American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America

American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock

This book looks at the entire history of vikings in America. While it does explore the role of Scandinavians in general, it is primarily focussed on those from the viking age in particular. The Icelandic sagas contain some details of viking exploration in distant lands. This has been tied to the Newfoundland coast. Some archeological evidence has been found that corroborates the sagas. Nordic immigrants later adopted took interest in these stories to show their important role in American history (similar to how Columbus was adopted by Italians.) This led to "discovery" of many runestones and other artifacts - often in areas of Scandinavian populations. Many of these artifacts are likely fakes. However, there are some that do appear to be real. A viking coin found in a Native American trading area, indicates that the artifact may have been carried and traded from previous viking traders.

The vikings have become part of the cultural fabric of the United States. They are typically depicted as hyper-masculine horned-helmet wearing warriors. Vikings are especially popular in areas of significant viking immigration, such as the upper midwest. Nordic gods, such as Thor have became common pop-culture icons, especially known as a super hero. On the dark side, vikings have been adopted by white supremacists. However, this has been on the fringes and has not caused wide-scale negative impact to the respect of vikings.

It is interesting that historically, "viking" was more of an activity. Farmers may go out sailing and raiding. The vikings were just the people engaging in that activity. Today it has become more of a shorthand for the entire culture. The Scandinavians represented a small population area, but have had a large scale influence on society in general. 

River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads

The history of the vikings is most often told from those that lost to them. From their perspective, the vikings were enormous, cultureless warriors who came, plundered and left. They tended to exaggerate the negative impact of the vikings, while minimizing the positives.

In this history, Cat Jarman focuses on archaeological research to shed new insights into viking history. Certain artifacts can be traced through their history. The analysis of human remains has helped show the close familial relationships. Carbon dating can be used to obtain dates. However, it must be adjusted for the preponderance of seafood in the viking diet. 

The Vikings had advanced maritime skills. They also had a culture at home and abroad. They had traveled extensively to the east and west. They were Vikings to the western Europeans and the Rus in the East. They also made appearances throughout the Muslim world. To both Christians and Muslims they were heathens. They may have engaged in female infanticide, human sacrifice and held people in slavery. They also appeared to have some strong female leaders and a strong appetite for silver. They knew were the wealthy monasteries were located and targeted them. They intermarried with various parties that they fought. There is still more that we don't know than we know about their history.

The Long Ships

The Long Ships (originally Röde Orm in Swedish) is a viking epic set around AD 1000. The vikings have what would seem today as naive view of the world around them. They have a great sense of loyalty, and take what comes to them. The main goal is to seek out plunder and women to support themselves and their crew. However, with this lifestyle comes the likelihood of death or slavery.

The protagonists of the main religions of the day. A Jew helps lead them to a a great deal of plunder. However, they later fall victim to a Muslim leader who enslaves them. They take what happens. One viking is able to pick up the language. The vikings fight valiantly for their Islamic leader, adopt his religion and save his life. Eventually, the time arises for them to escape and they commandeer a ship to return home.

Back home, there are bouts of armed combat to resolve issues (often leading to the death of the loser.) Christianity has come to Scandinavia and many vikings convert. They often take a practical view to the religion. In Iberia, they convert to Islam as that god seems strong there. Later they convert to Christianity to restore their luck. Sometimes there are bits of confusion with the different religions.  The strong loyalty to family and one's word is often the predominant factor in guiding their life decisions regardless of the current religion.

The book is episodic, with many of the sections easily standing alone. The style seems to have been an inspiration for the Brotherband books by John Flanagan 

Norse Mythology

Norse mythology is not as well documented as Roman and Greek mythology. Stories were mostly written down in the Christian age in order to help with the understanding of some common expressions. The stories are a little different from the comic book versions. Loki is an integral part of the gods. However, he is a crafty trickster. He often gets into trouble with his trickery. However, he was a way of getting out of trouble also. Thor's hammer came from as a result of his plot to get Thor's wife's hair back. (He tried to make his dwarf crafters lose, but instead they made a "smaller" hammer that Thor ended up loving.) There are also stories that explain why salmon migrate upstream and other bits of "science". Interestingly, the stories had originated in a germanic area. There is a lot that is lot documented, and what we have was only written to help understand some of the Scandinavian sagas.

Vikings

Vikings is a series of lectures focussing on Scandinavia during the age of the Vikings (roughly a few hundred years on either side of 1000 AD). A little background is provided on the people before the time and how they split off from the the other Germanic people of the time. There is also a brief section at the end covering the christianization of Scandinavia and the integration in to Europe of the time. The bulk of the course, however, focuses on the sea-going exploits of the Vikings. With their technology, they were able to rapidly move around to raid, trade and plunder with minimal opposition. While they often participated in purely "business" missions, at times they stayed and adopted the habits and customs of the locals. Thus we get the Norman French, who were primarily a Viking caste that had adopted the French language.

The history of Britain and France from the Viking perspective is also enlightening. The battle involved a bunch of French who had recently immigrated from Scandinavia fighting against a bunch of Scandinavians and some English who had taken the throne from Scandinavians. Its like the USSR and US having a proxy battle in Vietnam. It ends up very important for Vietnamese history, but for the players, it was just a small part in the bigger picture.

The concept of "kings" is also enlightening. It seems anybody with Scandinavian ancestry can find plenty of kings in their family tree. Part of this was the natural reproductivity of kings (and their many wives). However, there were also a large number of kings. The Scandinavians didn't have large kingdoms until after they Christianized. Instead there were numerous "sea kings" who ruled small areas and led raiding parties.

The Vikings had led a very complex society. Alas, other than the Icelanders, they were not too keen on writing about their exploits. Thus most of what we hear from them is from their opponents.