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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Happy Leif Erickson Day!
 
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Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

Blurry Gray Thing posted:

The vikings had a Thing. It was literally called a Thing. It's what they called their governing body, and it was an assembly of all the free people, who all had the right to one vote. The King ruled only by the consensus of the people and was fully aware of this fact.

English parliament and, by extension, American democracy owes as much to the Thing (and the Folkmoot, the Anglo-Saxon version) as to the ancient Greeks.

Parliament more goes back to noble councils and Germanic and later medieval feudal ideas as the king of a first-among equals kind of idea than to the things and the Anglo-Saxon thing. Though in some way those ideas about the rights of the warrior aristocracy and such really come from the same place as the things and their equivalents.

The Things in Scandinavia mostly were local and as kings became more powerful they largely did away with them in governing the realm as a whole (though they still had to rely on the consent of their vassals and the church to govern their realm, as elsewhere in Europe). Also it's usually free landowning men, i.e., aristocracy in some way, not all free people.

SniperWoreConverse posted:

Hey it's Leif Erickson day, the day to celebrate the first time Europeans made contact with the American continent. Post your favorite Viking, Norse, and transcontinental factoids.

Did you know that Vikings didn't wear horned helmets because that's a loving retarded idea? If you're in a fight that's an easy way for the enemy to control the position of your head and kill you instantly. Vikings are depicted as having that kind of helmet because they had some opera come out around the same time the sagas were becoming popular again, and the producers wanted the actors to seem more exotic and tough. And the image just stuck.

This modern day song is based off of an ancient Icelandic battle hymn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eHkjPCGXKQ

Vikings didn't just rape and pillage all the time tho. They also were heavily focused on personal honor, trade, and communication. A good Viking would be able to also resolve disputes with words as well as ritual death combat. Also get treasure and gently caress.

Horned helmets don't necessarily seem to have been a terrible idea. Lots of cultures throughout history have had horned or otherwise adorned helmets (Japanese, Celts, Romans, Greeks, etc), it's just that the vikings didn't. It probably wasn't because "it was loving stupid" or something like that.

When it comes to trade one of the most lucrative trade goods the vikings dealt in were people, slaves that is. Dublin, Kiev and Novgorod were essentially built on this, selling the slaves mostly to Byzantium and the Islamic world, though many also found their way back to Scandinavia (and a bunch of Irish women to Iceland which was mostly settled by men).

Viking is however a term, also attested in Scandinavia once we have written sources, that literally seems to mean "pirate". It's not really a culture or a people.

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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Happy Leif Erickson Day!