Vikings May Have Been More Social Than Savage

[cronus]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 091338.htm

Vikings May Have Been More Social Than Savage

Oct. 1, 2013 — Academics at Coventry University have uncovered complex social networks within age-old Icelandic sagas, which challenge the stereotypical image of Vikings as unworldly, violent savages.

Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from the University's Applied Mathematics Research Centre have carried out a detailed analysis of the relationships described in ancient Icelandic manuscripts to shed new light on Viking society.
In a study published in the European Physical Journal, Mac Carron and Kenna have asked whether remnants of reality could lurk within the pages of the documents in which Viking sagas were preserved.
They applied methods from statistical physics to social networks -- in which nodes (connection points) represent individuals and links represent interactions between them -- to home in on the relationships between the characters and societies depicted therein.
The academics used the Sagas of Icelanders -- a unique corpus of medieval literature from the period around the settlement of Iceland a thousand years ago -- as the basis for their investigation.
Although the historicity of these tales is often questioned, some believe they may contain fictionalised distortions of real societies, and Mac Carron's and Kenna's research bolsters this hypothesis.
They mapped out the interactions between over 1,500 characters that appear in 18 sagas including five particularly famous epic tales. Their analyses show, for example, that although an 'outlaw tale' has similar properties to other European heroic epics, and the 'family sagas' of Icelandic literature are quite distinct, the overall network of saga society is consistent with real social networks.
Moreover, although it is acknowledged that J. R. R. Tolkien was strongly influenced by Nordic literature, the Viking sagas have a different network structure to the Lord of the Rings and other works of fiction.

(continued, them boats too I would have thought....a hint there?)

[Pappa]

Isn't the initial premise that they were "savage" a bit retarded?

[JimC]

Normal will be chuffed...

[Tyrannical]

Isn't the initial premise that they were "savage" a bit retarded?

Certainly when compared to actual savages. The Vikings were quite sophisticated culturally and technologically.

[cronus]

Isn't the initial premise that they were "savage" a bit retarded?

Certainly when compared to actual savages. The Vikings were quite sophisticated culturally and technologically.

I figured it was not meant to be literal but rather a play on words to garner reader attention for the article. social savage social savage social savage red lorry yellow lorry....

[Clinton Huxley]

Big on Twitter. Just plundering Holy Island. Lol.

[rainbow]

Isn't the initial premise that they were "savage" a bit retarded?

Hugely.

Some were savage, some were social. Some might even have been both social and savage, some might have been neither.

This sort of generalisation is only required for those too stupid to think for themselves.

[Svartalf]

Saxon chroniclers keep whining about how those smooth talking Scandinavians were a threat to the virtue of their wives and daughters.

[Svartalf]

Isn't the initial premise that they were "savage" a bit retarded?

When you see stories where people kill a foe by biting his throat out or where characters are introduced as " a great lout who kept bragging about how many men he had killed without ever paying weregild", you might just wonder a bit.

[cronus]

Vikings like sharks are being redeemed. We now realise their territory from their perspective was being invaded by new comers. What else could they do? They had to repel the invaders.

[Audley Strange]

Yeah turns out Rape Pillage and looting are dialect heavy versions of the IKEA Rapii cushions, Pllaj vegetable strainers and Loaiting folding sofa beds.

[Svartalf]

You folk are aware that viking forces never won an engagement when there was anything like a sizeable or reasonably organized opposition, right? (even when it was adjudged more expeditious to buy them off than to actually fight them down)

[Audley Strange]

vikings are a fairy tale, like goblins, orcs and the war on terror.

[Svartalf]

Sez the Scotsman with likely as much Norse as Celtic blood in his veins?

[Coito ergo sum]

Isn't the initial premise that they were "savage" a bit retarded?

Yes, also long since debunked. I've a library of about 40 books on viking history, dating back over 100 years and no serious historian ever suggested that they were not social or that they were primarily "savage." They were known to be primarily merchants and farmers, and that has been known for hundreds of years. They did, of course, go to war, and they gained a "savage" reputation by virtue of their nearly 300 years of warring around England, Scotland, Ireland, France and eastern Europe. And, they had a great rep as warriors (Varangian Guard) in the Byzantine Empire and therefore throughout the mediterrenean. But, the idea that they were "more savage than social" as a people is, I think, retarded.

They were people pretty much the same as every other people of the time. They lived precariously, at the mercy of harvests and fisheries, and they lived in a world where sending armies out to raid ones neighbors was not unusual. They weren't the only ones doing it. The Franks were not called "savages" and they were rampaging all over Anglo-Saxon lands and Germany trying to convert everyone to Christianity and bring them into the Holy Roman Empire. The Arabs were invading every one of their neighbors. The various kingdoms in England were warring constantly against each other. Etc. Etc.

This article is about as groundbreaking as an article taking the position that vikings didn't really wear horned helmets.