A couple of interesting items. . .

 to ponder.

View from the S H Knight (geology) Building in 1986.

Recent research has indicated that humans reached the Faeroe Islands at least 300 years prior to the Vikings doing so.

This doesn't surprise me a bit, and apparently it's been more or less known for some time, and its what I would have expected, but new studies, involving obtaining DNA from the bottom of a lake, has proven it conclusively.

Evidence of really old sheep defecation was found down there.  Maybe sort of gross sounding in a way, but really cool nonetheless.  So not only was early colonization much earlier than guessed at, but it was true colonization.  I.e, we know about this place and we're bringing our sheep.

Really cool, in my opinion, is that part of the groundbreaking research was done by Dr. Lorelei Curtin of the University of Wyoming. She is a post-doctoral researcher at the university's Department of Geology and Geophysics, of which I'm a graduate.

She specializes, I'd note, in climate research and another study just out notes that global cooling seems to be brought about by global warming. Something I was taught when a student in that department some 35 or so years ago.

Graduates of the other department that I'm a graduate of, the College of Law, have not pegged me out on the pride meter much as time has gone on, but the Department of Geology and Geophysics is different.

Well, go Pokes.

I'll note this as well. The Vikings first settled Iceland starting in 874 and Greenland around 980.  I'm guessing that the last date is correct, but I'll bet that somebody was on Iceland by 874. Rather obviously, the Vikings weren't great at recording who exactly was where they went, when they got there, as the Faeroe Island discovery more or less proves.

Icelanders have mitochondrial DNA from a Native American woman.

So notes a recent study.

I'm only noting this, as it's interesting.

Recent evidence suggests that Vikings first colonized North America in 1021.  Of course, they probably showed up prior to that.  But, at any rate, they were showing up in North America by the 1000s.   They were aware of North America, for that matter, in the 900s, so recent studies not withstanding, I'd be surprised if they didn't have some sort of presence, perhaps only occasional and seasonal, in the second half of the 900s.

And at some point, one of them brought a Native American woman home to Iceland.

Now, we don't know the circumstances, and so far it seems to be only one, which is odd.  But it did occur, and she had children, and some of her children's children, carried down many times, live in Iceland today.

A Viking Sword from the High Mountains of Oppland County, Norway

Meanwhile, the Vikings landed and were defeated by regulation

With the Republican and Democratic races going on nationally, resulting in the nominations of the two least popular and most distasteful candidates in living memory. . . assuming your memory absorbs more than a century of context, and the local races featuring bizarre arguments amongst Republicans (the only ones here, probably, who stand a real chance) about who is most conservative, etc., perhaps you missed that the story that the Vikings have landed.

Or that they haven't.

They're trying to, but they might not make it.

Here's the reason why, as quoted from The New York Times:

After making stops at Canadian ports, the Draken’s crew was told by Coast Guard officials last week that if it wanted to sail through the Great Lakes, it had to hire a certified pilot, paid at an hourly rate that would amount to about $400,000 by the trip’s end. If unable to pay, the vessel would be forced to turn back.

That is, truly, absurd.

Redrawing the battle lines to fit modern sensibilities, and thereby doing violence to history.

I suppose I'm over-publishing on this topic, due to the recent controversy over South Carolina's continued flying of one of the Confederate battle flags (there were a variety of them).  I've already posted on that immediately below.

On that topic, tonight on the national news I saw a man yelling at the reporter interviewing him when that reporter associated the Stars and Bars with the cause of slavery.  He yelled back something to the effect that Southern solders "were never fighting for slavery".

Oh, yes they were.

Oh sure, a person can put any number of nuances on this.  Drafted men, for example, fight (sometimes) because they were drafted. But at the end of the day, the argument that Southern soldiers didn't know that the war was about slavery are fooling themselves and dishonoring history. No matter what else the motives of individuals solders were, and no matter how hard, and even valiantly, they fought, they knew that if they one, slavery as an institution was going to be preserved, and that's what had taken their states into rebellion.  Individual motives may have been, and likely often were, much more complicated than that, but that's the simple fact.

What's also the fact, however, is that there's a tremendous desire on the part of people to make combatants of the past, even the near past, fit their sensibilities.  People don't like to think that people who fought really hard, and who had some admirable qualities, let alone people who are related them, fought for a bad cause, and knew it.

So, let's see how some examples of this work.

"The lost cause" has been a romantic Southern perception since some point during Reconstruction, when Southerners ceased confronting what they'd fought for and reimagined it.  As they did so, something the opposite of what Americans did to their returning servicemen during the late 60s and early 70s occurred, as they began to imagine the cause as noble and every Southern soldier a hero.  This stayed largely a Southern thing up until film entered the scene, and Birth of a Nation spread the concept everywhere.  It's likely best expressed in Gone With the Wind, which no matter what else a person thinks of it, has a very racist and rosy view of the old South.  It well expressed the concept that every slave was like Pork, Mammy or Prissy, and ever Southern soldier was Ashley.  The slave holding South is presented as a romantic dream, and effectively. Heck, I like the film. But it doesn't express reality.

The reality of Southern secession was that the Southern slave holding states had such a hair trigger about slavery the election of Abraham Lincoln was too much for it to endure, simply because he expressed the intent not to let slavery spread.  Southern legislatures went out of the Union, or tried to, on that point.  

That doesn't mean every Union soldier was enlightened.  But it should be noted that Union soldiers fought for the more philosophical point of preserving the Union.  At one time, their service was hugely admired, but in recent years, somehow, the romance that surrounds the Southern cause is the one that tends to be remembered.  That skews history.  Sure, the individual motivations of Southern troops may be more complicated, but that's still a fact that can't 'be ignored.

It probably also shouldn't be ignored that a huge percentage of the Southern fighting force had deserted by the end of the war either, or that regions of the South were hostile to the Confederacy.  

Which brings me to Italians during World War Two, truly.

For some reason, Italians, who actually did fight pretty hard in North Africa and in the Soviet Union (you didn't know that they fought with the Germans in the USSR, they did) are regarded as cowardly as they gave up when it became obvious that Mussolini wasn't worth fighting for.

Now, exactly what's wrong with that?  That doesn't make them cowards, that makes them smart.

I don't know what that says about the German fighting man in World War Two, but whatever it is, it isn't admirable.  But here too there are apologist who would excuse the German soldier.

German troops fought hard everywhere right to the bitter end, and they did so for an inescapably evil cause.  That's not admirable, and I don't care if most of them were drafted.  Most Italian soldiers were drafted too, and by 1943 they were giving up where they could, including their officers.  Some German officers did rebel, but mot didn't, and most German troops fought on until late war.  They shouldn't have.  They shouldn't have fought for Hitler at all.

The Japanese have gotten more of a pass about World War Two than the Germans have on every level, and I do suppose that the fact that Japanese soldiers were largely ignorant of things elsewhere may provide a bit of an excuse for the barbarity that they engaged in, but only barely.  And the occasional confusion of Japanese Medieval chivalry for later day Japanese "honor" is bunk.  The Japanese were brutal during World War Two and the fact that they claimed to liberate other Asians and then acted brutally shows that they should have known better.

Speaking of chivalry, however, the recent trend to show the enemies of Medieval Christendom as primitive nobles and the forces of Medieval Christendom as baddies is also revisionism in need of a dope slap.  Crusaders who went off to the Middle East weren't on a confused mission, they were repelling an invasion, and the Vikings weren't admirable in their pagan state.

Speaking of mounted troops (chivalry) another odd one has been the modern tendency to view all native combatants as committed against the United States in the 18th and 19th Century, or even against all European Americans.  Many Indians view things this way themselves, but it doesn't reflect the complicated reality.  Many tribes allied themselves with European Americans in various instances, sometime temporarily and sometimes not so.  In the West an interesting example of this is the Shoshone, who were allies of the United States and who contributed combatants to campaigns of the 1870s.  In recent years I've occasionally seen it claimed that the Shoshone were amongst the tribes that fought at Little Big Horn, in the Sioux camp.  It's not impossible that some were there, but by and large the big Shoshone story for the 1876 campaign was the detail contributed to Crook's command against the Sioux.  I'll note I'm not criticizing them for this, only noting it.

Regarding the main point, the fact of the matter is that we admire those who fight for us bravely, and bravery is admirable.  It's hard to accept that bravery for a bad cause is admirable, however. That doesn't mean that all bravery serves honor.  Quite the opposite can be true.  Redrawing the motives of combatants doesn't do history any favors, and it doesn't do justice of any kind to the combatants on any side in former wars either.

Random Snippets: How to tell you are really out of the mainstream and too history minded.

"Adrian Peterson finding a new normal with Vikings" read the headline on the net.

And, having not had enough coffee I read that and thought to myself "well, Peterson could be a Norse name. . . but wait, we don't have vikings anymore. . . ."

It took me a few seconds to wake up and realize that, of course, Adrian Peterson is a football player with the Minnesota Vikings.

Lex Anteinternet: Vikings, maybe not so much after all.

I've recently posted this item about Vikings:

Lex Anteinternet: Vikings, maybe not so much after all.: One of the most interesting introductions into the field of history in recent years has been the study of DNA.  The populations of various ...

And then there's that television show, "Vikings".

Ack.

First a disclaimer.  I'm going to run down Vikings.  That will eventually somebody who reads this entry, sooner or later. But I'm entitled.  I'm partially entitled because anyone is entitled to argue historical truth.  I'm also entitled as I can claim Viking ancestry.  Anglo Norman, actually, on my mother's side, with those Anglo Normans ending up in Ireland.  But any Norman was, by descent, a Norseman.  More specifically, part of that group of Vikings who ended up with Rollo in France, his having secured Normandy for a residence for his band.

Rollo, who was baptised (a not uncommon thing in the second half of the Viking era) takes the hand of Gisela in marriage, which may or may not have actually happened.  He probably didn't look quite so pacific and mild in real life.  He's buried at the Cathedral in Rouen.

So, some of my ancestors having boarded long boats in Norway and having followed Rollo to France, I'm entitled.  I'm slamming my own distant ancestors.

Well, actually I'm not, I'm just being honest.

The Vikings are really interesting, which is why they're featured in a television series right now.  But they were bad.  Really bad.

Extremely bad.

Their raids on the British Anglo Saxon and European coasts were horrific, featuring murder and the worst sort of perverted actions imaginable.  They not only exhibited a thirst for gold, but for blood and just simple debased and gross violence. They were most young men, and they were as bad as any criminal gang made up of young men. The television show that currently debates them as rough, pretty, people has it wrong. They were way beyond rough. Some of them may have been pretty. But at least at first, they weren't farmers looking for homesteads.  They came to attack and attack they did.   When they were met with serious armies, as for example those of Northumbria, they didn't do that well, after all, they were just floating gang members, really.  Later on, when they were real armies, the story was different.  But evolving from street gangs into armies, like the NASDP did in Germany in its day, does not credit the effort.

Then something happened to them. Something I doubt we'll see in the television show.

In their later years their adventures became bigger and more advanced.  They evolved from sort of a seagoing street gang (or rather gangs) into what we can sort of regard as Mafia families.  Much more skilled and advanced, and larger.  Then they did in fact begin to settle in other lands (although we now know in the case of England, they never swamped the existing population.  

And they became Catholic.

On another blog, I suppose, might say they "became Christian", but we try to present full accuracy here, and they became Catholic.  The entire Christian world at the time was Catholic, Catholicism and Christianity being the same thing.  They became, largely, Latin Rite Catholics, although I suppose, as some were hired out to the Byzantine Empire, and others, the Rus, located in the Slavic nation now named for them, became Eastern Catholics.  Indeed, a few in the late stages of their conversion became well recognized saints who are still recognized in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

And they took to it more completely, and indeed rapidly (keeping in mind that everything moved slowly in prior times) than movies and whatnot would credit.

In our modern era, television, which basically has a thing against conventional Christianity, likes to portray troubled and disenginuine Christians struggling against rustic but sincere pagans.  But that's not the way it happened.  Violent enemies of the Church at first, for economic reasons, once exposed to it, they converted pretty quickly and sincerely, keeping in mind that they lived in remote locations and that in that era, 300 years (which is about the length of the Viking era), wasn't really a long time. 

Iceland, a Viking island, but incorporating a fair number of Irish Catholic slaves within it, converted by vote, with the deciding vote cast by a pagan priest. The other Scandinavian lands were exposed to the Faith by raids which seemed to be particularly influential amongst their leadership, and also by missionary activity. By the later stage of the Viking era, Scandinavian Christian monarchs, such as St. Olaf, who had been a Viking, appeared.  Really tough men, they brought the faith to their lands, which remained pretty rough places.

This isn't to say that the Faith came instantly or perfectly to these places.  It didn't.  It took quite awhile, as we reckon time today, before the old beliefs were abandoned, and there was a period of imperfection where behavior was somewhat mixed.  King Cnut, the Dane, and King of England, for example, had two wives, even though he was a Catholic.  But it did come, and pretty completely.

What's the point?  Well, basically, the Vikings are really interesting.  A forgotten northern pagan people whose population exploded during a period of dramatically warming climate, their displaced young struck Europe with a barbarous fury, during which they raided as far as North Africa, and into the heat of what is now Russia.  In the end, they evolved into a military people and then a Christian one, which in its final stages gave us three Norman political entities, one in Normandy, one in England and Ireland, and one in Sicily, that were vibrant and hugely significant.  Over time, they became the peoples they are today, who are not at all associated with the acts of their fierce forebearers, and they left a record of their presence throughout Europe and even extending to North America   That's a much more interesting story than the one television is giving us.

But its one today that television won't give us.  A barbaric people whose first exposure to Europe included acts so vile that even modern television, which dwells pretty much in the sewer, can't touch it, and who in the end become a Christian people with values that television would rather lampoon than feature.  History more interesting than anything TV will offer us, and which has a message that television, which operates as sort of a modern early Viking culture amongst our own, wouldn't want to touch.

Vikings, maybe not so much after all.

One of the most interesting introductions into the field of history in recent years has been the study of DNA.  The populations of various regions that have more or less static modern populations have been, in some cases, studied, sometimes with surprising results.  Perhaps no place has received more of this attention than Great Britain.

The classic story of Britain has been that it was settled in ancient times by some Celtic population. Following that, it seems a second one invaded at some point.  The Romans conquered it, or at least the southern half, and then in the 400s the Saxons, Angles and Jutes arrived and conquered the southern half of Great Britain, and the Irish Celts the north.  Or so the classic story goes.  Celtic holdouts from these invasions kept on only in Wales.  A couple of hundred years later Vikings from Denmark and Norway arrived, principally as brutal raiders at first, and later somewhat as invaders.  After that, in 1066, the Normans came over from France (the Normans themselves been descendant from Norsemen) and the process ceased, with no further invasions being successful.

Or so the written record held.

Then the study of genetics came in, challenged much of our assumptions, and with the most recent studies it would see that, well. . .the original story was probably more or less correct.

There's been different genetic studies of the British population, and they haven't all been uniform by any means, but the most recent one pretty much overturns the prior one.   The new one concludes that but for a single region of Britain, Scandinavian ancestry is slight.  This reverses the most recent prior conclusions which was that the Vikings came not so much as raiders, but as settlers. Well, they did do some settling, that's been known for a very long time, but it appears that, in fact, they were mostly just raiding.

In contrast, about 40% of the overall British DNA is German, which shows that the prior assumption that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes did in fact invade in strength is correct.  They didn't do under the British Celtic population, however, which was at one time the general assumption, although even Churchill questioned that in his classic multi-volume text on the history of the English speaking peoples.  A conquering people, their culture came to dominate but they obviously mixed with the conquered people, the overall human norm really.

As for the Celts, well it looks like people from Europe had started settling in Great Britain about 10,000 years ago, but we already knew that.  And it appears that the Celts were not one uniform people, but we already knew that too.

So, it seems, the written record was better than it was recently supposed.