Vikings just misunderstood?

[Prufrock]

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/nov/20/artefacts-reveal-vikings-were-more-urban-pioneers-than-violent-raiders-ribe

[Duncan Head]

Surely nobody's thought Vikings were "just" raiders for fifty years or more?

I still wouldn't want to be raided by them, though.

[Erpingham]

When i was at university 40 years ago, my lecturers were at pains to explain that what i was taught about Vikings just being pirates that I'd been taught at school was all wrong.  They were really primarily traders who built major trading emporia and urban centres, with a sideline in rape loot and pillage and silver collecting.  Obviously, after innumerable TV series and books on the subject, this radical idea is now reaching newpaper sub-editors. 

[Mick Hession]

Surely nobody's thought Vikings were "just" raiders for fifty years or more?

I still wouldn't want to be raided by them, though.

Precisely. And when slaves are one of the major commodities you're selling the distinction between raider and trader is academic.

Cheers
Mick   

[Patrick Waterson]

While it is as well to recognise that the Vikings had their own particular culture and did not spend all their time raiding, there seems to be a developing drift towards a school of thought that they never seriously raided at all.

From the Viking point of view, it was fairly simple: if you were trading, you pulled up off the coast without fixing the dragon heads on your stem and sternpost.  You would then drop some goods at the beaches and the locals would go through the process of piling up their own stuff until you felt you were getting value for money - or beads, or whatever.  If going raiding, you pegged on the dragon heads, arrive with as little warning as possible and do largely irreversible things to houses, sheep and women.

If the Vikings were really 'more urban pioneers than violent raiders', one wonders why the records of their contemporaries mention rather a lot of raiding but for some reason no particular activity in 'urban pioneering'.  Surely the prayer of the period: From the fury of the Norsemen, O Lord, deliver us! would have rather been: From the deceits of Northmen traders, O Lord, deliver us.

"It could be that the raids were actually the tip of an iceberg of trade .."

Not entirely sure what this is supposed to mean: perhaps, for example, that the monks of Lindisfarne might be more amenable to trading religious items at favourable rates once the raiders had wiped them out?

[Andreas Johansson]

Since the use of "Viking" as an ethnic label is one of my pet hates, I feel compelled to point out that in Old Norse, víkingr means "seaborne raider" or similar. A peaceful trader is a kaupmaðr*.

Now the same man may be either depending on circumstances, but then he's being a víkingr precisely when he's not being peaceful.


* Etymologically identical to the English surname "Chapman", literally "buy[ing] man". The first element also gives us English "cheap".

[Erpingham]

If the Vikings were really 'more urban pioneers than violent raiders', one wonders why the records of their contemporaries mention rather a lot of raiding but for some reason no particular activity in 'urban pioneering'.

Did no-one mention places like York, Dublin, Waterford or Limerick when talking about Vikings?  What about Hedeby?  Or Kiev?  The idea that Vikings didn't raid is silly but the idea that they weren't noted for their urban centres is hard to accept too.

[Swampster]

Hopefully Andreas will be pleased to know that I tried to make the distinction between Viking as raider and Norse as an ethnic descriptor to my 10-year olds yesterday.

[Erpingham]

Apologies to Andreas for terminological inexactitude.  However, Scandinavian settlers/invaders/traders in the Early Middle Ages are commonly referred in British history by the catch-all Viking, despite it being a job-description rather than a cultural origin.

[aligern]

After a period of raiding and presumably trading the Vikings ( Nirse if you prefer) attacked Nirthumbria and killed its king, installing a puppet to run the pkace in their absence. They then ( next year.) returned and took East Anglia and crushed Mercia, installing a puppet king . So after a period of raiding and destabilisation the Nirse had moved to a carefully planned takeover of  the Anglo Saxon staes whereby the local kingdom is beaten and a local stooge is installed to keep the inhabitants in order whilst the Scandinavians  go get more of their own people, farmers traders and families. This is conquest on a planned basis. Having picked upon a country they decide whether it is worth the expenditure of effort...presumably a rational balancing of the likely rewards in terms of fertile land, slaves , nearness to home  versus the toughness of the inhabitants.

I buy the story that the 'Vikings'  are more than raiders and that they do found towns, but the raids are the orecursor to conquest . Even trade is preceded by the destruction of ports in Frisia and Flanders, ir do the archaelogists just think its a matter of competitive oressure? Was York not a trading centre before it was taken over?
By the way I also get the point that other states and armies were just as destructive when waging war in this oeriod and that Charlemagne's treatment of the Saxons was harsh ( but only when these recidivist pagans rebelled).  Also of course Mediterranean Moslems and Hungarians could spoil your day.  In a brutal period the Vikings were brutal, but they added a dimension. In Western Europe you were at risk when there was a war or when you lived on a known frontier. The Vikings knew no frontiers, they could appear almost witnout warning anywhere. For Monks , who after all are doing the recording, and who are trying to live weapon free lives , the feeling that what had been planned as retreats from the secular world had now become tempting targets on the front line .

[Prufrock]

Yes, a strange article. I'm not sure who the people supposed to hold the opinion that "that all the Vikings did was to raid and to rape" are. And the idea that musicianship, craftsmanship and trade being part of the culture should be considered extraordinary is again odd. 

[Dangun]

Yes, a strange article. I'm not sure who the people supposed to hold the opinion that "that all the Vikings did was to raid and to rape" are.

A classic strawmanning.

[Patrick Waterson]

If the Vikings were really 'more urban pioneers than violent raiders', one wonders why the records of their contemporaries mention rather a lot of raiding but for some reason no particular activity in 'urban pioneering'.

Did no-one mention places like York, Dublin, Waterford or Limerick when talking about Vikings?  What about Hedeby?  Or Kiev?  The idea that Vikings didn't raid is silly but the idea that they weren't noted for their urban centres is hard to accept too.

But were they, other than by today's archaeologists?  The standard for urban centres was set by Constantinople and Rome, beside which even Charlemagne's capital Aachen was distinctly prosaic and rudimentary.  Norse (in the interests of accuracy it is perhaps best to keep 'Viking' as a raider descriptor) urban centres impressed Slavs, Irish and modern archaeologists but not, as far as I know, the generality of contemporaries.  Considering the Norse to be 'urban pioneers' puzzles me: what exactly were they supposed to have been pioneering?

I agree that recognition of their urban endeavours is due; overstatement of their level of sophistication of urban development is not.  It is one of those balance things.

[Erpingham]

The standard for urban centres was set by Constantinople and Rome, beside which even Charlemagne's capital Aachen was distinctly prosaic and rudimentary.

Not really.  They were in a class of their own.  You have to be looking at what the Norse did (if that is what we are calling them) in the context of Northern Europe, which lacked cities of great antiquity and splendour.  So, in England, you compare the Five Boroughs with Anglo-Saxon Burhs.  In Ireland, you note the lack of urban centres prior to the Scandinavians.  There weren't many urban centres on the Russian river system before the Rus got there, I think.   Scandinavian urban development was also important in the Baltic.  So I don't think we can just have our Scandinavians sailing about and living in rural longhouses - we have to acknowledge their urban side too.

[Patrick Waterson]

So I don't think we can just have our Scandinavians sailing about and living in rural longhouses - we have to acknowledge their urban side too.

Quite agree, provided it is not taken to the extent that people start to believe that the Norsemen were devoted urban dwellers by nature and did not really do all that much raiding.

I wonder if by 'urban pioneers' the article writer meant they established cities where cities had not been before.  I would give them that, especially in Russia, while remaining wary about the respective influence and proportion of raiding and trading (víkingr and kaupmaðr) activities.  The impression they made on contemporaries is reflected in the designation or epithet by which they are still known.