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Northmen longphort6/10/2023 Partly, this was an over-reaction to the established view, and partly because after the two horrific world wars, conquest and empire-building no longer seemed such praiseworthy activities to Europeans. However, there was also a tendency to underplay the violent aspects of the Viking Age as mere monkish exaggeration. Archaeology uncovered evidence of peaceful Viking enterprise in the fields of crafts, trade, exploration and settlement, leading to a more balanced view of their lives. In the second half of the twentieth century this essentially military image of the Vikings came under increasing scrutiny. The helmets too have stuck in the popular imagination. It was also during this era that Vikings were equipped with their romantically barbaric, but historically inaccurate, horned helmets (the error originated in the misidentification by early Antiquarians of Bronze Age horned helmets as Viking helmets). Under the influence of national romanticism, however, ‘Viking’ became a synonym for ‘early medieval Scandinavian’ and the usage has stuck. The word is thought originally to have meant ‘men of the bays’, perhaps because that is where pirates lurked hoping to ambush an unwary merchant ship. If they used the term, medieval writers used ‘Viking’ specifically to describe someone who went í víking (plundering), that is a pirate, and not necessarily a Scandinavian one at that. It was in this period that the word ‘Viking’ subtly changed its meaning. The temptation for Scandinavians to hark back to a more heroic era when it was they who bestrode the world was irresistible. The Scandinavian kingdoms had become a European backwater, lacking influence on the world stage and playing no part in the global empire-building activities of countries like Great Britain and France. The medieval image of the Vikings as all-conquering sea rovers came to be seen in a positive light. Vikings remained frightening barbarians, on a par with the Vandals and the Goths who had plundered ancient Rome, until the ninteenth century era of national romanticism. The main chroniclers of medieval Europe were monks and understandably, as they were frequent victims of it, they dwelled on the Vikings’ plundering, burning and captive-taking (they had little to say about rape, perhaps because, as men, they had little to fear from them on that account, at least). It is these far-flung connections, and the daring spirit that created them, that give the Vikings their enduring appeal.Īttitudes to the Vikings have shifted over the years. Other Vikings crossed the Atlantic, leaving settlements along the way in the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, to become the first Europeans known to have set foot in North America. Vikings even penetrated the Mediterranean to attack Italy and North Africa. In the west, Vikings were active along the entire coastline of Western Europe, founding settlements in Scotland, England, Ireland and France. From their Scandinavian homelands, Vikings sailed east down the great rivers of Russia crossing the Black Sea to Constantinople and the Caspian Sea to reach Baghdad. No previous Europeans had ever seen so much of the world as the Vikings did. The Vikings were an unprecedented phenomenon in European history, not for any technological, military or cultural innovation that they contributed to – in most respects they were really rather backward and even their shipbuilding methods were conservative – but for the vast expanse of their horizons. Chapter 12: Largs, Reykholt and Hvalsey. Chapter 11: Palermo, Jerusalem and Tallinn.Chapter 10: Hedeby, Jelling and Stiklestad.Chapter 9: Maldon, London and Stamford Bridge.
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