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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Apr 24, 2022 19:14:49 GMT
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Post by RufusScorpius on Apr 24, 2022 19:38:38 GMT
Interesting article, but the evidence is so thin it's see-through. I would like to know more about the original scholarly works and original sources from which their conclusions were derived. Were there black people in Scandinavia in the 8th to 12th century? Almost certainly. Did they impact Scandinavian culture? Almost certainly not. It's no different than knowing that there were Celts in China during that same time period (there were and we found graves to prove it) and then claiming the Celts had a cultural impact on Chinese political development.
If I had the time I would look into this a bit deeper.
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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Apr 24, 2022 20:15:22 GMT
The problem is they're trying so hard to rewrite history to what they think it should have been that they're losing track of the facts and missing the real accomplishment. So now people are saying LOOK BLACK MEN AND WOMEN WERE VIKINGS. So big deal that Matthew Henson was the first black man to reach the North Pole in 1909. The day is coming where no one will have a clue what's real and fabricated.
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Post by randomnobody on Apr 24, 2022 21:30:16 GMT
On one hand, there is historic reference to African peoples serving in the Roman army, so it's not overly surprising if they happened to make it to Scandinavia, too.
On the other, I feel like this article is really stretching the meaning of its words. "Dark skin" does not imply "dark brown" skin in all cases. A people most accustomed to pasty-white skin, like that found in many northern tribes in Scandinavia (Sami say hi) could think a Mediterranean fellow to be very dark-skinned, and quite taken by their brown hair and eyes, as opposed to their own blonde hair and blue eyes. One might not even have to go so far as the Mediterranean; many "Germanic" peoples have been cited, historically, as darker in complexion and, of course, with dark hair and eyes.
So...yeah, "darker-skinned" people were everywhere, if you were Snow White. Were they from southern Africa? No idea. Maybe? Probably not.
Also: This thread might get kinda ugly... Just a feeling.
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Post by pellius on Apr 24, 2022 21:38:53 GMT
Please be warned: mind the Rules carefully here.
”Account Deletion (Banning): a moderator or staff may delete a Member’s account and ban their IP address for continued or extreme violation of their responsibilities. Examples of this may include: … - any statement that is racist, homophobic, or otherwise a statement of hatred against a category of persons (race, colour, religion, sex/sexuality, etc)..”
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/18656/quot-rules
Thank you.
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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Apr 24, 2022 22:00:54 GMT
The Vikings are well known to have traded in the Middle East which is made up of dark skin people. So if there is any mention of " dark shin people " more than likely it was referring to them not people from Africa. As for serving in the Roman Legion most people that Rome conquered served Rome after. Either by choice or by force. Look at how the Vikings looked down on native American when they encountered them. They called them skraelings, the old Norse were not known to be friendly to people they thought were lesser people. If there were some people from Africa among them more than likely they were slaves not warriors or even a queen like the new TV series depicts them. Sorry but we can't rewrite history to our own liking.
Not being racist here just trying to keep history straight.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 24, 2022 22:07:15 GMT
Historian here. Here are my thoughts:
Garbage article from an untrustworthy source, little scholarly basis.
Just a friendly reminder: the Vikings were not an ethnicity or a race. Vikings were sea-faring raiders. If you aren't using a longship to rape and pillage, you're not a Viking. Vikings were also outlaws.
I think we should contextualize the Viking Age to be more about ethnicity, language, and culture rather than skin color. Anthropology matters, not racialism.
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Post by legacyofthesword on Apr 24, 2022 22:14:17 GMT
It's a silly article, not worth more than a chuckle. As others have already said, there probably were what we would today call black people in Viking age Scandinavia, but they obviously didn't make much of an impression.
The biggest problem is trying to take modern ideas about race that were invented in 18th - 19th Europe/America and apply them to societies, cultures and time periods that predated such ideas by hundreds, sometimes thousands of years.
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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Apr 24, 2022 22:22:48 GMT
Most people use the name Viking because for non historians it's the only name they know. Just like they still call Valholl Valhalla . It's very easy to screw up history due to lack of education but now it's being done deliberately. to serve a purpose.
Like I always say, we can't judge people from the past by our standards today.
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pgandy
Moderator
Senior Forumite
Posts: 10,296
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Post by pgandy on Apr 24, 2022 22:55:51 GMT
Someone once said that history is of past events as would liked to be known.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Apr 25, 2022 0:24:02 GMT
Here is what I believe Viking history really looked like. It has all the elements of their mythologies, so therefore it must be the cornerstone of the society and culture. Attachments:
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Post by nddave on Apr 25, 2022 13:50:01 GMT
I don't know seems like hyperbole with an agenda like most things these days. I swear we're going to look back on the 2020's as the worst decade of modern history.
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Post by treeslicer on Apr 25, 2022 16:23:14 GMT
So I guess we had it all wrong............. I rather liked the show's take on Mercian princesses.
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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Apr 26, 2022 12:08:04 GMT
I liked the one where they had the dark skinned queen wearing a form fitting dress that looks like it came from Bloomingdale's in New York. Either that or she had it made at a drapery store. See, all this time we thought Vikings wore loose fitting linen and wool tunics. Thank god Hollywood finally straightened us out. Lightsabers next.
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Post by randomnobody on Apr 26, 2022 14:03:30 GMT
It's unfortunate that appealing to the tastes of modern audiences takes priority to historical accuracy in most, the vast majority I'd say, so-called "historical" productions. That Bloomingdale's dress probably cost less than actually making a period-accurate, tailored costume, so that's also a major factor.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Apr 26, 2022 15:46:42 GMT
Everything on TV and in the movies is all fantasy at the end of the day. It's not real. However, many people will take what they see on screen as authentic and believe that is real history. Sadly, they will never actually bother to read a real scholarly work on the subject and just repeat what they saw as if it was accurate. This is what worries me the most.
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Post by blairbob on Apr 28, 2022 22:32:05 GMT
Yeah, came across that before Vikings Valhalla came out.
It really does seem like a fluff piece.
I'm all for it if they can find a significant amount of DNA, haplogroups from the Nordic countries. Besides just looking past 100,000yrs ago or something.
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Post by Gunnar Wolfgard on Apr 30, 2022 12:44:02 GMT
Just came across another example of wokie trying to rewrite history. He's claiming that George Armstrong Custer was killed by a Sioux woman named Buffalo Calf Road Woman. No proof, no written documentation, no physical evidence just him saying so on his YouTube channel. It's not going to end until true history will be wiped out.
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Post by AndiTheBarvarian on Apr 30, 2022 13:02:28 GMT
It could have been a Sioux warrior who identified as a..., ah... ahumm... person who womans.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Apr 30, 2022 14:16:17 GMT
Custer's moment of death is unknown and unrecorded. There are only two facts known about it: 1. he died at the Little Bighorn and 2. He wasn't scalped
Anything other than that is merely opinion or speculation.
Considering that 1 out if 8 adults believe that the earth is flat, I don't have much faith in anybody doing scholarly research into any history whatsoever. It seems that whater somebody wants to be true, becomes true. Social media is the new "peer reviewed " journal. Just make a YouTube video about something and that becomes defacto "evidence"- especially if other YouTubers repeat it.
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