Does the reputation of the Vikings need reassessing (again)?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I'm reading Simon Schama's 'History of Britain', and he reckons that the Viking revisionism is bullcrap, and they were a bunch of murdering bastards. So they might have done some nice trading as well, but they were pillage-and-slaughter merchants, and the archeology backs this up.

To put this in context: Charlemagne waged war on the Lombards, the Danes, the Saxons and the Avars and the Muslims in Spain and was hostile to the Byzantines in southern Italy.

He massacred Saxons, destroyed their sacred site, the Irminsul, and effectively operated his state on a booty economy principle.

In Ireland, monastic foundations were frequently tied to the local tuatha or tribe or clan; pre-Viking Irish history has instances where monasteries attacked each other's holdings in partnership with their clan- not dissimilar in that respect to warring Buddhist foundations in mediaeval Japan.


The written records we have in the West tend to be from clerics, or based on recollections of clerics. The invocation :

"From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord deliver us."

does not actually appear in any surviving Church litany of the time.


Records from the world of Islam do portray a slightly different aspect, dealing with the life of Viking traders amongst the Bulgars inhabiting the Volga bend, and one hardy Jewish Arab traveller, Al-Tartushi, left an account of the entertainment at the Viking trading centre of Hedeby:

Never before I have heard uglier songs than those of the Vikings in Slesvig (in Denmark).

The growling sound coming from their throats reminds me of dogs howling, only more untamed.

To be fair, adventurous Vikings did attack Muslim Lisbon, Al-Andalus and North Africa, and launch an assault upon Baku.

They also left runic inscriptions on the shoulder of the Piraeus Lion (now in Venice) and on a balcony in Haghia Sophia, where the runes for ' -alftan ' can still be made out- probably a bored Viking idly scratching his name during what appeared to be an interminable Orthodox service- 'Halfdan was here'.