[HN Gopher] 'Viking' was a job description, not a matter of here...
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'Viking' was a job description, not a matter of heredity: Ancient
DNA study
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 128 points
Date : 2026-02-21 13:24 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| barrenko wrote:
| The OG founders.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I suspect this is an example of us seeing history through a
| mdoern lens and making false assumptions. For example, the idea
| that a nation project or an empire is genetically homogenous is a
| relatively modern concept. The truth is that empires incorporated
| various ethnic groups and those ethnic groups survived for long
| periods of time.
|
| The Roman Empire at times extended all the way from England to
| the Persian Gulf. It included various Celtic people, North
| Africans, people from the Balkans, Turkic people and people from
| the Middle East. At no point did these people become ethnically
| homogenous but they all very much Romanized.
|
| The British Empire spanned the globe.
|
| In more modern times the Austro-Hungarian Empire included a dozen
| or more ethnic groups and languages.
|
| Would we describe being Roman, a Briton or an Austro-Hungarian as
| a "job"? I don't think so.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| > Would we describe being Roman, a Briton or an Austro-
| Hungarian as a "job"? I don't think so.
|
| I think this is the articles point. We would not consider being
| Roman a job, but we would consider being a Legionary a job.
|
| The article is arguing "Viking" is more "Legionary" than
| "Roman."
| QuercusMax wrote:
| The entire point of the article is that they called themselves
| collectively Norsemen. Going 'viking' (raiding) was an activity
| done by 'vikings' (raiders).
| guywithahat wrote:
| I feel like this is common in most (at least western) empires.
| Vikings from Sweden would take over territory as far as Poland or
| even Italy and recruit new soldiers. Eventually some of them
| would end up in warrior style graves. What's actually more
| interesting in my mind is that they didn't bring people back, and
| so the gene pool in Sweden remained more or less unchanged
| paleotrope wrote:
| The slave trade only went south.
| ecshafer wrote:
| I am not sure why they used this title for this study as that is
| not the important part. We already have known Viking was a job
| description, thats been known for hundreds of years. We also knew
| that viking settlement was widespread. This study used DNA
| sequencing to settle the debate on if vikings from certain areas
| went to certain areas, and if they mixed. It seems to confirm the
| theory that the norse did NOT mix, and traded, raided and settled
| different areas separately.
| beloch wrote:
| The title is indeed odd.
|
| The new (to me, at least) idea here is that the different
| regions of Scandinavia didn't mix as much, "on the job" or
| genetically, as I thought they would have. They each carved out
| their own territories and mixed with the local population, but
| not with each other to a significant degree. It's surprising to
| find that more genetic material was making it's way back to
| parts of Scandinavia from those far-flung regions than from
| neighbouring Scandinavian countries.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| maybe you hate your neighbors more than you hate the exotic
| foreign visitor?
|
| hmm, of course current news would rather undermine that
| theory, but maybe today's exotic foreign countries are about
| as close as neighboring countries were back in Viking times.
| beloch wrote:
| It's a distasteful, but relevant, aspect of vikings that
| they were slavers as well as raiders. If you went viking, a
| large part of the booty you brought back walked on two legs
| and had genes to pass on. Perhaps the Norse liked their
| neighbours just enough not to make many of them "visitors".
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| doubtful given histories of the area, however maybe they
| disliked getting retaliation for a raid.
| vintermann wrote:
| A historian I respect - don't want to name him in case I
| accidentally misrepresent his ideas - has speculated that the
| Norse didn't mix with the Sami because having a separate
| tribe of hunters (no major reindeer farming back then) was
| useful to them. Almost like a caste. If people live side by
| side for 1000s of years, I think that's fair to speculate -
| there has to be a reason they didn't just assimilate into
| each other.
|
| After the Danes returned to Greeland and first met the Inuit,
| the priests pushed for religious and cultural assimilation.
| Not strictly speaking linguistic assimilation, since they
| were good protestants who believed everyone had a right to
| hear the gospel in their own language, but it seems likely
| the language would have disappeared eventually if they got
| their way.
|
| But the mercantile class in Denmark resisted development
| efforts, because if the Greenlanders became just another
| European people under the Danish crown, exploiting trade with
| them might become less profitable. People who were willing to
| live without European material comforts, such as they were,
| yet would sell you highly lucrative trade goods in return for
| comparatively little. The policy may have saved their
| language and culture, but at the cost of crippling economic
| development for a long time.
|
| Maybe it was like that with the frontier/foraging Sami in the
| past, too. Kept apart in order to be easier to exploit
| economically. Though already in Harald Fairhair's day, it
| seems there were also Sami living among the Norse as
| boatwrights and smiths and maybe also as wandering
| professional hunters, hunting livestock predators for
| bounties - we know that kept going for a long time.
|
| Another historian, which I will name - Johan Borgos - has
| written that the Lofoten islands were roughly 1 / 5 Sami, and
| that it was priests, the social elite, who first broke the
| taboo on marrying across the language barrier. Once they had
| done it, common people started doing it too, and so the
| language died out in that place. Not really from deliberate
| suppression effort (that came much later), but simply from
| "well, our parents speak different languages but most of the
| people we interact with speak Norwegian, so..."
|
| Segregation can "work wonders" for preserving language and
| culture, but it's obviously often not a good thing. And to
| some degree, I think we have to respect our ancestors choices
| that they wanted bakeries, horn orchestras, cinemas,
| photography studios, tuberculosis sanatoriums, teetotaller
| lodges, baptists and salvationists, steam ships, traveling
| circuses, gymnastic competitions, revue theater etc. etc. in
| short everything modern, coded as "Norwegian" to them -
| rather than joik and reindeer and the few exotic things coded
| as Sami.
| amarant wrote:
| I don't give much credence to the theory though, having
| grown up in a part of Sweden where every village have their
| own "language"(we call them mal, which is like halfway
| between dialect and language, they're not officially
| recognised as minority languages, but they're more than
| just dialects: villages as little as 30km apart can't
| understand eachother at all, and one of them, Alvdalsmal,
| is notoriously more similar to Icelandic than it is too
| Swedish)
|
| These are Swedish communities, as opposed to Sami ones,
| they've been integrated into the wider Swedish society
| since their founding, yet these languages are still alive
| today(though some are critically endangered)
| vintermann wrote:
| There are degrees of integration. People from Alvdalen,
| should they choose to, could move to Stockholm and change
| their dialect (one of the ways you know it's a dialect,
| is that they understand you much better than you
| understand them). It's been that way for a long time.
|
| And from what I understand Alvdalsmal is, like all
| dialects, getting rounded at the corners and getting more
| understandable to other Swedes.
|
| Even dialects that sound incomprehensible at first, if
| you're a native speaker you'll get used to it quickly.
| The difficulty of Alvdalska is superficial, it's actually
| very close to what you're used to, so you'll learn to
| understand them and they already know how to understand
| you.
|
| Sami is completely different. It takes a long time to
| learn. Go back 150 years, and very few Sami would be able
| to move to the capital and pass as Norwegian or Swedish,
| their accent would give them away even if they did know
| the majority language. Go back another 50 years, and they
| may simply not have been allowed to even _try_ to pass in
| many places (as I recall, the first Sami priest in
| Norway, Anders Porsanger, was rejected by his Trondheim
| congregation. He was simply too weird for them, even
| though he was highly educated and of course spoke
| excellent Norwegian).
| simonask wrote:
| "Mal" literally just means language, there's nothing
| special or particular to Swedish regional dialects about
| it. You have the word "sprak" from German "Sprach",
| likely via Low German.
|
| The term "dialect" is very fluid, and intelligibility is
| not a requirement. It is often a negotiated term that has
| more to do with culture or politics.
|
| In China, they even call Cantonese and Hakka "dialects",
| which is linguistically absurd, but serves a political
| purpose.
| groundzeros2015 wrote:
| The used that title because more people will see and remember
| it.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| You say "we" knew but the vast majority of people don't. It's
| not exactly common knowledge among people I know so it's
| unsurprising a title for general audiences uses it as a hook.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I work in the US with white dudes who literally think their
| heritage is "Viking" and make it a big part of their identity -
| I appreciate your point but I also understand why someone might
| pick that title.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| People believe in all kinds of fanciful nonsense to try to
| feel "special". In the US in particular, people will draw on
| some distant real or imagined ancestry to try to establish
| some kind of feeling of ethnic identity. Part of the reason
| may be the feeling of vacuousness of American identity from
| an ethnic point of view, as well as the dissolving religious
| identity which historically functioned as a substitute for
| ethnic identity in the US. (Various ideologies and
| subcultures are also expressions of this.) People will not
| only claim to belong to ethnicity X, 5+ generations after
| their ancestors immigrated and 3+ of which didn't speak the
| language and didn't maintain any contact with the country of
| origin; they will also claim they're "1/16th" of some
| ethnicity, as if "genes" or "blood" were like chemical
| elements. Naturally, these "identities" are rooted in
| stereotypes rather any kind of living culture.
|
| It's a kind of cosplay-lite for the masses.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I highly recommend reading Ethnic Options by Mary C.
| Waters. It's a fascinating work of sociology that defines
| this exact phenomenon and explains its origins.
| samaltmanfried wrote:
| I'm so glad someone brought this up. It irks me when I hear
| Americans detail every minor fraction of their genetic
| makeup: 1/4 Italian, 1/8 German, 1/16... etc. But they
| don't speak any of these languages, they've never even
| visited these countries. It's such a matter of pride for a
| lot of Americans, but it's just a costume.
|
| A quote I found here on HN, that I really liked: "Americans
| will say they are Italian because their great grandma ate
| spaghetti once, but God forbid someone is American because
| he was born there" - mvieira38
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43930642)
| troosevelt wrote:
| Does it really bother you that people care about their
| heritage? US culture is a culture that assimilates,
| people remember where they come from. It's almost mean-
| spirited that yall fault them for this. Better than
| forgetting. I remember where my ancestors came from
| because they came here from somewhere they were not
| wanted.
|
| What I would ask you is why does it irk you, why do you
| care? Is it some hindance to my culture that I want to
| learn about it and try to "cosplay"? What would you
| prefer that we act as though we're here sui generis? Is
| somebody's culture lesser because they're not in that
| country at that time?
|
| People of Italian ancestry in the US did not forget
| everything about their past, in many cultures that
| transition is even more recent; I remember my immigrant
| grandmother. Comes off as gatekeeping people who would
| otherwise be your relatives.
| samaltmanfried wrote:
| It irks me because it usually manifests as embracing
| cartoonish stereotypes of the most superficial aspects of
| the culture: "I'm 1/64th Italian, so I like pizza. I'm
| 1/16th German, so I like beer. etc."
|
| It doesn't keep me up at night, but I think it's tacky
| and vulgar.
| troosevelt wrote:
| It might usually manfiest as that or you're picking out
| the most superficial parts of people's identity to
| criticize. It's just not how I and others view it when we
| think about where the people who made us come from.
|
| Or, to put it another way: your criticism is tacky and
| vulgar. Perhaps what you're describing is "cosplaying"
| but that's not how immigrant communities see themselves.
| I do in fact know the perecentages of my national makeup
| but pizza and beer aren't how I celebrate that. Nobles
| know their ancestry down to the smallest detail, is
| somebody really tacky for knowing that technically they
| are 1/4th Italian? I don't think attacking somebody's
| identity is ever fair; it costs you nothing but is
| everything to them.
| efskap wrote:
| It's so bizarre to me when North Americans proudly claim "Viking
| ancestry", rather than Scandinavian. Like, beyond it not being an
| ethnicity, you're identifying specifically with violent raiders
| who killed peaceful monks, even if that's romanticized by media.
| It's like proudly claiming "pirate" or perhaps more poignantly in
| current times "ICE agent ancestry".
| lazide wrote:
| Pfft, ICE agents wish they were pirates.
|
| In other parts of the world, plenty of people romanticize
| ancestry with Ghenghis Khan too.
|
| Everyone loves being seen to be on the 'winning' side
| sometimes, (and there is always a counter-culture minority!)
| and when sufficiently remote in time, no one is going to really
| 'feel' the atrocities. Then it's all about marketing and
| current social whims.
|
| If the Nazi's won, the current 80/20 pro/anti ratio would be
| flipped no question.
|
| You don't have to go very far back in history to see that
| humans have some pretty dark tendencies.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| > rather than Scandinavian
|
| Strange, being in North America, I've yet to meet anyone
| identify themself as having viking blood, but we refer to
| Scandinavians as being of viking ancestry all the time.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| I grew up in Minnesota and have literally never heard anyone
| ever say this about me or any other person of Scandinavian
| origin.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| You've never heard of your NFL football team?
| Revanche1367 wrote:
| Sport team names have nothing to do with declaring
| ancestry.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| This is not the zinger you think it is, my dude.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| Tampa Bay Buccaneers? Las Vegas Raiders?
|
| Do you think the LA Rams have that name to claim
| ancestry?
| esseph wrote:
| You're absolutely correct.
|
| "They are named after the Vikings of medieval
| Scandinavia, reflecting the prominent Scandinavian
| American culture of Minnesota."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Vikings
| cess11 wrote:
| It's common among usian nazis of the David Lane strain, and
| on Facebook you can find quite a lot of "viking" groups
| mainly populated by usian dinguses, some of whom claim some
| scandinavian ancestor or other.
| jimsimmons wrote:
| pretty common on twitter, esp these days where there is
| strong anglo-saxon white nationalism crowd
|
| they do romanticize their ancient past as one of conquest and
| domination over others.
|
| btw, even without the viking aspect, norse law was pretty
| strange in that it allowed murder for a fine. there is
| definitely a savage aspect to white tradition as there is to
| any modern culture, but there is a lot of whitewashing thats
| done to present anglo saxons as racially superior, highly
| civilized culture.
| nomel wrote:
| > pretty common on twitter
|
| All sorts of strange things are common on twitter that are
| completely absent in real life. It shouldn't be used for
| any measure of reality, especially if you're judging the
| people of a continent.
| macintux wrote:
| White ethno-nationalism is not exactly irrelevant to
| current U.S. news & politics.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| and that is thanks to amplifying fringe and/or fake junk
| from twitter!
| paleotrope wrote:
| Restorative justice isn't that unusual in the world. Blood
| money has roots all over the place. Paying victims or their
| family/clan/tribe for deaths or injury is not unusual
| especially if the perpetrator is of higher status than the
| victim.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| ...so a common meme for bots
| jayknight wrote:
| I've heard it, but only in a tongue-in-cheek context, at
| least the way I've always interpreted it.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Ugh, consider yourself lucky then. Can easily meet a new one
| each week if your social circle isn't too selective. Usually
| someones cousin that tags along. At least they can't survive
| long without the rest of the tribe, so they don't become
| regulars.
| metalman wrote:
| next will be combined "genitscope" readings "astrogenetics",
| the "pro" reading will include your chart including planet 10
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I don't think I've ever heard anyone IRL say they have viking
| ancestors.
|
| Yearning for Valhalla is more a specific type of extremely
| online poster / podcast bro / FBI director kind of behavior.
| antonymoose wrote:
| Would wearing a haircut from that dreadful viking TV show and
| a Thor hammer necklace count? I've seen quite a meme-worthy
| characters over the years
| selimthegrim wrote:
| There was that one Indian guy who hit the gym, bleached his
| skin and hair and now does a pretty credible Viking
| impression.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Crazy what people will do for a government pension
| shakna wrote:
| Modern paganism went through a revival during the early
| 2000s. Are you sure you're not just seeing someone's
| religion?
|
| And its not the first time, either. There's been several
| revivals of the beliefs and culture over the years - for
| example, we didn't even have the word 'viking' in English
| until the 18th Century.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The modern Techno Viking:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjCdB5p2v0Y
| scottyah wrote:
| No, that's not specifying the Viking job, just old nordic
| culture. I don't think that anyone wearing a cross is
| pretending to be a crusader.
| baxtr wrote:
| Never heard someone saying they were Vikings tbh.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's called the power of branding.
| philwelch wrote:
| Much like pirates and gangsters, Vikings are cool if you
| consider them from an aesthetic as opposed to moralistic
| perspective. Everyone has evil ancestors, but some of them were
| cool.
| scottyah wrote:
| Ninjas, samurai, Native Americans in war paint, etc. It's
| like every culture (that has survived) has reverence for
| their own group.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| It's one thing to find a culture fascinating, but this
| "aesthetic" is generally a construct of the imagination
| cobbled out of stereotypes.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > It's so bizarre to me when North Americans proudly claim
| "Viking ancestry", rather than Scandinavian.
|
| Where did you hear it? I am sure at least one out of hundreds
| of millions of Americans claimed it. But you know, we have
| people who think the earth is flat, as well. But by that token
| one can take any dumb thing someone from a large group said and
| sort of say "why do all X say this one dumb thing"
|
| At least from my experience I only heard people claim
| Scandinavian ancestry. Or even more specifically a country like
| Norway or Sweden for example. Places like Minnesota or
| Wisconsin have a lot of that.
| hinkley wrote:
| There are five million Irish in Ireland and something like 75
| million "Irish" in the US. And Chicago has more Polish that
| Warsaw, but that's actual expats and their kids. Not great
| great great grandchildren of Margaret and John who came over in
| 1845.
| necovek wrote:
| This source puts that number at 35M of people with "some"
| Irish descent: https://overlandirelandtours.com/blog/why-are-
| there-more-iri... -- that means that most of them probably
| have some other heritage too.
|
| People say similar stuff about Serbians in Chicago (how it's
| the second biggest Serbian city after Belgrade), but usually
| all of that is overestimated significantly. Just like people
| overestimate their local city population (most in Belgrade
| claim it has 2M people when census on a metropolitan area
| gets us to 1.57M).
| ajxs wrote:
| People say a very similar thing about the number of Greeks
| in Melbourne, Australia.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > There are five million Irish in Ireland and something like
| 75 million "Irish" in the US.
|
| Reminds me of this sketch. [0]
|
| > And Chicago has more Polish that Warsaw, but that's actual
| expats and their kids.
|
| This is one of those persistent myths. While Chicago has many
| Poles and people of Polish ancestry living there, it has
| never exceeded the population of Warsaw. And New York has
| more Poles than Chicago.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/xzlMME_sekI
| hinkley wrote:
| The reason I like to use the Polish example is that I got
| it straight from a Polish dissident, and a second one
| didn't correct me when I repeated it to him later.
|
| Nobody has official numbers on populations that are a mix
| of documented and undocumented people. But I trust members
| of those groups and their relatives probably have a better
| estimate, even if it's offset by not having a degree in
| statistics.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Yes, but when you call it "pillaging" it sounds much more
| romantic.
| tokai wrote:
| You are getting struck hard by the comments, so I'll provide
| some source about the concept of Viking in American self
| identity.
|
| > _In the United States, mainstream Americans incorporated
| Vikings into emerging Anglo-Saxon racial identities_
|
| https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3kq8c3g3
|
| > _As the man skims through these figures, his eyes are
| suddenly opened wide. According to the test results, he is
| "0.012% Viking." With tears in his eyes, he falls on his knees
| and yells with excitement._
|
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14636778.2020.1...
|
| Just the first papers I grabbed, there is a good chuck of
| research literature on viking identity of Americans. There is
| also several monographies on the subject like _Krueger, D. M.
| (2015). Myths of the Rune Stone: Viking Martyrs and the
| Birthplace of America_. Besides that there are organizations
| like the American Viking:
|
| > _We are loyal to our country, United States of America, bound
| by our Viking Heritage, and fueled by modern Longships, the
| Rune-Carvers, and the Skalds._
|
| https://www.americanviking.org/about
|
| I think its a bit harsh dismissing the idea of Viking ancestry
| as a thing in USA. It might be linked to white supremacy, and
| mainly experienced in certain circles online, but its still a
| real phenomenon that has been going on for a long time.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Those monks were part of a system intending to push out the
| native beliefs of the inhabitants of the land as a soft form of
| conquering.
| keybored wrote:
| Someone online from a region of North England was proud that he
| was more of a viking than Scandinavians because the
| Scandinavians that came to that place were definitely going
| viking. Not just lazy Scandinavians that stayed home all the
| time on their ill-geography farms.
| rgblambda wrote:
| If his ancestors remained in England following the viking
| age, then he's 0% viking. I take it he's conflating vikings
| with the great heathen army.
| something765478 wrote:
| > you're identifying specifically with violent raiders who
| killed peaceful monks
|
| That's not that surprising; figures like Caesar and Genghis
| Khan are still being worshiped today. Hell, most famous
| European monarchs are famous _because_ of their violence. It 's
| a lot easier to forgive murder when it happened centuries ago.
| kgwxd wrote:
| Douche bag culture is highly-competitive across the world. Is
| this one really NA specific? I'd bet it's common among ICE
| employees, but they don't represent NA as a whole.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| 1. People yearn for identity labels. It's a core part of human
| existance.
|
| 2. "White" and "American" are problematic identity labels.
| People therefore often reach back toward European ancestry
| (real or supposed), for identity labels that are less
| controversial.
|
| 3. The average person isn't aware (or concerned) that "Viking"
| isn't strictly an ethnicity. Because it's nevertheless a
| commonly used identity label.
|
| Not everything has to be an opportunity to spot Nazis hiding
| behind every tree, or showcase your pedant chops. People wear
| shamrock jewelry or put an Italian flag bumper sticker on their
| car because it's fun and feels good, simple as that. Only a
| small number of legit white supremacists, and a legion of
| absolutely insufferable Internet progressives, think about this
| all that deeply.
| dmurray wrote:
| It makes sense if you're Irish or British. People here who are
| blond and blue-eyed but whose ancestors come from Ireland
| assume they have Viking ancestry, and they're probably right
| since the Viking era was the main time Scandinavians mixed into
| the Irish gene pool. It doesn't have white nationalist
| connotations: the alt-right probably identify more with Celtic
| iconography if anything.
|
| If you're American, it doesn't make as much sense, because
| Scandinavians and Germans have been coming to America for
| hundreds of years.
| coldtea wrote:
| It was both.
| ghostoftiber wrote:
| The answer is - it's both. There's also parallels in archers in
| Europe from the longbow period:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow#Training You can
| tell who was a professional archer by looking at their skeleton,
| and so naturally families who had bodies with more readily
| adaptable skeletons typically became archers. This married the
| morphology of an archer to social status and family line.
| hinkley wrote:
| "Make the tall girl join the women's basketball/volleyball
| team."
| philwelch wrote:
| This piece seems a little confused about what it's actually
| reporting on.
|
| It's well known, to the point of near-cliche, that the word
| "Viking" didn't refer to a nationality or ethnicity. It meant
| something akin to "raider". The ethnic group is usually referred
| to as the Norse, at least until they start differentiating into
| the modern nationalities of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,
| Icelandic, and Faroese.
|
| The actual finding here seems to be the discovery of the remains
| of some Viking raiders who weren't ethnically Norse. Fair enough.
| There are also examples of Norse populations assimilating into
| other cultures, such as the Normans and Rus. Likewise, the
| traditionally Norse Varangian Guard accepted many Anglo-Saxon
| warriors whose lords didn't survive the Norman conquest. So it's
| not too surprising that someone of non-Nordic descent might be
| accepted into a Viking warband.
| kleton wrote:
| It's safe to say that 100% of the Northmen who invaded England in
| 1066 shared that same "job description", however.
| philwelch wrote:
| By 1066, not quite. That was an invading army led by the King
| of Norway to press his claim on the throne of England. I'm sure
| many of the soldiers in that army had been Vikings but at that
| time they were soldiers of a Christian king, which would have
| been considered much more legitimate than being a heathen
| raider.
|
| I guess the Normans were also of Nordic descent but they had
| given up the Viking way of life a century before.
| hinkley wrote:
| 99%.
|
| Poor Sven just liked maps but they kept making him come along
| on their "excursions".
| bitwize wrote:
| What's gonna bake your noodle is, Viking raids were the VC-
| funded startups of medieval northern Europe. Norse kings were
| very generous with their kingdom's treasure, to the raiders
| with the most fearsome reputations.
| acadapter wrote:
| It is linguistically possible that "viking" was simply a self-
| referential ethnonym, with the first part meaning "home" or
| "village".
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-Eur...
|
| Compare Ancient Greek [w]oikos, and all the various ves, vas,
| wies, which can be found all over Eastern Europe.
| theMMaI wrote:
| The first part of the word viking, or vik simply means "bay" in
| nordic languages
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The even firster part "vi" means "we" though.
| b3nt-fiber wrote:
| webay hmm. they started a trend
| runarberg wrote:
| I don't think -kingur is a suffix in old norse. It is not a
| suffix in modern Icelandic, and I can't think of any suffix
| like that.
|
| In fact I don't remember a suffix which attaches to a
| pronoun. In modern Icelandic at least we like to introduce
| more pronouns or conjugate them rather then to suffix or
| prefix them.
|
| If the word was broken as vi-kingur, I think the modern
| Icelandic would be vid-kingur (or vid-lingur), which is
| simply not a word in the language.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| And vi was an outgrowth of ex, which was an improved
| version of ed, which in my experience, roughly translates
| to 'ugh'.
| BobBagwill wrote:
| Argghhh! When all ye got is a 300 Baud connection and a
| ASR-33, then ye be thanking your lucky stars for ed! And
| pray that the ribbon ain't worn out, and that the paper
| tape don't jam!
|
| A pox o' chads on your house, ya mewlin' landlubber!
| acadapter wrote:
| Yes, but similarity alone is not a guarantee that words are
| related. The words val and [h]val are not related in Swedish,
| even though they ended up with the same pronunciation and
| spelling in the modern language. Sometimes, words can end up
| as "fossil words" because the main usage of the word was
| lost.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_word
|
| This can also happen to word roots. Because this is about a
| historical word, it's interesting to look at the broader
| Indo-European language tree for clues about the original
| meaning.
| runarberg wrote:
| I don't speak old norse but I speak Icelandic natively.
| Vikingur simply means Bay-er, that is somebody from a bay. As
| an Icelander living in America I experience the English word
| "viking" as an Exonym for my identity. In Iceland we use
| "Nordic" or "Scandinavian", both terms are inclusive of Finns,
| Sami, and Greenlanders, so strictly speaking this is not an
| Enthnonym.
|
| In Icelandic, at least to my knowledge, we have never used
| _Vikingur_ as an ethnonym (well maybe during a sports game, or
| among right-wing nationalists). It has always meant raiders. In
| 2007 there was even a new word dubbed _Utrasarvikingar_ meaning
| businessmen who made a bunch of money doing business abroad (
| _buykings_ would a clever translation of the term).
|
| EDIT: I just remembered that the -ingur suffix can also be used
| to indicate a temporary state e.g. _ruglingur_ (confusion) and
| _trodningur_ (trampling [n.]), and was used as such e.g. _ad
| fara i viking_ (to embark to a viking) so _vikingur_ could also
| mean, a person that embarks to a bay.
| jibal wrote:
| Never trust the headline. From the article:
|
| > And comparing DNA and archaeology at individual sites suggests
| that _for some_ in the Viking bands, "Viking" was a job
| description, not a matter of heredity.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| The article is just really confused in its terminology. But
| historically, vikingr meant raider or pirate. It was only
| hereditary in the sense it might be a family tradition to go
| viking. But if you dont go raiding you are not a vikingr
| whatever your ancestry.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| The title is rather confused, because DNA cannot show how people
| understood a certain word. Historical sources like the sagas show
| how the word was understood.
| danilocesar wrote:
| And they didn't use emacs, because they were Vi-Kings
| boutell wrote:
| Later the vimkings pushed them out. Then they were suppressed
| by the vs-igoths, but modern day enthusiasts still call
| themselves neo-vimkings
| HerbManic wrote:
| I have come out of lurking here. But that pun was so good/awful
| I just sent it to Richard Stallman for his collection of puns.
| enjoykaz wrote:
| The no-mixing part is what got me. If "viking" was just a job
| open to anyone, you'd expect genetic mixing in the burial sites.
| But Swedish groups went east, Danes south, Norwegians west --
| distinct genetic clusters throughout.
|
| So it was a job, but one you apparently got by being born in the
| right place
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Don't take "job" literally. It wasn't centralized in any way.
| It just meant if you had the resources you could build a ship,
| hire some henchmen, and go raiding. It is not surprising Swedes
| went East, Nowegians Northwest etc - just look at a map.
| Bender wrote:
| From old Norse a viking is a pirate or raider _often including
| rape_. Hobby or profession to get the booty and spread ones DNA.
| It 's still very much a thing but primarily out of Africa and
| parts of the middle east including places they emigrate to.
| Scandinavians had evolved away from that behavior long ago.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| So Africans have the raping gene but Scandinavians do not?
| Bender wrote:
| [delayed]
| nillkiggers1488 wrote:
| No Netflix, the Vikings were not black.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| If you are referring to the "Vikings"-show, you should be aware
| it is fiction and the roles sadly are played by professional
| actors, both genuine vikings.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Well said.
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