Do you think that someone invoking the highly mythologized spectre of their millennium-dead predecessors amounts to anything but an embarassing admission that they themselves have accomplished little of note?

[–] SoyViking@hexbear.net 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The danish national anthem summarized: In ancient times? We wuz Vikings'n shit. Today? Well our trees are really pretty.

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 12 points 3 weeks ago

They really are very pretty, I'd like to see the forests

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I mean, the TV version mostly is. The real guys were cattle farmers with good boats. They did raids and stuff, but so did the Bulgarians. And yeah, the blood means nothing.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Bulgarian khan drank wine from the cup made from the skull of Byzantine emperor, vikings served the Byzantine emperors. I see skill issue here.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

~~I'd read this, but my eyes have been gouged out by Basil II Porphyrogenitus.~~

I went with the first non-feared modern group that I thought of causing historical trouble, but maybe some random Muslim empire would have been better. The point was just that their military achievements were nothing special. Vikings had their day and then it was over, basically. To be fair, they were really good boats, that took them all kinds of crazy places, and that's half of the reason why we're talking about them. (The other half being nationalistic shilling from later Germanic people)

Pretty much every steppe nomad culture was OP before the early modern period; from the Turks to the Cumans to the Huns to the proto-Indo-Europeans. And of course the Mongols. Honestly I'm still not sure why.