this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
417 points (99.5% liked)
HistoryMemes
736 readers
2 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
Fun fact, IKEA funded the brutally repressive Romanian secret police.
The Italian restaurant is there because no-one could stop the Normans before they reached Sicily.
They just simply conquered until they found good food, then stopped.
To be fair, those churches had a lot of loot, and priests give great XP.
I know there is absolutely tons of historic evidence of viking pillagers, but I do want to point out that, with that evidence aside for just a moment, most or all of what is written about them in historic texts was written by the people who wiped out almost their entire culture and replaced it with christian theocratic monarchy.
They get a bad rap.
Nobody wiped their culture. Their culture evolved, and other cultures influenced this evolution, as they influenced the culture of their neighbors.
other cultures influenced this evolution
Specifically, the Catholic church influenced most of Scandinavia by persecuting and murdering people who kept to the old ways.
Your main source for that is Snorri Sturluson, a Christian who wrote 200 years after Scandinavia's conversion. He invented those murders in order to paint the pagans as stupid and stubborn people, needing violence to accept what he believed to be the truth. Historically, the conversions weren't, with a few exceptions, violent in Scandinavia.
Scandinavia's conversion is more the result of an internal power struggle.
Your main source for that is Snorri Sturluson, a Christian who wrote 200 years after Scandinavia's conversion
Nope, my main source is the fact that that was the way that the Catholic church "converted" countries as well as "apostates" and "heretics" in places they already controlled.
Christianity didn't become a major religion and political force through the quality of its message. It did so through the quantity of its violence.
Scandinavia's conversion is more the result of an internal power struggle.
If by "internal" you mean some Scandinavian rulers being forced to convert at the point of a sword and then trying to do the same to the rest, sure. That's a really weird definition of the word, though.
Yeah, you have no other source than your biases, then.
If you ignore the source known as "most of the history of Europe" then sure, I have only my biases 🙄
It's not a source.
No, it's the vast majority of all sources available.
Claiming that the Catholic church used violence to convert pagans is like claiming that the Pacific Ocean is larger than a standard burrito.
It's such an obvious truth based on all available knowledge that not even the most ignorant and brainwashed zealot would ever claim otherwise in good faith.
A zealot is “a person who has very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too”. You sound more like a zealot than me.
Of course Christianity did horrible things in its history. Nobody denies that. But to think that they only were violent and criminal is a bias. What they did in Africa for example doesn't presume of what they did a millennium earlier in an other part of the world. Now all modern historians (Nora Berend, Alexandra Sanmark, Régis Boyer to name a few) agree with the fact that Germanic Scandinavia's conversion was mostly peaceful. Do you know more than academics that studied the subject?
very strong opinions about something, and tries to make other people have them too
I'm casually stating the obvious. That you stubbornly cling to your "alternative facts" version of history doesn't make me a zealot.
But to think that they only were violent and criminal is a bias
One that I don't hold.
Now all modern historians (Nora Berend, Alexandra Sanmark, Régis Boyer to name a few) agree with the fact that Germanic Scandinavia's conversion was mostly peaceful.
How exactly do they define "peaceful", though?
Personally I wouldn't consider the government enforcing a state religion using violence and deprival of freedom and dignity peaceful, for example.
I cited my sources, actual and recognized historians from actual and recognized universities. I still wait for yours.
I don't see any links
I'm old fashioned, I like actual books. But I can give you some references and citations (if you know how to use Library Genesis or equivalent, you'll download easily, although illegally, those books).
Although it was possible to justify the use of force in Christianization, we must distinguish between the use of violence in the consolidation of power and its employment against the population at large in order to make them convert. The first, war against rivals, some of whom were pagan, in order to establish or strengthen a ruler’s power, was prevalent. The latter did not often occur in these areas.
Nora Berend, Christianization and the rise of Christian monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus' c. 900-1200, Cambridge University Press, 2007, p. 20-21.
Scholars have argued that if there had been serious, and violent, religious conflicts between non-Christians and Christians, this would have left traces in the rune stone material. They have, however, not found any such signs.
Alexandra Sanmark, Power and conversion: a comparative study of Christianization in Scandinavia; Uppsala: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, 2002, p. 113-114.
Because – it must be strongly emphasized again – the conversion of Scandinavia will have taken place without drawing the sword, without religious wars, without bloodshed, without martyrdom. When chroniclers depict it to us, much later, under a tragic and violent exterior, they will only do so by imitation of the lives of saints which were de rigeur in the West at the time.
Régis Boyer, Les Vikings, Perrin, 2015, p. 402 (I translated).
Edit: But if you want something online to read, I believe that this page is quite accurate.
Oh lol, okay, tell me about the phonology of norn and younger futhark used in the age of vikings? How about any self-description of iron-age viking society before 1066, anything at all? Who were their leaders, how were rights allotted? Nothing remains but their versions of catholic prayers and before that their versions of oral germanic traditions like norse mythology, which was much more widespread.
Basically, we know nothing about them that they told us themselves, in fact their systems of writing have only been properly compiled in the last century but the language is still entirely extinct.
Because of Crusades. Because of Catholic Crusades on Vikings.
There never was any crusade in Scandinavia.
The other time Scandinavia visited:
Ahhh, Lindisfarne, good times.
Nobody expects the ~~Spanish~~ Scandinavian inquisition!
I was in Copenhagen earlier this year and the most striking thing about visiting was how many people there were with young kids pushing prams around. ~~Would need to examine the statistics to see if this is actually true but I wonder if the fertility rate is higher due to a better social policies / financial support for families.~~
Edit: Have just looked at the rates on the wikipedia demography page for each country. It's higher in the UK 1.61 vs 1.55. Maybe the visible difference is due the amount of maternity/paternity leave being offered by employers.
Hell yeah!!!
Pass deg, kompis ;)