Norsemen and Scandinavian Vikings
Why Jarls Great Till They Gotta Be Great
We all kind of know what Vikings are: You picture men and women in big helmets with horns, donned in animal hide dresses holding spears. That’s what the Halloween industry has created for us as an image. But who were the Vikings in Scandinavia and what more is there to Norse mythology beyond the Marvel Cinematic Universe?
Norsemen vs. Vikings
Vikings were Norse people in Scandinavia between the late 8th and early 11th centuries AD. They were sailors and explorers and their territories ranged from modern day Denmark to parts of Iceland and Greenland. The furthest Viking raid recorded was all the way in Baghdad.
The term “Viking” was not used by Norse people. In fact, the word “Viking” translates to “pirate” in ancient Norse language. Other scholars believe that the word “Viking” was used to describe Norse sailors and explorers while everyone else was just a Norseman.
The Viking Age
When Norsemen began exploring further West, the Viking Age was born. The Viking Age lasted from around 800 AD to about 1050 AD. The leaders of the Norse People raided and became kings of modern day Denmark and other parts of Scandinavia.
Vikings mainly traveled by sea but many raided the land closer to their immediate territories. While in today’s society we associate Vikings as being warriors and soldiers, many Norse people were diplomats and traders: Raids were conquered by the warriors, the businessmen of the Norse culture took up shop and traded silver. Silver was the main form of currency in Viking territories and goods were traded with silver based on weight.
Social Culture for Vikings
Norsemen had three classes of people; an upper class (the Jarls), a lower class (the Karls), and a slave class (the Thralls). Slavery was widely accepted and encouraged across Scandinavia in the 8th century, so this was far from unique to Vikings. Slavery was considered one of the main motivators of raids into other lands.
Mythology played a big role in social and political culture for Norsemen. Viking life emulated the gods, and many explorations and raids were influenced their religious culture. As a polytheistic religion, the Norse people had a hard time understanding and resonating with early Christianity. They found a single god and his son being worshiped “absurd and threatening.”
According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia;
It would have been considered dishonorable for a Norse warrior to kill unarmed civilians and take their possessions, but this is precisely what the Vikings did between c. 793–1100 CE. They were able to do so because those they plundered were not Norse, were not bound by the same belief, and so the rules which maintained Viking society did not apply to them. When the Vikings first came to Britain and sacked the priory of Lindisfarne in 793 CE, they murdered every monk they found…this would have been considered a serious crime if the slain had been Norse [but] the monks were simply obstacles to the acquisition of wealth and…it was abundantly clear that the Christian god had no power to defend his people if they could so easily be killed within the walls of their own place of worship.
Feminism Before Its Time
Norse people were ahead of their time in terms of equality between men and women. Apparently there were no male religious leaders in Norse culture; there were only prophetesses to Freyja and Odin.
A common misconception about the term “feminism” is that it means that women are bigger and better than men. But in actuality, feminism is defined as a strive for social, economic, and political equality between all people. And by that definition, Vikings were very a very feminist group. Neither men nor women could choose who they were going to marry (they were arranged by their parents), both cooked and cleaned for the household, and both worked to provide for themselves and their families.
Norse women had the ability and freedom to represent themselves in court, own and inherit property, and live unmarried without shame. Women could even own their own businesses. These cultural norms were far beyond what the rest of Europe did.
Everyone dressed the same within their social class, which further points to equality between men and women. It was traditional for women to be homemakers and raise children while the men worked as blacksmiths or farmers, but it was not set in stone that way. Either sex could do what they pleased without fear of shameful repercussion.
Objectively, a lot of what happened in the 8th century isn’t realistic for today’s society. Raids, traveling almost exclusively by enormous ship, and the social class hierarchy aren’t constructs we want to relive.
But everyone always says history is doomed to repeat itself, so we might as well talk about it.
