My problem with Vikings

[Alexander's Horse]

I like the show, it's okay although I have seen better.

My main problem with it is I want the Vikings to lose. To me they are barbarians, throwbacks, backward ignorant people. I'm always sympathising with the civilised christians they are attacking.

I realise some of my ancestors were probably viking, freely or by force. It would be interesting to have a genetic test on that. Dublin for example was established by norsemen. I rather like the Vikings on some levels, feel an affinity to them.

But really - if the Vikings had been around during the Roman empire, they would have been smashed. They aren't much different from the Gauls or the Picts - open order undisciplined heavy infantry fighting in family groups, very little cavalry, even their ships are fragile for fighting, if very sea worthy. They are tiny by ancient standards. All the ancient Celtic armies had "shield maiden" and the like, primitive tiny ships. The Romans and other sophisticated civilisations like the Greeks and Egyptians laughed at them.

Romans called people like the Vikings "sea people". They had such raids in ancient times and they hardly rate a mention in Roman history.

The Romans would have seen them as little more than a nuisance, just another hairy tribe to go and punish with expeditionary forces. Their most likely response would have been to send fleets up to the Viking homelands, block their ports, destroy their meagre crops and raze their villages. Then let the survivors starve. The real weakness of the dark age Kingdoms was they didn't have strong naval forces and couldn't thus control or police the sea.

One neat trick the Romans had was to confiscate sacred objects and destroy temples - which suggested to whomever that their Gods were not pleased at them for taking on Rome and cast the Romans as God's vengeance. That sometimes pacified tribes more effectively over the long term than fighting. They'd start fighting among themselves, over who was to blame for the Gods displeasure. It was a sometimes overlooked aspect of Roman divide and rule tactics. It was one of the steps towards client states outside Rome's borders, who helped police the frontier. The Romans also had the resources to buy off peoples they couldn't or didn't want to subdue.

It would have been easy. Viking fighting tactics are unsophisticated and Roman legions were actually initially designed to fight people almost exactly like the Vikings.

The Vikings thrived because of the fragmentation of civilised Europe after the fall of Rome. Discuss.

[Lorizael]

The Romans were tyrannical, war-mongering, imperialist slavers who happened to write things down and build aqueducts and don't deserve to be revered as paragons of Western civilization. Discuss.

[The Mad Monk]

At the time, being war mongering slavers was normal; writing things down and building aqueducts was exceptional.

[Alexander's Horse]

I think Vikings appeal to people today because many of you have reverted to your primal state *runs*

[Proteus_MST]

Vikings had more in terms of battle tactics than you think (partially also reflected in the series) ... for example the shield wall.

Also you should be aware of the fact that it was the vikings and not the christians, who first discovered america ... that they also had lots of trade routes with distant lands and that there was a reason that the Baliseus of the Bazantine Empire chose Vikings as his personal elite guard (the varagian guard).

Also remember that the vikings, at a time when christians still were governed by kings and clerics, already had developed some form of democracy (with the Thing as a gathering of all farmers in the region, where mattrs of importance were being discussed and justice was spoken [in contrast to the false depiction in Vikings not by the Jarl, but by the people present in the Thing])

So maybe your depiction of the vikings as mere brutes may be a little bit misguided ... they may not have written books (after all the Futhark was only used for religious purposes) and may have burned monasteries and other hoards of knowledge ... but they also had topics where they were more advanced than the christians

[Alexander's Horse]

Vikings had more in terms of battle tactics than you think (partially also reflected in the series) ... for example the shield wall.

The shield wall is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Most ancient celtic and germanic armies did that. The Romans, or the Greeks for that matter, would have just rolled their eyes. It is easily defeated. For one thing it pins the force down, is static or at best very slow moving if formation is to be maintained. It actually makes it easier for trained missile troops and heavy infantry like Roman legionaries to isolate and break up barbarian formations, as their cavalry work around the flanks. The cavalry, if they had any, of Viking armies are very weak, basically just individuals who owned a horse, not trained formations.

In fact England's Alfred the Great decisively defeated the Norsemen, who were threatening to take over the whole country, by studying ancient Roman and Greek tactics and troop formations. They worked a treat against vikings.

[Proteus_MST]

The shield wall is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Most ancient celtic and germanic armies did that. The Romans, or the Greeks for that matter, would have just rolled their eyes. It is easily defeated. For one thing it pins the force down, is static, thus actually making it easier for missile troops and heavy infantry like Roman legionaries to isolate and break up barbarian formations, as their cavalry work around the flanks. The cavalry, if they had any, of Viking armies are very weak.

In fact England's Alfred the Great decisively defeated the Norsemen, who were threatening to take over the whole country, by studying ancient Roman and Greek tactics and troop formations. They worked a treat.

But was Alfred the Great exemplary for other christian kingdoms (and/or other british kings before him) ... or was he an exception (just like the swiss were in exception a few centuries later in rediscovering the Phalanx and stormrolling the late medieval world with it [until the other kingdoms adapted and formed their own versions of the tactic of course ... and/or hired mercenaries versed in this kind of warfare ... often swiss ones ]).

After all AFAIK early christian armys usually consisted of farmers which were levied into the army in times of war (and didn´t possess all too much discipline) accompanied by mounted noble troops (who also often lacked discipline due to their wish to gain honor in battle and therefore being too eager to ride blindlings into the battle [AFAIK something that would later cost the french dearly in a few battles of the hundred years war])

[Alexander's Horse]

Yes it was the loss of ancient regular forces, trained standing armies and navies of any size, which helped the Vikings a lot.

They had other great qualities - their navigation of open seas and exploration. It was partly technological advances by Vikings that made that possible. I am not against them.

[Dr Strangelove]

I think of "Vikings" as "Sons of Anarchy" with boats instead of motorcycles. Frankly many of the characters remind me of people I grew up with.

Remember that the Anglo-Saxons and Franks were pretty much mere brutes too. As has been pointed out, so were the Romans.

You know what did in the Romans? As an "act of kindness" they took in the Visigoths who had been harried by the Huns. They gave them worthless land and then when the Visigoths starved they gave them food in exchange for Visigoth children as slaves and Visigoth men as auxiliary soldiers. It's pretty clear that the Visigoths were treated as the new "n****s" of the empire. Eventually they so humiliated one of the most talented of the Visigoth auxiliary leaders that he went on a rampage that crippled the Empire for decades. Unfortunately before the empire recovered Attila arrived. Attila's troops weren't Turco-Mongolic warriors from the steppes of Central Asia, they were Slavs, Germans, Celts, disaffected minorities from the Empire itself, even Greeks to build his siege engines.

Actually the way Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings was more diabolical than that. He built a navy. One summer while the Vikings were raiding English soil he sent that navy to their homeland. They landed Anglo-Saxon soldiers on Viking soil and they began slaughtering Viking families. They sailed along the coast slaughtering potential future generations of Vikings. The Vikings returned home to discover that their families were dead. The next year they stayed home.

[Dinner]

They need to hurry up and release the new season on Amazon Prime.

[Alexander's Horse]

There is a point to what Doc says (and others) - I was very struck to learn that it was actually so-called barbarians that shut down the Roman circus and the collosseum because it was so cruel - to people and animals.

But the fact remains, the Vikings were pretty backward and I find most of the characters in the show unappealing violent yokels from the fjords.

[Elok]

I think the "horns" on the Minnesota Vikings' helmets look like sperm. Makes me wonder if they're sponsored by a fertility clinic, or what.

[Thoth]

I was very struck to learn that it was actually so-called barbarians that shut down the Roman circus and the collosseum because it was so cruel - to people and animals.

Dirty barbarian basterds spoiling the nice clean Roman fun.

[The Mad Monk]

But the fact remains, the Vikings were pretty backward and I find most of the characters in the show unappealing violent yokels from the fjords.

I think you're just pining for the fjords.

[Dinner]

There is a point to what Doc says (and others) - I was very struck to learn that it was actually so-called barbarians that shut down the Roman circus and the collosseum because it was so cruel - to people and animals.

But the fact remains, the Vikings were pretty backward and I find most of the characters in the show unappealing violent yokels from the fjords.

You should read the history of the real person the tv show is based upon. He had like five sons from four women grow to adulthood (he killed several of his own sons who had displeased him), carved a viking kingdom out of what is now the UK, but was finally caught and put to death by being thrown into a pit filled with poisonous snakes, and then his sons vowed revenge and created five additional viking states in the UK before mostly killing each other in a power struggle to see who would be king.