[HN Gopher] Vikings went to Mediterranean for 'summer jobs' as m...
___________________________________________________________________
Vikings went to Mediterranean for 'summer jobs' as mercenaries,
left graffiti
Author : dxs
Score : 266 points
Date : 2023-02-23 02:50 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sciencenorway.no)
(TXT) w3m dump (sciencenorway.no)
| [deleted]
| steponlego wrote:
| Yes they were called Varangians. Varangians!
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Goddamn kids never change. Booze, drugs, and the make out cave
| with graffiti all over it.
|
| Viking resumes and Viking guidance counselors must've been
| interesting.
|
| "I'm sorry, I lied. I only have 1 year of experience of
| plundering at sea. And I wasn't captain of a fleet of pirate
| ships. My references are real though."
| pjmlp wrote:
| There is a surviving letter from a famous roman writer,
| complaing about how his son is wasting money in parties and
| alchool instead of studying in the Athens university.
|
| Maybe someone else knows his name and the letter reference
| better.
|
| Some things never change, yeah.
| praptak wrote:
| "Even Sumerians complained about the young" sounds like an
| urban legend but it is not, there's a historical record of a
| scribe from Ur complaining about his ungrateful son,
| loitering about public squares rather than dutifully training
| to become a scribe:
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/001112875700300.
| ..
| tmtvl wrote:
| In the stone age my friends often complained about their
| kids spending time painting their hands on cave walls
| rather than learning how to properly knap a flint knife.
| smcl wrote:
| This is why I'm really insistent on pushing back on "kids
| these days..." complaints. Every single generation has had
| grumpy people who whine about how the young'uns are unruly,
| lazy, have it easy, etc. I'm starting to people in my age
| group (mid 30s) saying it, which is a little bit sad since
| it was not long ago that we were on the receiving end of a
| lot of "psssh, typical millennials..." nonsense :-/
| minxomat wrote:
| Everything old is new again ...
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/juvenoia
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Every single generation has had grumpy people who whine
| about how the young'uns are unruly, lazy, have it easy,
| etc.
|
| That's because at least the "have it easy" part is
| factually true on a large scale. At least until now, it
| was a constant given that over generations, technical
| progress would make life easier for society as a whole.
| An example is the distribution of jobs by sector - in
| Germany, the generation of my father (born in the 70s)
| grew up with 50% of jobs being in agriculture and heavy
| industry, today 75% of jobs are classified as "service
| jobs" [1].
|
| Add on top of that something that is incredibly common
| across migrant communities... they know they got treated
| badly and had to jump through tons of ridiculous hoops to
| immigrate to Germany, and so they strictly oppose
| relaxations of these rules because their trauma hasn't
| been recognized at all, much less made whole. And that
| mindset is similar in education - we still suffer through
| "frontal education", pointless selection after the 4th
| grade and other education crap because boomers think it
| would devalue their own sufferings.
|
| [1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/275637
| /umfrag...
| smcl wrote:
| Hm so perhaps that phrase is actually a separate issue,
| but it is still interesting because it still involves
| treating the younger generation differently. Because in
| the context I was talking about this "they have it so
| easy" complaint is usually presented as a _bad_ thing
| that the younger generation has it "easy". It suggests
| that despite each preceding generation having
| progressively "easier" lives, it is wrong that this
| current generation should also enjoy an easier life than
| the last.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Because in the context I was talking about this "they
| have it so easy" complaint is usually presented as a bad
| thing that the younger generation has it "easy".
|
| For the older generations, they _do_ see it as a bad
| thing that society didn 't make them whole on past
| transgressions. Taking the concept of "generational
| trauma" seriously is only a thing of the last 20-30
| years.
| badpun wrote:
| I agree in spirit, although I'd put it as ,,every
| generation needs to go its youth period, when it tends to
| behave excessively irresponsible and selfish, before they
| can mature and more or less join the adult society". I'm
| 41 :)
| Extasia785 wrote:
| This is an interesting topic though, because this
| generation is the first generation of kids who grew up
| with social media, so it's not unfathomable that "kids
| these days" are different, for better or worse. Kids
| these days might be normal, but with them being the first
| generation to truly grow up in the internet and social
| media era, there is a legitimate argument that they are
| not.
| smcl wrote:
| You're not wrong that there will be some kind of
| difference in how they grow up, but I think each
| generation has grown up exposed to new technologies from
| birth that the previous one wasn't. My thought is that it
| would be really unusual if, after decades and decades of
| "kids these days..." that _this_ is the time it is
| finally right that the current generation are in some way
| worse or more badly behaved or whatever negative
| connotation people may be using at any given point.
|
| There's a lot of "I think..." in this so obviously this
| is totally based on speculation and from what I've seen
| in my encounters with Gen Z, where they generally seem
| pretty good and certainly no worse behaved than my fellow
| millenials :)
| devonkim wrote:
| I'm much more upset at the cruelty and hypocrisy kids
| display (and of course by extension the adults that grow
| no wiser) in that when I was on the Internet as a kid you
| were a loser and loner. And now if you're _not_ on the
| Internet enough you're a loser and loner.
|
| Have to admit that the movie Black Phone was much better
| than I thought because the children were portrayed very
| realistically in their dynamics and yet still we were
| reminded of their vulnerability in society as those
| without many rights or privileges that adults have.
| Furthermore, the child abuse... I don't even flinch at
| some of the most brutal violence in media anymore because
| it seems so comical typically but I felt sick during that
| part.
|
| Horror to me is reality oftentimes I guess and much of
| why I watch horror is to desensitize myself a bit about
| the horrors of our world.
| science4sail wrote:
| It was the orator Cicero!
|
| > Cicero hoped that his son Marcus would become a philosopher
| like him, but Marcus himself wished for a military career. He
| joined the army of Pompey in 49 BC and after Pompey's defeat
| at Pharsalus 48 BC, he was pardoned by Caesar. Cicero sent
| him to Athens to study as a disciple of the peripatetic
| philosopher Kratippos in 48 BC, but he used this absence from
| "his father's vigilant eye" to "eat, drink and be merry."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicero#Family
| arethuza wrote:
| A band of Viking warriors sheltered from a snowstorm in the 5000
| years old Maeshowe chambered tomb on Orkney and left quite a lot
| of graffiti written as runes:
|
| http://www.orkneyjar.com/history/maeshowe/maeshrunes.htm
| sandos wrote:
| They should have went in the winter? Who wants the dark winters
| up here...
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| But they can circle until they drop dead
|
| I have not come this far
|
| To end, but to pursue my own thread
|
| To join The Varangian Guard
| sigg3 wrote:
| Yeah, I remember seeing runes in the Aya Sofia in Istanbul.
| farseer wrote:
| >>She went to Venice at three different times of the year, to see
| how the light from the sun fell at different angles and cast
| varying shadows on the worn runes.
|
| Is this really a thing or BS?
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I read somewhere that Christian inquisition into Nordic region
| basically washed and labeled the Vikings as barbarians, brutes,
| and overall abusive people.
|
| Is that true? I mean the other inquisitions ended up with
| labeling other native people as savages or not fully human. I
| wouldn't be surprised if it is true that they were just called
| bad because they had a pagan religion.
| pard68 wrote:
| Can't speak to the Christian angle, though probably not an
| "Inquisition" that term is for when Catholics tried "cleaning
| house" and I think it may have been a one-off thing in Spain.
|
| Any way, what I wanted to say was that the Vikings (strictly
| referring to the warrior class here) tended to be fairly
| abusive and brutal. Ibn Fadlan's writings document some of the
| rather barbarous acts they engaged in.
| bombolo wrote:
| Did the inquisition and the vikings even exist at the same
| time?
|
| According to wikipedia, no. Vikings were gone a good century
| before the inquisition existed at all.
|
| > Is that true?
|
| Probably not. The dates don't seem to even match for it to have
| happened.
| vintermann wrote:
| First, you probably mean incursion, there was no Scandinavian
| inquisition.
|
| And no, it isn't true. First, remember that by the time the
| first churches were built on the Scandinavian peninsula,
| Christianity had existed for about 700 years. Before that time,
| Christian ideas had perculated up and been incorporated, in
| garbled form, in Norse religion.
|
| And even after that, they had 300 years to get to know what it
| was about until being Christian became a civic obligation like
| it was in the rest of Europe.
|
| The viking raiders absolutely were savages, but the Norse did
| not identify with them, the way we equate them today. For them,
| viking was just the word for pirate, and if you did it - as
| could be tempting, seeing your neighbours come home with loot -
| you still probably wouldn't want to brag about it.
| krapp wrote:
| They got that reputation partly because they were pagan, but
| mostly because of all the sacking, pillaging and brutal
| murdering. Of course, Christian armies were just as brutal to
| Jews and Muslims, but the Vikings being pagan made it easier to
| propagandize them as being a literal satanic horde.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Vikings famously defended the Roman Emperor in Byzantium, known
| as the Varangian Guard. [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard
|
| Edit: Oh, the article actually mentions the same. I find it
| endlessly fascinating how interconnected the ancient worlds
| really were.
| Severian wrote:
| This is funny, as I just finished a novel that had this as a
| large plot point. Talk about Synchronicity. It's Neal
| Stephenson and Nicole Galland's "The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O".
| It's a pretty entertaining read, from the point of view of
| several characters.
|
| I'm waiting for the sequel in the mail, "Master of the Revels:
| A Return to Neal Stephenson's D.O.D.O." by Nicole Galland
| herself. It appears Neal dropped off.
| sn41 wrote:
| Yes, the Arabs knew about the Vikings. Similarly old Sanskrit
| grammar texts in India refer to the Greeks. St. Thomas Aquinas
| extensively refers to Arab scholars like Avicenna and Averroes.
| The ancient world was more connected than we realise.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Greek art heavily influenced Buddhist art
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
|
| And there were Buddhists in the Roman empire
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zarmanochegas
| CitizenKane wrote:
| This is actually one of my favorite historical facts.
| Buddha images are everywhere in modern Thailand and it's
| fascinating to me that this likely would not be the case if
| it weren't for Greeks in Central Asia
| sct202 wrote:
| Thailand (and most of SE Asia) is Theravada and received
| Buddhism directly from India while the Greek Buddhists
| were Mahayana and spread that thru the Silk Road into
| East Asia.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I recently saw a documentary about how Anglo-Saxons invaded
| the west of England but Cornwal remained celtic and because
| of its tin-mining kept a strong connection to the
| Mediterranean. I don't have a link to the documentary but I
| think this is about the same thing:
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/groundbreaking-study-
| ancient-t...
| pjmlp wrote:
| That is also a reason why northen Portugal and Spain also
| kept their celtic culture due to those connections.
| arethuza wrote:
| Speaking of Celtic connections - the origin legends of
| the Scots claim that they came here via Spain and
| Ireland:
|
| _" They journeyed from Greater Scythia by way of the
| Tyrrhenian Sea and the Pillars of Hercules, and dwelt for
| a long course of time in Spain among the most savage
| tribes, but nowhere could they be subdued by any race,
| however barbarous."_
|
| https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesBritain/Medieval_T
| ext...
|
| Of course, this is a bit bizarre - but a good story!
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I wonder how much cod food culture has to do with this?!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Might be, until recently I was unware that the Greeks and
| Turks also have the same salted cod culture as we have in
| Portugal, even if they lack 365 + 1 recipes for it. :)
| [deleted]
| e-_pusher wrote:
| Ibn Fadlan's writings about his encounters with Vikings are a
| fun read : https://human.libretexts.org/Courses/Saint_Mary's_
| College_(N...
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > I find it endlessly fascinating how interconnected the
| ancient worlds really were.
|
| Necessarily so - bronze required materials from different parts
| of the world.
| triyambakam wrote:
| > I find it endlessly fascinating how interconnected the
| ancient worlds really were.
|
| And it's amazing to me how much work we need to do to
| understand the past. Though it seems like not all past cultures
| had it so difficult - those with e.g. strong oral traditions.
| Some Australian Aboriginal oral traditions recount accurately
| geographic features from thousands of years before.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| The hard part isn't the recounting, it's distinguishing
| recount from improv.
| euroderf wrote:
| I've read somewhere that the Varangian Guard was mostly Finns.
| No proper source at hand tho.
| eitland wrote:
| One famous and interesting story that might be new and
| interesting to those who are already here and aren't middle-aged
| or older Norwegians is about one of the Viking kings (Sigurd
| Jorsalfar) who got his horse shod with golden shoes and
| instructed the blacksmith to make sure one of them would be loose
| enough to fall off while they rode through Miklagard ("Big Town,
| today Istanbul) so that he could pretend he didn't care when
| someone made him aware of it.
| Hanschri wrote:
| As a Norwegian I might be biased, but the viking era contains so
| many weird and interesting facts and happenings. I would strongly
| recommend checking out more on one of the following things I
| remember from the top of my head:
|
| The works of Icelandic historian/poet Snorre Sturlason, he is
| most famous for what in English would be called 'Snorre's sagas
| of kings', which is widely regarded to be one of the most
| important books for Norway.
|
| The Danelaw is also pretty interesting, but what I personally
| find even more interesting is the colonization and settlements in
| Ireland by vikings. Dublin, Cork, the Isle of Man and much more
| was settled by vikings. The Danelaw and settlements caused words
| from Old Norse to become fairly influential on English.
|
| Someone else has mentioned Ibn Fadlan, who met vikings which came
| from the river Dnipro, which runs through modern day Russia,
| Belarus and Ukraine. Vikings traveled from Sweden towards Russia,
| giving the country it's name. The name Rus was first used about
| the Scandinavians in Eastern Europe, but later referred to the
| Kievan Rus.
|
| The region of Normandie in France has it's name from the vikings,
| as Rollo the Walker was made ruler of the region by the king of
| France. This was allegedly after the vikings had tried to sack
| Paris for the n-th time. This deal was made on the premise that
| the people of Normandie would defend the rest of France from
| vikings and other raiders. Rollo the Walker is a direct ancestor
| of William the Conqueror, and by extension the British royal
| family.
|
| The title jarl is often translated into English as earl, but the
| correct translation would be duke. Jarl is simply just
| etymologically related to earl.
|
| Hope this random list wasn't too confusing, if anyone is
| interested in this I would gladly help with finding good English
| language sources!
| _glass wrote:
| It just shows how globalized history is, and somehow really
| cosmopolitan. William the Conqueror was fighting at the battle
| of Hastings Harold, who's mother was Danish. We know the
| history because of a Medieval chronicler that was from Meissen
| in Saxony, and the chronicle is called Deeds of Bishops of the
| Hamburg Church, because it focusses on Hamburg. As a Saxon
| living in Hamburg, this is very entertaining.
| xaedes wrote:
| Yet another etymological curiosity:
|
| hofn is "old norse" for harbour or port. Now going to
| wiktionary and following the etymology:
|
| hofn: From Proto-Germanic *habano, *habno ("harbour, haven").
|
| habano: From Proto-Indo-European *kh2poneh2 or *kh2pneh2, from
| the root *keh2p- ("to take, seize, grasp").
|
| Other germanic words (like german "Hafen") for harbour/port
| also have a very similar lineage and derive from this "to take,
| seize, grasp".
|
| So basically the harbour is the place you go to, when you are
| going "to take, seize, grasp", like when you invade other
| countries by sea.*
| rshaban wrote:
| "heaven"
| solalf wrote:
| On your point on Normandie, you can even go further!
| Ethnologically speaking Normandie, comes from its inhabitants'
| name: the normands. This name is composed of "nor" and "man",
| so it's literally North Men from the French perspective - aka
| the Vikings.
|
| The reason the French King gave them the region as a duchy, is
| because the Seine river, which passes in the middle of Paris,
| ends its course in present day Honfleur, Normandie. So Vikings
| would move their drakkars ships upstream from there and sack
| the city. Having Rollo installed as Duke put an end to the
| raiding.
|
| It is said that when Rollo was made to kneel before Charles the
| Simple, to swear allegiance, he grabbed onto the king's feet
| and threw him in the air. I don't know if this is a true story,
| but it's always amused me!
|
| If you drive around Normandie today, you'll see plenty of cars
| with drakkar stickers on their bumpers. A sign that many still
| identify with this heritage.
| [deleted]
| unhammer wrote:
| If you're the kind of person who likes names that originally
| meant "northman" you'll love
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murmansk#Etymology
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Another fun thing: despite their fierce reputation, the Vikings
| probably had the best personal hygiene in Western Europe at the
| time. They spent a lot of time on grooming their hair and
| beards, and contemporary writers noted that they typically
| bathed very frequently--which at the time meant once a week.
| atchoo wrote:
| Other random facts...
|
| Even without the Norman invasion, the British Royal family
| would be descendent from Norsemen through Godwinson's mother,
| daughter of Sweyn Forkbeard, grandchild of Harold Bluetooth
| (King of Denmark/Norway and inventor of frustrating wireless
| protocols).
|
| After 1066, England was pretty awful for the Anglo-Saxon
| warriors/noblemen, a good number of them also fecked off to
| Byzantium and joined the Varangian guard like Vikings before
| them. They also created settlements in what is now Ukraine.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| The Varangian guard is so interesting and could have been
| something out of a book or movie. A Roman emperor having an
| elite squad of viking warriors to protect them!
| nickik wrote:
| Varangian guard was not really a elite guard unit.
| Varangian guard were stationed all around the empire and
| were more like a normal part of the military.
|
| In the sources they show up just as often fighting in
| battles where the emperor was there and when he was not.
|
| The did protect him on campaign, but that might just be
| because the were the primary infantry arm.
|
| Some people think of them like the Praetorian guard, but
| that isn't really accurate.
| SergeAx wrote:
| They are depicted in "Raise and fall of D.O.D.O." by Neil
| Stephenson.
| sophacles wrote:
| * Neal Stephenson _and_ Nicole Galland
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Totally...although it makes sense in context. The Byzantine
| court was notorious for conspiracies, cabals, backroom
| deals, logrolling, and other shady political manuvers. The
| Eastern emperors were also presumably aware of the history
| of the Praetorian Guard in the Western empire, so their
| choice of bodyguard would probably have been a matter they
| thought carefully about. The logic, then, was to bring in a
| bunch of foreigners, from further away the better, with no
| ties to Rome and no interests there besides getting paid.
| All the better if these foreigners were immense badasses
| with uncanny pale skin and enormous beards.
| fakedang wrote:
| Exactly. The Turks never destroyed Byzantium. The
| Byzantines destroyed themselves, and made life shitty for
| most of Europe in the process (a la the Crusades).
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| Right--the Turks were just in a good position, literally,
| to pick up the pieces afterwards.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >They also created settlements in what is now Ukraine.
|
| Can you name something googlable or wikipediable so I can
| read more about this?
| autophagian wrote:
| I believe they're referring to Niwe Englaland/New England:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_(medieval)
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Timothy Snyder has a great set of lectures about the making
| of modern Ukraine and he goes into great detail about the
| impact the Vikings had in the creation of Rus and their
| interactions with the Byzantines
| clucas wrote:
| I was about to recommend this series as well, really glad
| to see a fellow-traveller got there first!
|
| Free, high-quality history content, can't recommend
| highly enough: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh9
| mgdi4rNewfxO7LhBoz...
| atchoo wrote:
| Nova Anglia. Perhaps better to say "might have created
| settlements". There is a tantalising number of crumbs from
| place names to travellers reports but little written
| record. The alleged location would make them the first
| victims of the Mongolian invasion of Europe a few hundred
| years later.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England_(medieval)
| arethuza wrote:
| Even more randomly: the current British Royals are also
| descended from Robert the Bruce, which is amusing given how
| energetically he opposed the Royals at the time.
|
| And the story of what happened to his heart is pretty
| interesting as well:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Teba
| [deleted]
| JustProNoob wrote:
| Think Ibn Fadlan witnessed Vikings on Volga river, which is
| even far more east and impressive.
| arethuza wrote:
| I believe that provided the background for the excellent
| movie "The 13th Warrior":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_13th_Warrior
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| An all time fun movie!
| imbnwa wrote:
| > The Danelaw is also pretty interesting, but what I personally
| find even more interesting is the colonization and settlements
| in Ireland by vikings. Dublin, Cork, the Isle of Man and much
| more was settled by vikings. The Danelaw and settlements caused
| words from Old Norse to become fairly influential on English.
|
| I'd say this is almost an understatement[0], its rather
| shocking how many very average, day-to-day intellectual items
| are Norse in origin. Almost as if English is some sort of
| creole when you add the massive simplification of Old English
| on the way to Middle English; the Norman host was a tiny
| fraction of the population of speakers in England.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Old_N
| ...
| asveikau wrote:
| > Russia, giving the country it's name. The name Rus
|
| It's worth mentioning that Russia is only one population that
| branched from the Rus', and it did not claim the name Russia
| until the ~1700s when the Duchy of Moscow entered an
| expansionist period... Rus' = Russia is an oversimplification
| that implies Russian dominance of Belarus and Ukraine.
| yesbabyyes wrote:
| I was born in Roslagen so I may be biased, but that is likely
| where the name Rus comes from.
|
| Roslagen comes from skeppslag, skepp as in ships,
| administrative regions which were required to each contribute
| one fully manned and equipped ship along with supplies.
|
| A similar levy was taxed inland, called hundare (hundreds).
| There are three still remaining, the Chiltern Hundreds in
| Buckinghamshire.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _Rollo the Walker was made ruler of the region by the king of
| France. This was allegedly after the vikings had tried to sack
| Paris for the n-th time. This deal was made on the premise that
| the people of Normandie would defend the rest of France from
| vikings and other raiders_
|
| The deal was also conditioned on religious conversion and
| allegiance to the King of France, and he also married the
| King's daughter.
|
| Win-win.
| caporaltito wrote:
| Also, if you put a guy controlling Normandy, he will control
| the mouth of the river Seine which runs in Paris. So you
| secure the biggest city of your kingdom from being raided
| from this river by enemies rowing it upstream, which was the
| biggest problem with Vikings raiders back then.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I'm thinking the King thought Rollo was a massive pain in
| the ass but also a very capable guy so decided to kill two
| birds with one stone.
| eschulz wrote:
| Brilliant stroke of win-win diplomacy, so long as we keep the
| concerns of the daughter aside.
| Archelaos wrote:
| > The title jarl is often translated into English as earl, but
| the correct translation would be duke. Jarl is simply just
| etymologically related to earl.
|
| This is not so simple. Titles and their significance change
| over time. During the Anglo-Saxon period in Britain, an
| "ealdorman" was the ruler of one or (later) more shires; during
| the end of the period the title was shortend into "earl". The
| title lost later more and more of its importance. "Duke" was
| originally a French title (from French "Duc") and started to be
| used in England from the middle of the 14th century -- long
| after the Viking Period. Therefore it would be very
| anachronistic to translate "jarl" with "duke". If you were
| looking for the highest official of a shire in todays England
| you may prefer the translation "High Sheriff" (a title created
| in the early 1970s), but which is more or less only ceremonial.
| So no, a "jarl" is best to be left an "earl".
| atchoo wrote:
| > Duke" ... started to be used in England from the middle of
| the 14th century -- long after the Viking Period. Therefore
| it would be very anachronistic to translate "jarl" with
| "duke".
|
| Apparently the Anglo-Saxon chronicle refers to Ealdormen as
| "Duces", plural of Dux, same Latin root as Duc and then Duke.
| It just means leader. As far as actual meaning then "second
| highest noble rank to a King" would mean that Jarls and Dukes
| are equivalent noble titles.
|
| The spanner in the works is after 1066, Earls became
| equivalent to Counts, below the rank of Dukes. I wonder if
| this is due to King William still being a Duke in fealty to
| the King of France? Maybe the Shires were smaller/less-
| powerful than Duchies like Aquitaine, Normandy etc.?
|
| So it sounds like it went: Ealdormen==Duke then after Cnut,
| Ealdormen==Jarl==Earl==Duke and then after 1066,
| (Earl==Count)!=Duke.
| shever73 wrote:
| >an "ealdorman" was the ruler of one or (later) more shires;
| during the end of the period the title was shortend into
| "earl"
|
| Do you have a source for this, please?
|
| The OED says that "Ealdorman" is cognate with "Alderman",
| while "Jarl" is cognate with "Earl". The titles were used
| interchangeably, but one did not come from the other. The
| distinction being that earls held power under Danelaw. Earl
| replaced ealdorman as the title of distinction in the
| mid-11th century due to the extension of the power of earls
| outside of Danelaw.
| [deleted]
| Archelaos wrote:
| Yes, my remark was not very precise. The two words seem to
| have different roots ("jarl"/"earl" < Old Engl. "eorl" =
| "brave man, warrior, leader, chief") vs. ("alderman" =
| "ald" + "man" = "old man").
|
| Instead of writing:
|
| "during the end of the period the title was shortend into
| 'earl'"
|
| I should have written:
|
| "during the end of the period 'ealdorman' was replaced by
| the etymologically unrelated, but phonetically close and
| shorter 'eorl', that later turned into 'earl'."
|
| What I wanted to say is that "earl", though somewhat
| anachronistic, can still be an exceptable translation of
| "jarl". When the emphasis is on contemporary jargon, it
| might perhaps best be left untranslated. Another
| alternative would be to translate it with "count", because
| contemporary Latin sources sometimes use the word "comes"
| to refer to a jarl; but this translation has its own
| difficulties because "count" entered the English language
| also late via the French "comte". The only criteria in
| favour of "duke" is the fact that this title was later
| often used in Scandinavia instead of "jarl" for
| functionally similar offices. Another option is to
| translate "jarl" with "chief", which corresponds to a more
| general early usage of "jarl"; however, this would indicate
| too low a status for most of the Anglo-Saxon period.
|
| My personal preference for the Anglo-Saxon period is to
| leave it untranslated. If someone insists on a translation,
| "earl" would still be the best fit in my opinion.
| autophagian wrote:
| Given the settlement and Rollo, I loved finding out that
| 'Norman' more or less is from 'Northman'. Fun little "ohhh"
| moment.
| emsixteen wrote:
| Celts were on the Isle of Man long before the Vikings, but I'm
| just nit-picking.
|
| I agree that the history of Vikings is way more fascinating and
| complicated than what's typically paraded about.
|
| Shoutouts to Tore Hund!
| [deleted]
| detourdog wrote:
| I"m very much interested in older cultures and their inland
| history. The Mediterranean cultures get the most coverage in
| our history studies. I believe the inland culture is probably
| parallel in its history. And development. I"m not that
| attracted to historical fiction. I'm very interested in
| cultural development and interactions.
|
| Anything that covers that would be great,
| seneca wrote:
| It's largely a matter of record keeping. We know all about
| the Greeks and Romans because they left libraries full of
| stories and documents. The vikings are almost entirely only
| known from other people writing about them.
| cozos wrote:
| There was a scene in The Northman (2022) which is based on Ibn
| Fadlan. After seeing the movie I read the account [0] which I
| found very interesting. This describes the scene in the movie:
|
| > The men came with shields and sticks. She was given a cup of
| intoxicating drink; she sang at taking it and drank. The
| interpreter told me that she in this fashion bade farewell to
| all her girl companions. Then she was given another cup; she
| took it and sang for a long time while the old woman incited
| her to drink up and go into the pavillion where her master lay.
| I saw that she was distracted; she wanted to enter the
| pavillion but put her head between it and the boat. Then the
| old woman siezed her head and made her enter the pavillion and
| entered with her. Thereupon the men began to strike with the
| sticks on the shields so that her cries could not be heard and
| the other slave girls would not seek to escape death with their
| masters. Then six men went into the pavillion and each had
| intercourse with the girl. Then they laid her at the side of
| her master; two held her feet and two her hands; the old woman
| known as the Angel of Death re-entered and looped a cord around
| her neck and gave the crossed ends to the two men for them to
| pull. Then she approached her with a broad-bladed dagger, which
| she plunged between her ribs repeatedly, and the men strangled
| her with the cord until she was dead.
|
| [0] http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ibn_fdln.shtml
| mcv wrote:
| Vikings have also ruled Sicily and Friesland. And probably a
| lot more.
| layer8 wrote:
| The name "Rus" shares etymology with "rowing":
|
| "The name Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden
| (*Ruotsi), supposed to be descended from an Old Norse term for
| "the men who row" (rods-) as rowing was the main method of
| navigating the rivers of Eastern Europe [...]"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Rus',_Russia_and_Ruth...
| was_a_dev wrote:
| As someone who grew up not far from York, the best experience
| as a schoolchild was visiting Danelaw village [1] - a recreated
| Viking settlement
|
| [1] https://murtonpark.co.uk/for-schools/at-murton-park/viking/
| vintermann wrote:
| I think it's interesting to see how they saw themselves, compared
| to the stereotypes about them: Not great warrior Hausi. Farmer
| Hausi. Just doing a little side gig for the winter, probably.
| westurner wrote:
| Would you put graffiti on your own vehiclr?
|
| Careers for graphic artists with BA degrees
|
| Prehistoric art: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art
|
| 1. "Encino Man" (1992) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encino_Man
| https://www.google.com/search?kgmid=/m/05fc8m&hl=en-US&q=Enc...
| mcv wrote:
| Summer jobs? Considering the climates, I'd expect them to do it
| as winter jobs. Raid England during summer, serve the Byzantine
| emperor in the med during winter.
| hummus_bae wrote:
| [dead]
| ggm wrote:
| Surprise! Everyone left graffiti. Tagging is as old as going on a
| pilgrimage.
|
| (summer working holiday with potential for a long residency visa?
| also as old as the business of being mobile, and capable of
| fighting. The romans did it.)
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| > Tagging is as old as ...
|
| Many animals mark their domain by peeing around. So "tagging"
| may have biological roots
| ggm wrote:
| Desmond Morris would agree. "the naked ape" pretty much said
| it's all down to genes.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > So "tagging" may have biological roots
|
| Everything anyone does has biological roots. There is no part
| of any living thing that doesn't have biological roots.
| That's what "biology" is.
| ben_w wrote:
| Technically correct, in that biology created a brain
| capable of learning non-genetic information.
|
| But, personally, I think if a behaviour is learned rather
| than e.g. a genetically programmed reflex, it's _useful_ to
| draw a line between them and say that the former _isn 't_
| biological _in origin_.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Having worked in behavioral analytics at scale the most
| surprising aspect is how much of it is purely genetic.
| There is a lot of emergent complexity that looks unique
| but really isn't, simply variations on a theme. But an
| individual is unlikely to meet enough people to see the
| trends in the long tail. Clustering at scale along with
| the birthday paradox will give you a bunch of people with
| the same rare behavior and usually you can drill down and
| find there is quite a lot of genetic similarities as
| well.
| ben_w wrote:
| I can absolutely believe that. In general I wouldn't want
| to guess _which_ behaviours are in each category, but
| from e.g. the things dogs and cats do that seem
| fundamentally weird to humans and vice versa, I expect
| many genetic behaviours to exist.
|
| Going upthread a bit, I _would_ expect tagging to be
| genetic, as it seems similar to other territorial
| markings created by other species. But I don 't expect
| e.g. the specific shapes of Futhark runes to be, as the
| straight edges look like merely the easiest shapes to
| carve into rock and other writing systems aren't limited
| to those shapes even when (e.g. Egyptian hieroglyphics)
| they are carved.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Oh yeah, specific shapes of runes are not genetic, those
| are taught, I didn't think we were drawing the line that
| far over. Modern society has chosen to underplay the role
| of genetics for seemingly quasi religious reasons, it's
| as if we've gone back to using the soul to explain
| things. Basically every time I spotted unusual behavior
| in search logs I found out that people searching were way
| more related then they're supposed to be. Socially taboo
| behaviors were used as a baseline as there are things
| that people will not tell each other but will tell a
| search engine.
| ben_w wrote:
| > I didn't think we were drawing the line that far over
|
| Don't worry, I'm agreeing with you -- I chose to use the
| example of shapes of runes as something _unambiguously_
| on the "learned" side, not as something close to the
| dividing line :)
|
| > Socially taboo behaviors were used as a baseline as
| there are things that people will not tell each other but
| will tell a search engine.
|
| That's piqued my curiosity. While on the basis of past
| experience I may regret asking... do you have a link to
| any results of this research?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| The kind of stuff I wouldn't even put in an email. I did
| confer with colleagues from a variety of companies doing
| similar work and they saw similar things, it's the kind
| of thing that pops up quite frequently even when not
| looking for it. Essentially many of the base assumptions
| society has agreed upon are wrong. In order to maintain
| that belief the messengers are crucified, so smart people
| who know keep it to themselves.
|
| It has a more personal link for me as I have one of the
| more distinct and rare genetic personalities and come
| from a long line of unusually smart assholes. It turns
| out clEDS causes a great deal of pain and when you
| complain about it people will tell you it's normal, and
| how are we to know it's not. Overtime it'll change your
| brain chemistry and sabotage your life to the point you
| do become an asshole. There is also a strong link to
| intelligence, there is a fringe theory of RCCX genes
| explaining giftedness and I was one of those profoundly
| gifted children (clEDS is a recessive TNXB mutation,
| though I believe the official classification is wrong and
| the particular sub type of TNXB mutation matters). At
| school I was warned that people that gifted usually hit a
| wall pretty early on due to burnout, but really it's
| chronic fatigue that starts to get really bad in the mid
| 20s. So it seems to be a Faustian bargain and I guess if
| given the choice I would chose it again, it certainly
| makes life more interesting. I hope that overtime I can
| figure out a solution to the pain, I've done much better
| than most and hope I'll be able to avoid turning into an
| asshole, though some may say too late...
| ben_w wrote:
| > In order to maintain that belief the messengers are
| crucified, so smart people who know keep it to
| themselves.
|
| Fair enough; I can think of at least four things that
| might reference, so congratulations on remaining
| ambiguous ^_^
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm not surprised to hear the Vikings went where the money was.
| The epic _Beowulf_ describes Hrothgar as a Danish king who would
| give generously of his treasure in order to recruit the
| strongest, fiercest warriors (hence the kenning "ring-giver"). I
| always thought there were considerable parallels between this and
| the tech industry, at least when times were good and interest
| rates low.
| bjornsing wrote:
| They still do. But nowadays they mostly bartender and party
| instead.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| In late 2019, I was at the Viking Museum in Stockholm and they
| had a map marking where they _knew_ Vikings had visited (and
| likely raided) and where they had _probably_ visited (and likely
| raided). Not surprisingly, it was most of the North Atlantic and
| down through Gibraltar.
|
| What surprised me is that Egypt and Israel were on the "probably"
| list.. which seemed plausible if they just kept going down the
| coast of North Africa.
| alexwasserman wrote:
| For anyone interested in the interconnectedness of the medieval
| world, I'd highly recommend The Bright Ages:
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/09/the-bright-age...
|
| It covers 200-1200 AD (roughly) with stories from around Europe
| and the middle-east, highlighting the access, travel, science,
| and art of the time, in a way that really shows that it was far
| less "dark ages" than commonly thought.
| _0ffh wrote:
| I've read that the "dark ages" was a misunderstood term and
| really refers to them being "dark" to the historian due to a
| relative dearth of written documents from the time.
| colechristensen wrote:
| "Dark ages" was limited to the leftover sphere of influence of
| the western Roman Empire, 200 AD is considerably too early as a
| start for the period.
|
| There really was a steep decline in civilization, cities
| emptied, many completely, literacy rates in the tank, many many
| people regressed to subsistence agriculture.
|
| No it wasn't the whole world, the successful successor states
| to the Roman Empire didn't experience it. It was also not
| complete, but don't make the naysayers mistake of overstating
| the contrary evidence.
| vintermann wrote:
| It's a lot about what you value. Most of my ancestors were
| subsistence farmers, probably yours too. Doesn't mean their
| lives were all dark.
|
| I read a local book about violin makers. I was shocked at how
| many there were, in the almost entirely rural community
| around here. To me, making a violin requires some pretty
| serious, specialised woodworking skills. But they document
| hundreds of local farmers - subsistence farmers - apparently
| having those skills. And they don't even count those who
| "just made a fiddle or two".
|
| Which isn't to say there can be no such thing as dark ages.
| When there's so much war and chaos that no one has time to
| build much of lasting value, whether materially or
| culturally, that's pretty dark. Yet the few things that come
| out of such times and places (the English border ballads
| comes to mind, or the hymns of Paul Gerhardt) can be all the
| more beautiful.
| anewhnaccount2 wrote:
| I always thought that "dark" in "dark ages" refers to the
| lack of written evidence, i.e., more "dark" as in the
| lights have gone out and you can't see what's happening
| than "dark" as in grim.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I'm interested in such things; what was the name of the
| book?
| vintermann wrote:
| "Felemakarar pa Nordvestlandet", F.F. Birkeland, 2008.
| ISBN 9788292082041
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| I recently heard an interesting take that the view of this
| time of Europe might be an intentional slight to the
| influence of the byzantine empire as it presented an
| alternative form of Christianity to the roman Catholic one.
|
| Acknowledging the byzantine empire means that you have to
| deal with an unbroken line to Rome and also Christianity
| Swizec wrote:
| My favorite tidbit from history class: We can track slavic
| migration into Europe by when churches stopped sending
| updates to Rome.
| JPKab wrote:
| Relevant song:
|
| https://youtu.be/LeSOQ_qM6xs
| lumiukko wrote:
| Other relevant song: Turisas - Varangian Guard
| https://youtu.be/8kIv7ZJOyB4
|
| Those were the guards of the byzantine emperor, which were
| vikings that travelled to miklagard/constantinopolis/istanbul
| for such "summer jobs".
| ElfinTrousers wrote:
| It just occurred to me that these guys must have gotten terrible
| sunburns from the combination of pale Scandinavian skin and
| bright Mediterranean sun. No wonder they fought so fiercely: they
| were always incredibly annoyed.
| defrost wrote:
| The Lion of Piraeus actually originates from the Athens port city
| of Piraeus. It was carved out of marble in ancient
| Greece. The lion is almost 2,400 years old. The
| Venetians took the lion from Piraeus in 1688, after wresting
| control of the port city of Athens from the Turks in the Ottoman
| Empire. The Vikings who had tagged the lion 700-800
| years earlier were most likely Swedish and Norwegian mercenaries
| -- called Varangians-- in the service of the emperor in
| Byzantium.
|
| Hmmm.
|
| @dang can we get a ( ~ 788 - 888 CE ) tag here please?
| klyrs wrote:
| Date-tags typically list the year that an article was written.
| mukundesh wrote:
| Why `summer jobs`, I would have thought they would have gone
| there for a `winter jobs`.
| wavefunction wrote:
| At least in crop agriculture the work tends to be concentrated
| during planting and harvest so there is a big period in between
| with nothing to do for most of the people involved in planting
| and harvest. The labor for at least some of the Egyptian
| pyramids were idle farmers who had free-time available for
| hire, iirc.
| Pephers wrote:
| Nothing to do outside of crop agriculture in Viking times
| gives time for:
|
| - Building housing and barns
|
| - Chopping firewood
|
| - Shipbuilding
|
| - Wood working
|
| - Weaving fabric (linen) from the summer harvest
|
| - Ropes
|
| - Leatherworking
|
| - Metalworking/blacksmithing
|
| - Pottery
|
| - Animal husbandry
|
| - Hunting
|
| - Fishing
|
| ... and probably lots of other things that were necessary
| during those times. Of course Viking raids are a different
| means of acquiring a lot of the above.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| In Scandinavia there is zero agriculture work to do when the
| ground is frozen and covered in snow.
| vidarh wrote:
| I don't think it's meant to literally suggest they just went
| for the summer. Rather "summer job" ("sommerjobb") is commonly
| used in Norway to mean a second job done while you have time
| off from your regular duties. The "summer" bit included because
| the term is most often used for students who have an extra long
| summer vacation and so has plenty of time to take a short term
| job.
| moogly wrote:
| Same in Sweden and Denmark.
| mig39 wrote:
| These guys were soldiers, right? When there wasn't fighting to
| be done in the North, they headed south to look for work.
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