Bunkum. In Western culture it is taboo, but other cultures are different.
I rather suspect Not in Anger was referring to the Greenland colony, not Scandinavians in general :).
( emphasis added )
Uhh…You did mean to say they were not all warriors, yes? Otherwise, I might dispute with you just a tad. Afterall, I’m not entirely sure I’d chalk up Aethelred the Unready’s downfall purely to aggressive Danish trading practices ;).
- Tamerlane
Tamerlane. Yes of course there were some warriors. It’s just that the stereotype is very… um… stereotypical . It’s on par with Native-Americans saying ‘How!’ and ‘Ugh’, all Japanese being fierce Samurai, asf.
Not that we suffer from the stereotype, per se. But we are fighting ignorance here.
Up next - we continue the debate about cannibalism.
[Sorry to be late with this response - the SDMB has been very slow today, and reluctant to accept posts.]
My source is the writings of James Cook. His definitive biography is probably The Life of Captain James Cook by J.C. Beaglehole.
Cook and a number of others on his voyages who kept journals make frequent mention of cannibalism in NZ. They were not describing a single incident, but many.
Modern historians should feel compelled to advance theories that cover the existing evidence. Either cannibalism existed in NZ at the time of Cook’s voyages, or he and others were engaged in a remarkably elaborate conspiracy to falsely suggest that it did. Since Cook has otherwise been shown to be an extremely reliable observer, this would be a challenging theory to pursue.
You have implied that you find 200+ year-old first-hand observations dubious on account of their age. I’m puzzled by this. In considering what took place 200+ years ago, what better source might we hope to find? Are we to consider something written, say, 50 years ago inherently more accurate?
Yeah, they did. My understanding is that there were three different distinct kinds of Viking, roughly corresponding to the three nation-states currently existing. The “Swedes” followed the river system down into Russia and the Ukraine, establishing a commercial empire and the roots of civilization there. The “Danes” were the stereotypical helmet-horned guys who sailed to Britain and Ireland, started colonies in northern France, sailed past Spain and into the Mediteranean, etc. And partied like dogs the whole time. The “Norwegians” were the ones ocean-going westward who colonized the Hebrides, the Orkney Islands, Iceland and Greenland and maybe eastern Canada. Course, both the N’s and the D’s invaded Britain regularly, cuz, hey, it was just there.
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No one wore horns on their helmets until big opera productions 800 years later. That’s why stereotypes are a bad thing. Hagar the Horrible doesn’t represent any actual history.
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It was a lot more mixed than that. Settlers tended to move in the directions you give, but not all and certainly quite a few did it all. Harald Hardradi was born in Norway, had to hide out in Kiev, went to work for the Emporer in Constantinople, fought from Sicily to Palenstine, went back to Norway, became king, tried unsuccessfully to become king of Denmark, launched an invasion of N. England from the Orkneys, died at Stamford bridge, thus setting up the victory for the Normans at Hastings a few days later. The Jomsburg vikings also travelled all over. The Norwegian/Danish/Swedish distinction didn’t really matter to people at the time. Norway didn’t even exist as a united country for much of the Viking Age. Part of modern Sweden was Danish, etc. It is general quite hard to determine which group came from where. The Rus who got set up in Russia may have never lived in Sweden but were Norsemen living in the Finland/Baltic states area. (There are still such “ethnic Swedes” in Finland. Something of a misnomer.)
There’s no evidence of Vikings reaching New Zealand in longboats, because, as has been pointed out, it’s pretty much impossible for them to have travelled that far.
There are some Scandanavian roots in New Zealand though:
Dannevirke and Norsewood were settled by Scandanavian settlers in the nineteenht century.
There is a Viking long boat on thee shore in the northland region of new Zealand. So yes they did reach new Zealand the authorities of new Zealand will not allow any DNA evidence to prove this. They arrived in 1100ad 200 years even before the Maoris
And I think we also need to draw a distinction between ceremonial cannibalism (even of a fairly substantive and, er, filling kind) and subsistence cannibalism.
That is, it’s one thing if a society occasionally celebrates a victory over its enemies by literally feasting on their bodies. It’s quite another if a society adopts the eating of human flesh as a routine part of its standard diet, as in the old Cosmographia universalis legends and such like.
That latter type of cannibalism, AFAIK, is what anthropologists currently don’t consider sufficiently substantiated in any human society past or present. I know that many anthropologists are skeptical even that strictly ceremonial cannibalism has ever occurred, which seems to me a less defensible position, but AFAICT they’re quite right to say that no known human culture has ever practiced subsistence cannibalism.
Don’t they have Spam* in New Zealand? How would that get there if not for (zombie) Vikings?
*The canned meatlike product, not the unwanted email advertising.
FYI: This is an 8.5 year old thread.
Yes, we know. Thanks for the heads-up, though; the first-decimal-place precision is especially appreciated!
Positively Felliniesque!
Corn Bunting?
What’s with the gazzilion threads/posts about corn this weekend…?
:smack: 4/1/12. I was so cornfused!!
You don’t need DNA to prove this. Just show the construction of the boat is Viking rather than Polynesian and carbon date the wood to show age. You need to be careful though, I don’t think the effect of zombiism on carbon dating is well understood.
I’m not going to comment on the truth-worthiness of your claim, but I’ll just practice a little peeve of mine in the interest of the general populace.
Don’t write ø or ö instead of o and think it’ll impress actual Scandinavians. It’s extremely silly. The ø/ö is a totally different letter (and sound) from o. Trying to pronounce “Geørg” is about as tough-sounding as “Gearge”. And “Motörhead” sound about as smart as “Moteerhead”, only less so.
The Ø/Ö is the silliest of all the Scandinavian* vowels (and we have a lot of them!). The closest approximation in English is about like the “ehhh…” people utter when they have absolutely no clue what they are talking about.
Thanks!
*) It also exists in German, Turkish and probably others, but I am uncertain about their silliness
I’m glad to hear somebody else thinks this is silly too. I doggedly pronounce the name of a certain American heavy metal band more or less as “Meuhtly Creeue”, because by golly, if they’re going to write it with umlauts then I’m going to pronounce it with umlauts. If they think it sounds stupid (and yes, it certainly does), then it’s their own fault.
Do they think it sounds stupid? They are the real life version of Spinal Tap, except with an even more idiotic name and you are asking if a different pronunciation of their name would sound stupid?
The student reads aloud in class: “Goethe was a great poet.”
The teacher interrupts him: “No no no no no, in this case, when ‘o’ follows ‘e’, it should be pronounced like an ‘ö’. Got that?”
“Sure did, ma’am,” says the student, and tries again:
“Göthe was a great pöt.”
(It’s, uh, slightly better in the original Swedish. But only slightly.)