Your translation is pretty good, but you appear to have taken the wrong lesson away from them. The point is that the word “Sagokung” does not mean, “fairytale king”, it means “king from the sagas”. The sagas were meant to be historical, but recorded decades to centuries after the events involved, and only the more recent events are documented in multiple independent sources. So the references to genealogies going back to the Norse gods are obviously wrong, whereas descriptions of more recent kings and individuals have a better chance of being correct.
When the wikipedia-article says, in your translation ““Sagokung” is thus a value-neutral designation”, that’s what it means. It is a term that includes the early individuals in a genealogy that places the Norse god Frey as king of petty kingdoms in Sweden in 63BC (according to some interpretation of generations), his descendants obviously fictitious rulers recorded only in these genealogies, with no real information about life and deeds, but it also includes rulers in the Viking age, attested in multiple sagas with detailed lives and interactions, and with independent corroborating evidence in archaeology and contemporary sources from other parts of Europe.
In the early 19th century the Sagas were treated as perfect historical documents, then they were rejected as completely unreliable fairy tales for a while, and now they are seen as flawed but valuable evidence of late Norse prehistory.
Sadly, any act of cruelty, no matter how heinous has been committed throughout history. I know there’s at least one account of Japanese solider in the Phillipines or Nanking, China, throwing a baby up in the air impaling it on his bayonet.
While the passages on this page excepted form (linked below) doesn’t detail the act of throwing and impalement, I take what is written as highly, highly true and accurate and not apocryphal. The page is http://malacanang.gov.ph/75102-manila-holocaust-massacre-and-rape/, “The Presidential Museum and Library is the primary office within the Office of the President responsible for preserving, managing, and promoting the history and heritage of the Philippine Presidency, and particularly of Malacañan Palace as its official seat.”
The opening passages from the page:
"It is when one turns from the purely combat aspects of the sack of Manila to the plight of the affected civilians that the full horror of the ordeal becomes manifest. To this day, many of the survivors cannot talk about it.
Two things must be borne in mind. First, there were no novelties in the Japanese conduct in Manila in February 1945. All of it had previously been seen in Nanking in 1937—the mass killing, the bayoneting, the beheading, the rape, the slicing open of women after being raped, the impaling of babies on bayonets, the gouging out of unborn fetuses from pregnant mothers."
To those with a weak stomach or would prefer not to acknowledge the atrocities committed during war, I advise you not to read the detailed accounts.
These types of atrocities did not end with the Japanese during WWII and frighteningly are no doubt being a carried out somewhere in the world today, by those who have no knowledge of what the Viking or Japanese or any number of other soldiers of countless countries, throughout countless centuries have done during the heat, anger and frustration experienced during war.
It is cold, hard, verifiable FACT that nations throughout history have told exaggerated tales of enemy brutality. It is also undeniable fact that many foolish people have laid aside their rationality and swallowed such stories whole. It is also a fact that many false stories have a certain resemblance to each other.
As such, a modicum of skepticism under such circumstances is entirely appropriate.
Yes, the links above are from Wikipedia, which can be edited by anyone, but a quick search will bring up dozens of other links that state the same FACTS that are not unique to these incidents.
BTW, I lived through the Vietnam era and saw the reports of My Lai given by the US Government on US networks where there was film of live action fighting and body counts almost every night. So the sad thing was to my pre-teen mind, hearing about My Lai was just another story of the fighting “Over there”.
“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana - 1948
There are countless killings of civilians, including women, children and even babies throughout the ages. That is not being contested here.
What is likely to be fabricated are stories such as catching babies on spears for the reasons given in various posts above.
It’s very possible that some Viking somewhere deliberately killed a baby. Maybe it happened sometimes. What seems questionable is that this was a common practice.
What makes me question it is the practicality of the action. Spearing kids? Sure, easy-peasy.
Tossing them in the air and catching them on spears? Messy as fuck - Viking spears were quite broad-bladed and could even be used for cleaving grown men - this is just an invitation to getting covered in a shower of babyguts. Not a neat puncture like a bayonetting.
Contrary to popular imagination, Vikings were extremely fussy about their cleanliness and appearance, I don’t see them revelling in wearing entrails as a fashion statement.
Intimidation, frustration or just plain nuts! A little baby entrails is nothing compared to the blood spurt from an impaled adult!
Intimidation - Look at how carelessly and heartlessly we treat the most innocent and beloved of your town. Think what we’d do to you!
Frustration - This was one of the driving forces behind My Lai. The soldiers were frustrated that they couldn’t locate the Viet Gong and when they got to My Lai, they let their frustration out on the villagers. Repeated countless times before and after throughout history.
Just plain nuts! - “The Warriors” (1979)
Swan: Why’d you do it? Why’d you waste Cyrus?
Luther: No reason. I just… like doing things like that!
And they probably didn’t impale adults in the air directly above themselves, either. When someone’s on the ground and you impale them, the mess mostly ends up on the ground. When you toss someone in the air and then impale them, the mess mostly ends up on you.
Again, not the Vikings, but Vlad the Impaler sure displayed a lot of people in the air! And displaying an enemy’s head on a pole was/is a common practice in various countries. Somebody has to erect those poles!
In college, I took a course on the history of early Christianity. And I read a lot of (translated) original sources from the first century or two after Jesus.
One story I read in several sources was that the Christians would steal a Greek or Roman baby, and encase it in a ball of dough, and then throw it around the room, dropping it and beating it until the baby was dead. Then they would bake the ball of dough, baby and all, and share it for a ritual meal.
(Some of them also documented how the Christians extract blood from babies or children of non-Christians, and used it for their sacrament.)
I think this is extremely unlikely, despite there being several extant versions of the story, rich in detail, and similar in detail. I think it’s more likely that the Christians were unpopular, and their neighbors misunderstood the cannibalistic aspect of the eucharist thing (“this is my blood you drink, and my body you eat”) and made up some stories, that were “click worthy” enough to be repeated. And I suspect the same of that Viking story.
Did some Viking impale an infant on a spear? No doubt. Was it routine for them to toss infants around on the ends of spears as a sacrifice to Odin? Not bloody likely.
Farmers and villagers had little to fear from the Vikings. As a matter of fact, they made excellent trading partners. Churches and monasteries on the other hand were a beloved target for the travelers since they were packed with worthwhile bootie and offered little or no resistance. Since the Vikings were not christened in the 9th century they had little scruples when it came to robbing religious institutions. Since history was mostly written by monks in monasteries, there was probably some bias there.
The 10th century Arab intellectual Ahmad ibn Fadlan spent some time with the Vikings (a tale very loosely depicted by Antonio Banderas in the 13th Warrior). He describes many of their habits. Impaling children or other unusual cruelties are not in his accounts. He is mostly disgusted by their lack of personal hygiene: “They are the filthiest of all Allah’s creatures: they do not purify themselves after excreting or urinating or wash themselves when in a state of ritual impurity after coitus and do not even wash their hands after food.”
(http://sciencenordic.com/old-arabic-texts-describe-dirty-vikings)
IIRC the propaganda of WWI could get nasty, the Germans were called Huns and there were reports published that on their rampage through Belgium they bayonetted babies for fun.
Or recall the testimony of the nurse from Kuwait that Saddam’s army dumped babies out of incubators to take them (the incubators) back to Baghdad hospitals. Later demonstrated that the “witness” was IIRC the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and it was all fabricated.
Everyone slanders their enemy, and what’s more horrible than sadistically killing innocent babies?
Old (tasteless) joke -
Q: “What’s easier to load, a truckload of bowling balls of a truckload of dead babies?”
A: “Dead babies, you can use a pitchfork.”
I’ll refrain from the “How do you tell their dead?” follow-up.
A ball of dough big enough to completely enclose a baby? How the heck would you bake it uniformly through? There’s a reason nobody makes loaves of bread that big.
So what are we to believe? Were the Vikings dirty as the Christians and Ahmad Ibn Fadlan described them or this
"What we do know from the excavation of Viking burial mounds is that personal grooming tools are some of the most common items found. Items such as razors, tweezers and ear spoons have been found. In fact combs seem to be the most common artifact found from the Viking Age. We also know that the Vikings made a very strong soap which was used not only for bathing, but also for bleaching their hair. Vikings bleached their hair as it seems blond hair was highly valued in the Viking World.
Accounts of Anglo-Saxons describing the Vikings who attacked and ultimately settled in England suggest the Vikings might be considered to be ‘clean-freaks’, because they would bathe once a week. This was at a time when an Anglo-Saxon might only bath once or twice a year. In fact the original meaning of Scandinavian words for Saturday (laurdag / lørdag / lördag) was ‘Washing Day’.
Is there any reason they couldn’t be both clean freaks and filthy? Different cultures have different notions of what constitutes “clean”. A lot of Ibn Fadlan’s description seems to be based on ritual uncleanness, and if the Vikings had any notion of that at all, it would have been different from the Muslim notion.
Agree with Chronos. Nothing in Ibn Fadlan’s description is incompatible with combing their hair or bathing once a week. Which would make them cleaner than a lot of the contemporaneous Christians. But I’m with Ibn Fadlan that it’s nice to wash after excreting, which I suspect neither the Vikings nor the Christians did.