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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Happy Leif Erickson Day!
 
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Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

Blue Star posted:

The Vikings were black. So were all of the kings of Europe up until the 1800s.

Google Geirmundur Heljarskinn.

* # ¿ Oct 9, 2017 16:59
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# ¿ May 21, 2024 19:40
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Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

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.

Randarkman posted:

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.


In fact one possible etymology for the word "thing" (as in non-specific object) is that it originally meant a matter for the Thing to discuss, and later took on the meaning of "object".

* # ¿ Oct 9, 2017 17:40
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Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

 I wonder why the Newfoundland natives that Leif (or that other guy who actually tried to colonize America) and his merry men encountered weren't infected with smallpox. If they had been, maybe North- and South America would have had enough to time to recover so as to not be so completely devestated five centuries later.

Grevling fucked around with this message at 17:46 on Oct 9, 2017

* # ¿ Oct 9, 2017 17:43
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Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

SniperWoreConverse posted:

Prob the Icelandic didn't have smallpox?

It was also much less of an interface between the two groups. Fewer people and less hanging out.

Yeah, it could be both of these things. I just skimmed the Wiki article and smallpox and it said it wasn't that common in Europe until the time of the Crusades, so a bit later than Leif.

I remember reading in the book 1491 that the earliest Spanish explorers brought pigs with them to have a portable food source and that smallpox spread from them extremely fast.

* # ¿ Oct 9, 2017 18:07
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Grevling
Dec 18, 2016

SniperWoreConverse posted:

This is how berserkers were formed. Ber is weed and serk means smoke or suck

How is warrior formed? How shield maiden get pregnant

* # ¿ Oct 9, 2017 18:20
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The Something Awful Forums > Main > General Bullshit > Happy Leif Erickson Day!