Red pill me on Vikings....between 395AD +
>What they did
>Were they good warriors
>>829008
white mongols with ships
They were okay fighters. Most Scandinavian people were "vikings" though. I'm pretty sure you have it in your head they were all vikings and all raiding all the time.
>>829008
>What they did
They farmed most of the time. When they weren't doing that they were either engaging in long distance trade or piracy
>Were they good warriors
About as good as any other informal military force at the time. The Varangian Guard were likely the best Norse Warriors.
>>829008
Raided small coastal villages for slaves, traded slaves and plunder elsewhere, ran from/were crushed by real armies when they showed up
>>829061
Mongols were good at fighting, Vikings werent
>>829207
>we wuz Varangian n sheet
Varangian Guard was started by Rus fighters and had larger numbers of Slavs and Saxons than Norsemen
>>829215
Because they were crushed whenever they actually faced Frankish/Magyar/Byzantine armies. They had 9 pitched battles with Francia, the only wine one of them and that was right after the schism. Seems pretty shit to me.
>>829215
Because it's the internet and everything has to be in extremes for them.
>>829227
They were also pretty shit anyway
Source please.
>>829234
That's literally like calling the Vietcong army shit because they lost in pitched battles against the US.
>>829334
>The Vietcong Army wasn't shit
>>829349
Well that couldn't have been bad considering they won the Vietnam war.
>inb4 denial
>>829349
i would call that a pretty admirable
>>829372
The Viet Cong were finished as a fighting force after their defeat in the Tet Offensive in 1968. It was the NVA that did all of the fighting in their conquest of South Vietnam in 1975.
>>829227
The Rus' were Norsemen, not Slavs. Do you have a source on the presence of Slavs in the Varangian Guards? Also, Saxons served in the Varangian Guards after they were btfo by the Normans (Norse/Frankish master race) only to get btfo by the Normans again.
>>829510
He is most likely a slav, they are taught that the Rus dynasty was totally slavic.
I don't understand why people, especially on /his/, act like the Vikings were amazing warriors and romanticise them so much.
The Varangian Guard were definitely skilled, the Jomsvikings probably were too.
The average Norse army was good at hit and run raids on farms and churches and surprise attacks.
But Vikings were absolutely objectively shit when facing an equal foe on an equal playing field.
>>829372
NVA won Vietnam, VC got rekt.
literal snow Somalis
>>830161
>I don't understand why people, especially on /his/, act like the Vikings were amazing warriors and romanticise them so much.
What the fuck are you talking about? 99% of the time when vikings are brought up on /his/ or /int/, you have a small army of people ready to tell everyone how shit vikings were and how they lost every battler ever, usually they're followed by people masturbating to anglo stronk who keep talking about how great a viking killer Alfred the great, completely ignoring that every other English kingdom other than Wessex got BTFO by vikings and that Alfred himself paid danegæld or he would have been next, and didn't stand a chance until he had united the remains of the other English kingdoms, even the first couple of times when the English united their armies against the Danes they got fucked. Æthelred, Alfred's bro also go rekt by vikings.
There is at least as much of a hateboner against vikings as there is a general boner for vikings.
>get BTFO
>kill the King while he's praying because you're too scared to fight a 78 year old man
>ruin any chance of Ireland uniting as a political entity and condemn it to centuries of invasion
reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
>>830161
how the hell do you get btfo this fucking hard
>>830161
>especially on /his/, act like the Vikings were amazing warriors and romanticise them so much.
>especially on /his/
The only people who think this are people whose entire knowledge of history comes from Skyrim and HBO series. Also the odd ironic Nordicist.
>>830258
>What the fuck are you talking about? 99% of the time when vikings are brought up on /his/ or /int/, you have a small army of people ready to tell everyone how shit vikings were and how they lost every battler ever
Not him, but this is the expected (retarded) reaction to morons on 4chan and elsewhere claiming how Vikings were the biggest badasses that ever lived.
>>830750
Màel Sechnaill was the greatest ard rì ever, with Brian Boru coming a close second
he seems to be pretty much unknown on /his/ while Boru gets all the attention
>>829510
>btfo by the Normans
The genetic make up of England is nearly entirely Saxon....
The Normans had the crown, but they never ruled.
>>830750
The Vikings left the fortified position of Dublin and tried to fight the Irish on a forested hill. The hill was a holy site for Mael Sechnaill's Ui Neill ancestors and they wanted to humiliate him by defeating him there.
Also the Irish had a more nuanced chain of command. A lot of Mael Sechnaill's sub-Kings acting as captains in his army got themselves killed but his army remained intact because he himself was still alive. Whereas once Amlaib Cuaran ran away because he saw his son die, the Viking army was a complete shambles. There were a few different vying factions in the Viking army as well as Irish slaves forced to fight, whereas Mael Sechnaill's army were his own liegemen.
Also Mael Sechnaill was really, really good. Like, amazingly good. He's probably one of the greatest generals of the period despite of how obscure he is. He tends to get downplayed in Irish history quite a bit because he was the High King before and after Brian Boru and he told the Church to fuck off sometimes. Whereas the Prophecy of Berchán calls Brian Boru "The Strong Man", it calls Mael Sechnaill "The Second Wife", the implication being that no matter how good he was he'll never be as beloved as Brian Boru.
Those numbers seem a bit fudged though desu, the Viking one is accurate afaik but I have a feeling the Irish army was a lot bigger than that.
Also the Irish continue to baffle me by erecting a 20ft tall monument in their capital city of a guy who said "stop speaking Irish and don't be Catholic if you can help it and the Brits might allow us to be sort-of independent" and massively celebrating him while one of their greatest generals and statesmen gets a dinky little statue in some bumfuck village in Meath and is known to most people as "not-Brian Boru"
>>830258
Thats not right, the other English kingdoms didnt get btfo by the vikings. Northumbria was in a bitter civil war between two pretender kings and the great army just sucker punched them in one seige of York, and as nothumbria was incredibly centralised and they caught both kings witht their trousers down they got lucky. East anglia got hit pretty hard but after the death of King edger they wernt willing to fight and mercia was simply partly taken over and an apparemt puppet king put in place but thats arguable.
Danegeld was paid by literally fucking everyone because its much easier than fighting anc Alfred managed to bash the scandiavians so hard he made the most prominent, guthrum, convert. This was the only time the vikings have ever posed even a fraction of a threat and the danelaw only lasted a good century in which the vikings were routinly fucked untill aethelflaed fuckd them off forever. Even after guthrum lost the next few times they tried to kick him out of England they were fucked so hard you dont even know it, and dont get me started on swein forkbear, cnut and harald hadrada.
Face it, the vikings were dogshit at fighting, maybe they were individually strong warriors but they couldnt figure tactics out for shit and almost always ran from a pitched battle where it was almost always likley they got mashed hard.
>>830544
>he doesn't know about the proud tradition of king killing
As a general rule, whenever vikings or any kind of dane is around, hide away all royalty and nobility.
We can't help it.
>>830205
Somalis fight well though.
>>830965
wat
I cost them 1000 lives to kill 19 Americans. You can't even blame it on airstrikes and shit, because the Americans literally only had humvees and a few little birds.
>>830978
>97 percent casualty rate is bad
America is dependent on its logistical system, that's why the VC tried to take down helicopters so often and why Iraqis used IED's. Without it its troops have no ability to suppress fire because they have crap fire discipline.
It took the Vietnamese 5 years to destroy the road system and be able to shoot down helicopters
They did it in 3 days.
http://historyofengland.typepad.com/
This podcast does a great job of chronicling the Viking invasion of England.
The vikings were literally the greatest warriors of their time
>colonized England to the point that Modern English is riddled with Norse influence, including pronouns
>conquered England twice (Sweyn, Cnut)
>conquered Normandy, their descendants in Normandy would fuck shit up just as good as they did
>colonized and dominated the Irish sea region for centuries
>founded Rus'
>formed the Roman Empire's elite guard
>raided and traded thousands of miles away from their homeland
>made Europeans everywhere pay tribute to them
>were famous mercenaries, even in so-called Viking defeats, like the Battle of Brunanburh there were vikings fighting on both sides, like Egil Skallagrimsson who fought so well Athelstan gave him his own ring he was wearing and tons of silver.
And that's just what I can name off the top of my head.
Admit it, /his/. The vikings were great.
>>831529
>Athelstan
RIP applestand
>>830965
no they don't
>>829008
>>831529
>>831745
I'm an Ethiopian and I'm admiting it. Compared to anyone else in the region besides the Afar they are pretty good
>>831801
yeah,
>Compared to anyone else in the region
>>831861
>Horn of Africa
>What is Eritrea
Are you seriously arguing that the HOA is bad at war?
I'm sorry they don't have a Cheetos division for you to enlist in.
>were they great fighters
Yes but due to constantly fighting offensively and never really fighting any defensive wars the cucks here will always bring up the fact that a home army expelled a foreign force like each one was a kind of Stalingrad.
The Vikings were great navigators and fighters that were always fighting against armies with forts and knowledge of their own territory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Heathen_Army
My favorite piece of Viking history, anyway.
>>831916
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Edington
Looks like it wasn't so great after all.
>>831922
They got to keep their possessions and kingdoms. Or are you just trying to start shit?
>>831941
>They got to keep their possessions and kingdoms
'no'
>>831941
Why would I want to quarrel with descendants of Alfred's Godson?
>>831967
>He wrote in English.
>>831974
>London was part of the Danelaw
>>831996
>He wrote in English.
>>831974
>Egil and his brother Þórólf fought in the service of King Aðalsteinn in the Battle of Vinheath (circa 927). Þórólf died a meaningless death in the battle, in large part caused by a military blunder by Aðalsteinn. Egil survived and was responsible for the victorious conclusion to the battle.
>Following the battle, at the feast in the king's hall, Aðalsteinn and Egil sat across from each other. Egil was grief-stricken and angry. He was dressed in full battle kit and was fully armed. Using his most fearsome visage, he glared silently at the king. Repeatedly, Egil partially unsheathed his sword, then thrust it back in its scabbard. To defuse the situation, the king removed a gold ring from his arm, placed it on the point of his sword, and offered it to Egil across the hearth. Egil picked up the ring with his sword, and put it on his arm, thus restoring the balance of respect and recognition. Mollified by the king's gift and the respect it signified, Egil joined in the feast by taking up the drinking horn and by speaking this verse:
>>832010
>London was part of the Danelaw
>>831451
>its troops have no ability to suppress fire because they have crap fire discipline
Citation needed
Related to the thread:
There were hundreds of years of interesting history, philosophy, arts, and science discovered by Vikings and other northeastern civilizations and it was all destroyed by incoming Christians.
true/false?
>>832061
False
>>832061
True by intuition. Ulfbehrt swords already speak of an extremely high skill of artisanry and there were absolutely texts of Pagan theology as well as worship sites.
Not really a bad or a good thing, though.
>>832067
Well i consider the religious shit being destroyed pretty much a given thing (and nothing of value was lost), what i'm talking about is astrology, mathematics, literature, history, biology etc. that might've been lost during christianization. Something that really put that area back in terms of development.
>>832074
Hard to say, really. Christianity was unhealthy scientifically because it naturally suppressed scientific ideas until Saint Thomas and Saint Augustine linked geometry and astronomy into the canon. Furthermore, with the destruction of these places of worship being houses of the only kind of scientific thought (common in society for the religious class to be the most academic) the annihilation of the pagan worship system was relevant in that way.
>>832067
>Ulfbehrt swords already speak of an extremely high skill of artisanry
Was a Frankish sword....
Frankish Weapons were known for their high quality and was considered the best in Europe. What is usually considered "Viking Swords" are either Imports of Copies of Swords from Frankish Influence lands.
>>832115
Well, you're right. I dont know why I thought it was a Viking invention.
But to return back to the other guys' question there was evidence that Vikings were using proto-compasses in the Vegisvir and the spar stones from Iceland to help in navigation. So geometric thought was at the very least coming into its own without any outside assistance.
It is likely to assume that had the Vikings been able to establish a unified kingdom in the northern sea they probably would have found North America and mapped it out rather than the few bits of evidence we have of Viking habitation in America. Without the Christian theology demanding them to conform to a flat and planar view of Earth things could have been very different, but Christianization did put a stop to this.
>>829234
When did they fight the magyars?
It would be a rare case of vikings vs horse archers, so I'm pretty interested
WE WUZ VIKINGS N SHIEET
>>829227
You slavs are so funny. The name of your people is literally used to define slaves, and yet, you try to argue that you were once strong and respected. Big news : you never were.
>>831451
>They did it in 3 days.
In one town, VC did it in the whole country, While they faced airstrikes and artillery
>>829008
They attacked civilians whenever they could. they were pure raiders. Rape and pillage and then run.
Don't get me wrong they conquered large areas but it was because people were shit scared of their reputation as civilian-killers and nun-rapers.
Were the Isaurians better warriors then the Varangians? The Excobitores were in service for a long time in comparison to the Varangians who were replaced by the Cretans.
>>830917
he looks like a gnome
>>829510
The Rus were originally Swedish vikinhs from Roslagen.
>>830836
>The genetic make up of England is nearly entirely Saxon....
Completely false.
>The Normans had the crown, but they never ruled.
kek.
>>829008
>Were they good warriors
There were decent, ignore /his/ memery.
>>829008
They were pretty good for a bunch of farmers
The Normans were definitely vikings, and they burned Rome to the ground after ransacking the city in the 11th Century for lulz.
>>829334
>Implying the Vietcong wasn't crushed by 1969, and that the war wasn't won by the NVA in pitched battles with ARVN after Vietnamization
>Implying you know anything about Vietnam
>>832246
I was counting the Varangian guard during the Hungarian-Byzantine war for that.
>>834086
Vikings didn't invade Rome you fucking retarded assface and Normans weren't viking either.
Literally traders that turned to pillaging when they learned some place was weakly defended. Got BTFO whenever anyone they attacked mustered some men together, even by Muslims
>>835077
>i am not going to read history and instead start yelling out fantasies on the internet
>>835122
Tell me of a single battle that wasn't a "raid" style attack on an unsuspecting foe that they won
>>835248
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Paris_(845)
>>831898
yes. all they do is to slaughter other savages that barely know which end of kalashnikov is the one that throws the magic missiles. calling them good fighters is like calling a tortoise good runner because it walks faster than a sea turtle.
