David Dunham wrote:
> > In most of the Icelandic sagas, the best vikings were farmers for
> > most of the year.
There are a few things that sets the icelandic "viking" culture apart from
the other "viking" cultures.
First more written material describing the period has survived, probably
because the clergy did not see the pre-Christian period as as evil as the
other Nordic churches did.
Secondly, until the clergy gained some kind of status, there was no king or
centralized authority, only farmers (and farmhands etc) of varying stature.
And the clergy was consisted of the strong men. IIRC the bishops married,
despite the church being roman catolic.
Thirdly they were settlers from outside, mainly from Norway made landless by
the king there. So you had nothing in Iceland except what you could settle.
A good start for a fairly equal society. Of course having relatives would
help, etc.
jaspire_at_... wrote:
> 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.
Huh? Apart from that the last part of this one sentence contradicts itself, at least seemingly, this reeks of academic work of the kind noone understands.
> 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
Polite Danes? Pacific Norweigans? Hahahaha. You do not live in Europe, do you?
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