Comments on: What caused the Viking Age?

What caused the Viking Age?

stbalbach — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:36:24 -0800

What caused the Viking Age? It has long been a source of, er, conflict among Nordic scholars. A new study ($ub-only) suggests the Viking Age was triggered by a shortage of women (lack of).

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:50:05 -0800

Well, I can't read the article, but I'd always understood the raiding parties to be one method of keeping disruptive, violent, adolescent males out of town.

By: turgid dahlia

turgid dahlia — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:50:46 -0800

What caused the Viking Age? Scholars estimate that around 785, Mt. Loki, NE of Iceland, erupted spectacularly, pumping hundreds of millions of tonnes of red-hot longships from the deepest bowels of the Earth and high into the planet's atmosphere. This eruption was felt as far away as China, causing Yan Zhenqing, famous calligrapher, to spill his inkpot, resulting in his strangulation.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:54:17 -0800

I blame too much sleep.

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:55:39 -0800

It's easier to name stuff that guys WON'T do for chicks: 1. Uh....

By: kisch mokusch

kisch mokusch — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:57:07 -0800

I can't access the article, but it seems to be merely a review in which a new (or old, maybe) theory is put forth. Which makes calling it a new study a bit of a stretch. No new data, no "this settles it, folks" results. Just the research equivalent of an op-ed. Frankly, I'm amazed the author managed to get press coverage.

By: zoomorphic

zoomorphic — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:59:38 -0800

Shortage of women, eh? Should I prepare for an invasion of rowdy, mead-chugging Chinese men looking for brides?

By: pompomtom

pompomtom — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:05:23 -0800

Lars: The Celts have huge warehouses full of Greek fire, they could burn our village down within forty five minutes! We must strike pre-emptively - lest we see mushroom clouds over the fjords! Sven:(sharpening axe) They hate us for our longboats!!

By: mwhybark

mwhybark — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:06:26 -0800

Oh boy! The Viking Age! That's where I'm a Somali pirate!

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:07:10 -0800

Should I prepare for an invasion of rowdy, mead-chugging Chinese men looking for brides? If you're in Tibet, yes. If you're in the Africa, in about 2 years. In the USA, maybe 5-8 years.

By: turgid dahlia

turgid dahlia — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:14:49 -0800

Legend has it one of Hillary Clinton's ancestors was a Viking. His first book? It's Rapes and Pillage

By: zoomorphic

zoomorphic — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:17:13 -0800

If you're in Tibet, yes. If you're in the Africa, in about 2 years. Aw sheesh, I forgot how the bride shortage in China is actually fueling the sex slave trade in SE Asia. Back to jokes about dead babies.

By: mlis

mlis — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:24:46 -0800

The World of the Vikings Vikings BBC - Vikings

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:43:10 -0800

The good news is that the bride shortage is self-correcting in the long run.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:52:14 -0800

I'd always understood the raiding parties to be one method of keeping disruptive, violent, adolescent males out of town. Spring Break?

By: Elsa

Elsa — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:30:57 -0800

I also cannot read the article, but... Hey! I wrote a (detailed and well-received) paper my sophomore year outlining how a shortage of women could easily have accounted for much of the Viking expansion. *pats self on back*

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:12:06 -0800

Hey what you got against short wo... oh.

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:35:04 -0800

Hey, if you were stuck here all winter, you would get itchy feet come springtime too! I went abroad and brought back a wife. When I think about it, wifey actually came here and found me... /Reverse viking

By: OneOliveShort

OneOliveShort — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 23:40:03 -0800

Dad, who's all mad about geneology, said that he recently discovered through DNA that we're all Vikings. Explains the shortage of women. /Remember pillage, THEN burn.

By: grouse

grouse — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:07:31 -0800

I'm amazed the author managed to get press coverage. If there's even a hint of sex in a new academic finding, it must be a hundred times easier to get press coverage.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:09:00 -0800

I missed reading up on the female infanticide when gobbling up every old norse saga and fact book on vikings that I could find - but women could often play quite hard to get. For example, Harald Luva, later Harald Hårfager was king over Sweden and wanted to marry a norweigan girl named Gyda, daughter of King Eirik of Hordaland, so he sent for her. Her reply was something akin to "why should I waste myself on someone who is only king of backwaterland. Tell him to call me when he is king of Norway too." Ten winters of not combing his hair later (hence "Luva" meaning hat) he was king of Norway and got the girl. When they combed his hair out they found it to be pretty, hence hårfager meaning beautiful hair. Vikings also had divorce so any woman could basically up and leave a man who mistreated them or did not provide enough for the family. Perhaps mail-order brides (or in this case long-boat order brides) were just easier to handle.

By: mannequito

mannequito — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:27:16 -0800

The viking age was a pre-emptive strike by beards everywhere after a prophecy foretold of a coming age when they would be enslaved by hipsters.

By: Sparx

Sparx — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:01:33 -0800

The shortage of women is one of those things with which I'm not terribly pleased It's tricky that I,a modern viking guy Has a girlfriend just up to my knees Should I escape, to pillage and rape To Normandy or to Darjeeling? Or should I stay, and try to assay The sensual practice of kneeling? A viking's duty is to travel the seas and see lessons in looting are taught But it just seems so wrong, with our longships so long And our women so awfully short.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:20:52 -0800

I'm pretty sure that the hammer of the gods drove their ships to new lands mainly to fight the hordes, singing and crying "Valhalla, I am coming," guys. I saw it in a documentary from the 1970s. On the other hand, I have read research suggesting that it was driven by a surfeit of powerful and commanding (yet sensitive) viking warriors questing moodily for their equal in the arts of love—preferably a woman who'd fallen through a time warp from the twentieth century, blouse scandalously torn but feisty modern sensibilities intact. Far from home and lost in time, can Susannah find happiness in... His Horned Embrace?

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:31:43 -0800

I can tell you what caused the Viking age. My ancestors were Vikings and my grandfather told me stories about this that his grandfather passed down from his grandfather. People think that Vikings liked to rape, pillage, and plunder. But I can tell you, based on my family's stories, that pillaging was not one of the primary reasons. Not even close. Plundering beat out pillaging to come in an easy second. Many Vikings signed up just to see the world and to have a good time. Few know that the Vikings had numerous happy songs and that many signed up just to enjoy these songs. In fact, Viking ships were a kind of floating musical theater, with dances and songs and laughter. And plundering. Here's a typical Viking song (which I've translated into English). Sing it a few times and see if you don't want to become a Viking too: Viking blood is a harsh red blood It runs through all our veins It comes out our noses when we fight too hard Or sing too many refrains

By: pracowity

pracowity — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:33:36 -0800

How are Vikkings formed? They went because they could, and because they realized they could. Because some raiders brought back heaps o' shiny stuff that they snatched from dumbfounded monks, and the guys at home said, "Well, why the fuck not?" Because English girls are easy when you've just chopped off their fathers' heads -- no dinner with the parents needed. Because success came to the young and strong and wild -- let the dull boys stay home to run the family farms. Because it beats working -- pillage beats tillage. When there's money and chicks and adventure and power in it, there's no need to suppose a shortage of women at home, not unless you want all the Women's Studies departments to assign your text.

By: No-sword

No-sword — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 03:44:34 -0800

Seriously, it's great that nowadays you can find editions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle online and check out the originals of those quotes from Wikipedia on the first Viking raids on the British Isles. 787, B manuscript:

Her nam Byrhtric cing Offan dohtor Eadburge, 7 on his dagum coman ærest .iii. scipu Norðmanna, 7 þa se gerefa þærto rad 7 hie wolde drifan to þæs cinges tune, þy he nyste hwæt hie wæron, 7 hine man ðær ofsloh. Þæt wæron þa ærestan scipu deniscra manna þe Angelcynnes land gesohtan.

They just straight-up ofsloh him! Þæt wæron cold, Vikings. 793, D manuscript:

Her wæron reðe forebecna cumene ofer Norðhymbra land, 7 þæt folc earmlic bregdon, þæt wæron ormete þodenas 7 ligrescas, 7 fyrenne dracan wæron gesewene on þam lifte fleogende. Þam tacnum sona fyligde mycel hunger, 7 litel æfter þam, þæs ilcan geares on .vi. Idus Ianuarii, earmlice hæþenra manna hergunc adilegode Godes cyrican in Lindisfarnaee þurh hreaflac 7 mansliht. 7 Sicga forðferde on .viii. Kalendas Martius.

Fyrenne dracan, for reals. It's right there in the Chronicle.

By: twoleftfeet

twoleftfeet — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:14:25 -0800

Fyrenne dracan Fiery dragons. Damn foreigners Here came dire portents over the land of the Northumbrians, and miserably terrified the people; these were tremendous whirlwinds, and lightning-strokes; and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. Upon these tokens quickly followed a great famine:—and a little thereafter, in that same year, on January 8, pitifully did the invasion of heathen men devastate God's church in Lindisfarne Island, with plundering and manslaughter. And Sicga died on Feb. 22." Gotta love the plundering!

By: DU

DU — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:36:46 -0800

The Viking Age! That's when I'm Ralph Wiggum!

By: Slap*Happy

Slap*Happy — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:04:51 -0800

It's more easily explained by Norse inheritance law, where the eldest son got everything, and the other sons had to go starve in the woods. No homestead, no money, no wife. Hopping on a longboat was pretty much the only choice for second (and third, and twelfth) sons. Bring back enough loot, and the king back home would let you have some land of your own. If he wouldn't, you'd hop back onto the longboat, and go make someone on the boat king someplace where the locals couldn't do much about it, and he'd give you some land and a bunch of locals to work it for you.

By: CheeseDigestsAll

CheeseDigestsAll — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 06:54:07 -0800

I guess India will become the next Viking state then?

By: No-sword

No-sword — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:17:00 -0800

Fiery dragons. Come on, this is way pre-Frenchification. Fiery drakes!

By: tommasz

tommasz — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:19:24 -0800

Hmmm, Vikings need(ed) women, Mars needs women. Simple coincidence, or something far more sinister?

By: adamdschneider

adamdschneider — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:23:02 -0800

No homestead, no money, no wife. The "they did it for the chix" hypothesis fits pretty well with the stuff I just read in the Red Queen. Good book.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 07:39:32 -0800

Her nam Byrhtric cing Offan dohtor Eadburge I've spent way too much time on the internet. The first thing I thought of when I saw this: if I looking for frog her nam Byrhtric green frog I lost my frog Love, Eadburg P.S. I'll find my frog

By: Meatbomb

Meatbomb — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:15:09 -0800

This is an entirely plausible theory. In my own life experience I have confirmed, from first hand accounts, that it is also the driving force that sends the bulk of male ESL teachers from Canada, USA, and the UK into Eastern Europe, Japan, and Central Asia.

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:19:45 -0800

Huh, I was just reading this account of the war for Troy being partly about acquisition of women in a time of scarcity.

By: TheWhiteSkull

TheWhiteSkull — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:14:07 -0800

Harald74, I think reverse viking would be me going to Norway to find a bride. Is Ingrid Toerlen available?

By: adamdschneider

adamdschneider — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:29:27 -0800

Huh, I was just reading this account of the war for Troy being partly about acquisition of women in a time of scarcity. I think this was alluded to in the Red Queen as well. I'm reading the Iliad now, and I've been contemplating that motivation for the participants (in light of the hoopla over Chryseis and Briseis, it's not at all difficult to believe), so this is very timely. Thanks, Durn Bronzefist.

By: bitslayer

bitslayer — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:56:44 -0800

All wars are wars of scarcity.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:39:31 -0800

I've been contemplating that motivation for the participants... Reputation crops up a lot. Never underestimate vanity as a reason for fighting, either in Homer or elsewhere.

By: liza

liza — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:48:17 -0800

i had a boyfriend from sweden who asked me once, "do you know what is a reverse viking?". man, had no idea you could do that with horns.

By: pracowity

pracowity — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 21:17:04 -0800

All wars are wars of scarcity. Scarcity of sense and decency.

By: homunculus

homunculus — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 14:08:30 -0800

Vikings preferred male grooming to pillaging