Re: Barntari hotheads

From: jaspire_at_...
Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2001 16:04:07 -0000


> In most of the Icelandic sagas, the best vikings were farmers for
> most of the year.

It was a strange culture. Not because of the farming aspect; in primitive cultures, farmers or herdsmen traditionally double as warriors (the ancient Huns and Habiru (Hebrews) and modern Bedouins are like this). What's interesting is that while most cultures that achieve sufficient size while retaining this structural primitivism venture far afield only under the impetus of major climatic shifts affecting food supplies, the Habiru did it under a triumphalist mandate to destroy unbelievers; while the Vikings did it because there was no cultural injunction against taking what you couldn't hold by force. Since vendettas didn't exist internationally (at least, not with non-Vikings), there was nothing internal to stop these ancestors of polite Danes and pacific Norwegians from raiding wherever they wished overseas.

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