Are Vikings overrated?

I also do not consider the Norsemen [Vikings/Varangians] as "overrated" or over-romanticized;

Bold adventurers and warriors that created a settlement and trade-network from Greenland - Nowgorod;
All connected with a great culture which is everlasting manifested in the Norse Mythology and Sagas;


Sure, the Norseman also suffered great defeats, like the Siege of Dorostolon;
But their reputation in bravery and loyalty (also cruelty) was so greatly appreciated that they were largely employed as mercenaries and guards by other foreign Kingdoms and Rulers;
Their christianised descendants the Normans, were masters of the pitched battle; (tragically) defeating the Varangian Guard (Byzantine) in the Battle of Dyrracheum; [Varangians were the only ones fighting, the Byzantines largely fled the field]

The Norsemen did get a good press in the medieval times from Ahmad ibn Fadlan;
very interesting chronicle and account;

Also to note (trade) the settlement of Haithabu (Queen of the Baltic);

Famous Piraeus Lion - inscriptions from Norse mercenaries [in Byzantine service]
d2oq.png

Battle of Dyrrachium, Noormands vs Varaggians, Vikings vs Vikings
 
Wends in Scandinavia...
(i've already wrote few articles about Slovensko-Svenska (Slovene-Swedish) words similarities), here is another article with more words which were discovered by other researchers...

The "triglav" (three head) stonehead found at Glejbjerg (ancient Wendic Glav-Breg("head-hill") of Tri-glav? - "3 head"; transmutation of Glava or Golova into Holova or Hova (Head) or Hoved) near Esbjerg ("ice-hill" or perhaps from As(god)-hill; Holm (in western Slovene dialects) - Hill of Gods?)

skandinavski-triglav.jpg



http://www.globalwends.com/uploads/1/3/0/4/13044918/wendish_in_scandinavia.pdf


The most interesting word i've found in this list is a word "gouta" which sounds identical to our Prekmurian word guch... "language"; Gučat; "to speak"; in official (literal Slovene) it would be "govorit"; "rek" is a "saying"; the pseudo-transliteration into a verb would be "rekat"; note I've market the letter "t" because it ends the verbs in Slavic and Sanskrit languages in general... This is a clear evidence that Swedish language did not derive from Gothic ("germanic") languages only... but was clearly part of the "Satem" linguistic diaspora also...

"yta paa sveitum" (iti po svejti / iti po svetu) (lol)

Svet as "word" in Slavic. Svet-loba (probably shares similarity with "ilumina"; Svet-loba, svetilo; "ilumina") as a "light"...




"Wends" (linguistic relatives of Hyperboreans, Slavs) in Japan...

The mysterious ancient Japan word of the Ainu people...


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Ainu Couple 1936: A photograph of one of the last pure-blooded Ainu. They have died out in the latter half of the 20th century. Recently, Japanese government offered funding to have Ainu culture revived!

aimu.jpg

very ancient Japanese sword is called meich in Japanese. Surprisingly, meich or mech has the same meaning also in Slavic.How did Wends reach Japan, and when? The question is at which point in time in the past Wendish speakers could have had contact with Japanese islands.

"
You may wonder how I came to search for traces of Wendish as far afield as Japan. It happened quite accidentally. I became curious about whether there was a linguistic connection between ancient Japanese and Wendish in the mid-1980s, when reading a biography of an American who had grown up in Japan. He mentions that a very ancient Japanese sword is called meich in Japanese. Surprisingly, meich or mech has the same meaning also in Wendish.How did Wends reach Japan, and when? I decided to find out first if this particular word, meich, really exists in Japanese. And, if it does, at which point in time in the past Wendish speakers could have had contact with Japanese islands.

I describe in more detail, mentioning my tentative conclusions with regard to the origins of Wendish in Japanese, and its relation to the Ainu language, in the 5th installment of my article,The Extraordinary History of a Unique People, published in the Glasilo magazine, Toronto, Canada. Anyone interested will find all the already published installments of this article, including the 5th installment, on my still not quite organized website, www.GlobalWends.com. In the next, winter issue of Glasilo, i.e., in the 6th installment of my article, I will report my discoveries and conclusions with regard to the origins of Wendish in the Ainu language, the language of the aboriginal white population of Japan.

I started my search for the word meich by buying Kenkyusha's New School Japanese-English Dictionary. Unfortunately,I had acquired a dictionary meant for ordinary students and meich is not mentioned in it. Obviously, I should have bought a dictionary of Old Japanese instead, in which ancient terms are mentioned. Nevertheless, to my amazement,I foundin Kenkyusha's concise dictionary, instead of meich, many other Wendish words and cognates, which I am quoting below in my List.

I found it intriguing that the present form of words in Japanese, with clearly Wendish roots, show that Chinese and Korean immigrants to the islands were trying to learn Wendish, not vice versa. This indicates that the original population of Japan was Caucasian and that the influx of the Asian population was, at least at first, gradual. Today, after over 3000 years of Chinese and Korean immigrations, about half of the Japanese vocabulary is based on Chinese.

There is another puzzle to be solved. Logically, one would expect the language of the white aboriginies of Japan, the Ainu - also deeply influenced by Wendish - to have been the origin of Wendish in modern Japanese. Yet, considering the set up of the Wendish vocabulary occurring in Japanese, Ainu does not seem to have played any part in the formation of modern Japanese, or only a negligible one. Wendish vocabulary in Japanese points to a different source. It seems to have been the result of a second, perhaps even a third Wendish migration wave into the Islands, at a much later date. Ainu seem to have arrived already in the Ice Age, when present Japan was still a part of the Asian continent. They have remained hunters and gatherers until their final demise in the mid-20th century. They retained their Ice Age religion, which regarded everything in the universe and on earth as a spiritual entity, to be respected and venerated - including rocks and stars. Wendish words in Japanese, however, mirror an evolved megalithic agricultural culture and a sun-venerating religion.

A list of all Wendish cognates I have discovered in the Kenkyusha's dictionary is on my website, under the heading of a List of Wendish in Japanese. It is by no means a complete list. My Japanese is very limited, based solely on Kenkyusha's dictionary and some introductory lessons to the Japanese culture, history, language, literature and legends, by a Japanese friend of mine, with an authentic Wendish name Hiroko, pronounced in the Tokyo dialect, as in Wendish,shiroko, wide, all-encompassing. Besides, although I have a university level knowledge of Wendish, I do not possess the extensive Wendish vocabulary necessary to discover most of Wendish words which may have changed somewhat their meaning with thousands of passing years, complicated by the arrival of a new population whose language had nothing in common with Wendish.

Future, more thorough and patient researchers - whose mother-tongue is Wendish but who also have a thorough knowledge of Japanese - will, no doubt, find a vastly larger number of Wendish cognates in Japanese than I did."

http://www.globalwends.com/introduction.html

List of Wendish (the author is Slovene, he concentrated the transliterations of the Ainu words through the Slovene; which is also very close to ancient Rig Vedic Sanskrit, among Lithuanian)...
The following list (attached at bottom of page as a PDF file) was compiled on the basis of an admittedly rather superficial reading of J. Batchelor's Ainu-English-Japanese English Dictionary and Grammar, 4th Edition, published by Iwanami in 1938.

http://www.globalwends.com/uploads/1/3/0/4/13044918/wendish_in_ainu_list.pdf

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A portrait of The Minamoto no Yoritomo (May 9, 1147 – February 9, 1199), the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura Shogunate of Japan, a feudal system which lasted for 700 years and undermined Emperor's centralized power in Kyoto. Minamoto ruled from 1192 until 1199. He united Japan with the rising of the Samurai class, whose privileged status was ended only in the late 19th century. He is shown in his portrait as a young man of 32, with reddish hair, green eyes, blond eyebrows, a blond moustache and a blond beard. This indicates that some Wendish characteristics were still to be found among the 12th century Japanese population - after some 3,000 years of mixing with Chinese and Korean immigrants.

A Partial List of Wendish Words in Modern Japanese

http://www.globalwends.com/uploads/1/3/0/4/13044918/wendish_in_japanese.pdf

expansion of the Y haplogroup R1a1a into China...

Chinese mummies with partimonial Y haplogroup R1a1a, which is most common among current Russian, Ukrainian, Slovaks, Polish, Slovene men...

The dynasty of Di(n) (derives from Don (River); named after goddess Dana or Danica or Zorya or Zorica (Dawn); this term is identical to Irish Danu goddess (Tuatha de Danu) and Vedic Saraswati (her simbol was a white swan; also in the mythology about Danu and Zorya (Danica)...


 
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@vedun

there are 2 theories on Goth origin
1 - they came from scandinavia
2 - they came from pomerania

I always supported number 2

Their "cousins" are the gepids south of them in pomerania..........they do not have "cousins" in the geats or the gutes of sweden and gotland. The goths conquered these lands
 
You are embarrassing yourself

If you bothered to read any standard of account of Russian history, you would learn about the Rus, who came from Roslagen in Sweden. They were invited by merchants in Novgorod to be mercenaries. When they weren't paid, they took over Russia. For the first two hundred years, they spoke Swedish and intermarried with Viikings in Sweden. They gradually became the nobility of Russia.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/513866/The-Russian-Primary-Chronicle

Gard was the Swedish word for fort, which became grad in Russian.

Valdemar became Vladimir. Helga became Olga.

Rurik, the founder of Kievan Rus, was named Hroerekr.

We don't have to just rely on archaeology because we have historical sources, but Viking artifacts are all over Kievan Rus.
On the 1,000th anniversary of Rurik's conquest, Russia erected a monument to the Swedish Vikings who founded the country
http://www.aztux.com/travel/page/Russia
Novgorod_millenium_4.jpg


http://www.aztux.com/travel/page/Russia
You don't know anything about either Swedish or Russian. Many Russian words were borrowed from Swedish, including kniga (book) from knigge, and stol (table) from stol (chair) in Russian
 
"
Rurik, the founder of Kievan Rus, was named Hroerekr."

Rurik was never the founder of "Kievan Rus". The term Kiev itself derives from prince Kiy, who was a ruler before ruler Rurik or Riurik.
His brothers were Shchek (=current "Czech") and Khoryv and his sister was Lybid (or Labod or Labud or "Swan" = Lada goddess...also a river around the city of Kiyev or Kiev...
Kiev simply means "Kiy's" and not "Riurikov".

"You don't know anything about either Swedish or Russian."

Why are you saying that? The words, you've described above are the same as in my language... They' are not Russian only.

"Many Russian words were borrowed from Swedish, including kniga (book) from knigge"

I've already wrote a post about the this root of KN; it means "fast" and something which has to do with a Ruler (like Kniaz or Knez or Konyaz (Kon; also a Horse or Kunec (a rabbit - fast running animals; young (fast) man,..)) or Russian КОН (Kon) which means "a game" or Time (cycle); Kniaz (Konyaz; "Konig"("king") / "Khan") was a "Time lord"(a dynasty)...

And the guys you are describing, weren't Swedish Vikings (Jarls), but Vagrians(from current location of Poland (and Germany) or Variags who became "rulers" over Rusi (and Rusalke weren't Swedish women...but dark "vilas" (fairies) from the 7th world..("7th day" celebration of the Rusalka days..). And the capital city of Variags (described by Adam von Bremen) or Vagrians was called Stargard or Stargrad (in Russian as Drevny Gorod or Grad) or "Old city"... With their 'unification', they've moved the capital city to Novgorod or New city.
 
If you bothered to read any standard of account of Russian history, you would learn about the Rus, who came from Roslagen in Sweden. They were invited by merchants in Novgorod to be mercenaries. When they weren't paid, they took over Russia. For the first two hundred years, they spoke Swedish and intermarried with Viikings in Sweden. They gradually became the nobility of Russia.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/513866/The-Russian-Primary-Chronicle

Gard was the Swedish word for fort, which became grad in Russian.

Valdemar became Vladimir. Helga became Olga.

Rurik, the founder of Kievan Rus, was named Hroerekr.

We don't have to just rely on archaeology because we have historical sources, but Viking artifacts are all over Kievan Rus.
On the 1,000th anniversary of Rurik's conquest, Russia erected a monument to the Swedish Vikings who founded the country
http://www.aztux.com/travel/page/Russia


http://www.aztux.com/travel/page/Russia
You don't know anything about either Swedish or Russian. Many Russian words were borrowed from Swedish, including kniga (book) from knigge, and stol (table) from stol (chair) in Russian
Obviously there was Viking influence over beginning of Kiev Rus. However this:Gard was the Swedish word for fort, which became grad in Russian. might be too far fetched. Grod, Gorod is also used by all the other Slavs. It is hard to explain borrowing from Vikings if it came from them around 9th century. Mind you that all Slavs split around 5th century, therefore their common vocabulary should come from before this time.
 
"Mind you that all Slavs split around 5th century, therefore their common vocabulary should come from before this time."

Jordanes described 3 kins, tribes of Slavs: Sklaveni (from this term derives Sloveni as an artificial name for all Slavs), who were living around the city of Novietunum and from the so called Mursian Lake to the River Dnjeper and up to River Visla to the north.' In these words we can best see the description of all Western Slavs, from Slovenians to Slovinians along the Baltic. Novietum can only be Neviodunum, today’s Drnovo near Krško, at that time an important Roman centre and a port on the river Sava. Marsian lake can only be Blatno jezero (Boloton Lake) named Mursian because of the nearby river Mura. Jordanes wrote in the year 551 referring to year 490. This was some one hundred years before the Slavs were supposed to have settled in present day Slovenia in the region of the Eastern Alps.
Left from the mountains in Dacia lived population of another Slavic tribe of Veneti. The territories of Antes (current Ukrainians, Russians, Belorussians, partially also Bulgarians) extends between rivers Dniester and Dnieper.
Jordanes is setting Venetes above Skloveni (Slovenes) and Antes and saying that both came from the Venetic origin...- both shared the same linguistic family...

"common vocabulary". If you already understand the language of Freising manuscripts(which predate 8th-9th century), we are not dealing with "common Slavic language" called "Church Slavic language", but Slovene, which was in a way much different the Old Novogorod dialect and Church Slavic (artificial christian language).
 
KYI, SHCHEK, KHORYV and Lybid, founders of Kiev...



a7bafff8999e846be83949574511987c.jpg


Note the ship, is "Korabel" in modern Ukrainian (Korabl' in Russian)... the old word was Ladya (remained in literal Slovene) which was also a term for a city Ladoga... The word contains the goddess Lada (Lady; "lads"(young people); (v)Lada (government, harmony), which was always described as a white Swan (Labod (Lybid, sister of prince Kiy); look bellow... Lada was mother of goddess Zorya(dawn) or Danica; this is Irish Danu and Vedic Saraswati(=Zarja(Danica; Danu) Sveta)


stock-photo-famous-monument-to-the-mythical-founders-of-kiev-on-the-dnepr-river-kiev-ukraine-32467849.jpg



kij.jpg

stock-photo-one-of-the-fountains-of-the-independence-square-in-kiev-ukraine-is-decorated-with-statues-of-152433515.jpg
 
Nobody1 said:
The Norsemen did get a good press in the medieval times from Ahmad ibn Fadlan;
very interesting chronicle and account;

Good press? :petrified: Are you sure? :rolleyes: Depends in which aspect, I guess.

Below is an excerpt from "Journey of Ahmad Ibn-Fadlan to the Itil River and Adoption of Islam in Bulgaria". This book describes the journey of Ahmad Ibn-Fadlan, Chief of the Embassy of the Baghdad Caliph Al-Muktadir to the Volga River, to the realm of Volga Bulgars (now in central Russia), in years 921-922 CE, in regard to their adoption of Islam. An excerpt describes hygiene of people whom Ibn-Fadlan calls the Rusiyyah:

"(...) The Rusiyyah are the filthiest of Allah's creatures: they do not purify themselves after excreting or urinating, nor do they wash themselves when in a state of impurity after coitus and do not even wash their hands after food. Indeed they are like wild asses that roam in the fields. They arrive from their land and moor their boats by the Itil, which is a great river, building on its banks large wooden houses. They gather in each house in their tens and twenties, sometimes more, or less. Each of them has a couch on which he sits. They are accompanied by beautiful slave girls for trading. One man will have intercourse with his slave-girl while his companions look on. Sometimes a group of them comes together to do this, each in front of the other. Sometimes indeed a merchant will come in to buy a slave-girl from one of them and he will chance upon him having intercourse with her, but a Rus will not leave her alone until he has satisfied his urge. They cannot, of course, avoid washing their faces and their heads each day, which they do with the filthiest and most polluted water imaginable. I shall explain. Every day a slave-girl arrives in the morning with a large basin with water, which she hands to her owner. He washes his hands, then his face and his hair in the water, then he dips his comb in the water and brushes his hair, blows his nose and spits in the basin. There is no filthy impurity which he will not do in this water. When he no longer requires it, the slave-girl takes the basin to the man beside him and he goes through the same routine as his friend. She continues to carry it from one man to the next until she has gone round everyone in the house, with each of them blowing his nose and spitting into the basin, then washing his face and hair in the basin. (...)"

If this is a GOOD press, then I really don't know what would a bad press look like... :grin: :LOL:

=============================

And the next part of Ibn-Fadlan's account about the Rusiyyah (just for the sake of it):

"(...) As soon as their boats arrive at this port [the city of Bulgar], each of them disembarks (...) and prostrates himself before a great idol, saying to it: 'Oh my lord, I have come from a far country and I have with me such and such a number of young beautiful slave girls, and such and such a number of sable skins (...) I would like you to do the favour of sending me a merchant who has large quantities of dinars and dirhams and who will buy everything that I want and not argue with me over my price. (...)"
 
Wends in Scandinavia...
(i've already wrote few articles about Slovensko-Svenska (Slovene-Swedish) words similarities), here is another article with more words which were discovered by other researchers...

The "triglav" (three head) stonehead found at Glejbjerg (ancient Wendic Glav-Breg("head-hill") of Tri-glav? - "3 head"; transmutation of Glava or Golova into Holova or Hova (Head) or Hoved) near Esbjerg ("ice-hill" or perhaps from As(god)-hill; Holm (in western Slovene dialects) - Hill of Gods?)

Vedun, just for the fun (I know you like wild etymologies)
hoved has nothing in common with golova/glova/hlova; Swedish has the oldest form huvud, dutch hoofd, German haupt apparently cognates with latine cap-ut

 
To go back to the original question for a second.

I think the Vikings are over-romanticised, yes. On top of that I find it odd that they are seen more like a fictional group wherein you can celebrate their exploits without getting 'unethical'. In other words, we have Viking Metal where it is common to find allusions to slaughtering priests, robbing, general pillage, destruction and enslavement, but it's not really common to find mainstream glorification of what would otherwise be considered 'crimes against humanity', such as transatlantic slavery of Africans, glorified from the British point of view for example.

People can celebrate their Viking heritage by harking back to the slaughter of innocents, people can't really celebrate their British heritage by harking back to the same thing done in colonial times. You generally wouldn't find people rooting for the British soldier striking down the "savage" Native American and raping their women.
 
Nope, my G.....Granny is not over rated. Considering that in my local library, I'm 110th in line to check out a copy of Viking Season 3.

Some ways yes I think that Viking are over rated and some under rated; a consequence of Victors(Christian Jesus) domination the losers (Odinism Thor). The Vikings may have attacked the monasteries in such terror but ultimately the Vikings converted to Christianity after the sacred oak tree was cut down.
 
It all depends.

Honestly, sometimes the Vikings are overrated. However, they have had a huge impact on European History. The Normans are descended from Vikings, as are a lot of people around the continent.
 
I think it depends what you understand with " warrior ", Celts were a natural warrior civilisation, but they fail and die against the roman discipline of war and diplomaty, Goths defeats romans and kills the emperor Valens but for what ? A lot of Goths soldiers die at Andrinople. The thing is that Vikings were also an honor and mythological warriorish civilisation. That gives them a lot of power between fatalist and scared christians people. If an centralised kingdom or empire were in western europe at this time, Vikings would only be here for figuration. When you've got an civilisation who trust on the point that all men have to die in fight and in the other side, people who prey, ass straight to heaven in tears, not so surprising that vikings had that ferocity and warriorship reputation. So, i don't think they were overrated, i think western europe at this time, dide not have the ability to fail them. They where determinated when christians where fatalist.
 
Imho, all of these ancient "warrior" groups are over-rated. Wanton destruction, rape and pillage, and engaging in the slave trade are not admirable activities.

It's one thing to be like Cincinnatus and honorably defend your homeland. It's another thing to invade, kill and enslave millions of people, and destroy everything in sight in Gaul for glory and money and power, as Julius Caesar did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus
 
All they did was rape and destroy, nothing innovative or beneficial at all
 
I think Vikings and Caribbean Pirates had certain character traits that are romanticized such as independence and courage and other psychopathic traits that are vilified such as theft, murder, and rape.
People respect courage and it definitely took courage to go on adventures and to explore unknown vast bodies of water in a boat. People also value independence especially in hierarchical societies. In societies where so much of one’s life is governed by a multitude of various rules and obligations there is something enviable and refreshing about abandoning that to chart your own course.
The flip side though is that many of these people had psychopathic tendencies and were not people you’d want to associate with. Most normal well adjusted people can agree that it’s not morally okay to steal, rape, and murder. The Golden Rule is logically consistent and people that sway away from it have a warped hypocritical version of reality that should not be romanticized in my opinion.

The Viking stories I enjoy the most involve the explorations of Iceland, Greenland, and North America.
 
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In my opinion, it's easy to romanticize The Viking era when relics closely associated with them include broadswords, helmets, loot and long-boats!
 

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