (Ragnarsson)'s infiltration/sacking of Luni in Italy.

As a general course, the Franks paid the Vikings off. In fact, they were often willing to give the Vikings practically all of their wealth, since the alternative seemed to be getting slaughtered and having that wealth taken from your dead hands anyway.

As for the Great Heathen Army, forgive the large copypasta:

"During 868, the army marched deep into Mercia and wintered in Nottingham, where it was besieged by a joint force from the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex. With no progress being made, the Mercians agreed to terms with the Viking army, which moved back to York for the winter of 869–70. In 870, the Great Army returned to East Anglia, conquering it and killing its king. The army moved to winter quarters in Thetford. In 871, the Vikings moved on to Wessex, where Alfred the Great was content to pay them to leave. The army then marched to London to overwinter in 872 before moving back to Northumbria in 873. It again returned to Mercia, conquering it in 874 and overwintering at Repton on the River Trent.[2] By this time, only the kingdom of Wessex had not been conquered by the invading Vikings. It was towards the end of 875 when the army started their second invasion of Wessex. After a few setbacks, Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Edington, and a treaty was agreed upon, whereby the Vikings were able to remain in control of much of northern and eastern England."

In summary, the Vikings did Viking things for several years, Alfred bribed them in the accepted manner to go elsewhere, then later fortified his kingdom and forced a peace in which the Vikings retained control of much of Britain.

The Vikings were the direct catalyst that created the High Middle Ages in the first place. They weren't unstoppable, but they were among (if not outright) the best fighting forces of the day. Most countries paid them off or even hired them as mercenaries rather than fight against them. A lot of that was the naval mobility. Given they could pop up anywhere there was a decently wide, shallow river, most places were within a day or two's march for them. Plus they knew their enemies and weren't afraid to fight dishonorably. It took stone walls and breeding up a dedicated force of soldiers to make sure their kind never got that much power again.

You all are aware that the Vikings actually won, right? This is just one of the rare cases of history being written by the losers, since the Vikings weren't much into writing.....

edited 8th Feb '17 10:06:59 AM by Swanpride

Yeah, the Vikings won. I'm not complaining about the Vikings winning. For the most part they curbstomped Europe until the locals wised up and created knights.

My complaints are over the hyped up stupidity and drama the show throws in. I really think they expected to stop with Ragnar in the snake pit but were told not to stop there after all.

That's an exaggeration of the impact of the Vikings in European history.

The best fighting force in Europe outside of the Byzantine Empire was the Frankish heavy cavalry (= knights). And that's true from the very beginning of the Viking Age. The Vikings owed everything to their ships.

And they did not always win. They failed at invading Wessex twice. They failed to take Paris despite besieging it for 13 months. They gave up invading Germany after a defeat in 891.

The Vikings were also great profiteers of political disunity and conflict among their victims. After the Franks had sorted out their internal conflicts, they did much better against the Vikings, as did the English after Alfred's invention of a 'Kingdom of the English'.

Yeah, I already had that corrected for me during the lull. Always did wonder about that interpretation but never bothered looking for anything to actually disprove it. It was a pretty common one.

Sorry if I sound like a smart-alec. But I feel like it's a worthwhile observation that the remarkable pop-cultural appeal of the Vikings is not entirely explicable by their impact on history.

Given that a great deal of the population of the British Isles and northern Europe is general are the descendants of Vikings, including through intermarriage, I'd say their actual influence is drastically understated by most media. They're much like the Mongols in this regard, treated as rampaging barbarians who merely won a lot of battles thanks to some clever, "cheating" method of implementing combat mobility and guerilla tactics, when their real impact goes well beyond that and is actually a much deeper story.

Britain went from being a feuding backwater with no power, no defenses, and no navy, to a great power with heavy fortifications, a professional fighting force, and a naval tradition that is still respected and in existence to this day - right after extended contact and occupation by a culture of universally feared warriors and world-class sailor explorers. Indeed, the British Empire would seem to reflect ongoing Viking traditions of exploration, conquest, raiding, and commerce, but without being historically depicted as savages.

And as we know, the British never colonized anything of importance...

Not sure what naming a handful of defeats in battle indicates? Some of the most famous battles in history are Roman losses, and yet the Romans are strong contenders in any conversation about the "most influential civilizations of all time". Which fighting force in history always won, even at its peak?

Media portrays historical conflicts as though their are clear victories. But if the people up the street moved into your family's home against your will, forcibly married your sisters, confiscated your bank account, and remained there for a couple centuries until all of your descendants were shared descendants and the head of the household was largely descended from their side of the family, would you feel like they were "defeated" if they eventually chose to start attending your family's church and agreed that their ancestors were very brutish to move in they way they did?

Eh. From what I've heard it was Henry VIII that is the real founder of England's naval tradition.

And the Vikings along with the Normans left little genetic influence in Britain.

https://www.google.com/amp/natureworldreport.com/2015/03/study-shows-vikings-normans-had-little-genetic-influence-in-britain/amp/?client=safari

The British on average share 30 % of their DNA with modern Germans and 40 %of their DNA with the modern French

Indeed. Alfred the Great's navy wasn't a very impressive force, it was just a very basic defensive navy and it in no way deliberately modeled after the Viking nautical tradition. As a matter of fact, Alfred's warships were a lot larger, heavier and sturdier than the Viking ships, which is why they had some success beating back the Viking ships.

It is one thing to say the Vikings are underrated as far as their historical impact goes, but it is fairly absurd to assume they basically founded modern England or had any relation to the British Empire. Alfred's England was not a superpower (it was barely a nation), and the Anglo-Saxons were proud, fearsome warriors on their own before the Vikings even arrived in England. It was not a question of warrior doctrine, but a matter of tactics. Vikings relied on lightning raids, and the English were too disorganized to properly mount a counter-defense.

The great impact of the Vikings in English culture was providing the English a reason to get their shit together and unify around Alfred the Great. But the actual reforms conducted by Alfred had nothing to do with the Vikings other than the fact the military ones were designed to counter their tactics and grind them into fine nordic powder, which is a important aspect, but implying the Vikings taught the Saxons how to fight is odd at the very least.

Seeing the Viking attacks on England as a overwhelming Viking victory is tempting, but it requires forgetting that hundreds of the Vikings were wiped out in battle, starved to death or were struck by famine. It's no wonder that out of the Great Heathen Army leaders Guthrum seemed to be the last man standing. Ivar, Halfdan, Sigurd, Bjorn, all either gave up or died. Guthrum himself had his army destroyed and became a subject of Alfred's essentially.

The Vikings surviving a defeat and even being paid do not imply victory. These things are complex. If you went to a foreign land to conquer it and ended up losing some 2/3rds of your men and ended up subjugated to said foreign land's King you would not be feeling very victorious.

I enjoyed the current series, but in my household, Alyssa Sutherland's character was a very Base-Breaking Character - unlike Lagertha.

All the show needs now is some more new actors - maybe bring in Jennette Mc Curdy in future seasons?

The Saxons and Vikings were essentially the same group, anyway. They came from roughly the same area, fought the same way, had previously had a tradition as proud warrior barbarians with a sailing culture...

Then again the reason both sides aren't fighting with shield walls is because having a push-fight be the fight scene in every episode is an awful way to film fight scenes because it's dull.

Sounds impressive, but is not that special in reality. Any person that lived a thousand or more years ago likely has a huge number of descendants today, provided they had offspring at all. It's not like the British Isles would be devoid of people today, had it not been for the Vikings.

Mad Skillz and Gaon have already pointed out what is wrong with this, so I don't need to repeat it. One thing I might add is that sophisticated stone castles were first built in England by the Normans, who had learned it in France. They were not built as defenses against the Vikings.

It indicates that the Vikings were defeatable, like everyone else.

People have this image of two-meter-tall berserkers charging into battle with „Odin!“ as their warcry, pulverizing doddering, unathletic Christians who stand no chance because their religion has made them too spiritual and non-violent to be much good in a fight (the show has had some samples of this).

But that is tropes, not reality. The opponents of the Vikings were not incompetent pansies. When the conditions were equal for both sides, the Vikings were not an especially strong fighting force. They did not have better weapons than their victims. They were opportunists who always looked for the easiest way to make the largest haul.

People recognize and know about the Vikings because they are immortalized in pop culture. But consider that the Vikings in their day were only one of three non-Christian peoples who raided Christian Europe on a large scale. The others were the Hungarians (who in the 9th and 10th century raided Central and Western Europe as far as France, Italy, and Northern Germany) and the Saracens, i.e. muslim corsairs from North Africa (conquered Crete and Sicily and sacked many towns in southern Europe, including Rome in 846).

Good luck finding fiction about pagan Magyars or Saracen sea-dogs, though. Looking at the plain facts, the Vikings weren't drastically more important in history than those other two. But they have made it into modern pop culture, while those others haven't.

If your chief complaint is that:

a) Vikings were not movie protagonists, merely professional warriors;

b) Huns, Mongols, Visigoths, Scythians, Tatars, etc, all were likewise influential in some degree as well

Then I'm not really seeing the point of disagreement? My points about Viking influence Britain have been somewhat oversimplified for the sake of fitting it on tvtropes (and by others, to make it easier to refute), but my real point is that long term contact with Vikings had a profound influence on the entire region. It's somewhat ironic that you mention Normans bringing stone castles to Britain, from France, since the Normans themselves were the descendants of Danish Norsemen.

The reason you see more Vikings than Magyars in western media is pretty simple - they influenced the area that directly spawned the English speaking world. English histories of Europe are largely derived from a British point of view, including histories written by many/most Americans, because English sources are obviously the most accessible. Viking exploits were also well recorded in many cases; good luck finding the same body of available literature for many of these peoples.

Doesn't hurt that Norsemen and their descendants left behind reasonably good (not great, but reasonable) records of their exploits and religion. It's often lamented that details of Norse religion are fuzzy due to being written down later by Christians, but compared to lost native religions like that of the Lusitanian people, it's a bonanza of information. I don't even think Estonian mythology has anything quite comparable to the sagas, at least nothing I've found in English.

edited 15th Feb '17 2:06:27 AM by lvthn13

I'm not complaining. At least not in a general way. I'm just commenting on the fact that a) as far as ancient civilizations go, the Vikings enjoy a remarkable pop culture street credibility; and b) this pop culture impact is disproportionate to their historical impact.

Many people assume that, because of their high media exposure, the Vikings must also have been very important to European history. But they weren't all that important. Less important than the Franks, for example, and how often are the Franks represented in modern fiction – except as supporting part in Viking-themed media?

I think I understood you perfectly, and I think you are wrong. Obviously they had an influence, but when you credit the Vikings with the English naval tradition, or the British Empire, you are constructing continuities were there are none.

Around the year 1000, seafarers from Iceland and Norway reached North America. The first English ship reached North America half a millennium later, captained by a native of Italy, in a ship type developed in Portugal.

Not to mention the Portuguese, the Spanish, and before them the Arabs, the Greeks and Phoenicians and who knows who else all engaged in sea-based commerce, conquest and colonizing without needing the Vikings to teach them these things first. Why should the English, of all peoples, need the Vikings to trigger such a development?

You're also unclear on how this influence you speak of works. Did the Viking attacks force the Anglo-Saxons to shape up and build better fortresses or ships? Or did they learn these things from the Vikings by observing and copying them? Or did the Viking settlers in England, by intermarriage, infuse the Anglo-Saxons with Viking genes that made them better sailors or more aggressive and enterprising?

I almost expected you would say this, because you count everything that someone descended from Vikings did as owed to "the Vikings". By that logic, you might say that the Vikings laid the foundations for quantum mechanics, because Niels Bohr (a Dane) won the Nobel Prize in 1922.

Of course, the Normans were descended from the French as much as from the Vikings; I wonder whether it were their French or their Danish genes which enabled them to conquer England.

And here you are wrong; of course medieval chroniclers recorded the raids of Hungarians and Saracens just like those oft the Vikings. If it was otherwise, we would know very little about these raids.

Now you're hitting the mark. Vikings are popular in the Anglophone world because of their role in the formation of England, especially as the enemies of King Alfred. If it wasn't for their part in the English national mythology, Vikings would not nearly be as popular today.

But the British Isles were a peripheral part of Europe until the Tudor area. The Vikings may have been an existential threat to the Anglo-Saxons (for a short time), but that does not mean they were for Western Europe as a whole.

Let's sort this out: The Norsemen of the Viking Age did leave very few records of their exploits or their religion. What you're thinking of is Scandinavian/Icelandic literature of the High Middle Ages, which started to be written generally at least a century after the Conversion, more often two centuries or more. To call this literature "records" or "information" is an euphemization. It is a mixture of history, legend, and fiction. In some ways you might call it a mythology all of itself.

It is, however, true that without the Icelandic Eddas and Sagas, and books like Gesta Danorum, we would not have Vikings as pop culture icons as we have them today. Because these works allowed the English literary world of the 18th and 19th century to (re-)"discover" the Vikings as positive figures worthy of admiration, rather than the heathen villains described in works from the actual 9th century. It is also from this time on there is a tendency to see the Vikings as related to the English, rather than as foreign "others". Not least, by the way, because patriotic English Viking enthusiasts made the connection between Viking raiding, trading and conquering and (social darwinism sends its regards) British colonialism.

Also, we're getting in a weird zone about what qualifies as "Vikings." That kind of covers a massive number of different cultures.

Are the Normans still Vikings?

Are the Germans?

Um, no. The Vikings were specifically RAIDERS from Scandinavia. It was a job description. That being said, stuff that probably wouldn't have happened without them could still be attributed in part to them. William the Conqueror wasn't JUST French. He was a direct descendant, at least in legend, of the real Rollo himself. The very Viking who founded the Normans. And that, in his eyes, gave him a claim against the Saxon King of England.

Maybe William the Conqueror would have come up with some excuse of his own without the Viking Blood story, but it gave him a convenient claim to do his conquering.