Amerikaner - I
Viking History
The History of the Vikings is a part of the History of
Scandinavia, and the modern history of Denmark,
Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Åland , Faroe
Islands, Greenland, Jämtland, Lapland, Scania and
Schleswig-Holstein.
The Vikings are a vital entity of the vast complex of
the Three Germanic Races that made themselves
known about three hundred years before the Birth
of Christ. However there is evidence that the
Germanic races existed more than 2000 B.C. and
possibly as old as 5000 B.C.
The three races of the Germanic people were
originally a part of the Indo-European group of
races, until it was determined that those three
races which constituted over a thousand separate
tribes, all speaking a similar sounding language
with their own alphabet, and which had a similar
heritage, and whose heritage bore similar traits,
that over time it broke away from the
Indo-European group of languages and formed
their own, which the Roman Historian Tacitus
described in His Germania, in the first century A.D.
The influx of the three Multi-tribal nations
originated from the plains of Asia, possibly from
areas in China, Mongolia, and Russia in Asia.
Originally fair skinned with blond hair with nomadic
tendencies, they fought among themselves and
others, striving for a superior place among their
own tribes, and among the various tribes that made
up the three divisions of their Teutonic Germanic
origins. These Three Divisions were originally the
East, West and North Germanic races. The East
Germanic tribes of the Ostragoths, Visagoths and
Vandals are completely extinct at this time, having
been vanguished from within and among each
other. The Vikings, however, among the ages
assimulated with the other Germanic tribes. But
before that happened, they were a seafaring people
that constituted Pirates, Plunderers, Raiders,
Explorers, merchants, who raided and colonized
vast areas of the European Continent, including the
British Isles, and settled originally in the northern
areas of the Peninsula which later became known
as Norway. They established a city, which later
became known as Trondheim which became the
seat of their Kings, and also the burial grounds of
their deceased nobility. Later, this peninsula
became known as it is today, as the Kingdom of
Norway.
Today, the Vikings and their Germanic language,
maintained their language roots in the Saetersdal in
Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and other parts of the
world. Of course the name of the Viking language
has been changed to Icelandic, Greenlandic, etc.,
but historically the language is still Viking.
These Norsemen used their famed longships to
travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga
River in Russia, and as far west as Iceland,
Greenland, and Newfoundland. This period of
Viking expansion is known as the Viking Age, and
forms a major part of the medieval history of
Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe
in general.
A romanticized picture of Vikings as Germanic
noble savages emerged in the 18th century, and
expanded during the Victorian era Viking revival. In
Britain it took the form of Septentrionalism, in
Germany that of "Wagnerian" pathos or even
Germanic mysticism, and in the Scandinavian
countries that of Romantic nationalism or
Scandinavism. In contemporary popular culture
these clichéd depictions are often exaggerated with
the effect of presenting Vikings as caricatures.
In Old English, the word wicing appears first in the
Anglo-Saxon poem, "Widsith", which probably
dates from the 9th century. In Old English, and in
the writings of Adam von Bremen, the term refers
to a pirate, and is not a name for a people or a
culture in general. Regardless of its possible
origins, the word was used more as a verb than as
a noun, and connoted an activity and not a distinct
group of individuals. To "go Viking" was distinctly
different from Norse seaborne missions of trade
and commerce.
The word disappeared in Middle English, and was
reintroduced as Viking during 18th century
Romanticism (the "Viking revival"), with heroic
overtones of "barbarian warrior" or noble savage.
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