Viking rant

Ok, I posted earlier that I was going to elaborate more on the BBC "blood of the vikings" series.  Here goes.

At one point in the first installment the comment is made (and I'm paraphrasing), "Were they just thugs that wanted to kill and steal stuff, or was this a retaliation for the attacks in order to convert the heathens to Christianity".

Well duh!  Of course it was a religious war.  Very similar to the war in Iraq right now.  Well, not the same, but I just read some forum postings on the war that upset me.  I didn't post my response there, and I won't post it here either.  No point I guess.

Back to the topic.  Can you imagine living as a farmer, you're out working the fields, you hail Thor for a good harvest this year, and a bunch of guys come up to you and start telling you that you're going to hel(l).  You're just out there, making a living for your family, and they are ranting on about Christ and how they are there to save your soul from eternal damnation.  You tell them to bugger off, and they tell you that you must worship their God, and not the Gods that you grew up with.  You once again tell them to bugger off, and they kill you.  They then go to your wife and the same conversation ensues, with the same end result.  Now they come to the son.  He just saw his parents butchered by Christians trying to force people to change their beliefs.  He agrees out of fear of being brutally slain and the Christians go about burning or otherwise destroying all the "heathen" artifacts (oh, and may as well burn the crops too, being they were tainted by the devil…oops, I mean another God).  The son then goes into the village and relates this tale.  The head hancho of the village takes it to the Thing and they talk about this injustice, and how it's happening all over the land.  So, they get a bunch of folks together to fight back.  First stop?  The first church/monestary they see…Lindisfarne.  They take precious metals and whatnot, kill all the Christians there, as retribution for what happened to their kin.  Then the Christians will retaliate and the war is in full swing.

Who gets the bad rap out of all this?  The "thugs" known as the Vikings.  Why?  Because they attacked religious folk.  It's disgusting how one-sided these things can get.  All anyone ever hears about are the vikings that raided.  What about all the farmers, and the shipmakers, and the blacksmiths, and the seamstresses, leatherworkers, jewelry makers…nope, they all raped and pillaged.

I think the reason that we don't hear about the other parts, is that it's not as interesting to the "media generation".  Everything has to be exciting, and get the blood pumping.  If it won't cut it in hollywood, forget it.  It's almost sickening that a culture like this can take such a bad rap.  So it's hard for me, when someone asks me, "what religion are you?".  Well for starters, that's a shitty question to ask someone.  Also, I'll respond "I'm Asatru" or "I'm Heathen".  If the former, I have to follow it up shortly after with "The faith that the vikings practiced." They then think I'm going to stab them with a sword or something.  If I say Heathen, they immediately think I'm a devil worshipper.  I must be, I'm not worshipping the Christian God…right?

The vikings were a trading folk, and yes, if someone got in their way, or insulted them or their family, a fight or battle might have ensued.  The same thing happens at the local pub weekly.  Some guy insults, or tries to pick up someone's girlfriend.  There's going to be a conflict.  So is the guy that is protecting his girlfriend from being taken a Thug?  I guess it's a judgement call.

As I sit here with a statue of Thor on my desk, a chainmail dreamcatcher with a Thor's hammer hanging from it, a Thor's hammer around my neck, a Thor's hammer tattooed on my arm, and a valknot on the other, I often wonder…should I be a Thug?  If you know me, I'm pretty pacifistic (is that even a word??).  Yeah, I can have my moments, but that's because I generally bottle stuff up.  Maybe that's what happened back then too.  They didn't fight back until it was too much and they exploded.  We'll never really know for sure. 

You see, when I blog like this, I go on tangents quite easily.  I'm just writing as I'm thinking.  I'm not going back and editing.  Hence the following.

In the BBC program, they mentioned Lindisfarne and the monk that documented the raid there.  They said he wasn't even at the monestary.  He was safe in another part of the lands (different country I believe) in the court of Charlamagne (that's probably not spelled right either).  So was the whole raid on Lindisfarne just propoganda to paint the evil "Heathens" as bad guys?  For all we really know, Charlamagne sent a group of soldiers to the island where Lindisfarne is and slaughtered the monks in order to get people motivated.  But that's the conspiracy theorist in me coming out.

Anyway, that's my rant for now.  I'll probably rant more later.  I'm learning quite a bit while I do these rants, so it's all a good thing.  Next up, Leif Eriksson and Vinland  :-)