Old World American
Member
"God deliver us from the fury of the Northmen."
-Old English Monastic Prayer
Scandinavia is overpopulated; fishing and the crop do not feed enough. The land harbors pitiless winters and is veined by rivers clogged with ice. The world is less and less generous each spring. Only the fittest could survive here; but now, harsh nature's gloom has rejected even them. To stay in the north, to remain on the Fjord is to know nothing new if not nothing at all.
They say the heat of the world comes from the south. Thus, farmers and craftsmen, under the watchful guardian eye of Thor, look to their warriors, who send their prayers not to Thor, but instead obey the commands of his mysterious, wise and violent father, Odin, only to be heard by the able elect- the warrior caste. For them the master boat-wrights take their traditional, simple and sturdy coastal craft and build a simple, versatile, and sturdy ship worthy of the deep, the water filled chasm that separates their people, the ward of the Aesir, from the fertile land and riches to the south and to the west.
The only thing between man and fate is fear, a phenomenon long since disregarded by their way of life. They cannot know the yet unknown, but they are resolved to face it bravely. The mist swallows the serpent prow as they leave, soon there is nothing but the fog. Alone, trekking across the deep, they know if they are to die, it will be in glorious battle for their own and their home. The reason for life, a warrior's life, is to end it well. The future belongs to the fearless.
The Viking age has begun. It is the middle of the 8th century; The western Roman world has crumbled, leaving the continent largely unorganized and scant by the classical definitions of civilization. It is in this new world that the Vikings, the term meaning to explore, traded, fought, worked, and learned, making a name for themselves as the fiercest, most merciless, and costliest warrior tribes to have ever set foot on the continent proper.
Now, we may all know about this romanticized version of the Vikings, but how much do we know about them really? Though some things I will post here are bizarre and wouldn't have been guessed about them, the most frightening (and interesting) facts are those that will illuminate just how closely these fearless and often brutal explorers really did, in actuality, follow their adventurous mythos to a place in history undeniably fascinating to scholars and important to a full understanding of European or even world development.
}Please! Feel free to post questions/comments/anything! Let's get some discourse going on!
-Old English Monastic Prayer
Scandinavia is overpopulated; fishing and the crop do not feed enough. The land harbors pitiless winters and is veined by rivers clogged with ice. The world is less and less generous each spring. Only the fittest could survive here; but now, harsh nature's gloom has rejected even them. To stay in the north, to remain on the Fjord is to know nothing new if not nothing at all.
They say the heat of the world comes from the south. Thus, farmers and craftsmen, under the watchful guardian eye of Thor, look to their warriors, who send their prayers not to Thor, but instead obey the commands of his mysterious, wise and violent father, Odin, only to be heard by the able elect- the warrior caste. For them the master boat-wrights take their traditional, simple and sturdy coastal craft and build a simple, versatile, and sturdy ship worthy of the deep, the water filled chasm that separates their people, the ward of the Aesir, from the fertile land and riches to the south and to the west.
The only thing between man and fate is fear, a phenomenon long since disregarded by their way of life. They cannot know the yet unknown, but they are resolved to face it bravely. The mist swallows the serpent prow as they leave, soon there is nothing but the fog. Alone, trekking across the deep, they know if they are to die, it will be in glorious battle for their own and their home. The reason for life, a warrior's life, is to end it well. The future belongs to the fearless.
The Viking age has begun. It is the middle of the 8th century; The western Roman world has crumbled, leaving the continent largely unorganized and scant by the classical definitions of civilization. It is in this new world that the Vikings, the term meaning to explore, traded, fought, worked, and learned, making a name for themselves as the fiercest, most merciless, and costliest warrior tribes to have ever set foot on the continent proper.
Now, we may all know about this romanticized version of the Vikings, but how much do we know about them really? Though some things I will post here are bizarre and wouldn't have been guessed about them, the most frightening (and interesting) facts are those that will illuminate just how closely these fearless and often brutal explorers really did, in actuality, follow their adventurous mythos to a place in history undeniably fascinating to scholars and important to a full understanding of European or even world development.
}Please! Feel free to post questions/comments/anything! Let's get some discourse going on!
