My problem with Vikings

[Sprayber]

It's a fun show to watch though the historical accuracy leaves much to be desired. It is a vast improvement over pawn stars and alien guy. Turn on AMC is another decent show. It isn't perfect either but at least it isn't portrayed as a the British being straight up evil.

My hopes for the next season Vikings is more naked Lagertha. If Rollo can fight bare chested, why can't she?

[The Mad Monk]

She reminds me of Mrs Horse. All propriety and indignation on the surface but likes a bit of rough trade like old horsie, or Rollo in this case.

...so not this horn?

[Alexander's Horse]

My hopes for the next season Vikings is more naked Lagertha. If Rollo can fight bare chested, why can't she?

Good point - some of those norse or celtic armies did have units called "naked fanatics" and the like. The early Greek hoplites fought naked - to scare people with their bits and help avoid dirty wounds.

Ratings would soar.

[Alexander's Horse]

One weird thing that is happening is I must have some sort of genetic memory of viking times, I'm cut from the same cloth, because I understand the spirituality and am constantly explaining it to Mrs Horse, who doesn't get any of it.

[binTravkin]

The shutdown of Colosseum and other Roman empire collapse related facts are misattributed.
Much of it did not happen because some benevolent barbarian leader come into it and said "this shall be no more!".
General systems collapse is the word.
Basically, once **** hit the fan in your economy, you stop doing many kinds of things and are suddenly vulnerable to all kinds of disasters.
Including your former inferiors (invited barbarians, "foederati") going on a rampage because you no longer can afford to pay your security (legions).

AHs initial description of vikings as not much more than the usual barbarian is almost correct, save for their adventures.
The adventures were enabled by their ships which were innovative for their time.
Consider these:

The particular skills and methods employed in making longships are still used world wide, often with modern adaptations.

The ship's shallow draft allowed navigation in waters only one metre deep and permitted random beach landings, while its light weight enabled it to be carried over portages or used bottoms up for shelter in camps.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longship

The strategic implications of such a technology are immense.
Consider the fact vikings created the modern Russia ("Rus" being a name of viking tribe), travelled its rivers with longships down to Caspian sea, Persia and Constantinople.
Vikings also used these ships to travel to America and, seeing as climate there and river spans are similar to European Russia (long waterways with portage possibilities), could as well have carved out a similar empire there, had fate turned slightly differently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_expansion

Strategic mobility achieved by Vikings was not surpassed until the Mongols and the naval/land mobility combination - not until steam power.

But that is not to glorify them, just to tell that they had some aspects in which they were superior to "common barbarians".

[jsorense]

And where are the horned helmets? :clueless:

[Bereta_Eder]

barbarians were called barbarians because they were not refined.

And by refined I don't mean refraining from farting in public but not having such things as hospitality but rolling in mud and eating uncoocked mamooth

[Bereta_Eder]

romans were barbarians too then they became something like civilized monkies and started making bad copies of everything
vikings were only good for scratching their armpits and making belching sounds

[Bereta_Eder]

And now let me speak at once of the race which is most dear to our rich men, and which I avoid above all others; no shyness shall stand in my way.

I cannot abide, Quirites, a Rome of Greeks;

and yet what fraction of our dregs comes from Greece? The Syrian Orontes has long since poured into the Tiber, bringing with it its lingo and its manners, its flutes and its slanting harp-strings:6 bringing too the timbrels of the breed, and the trulls who are bidden ply their trade at the Circus. Out upon you, all ye that delight in foreign strumpets with painted headdresses! Your country clown, Quirinus, now trips to dinner in Greek-fangled slippers,7 and wears niceterian 7 ornaments upon a ceromatic 7 neck! One comes from lofty Sicyon, another from Amydon or Andros, others from Samos, Tralles or Alabanda; all making for the Esquiline, or for the hill that takes its name from osier-beds 8; all ready to worm their way into the houses of the great and become their masters. Quick of wit and of unbounded impudence, they are as ready of speech as Isaeus,9 and more torrential. Say, what do you think that fellow there to be? He has brought with him any character you please; grammarian, orator, geometrician; painter, trainer, or rope-dancer; augur, doctor or astrologer:----

'All sciences a fasting monsieur knows,
And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes!' 10

In fine, the man who took to himself wings 11 was not a Moor, nor a Sarmatian, nor a Thracian, but one born in the very heart of Athens!

"Must I not make my escape from purple-clad gentry like these? Is a man to sign his name before me, and recline upon a couch above mine, who has been wafted to Rome by the wind which brings us our damsons and our figs? Is it to go so utterly for nothing that as a babe I drank in the air of the Aventine, and was nurtured on the Sabine berry?

"What of this again, that these people are experts in flattery, and will commend the talk of an illiterate, or the beauty of a deformed, friend, and compare the scraggy neck of some weakling to the brawny throat of Hercules when holding up Antaeus 12 from the earth; or go into ecstasies over a squeaky voice not more melodious than that of a **** when he pecks his spouse the hen? We, no doubt, can praise the same things that they do; but what they say is believed. Could any actor do better when he plays the part of Thais, or of a matron, or of the nude Doris? You would never think that it was an actor that was speaking, but a very woman, complete in all her parts. Yet, in their own country, neither Antiochus 13 nor Stratocles,13 neither Demetrius 13 nor the delicate Haemus,13 will be applauded: they are a nation of play-actors. If you smile, your Greek will split his sides with laughter; if he sees his friend drop a tear, he weeps, though without grieving; if you call for a bit of fire in winter-time, he puts on his cloak; if you say 'I am hot,' he breaks into a sweat. Thus we are not upon a level, he and I; he has always the best of it, being ready at any moment, by night or by day, to take his expression from another man's face, to throw up his hands and applaud if his friend spit or hiccup nicely, or if his golden basin make a gurgle when turned upside down.

"Besides all this, there is nothing sacred to his lusts: not the matron of the family, nor the maiden daughter, not the as yet unbearded son-in-law to be, not even the as yet unpolluted son; if none of these be there, he will debauch the grandmother. These men want to discover the secrets of the family, and so make themselves feared. And now that I am speaking of the Greeks, pass on to the schools, and hear of a graver crime; the Stoic 14 who informed against and slew his own young friend and disciple 15 was born on that river bank 16 where the Gorgon's winged steed fell to earth. No: there is no room for any Roman here, where some Protogenes, or Diphilus, or Hermarchus rules the roast----one who by a defect of his race never shares a friend, but keeps him all to himself. For when once he has dropped into a facile ear one particle of his own and his country's poison, I am thrust from the door, and all my long years of servitude go for nothing. Nowhere is it so easy as at Rome to throw an old client overboard.



decimus, feeling a bit overwhelmed