The voyages and sagas of the vikings are very interesting, but something I find to also be fascinating is the economic and cultural history that brought about the viking age and then several centuries later ended it. It does seem kind of sudden; there was a niche that suddenly caused vikings to travel everywhere, and then it was just over.
I think mainly it was, that they became civilized/baptized and christians were still free to plunder and enslave non christians, but not fellow christians.
So the vikings did not just stop, but rather became crusaders:
"In 1107, Sigurd I of Norway sailed for the eastern Mediterranean with Norwegian crusaders to fight for the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem; the kings of Denmark and Sweden participated actively in the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries"
(But otherwise of course many factors contributed to the rise and fall of the vikings and there indeed seems to have been a niche, with a temporary weakness, no christian nordic fleets etc.)
> they became civilized/baptized
How are civilized and baptized comparable concepts? The vikings surely had a civilization before christianity took hold and ascribing sone kind of higher ethics to christianity is also quite a stretch.
"Civilization" is ill-defined anyway. What's certain is that long before they embraced Christianity in a form other European Christians would recognize as such, they admired Europe. Europe had great buildings, castles, cathedrals, palaces, walled cities, places of learning, markets, unlike anything in Scandinavia at the time. They wanted those things. And they could only get so far as pirates and slavers.
Interesting that you see it as a higher ethics to be OK with only enslaving non christians, because I really did not mean anything like that, as I do not see it as a higher ethic.
And like the other commenter pointed out, civilization is ill defined.
I was mainly using it here from the christian point of view, where pagans are not civilized by definition. Not that the norse had not a complex society themself.
Maybe it was good weather [1] on the isles for once?
The voyages and sagas of the vikings are very interesting, but something I find to also be fascinating is the economic and cultural history that brought about the viking age and then several centuries later ended it. It does seem kind of sudden; there was a niche that suddenly caused vikings to travel everywhere, and then it was just over.
I think mainly it was, that they became civilized/baptized and christians were still free to plunder and enslave non christians, but not fellow christians.
So the vikings did not just stop, but rather became crusaders:
"In 1107, Sigurd I of Norway sailed for the eastern Mediterranean with Norwegian crusaders to fight for the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem; the kings of Denmark and Sweden participated actively in the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings
(But otherwise of course many factors contributed to the rise and fall of the vikings and there indeed seems to have been a niche, with a temporary weakness, no christian nordic fleets etc.)
> they became civilized/baptized
How are civilized and baptized comparable concepts? The vikings surely had a civilization before christianity took hold and ascribing sone kind of higher ethics to christianity is also quite a stretch.
"Civilization" is ill-defined anyway. What's certain is that long before they embraced Christianity in a form other European Christians would recognize as such, they admired Europe. Europe had great buildings, castles, cathedrals, palaces, walled cities, places of learning, markets, unlike anything in Scandinavia at the time. They wanted those things. And they could only get so far as pirates and slavers.
Interesting that you see it as a higher ethics to be OK with only enslaving non christians, because I really did not mean anything like that, as I do not see it as a higher ethic.
And like the other commenter pointed out, civilization is ill defined. I was mainly using it here from the christian point of view, where pagans are not civilized by definition. Not that the norse had not a complex society themself.
Maybe it was good weather [1] on the isles for once?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period
Wikipedia is amazing. The Swedish articles are even longer.
Just reread this[0] classic piece that captures Viking life. It holds up so well.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Long-Ships-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1...
The cover with the viking in a horned helmet does not hold up so well for me. The text is more historically accurate?
It's very interesting how fascinating the Vikings still are to many people. They did a lot of amazing things, and a lot of horrible things.
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