You might glean
something from this fanciful article, but when finished with it I think you
will agree that for the most part the findings herein are more voices crying to
be heard from the wilderness by yet another group of archaeologists, with more
ideas of what occurred 1300+- years ago, seeking their way in a crowded
discipline.
Nobody on earth
knows precisely when the Viking Age began, and nobody ever will. Studies in
Ireland right now, Dublin actually, indicate that it began for the Celts and
other medieval peoples of what is now Ireland much earlier than the 725AD
stated in this article, perhaps as early as sometime in the 7th
century.
The author also
states that the Vikings went “as far east as Russia.” They went a lot further than Russia. Swedish Varangian Guards guarded
the imperial palace in Constantinople, leaving their runes on the floor of that
edifice for us to see today.
Again,
nobody knows exactly where they went or when they went there. Why? Because the
people we have romanticized with the moniker ‘Vikings’ were illiterate savages at the time. Scandinavians didn't even have written languages for the masses until the 12 or 13 centuries. They were inveterate traders with a definite artistic bent certainly, but savages nonetheless.
Except for a few runic tablets of dubious origin and authenticity, most of which have been found to be gibberish, the Vikings wrote nothing down. Being illiterate they couldn’t write anything down. Everything written about them was written hundreds of years after the fact. And yes, I include the sagas in that statement, especially the sagas. (Ed.)
Except for a few runic tablets of dubious origin and authenticity, most of which have been found to be gibberish, the Vikings wrote nothing down. Being illiterate they couldn’t write anything down. Everything written about them was written hundreds of years after the fact. And yes, I include the sagas in that statement, especially the sagas. (Ed.)
***
Discovery of Reindeer Antlers in Denmark may Rewrite Start of Viking Age
4 APRIL, 2015 - 22:24 MARK MILLER
A team of scholars
says their new research is rewriting when and where the Viking age began. The
official date for the start of Viking voyages was a 793 AD raid in England. But
researchers say people from Norway sailed to Ribe, Denmark, on peaceful missions
much earlier—around 725 AD.
Archaeologists from
the University of Aarhus in Denmark and the University of York in the United
Kingdom found the useful commodity of Norwegian reindeer antlers buried in the
earliest archaeological layer of Ribe’s old market. Ribe was the first
commercial city in Denmark.
This caribou with its magnificent rack in Alaska is the same species called reindeer in Scandinavia. (Photo by Dean Biggins/Wikimedia Commons)
This caribou with its magnificent rack in Alaska is the same species called reindeer in Scandinavia. (Photo by Dean Biggins/Wikimedia Commons)
The sailing trips
from Norway to Denmark helped the sailors establish the technology and skills
necessary to do the later military raids and long-distance voyaging the Vikings
did, they say.
“Ultimately, the
researchers agree that the discussion of when the Viking era began is also one
of semantics,” says an article in
ScienceNordic. “It all depends on what you mean by Vikings. Morten Søvsø from
Southwest Jutland Museums suggests that we should be careful with the labels we
give to people who lived in the past. ‘They didn’t go around knowing they were
Vikings. If you want to argue that the Viking age in fact started when they had
contact with the wider world, then this study supports this view—but it will
always be a rationalisation,’ says Søvsø.”
Another researcher,
James Barrett of Cambridge University in England, told ScienceNordic he’s not
convinced the people who sailed to Ribe in the early eighth century were
Vikings, though he says it’s valuable research.
“Where we do not
necessarily agree entirely is in the perception of whether towns and trade also
helped to start the Viking age," says Barrett, a specialist in medieval
archaeology.
Ribe is Denmark’s oldest commercial center. It looks much
different in this photo than it did when Norwegians came around 725 AD to trade
reindeer antlers. (Photo by Wolfgang Sauber/Wikimedia Commons)
There is a related
debate among Nordic archaeologists—whether Ribe was central to Viking society
early in Viking history. The article in ScienceNordic says it seemed an early
link between the oldest commercial center in Denmark and the Vikings would be
obvious, but archaeologists had no physical evidence to confirm it.
"This is the
first time we have proof that seafaring culture, which was the basis for the
Viking era, has a history in Ribe. It's fascinating," said Søren Sindbæk,
one of the authors of the new study published in the European Journal of Archaeology.The trips across the
Skaggerak Strait or down the North Sea to trade antlers in Denmark may have
prepared the Vikings for longer voyages.
‘Ingolf tager Island i besiddelse’ by P. Raadsig, 1850, depicting
Ingólfr Arnarson, the first settler of Iceland, newly arrived in Reykjavík.
(Wikimedia Commons)
"The Viking Age
becomes a phenomenon in Western Europe because the Vikings learned to use
maritime mobility to their advantage,” Sindbæk said. “They learned to master
sailing to such an extent that they get to the coast of England where the
locals don't expect anything. They come quickly, plunder the unprepared
victims, and leave again—a sort of hit and run."
The Vikings went on
to do raids and set up colonies elsewhere in Europe and as far east as Russia.
They went on voyages of thousands of kilometers to Iceland, Greenland and
Canada.
"We can now show
that the famous Scandinavian sea voyages, which eventually led to the discovery
of Iceland and Greenland, have a history of some commercial travel, not just
raids. Previously we were inclined to say that yes, once you can sail across
open water, you can also sail to the commercial towns -- now we can turn the
equation around and say that trading towns may have been an important part of
the drive behind developing new technologies, "says Sindbæk said. “The
peaceful exchanges—trading—will take up more of the story, and the military
voyages, which are also important, must now share the space.”
"Deer antlers were
important to Danes because they were used in making combs, needles and other
tools. A householder was likely able to find enough for home use, but a comb
maker may not have been able to. So some Norwegians decided to gather what was
for them a waste product and take them to Denmark, where they were a valuable
commodity," Sindbæk said.