THE REAL VIKINGS

The title of this article is "The Real Vikings?". I was inspired to write this article after I looked into the history of the Vikings and their migrations through history. I will preface this article by saying that I am dealing with the Norwegians primarily since, contrary to what Swedes will tell you, the Norwegian Vikings were the prototypical Vikings portrayed in history.

The Swedes of the time also conducted raids and did their share of pillaging, plundering and raping (all good Viking things to do) but they did it mostly inland via rivers such as the Volga, Danube and the Dnieper mostly into what is now Russia and the Ukraine. It was the Norwegians and our brothers the Danes, who sailed on the open ocean and devastated most of Western Europe. The main idea of this article is to explain why the real Vikings and their descendants do not live in Scandinavia anymore....they live in the United States and Britain. To fully explain this phenomenon I will first detail some history of the Norwegian Viking and tell you why the real Vikings left and how the modern socialist Norwegians are not Vikings at all.....they are the descendants of the pussies who were farming while their countrymen intrepidly changed the world.

History of the Norwegian Viking
The Norsemen were well known in northwestern Europe as peaceful and respectable traders, at least for several hundred years prior to 800AD. But in the late 700's this peaceful activity evolved into plundering raids instead. The Vikings started to attack and plunder monasteries, towns and areas along coastlines. In the year 793 they attacked the Lindisfarne monastery and in the following year the Jarrow monastery.

Many theories have been launched concerning why the Vikings started with the plundering raids. Since the 1930's, recommended books studying this question have maintained that over population was responsible for this activity. Later, this theory was supplemented with an explanation to the effect that there was also a spirit of adventure and a need for discovery. This is " need for discovery and adventure " is one of the reasons why many of them left for Britain (at the time of the Vikings) and the United States (much later).

In the beginning, the Viking raiding groups were small. The first raid we know about involved only three ships crossing the sea. In the year 836 the number of ships rose to 25, and in the years 850 - 851 there were 350 ships reported on the river Thames near London. According to written records, the first time the Vikings spent the winter abroad was during the years 840 -841 in Ireland. In the year 843 the also spent the winter in France. The Vikings later established a colony in Northern France which is still known as Normandie (Land of the North Men in French). This land was ceded to a Viking named Rollo in 911 in return of defense against other Viking raids....wow, typical French cowardice, giving the Vikings land and money to protect them from other Viking attacks! Interestingly enough it was the Normans who invaded Britain in 1066 and effectively ended the Viking age. It was basically a battle between the descendants of the Vikings who settled in France versus the descendants of the Vikings who settled in England.

However, it is difficult to make a clear distinction between a traditional Viking raid, a plundering tour, a trading tour, an act of defense against Christianity or the desire to acquire new land. These acts often had overlapping motives. But the typical aim of the Vikings in preying upon others was to capture prisoners for a ransom. It also appears that they favored kidnapping members of the upper class in order to be able to bargain for more goods. If the ransom was not paid, the prisoner was taken away and sold as a slave in another area. The Viking usually established a base on island in the area they had decided to raid. They would bring their booty to this base - most often only prisoners of war. From this island base they would bargain over the prisoner's head. Slave trading was a big business in the areas the Vikings visited.

Here is a brief timeline of the Viking attacks and settlements in the Viking age with my explanations on why they are important in understanding the mass migration of the Norwegian Viking.

• 789 - The first Viking attack on England. (The first of many attempts to help out the native Brits, they should thank God that we came and made them what they are today)
• 793 - Vikings attack the monastery at Lindisfarne.
• 797 - Vikings attacks Lambay, Ireland.
• 798 - Vikings attacks Isle of Man
• 798 - Vikings attacks on France (before 800) begins (Seems as if the Vikings knew that the French were cowards 1200 years ago)
• 820 - Vikings attacks Flanders and approaches the moth of river Seine. (Hitting Holland too)
• 834 - Vikings approaches the river Thames, England.
• 839 - Turgeis (Torgisl) and a big Viking fleet conquers Ireland and settles permanently.
• 841 - Vikings under the leadership of Turgeis founds Dublin, Ireland (Ireland would be a wasteland without all the Viking settlements)
• 845 - Viking chieftain Ragnar Lodbrok attacks Paris along a big fleet. (Good work Ragnar!)
• 853 - Olaf the White conquers Ireland with a massive Viking fleet (More Vikings settling permanently abroad)
• 866 - Vikings establish the kingdom of York, England.
• 871 - Olaf the White returns to Norway, his brother Ivarr becomes ruler of Ireland
• 885 - Harald (Luva) Fairhair finally unites Norway as one kingdom, first in Scandinavia.
• 911 - The Viking chieftain Rollo is granted land by the Frankish king and founds the Duchy of Normandy.
• 917 - Vikings defeats Dublin by military power and regains the throne.
• 928 - Kings Æ thelstan and Harald Fairhair joins in a treaty to gain control of the Norse Vikings
• 930 - The first democracy (Alltinget) of the world is founded at Thingvellir, Iceland, by Vikings (More evidence of Viking superiority....we started democracy 1000 years ago....the Althing in Iceland still exists and Iceland is the world's oldest democracy. Oh by the way, Iceland is 100% Norwegian.)
• 947 - Eirik Blood-axe, son of Fairhair, gains control of York. (Eirik Bloodaxe....could there be a better name for a Viking...I think not)
• 974 - Emperor Otto II of Germany attacks Denmark, but fails because of Norwegian help. (Even though we don't like the Danes, you can't let other Vikings be ruled by anyone but other Vikings)
• 976 - Angelsey (coast of Wales) is included to the Norse kingdom of Man.
• 980 - Vikings starts regular attacks to gain control of England.
• 984 - Viking leader Erik the Red discovers Greenland and starts settling.
• 986 - Viking ships sails in Newfoundland waters (And yet the weak and inferior Italians are given credit for " discovering " the Americas. We came, We saw and then we went home to Iceland)
• 1000 - Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, explores the coast of North America.
• 1009 - Viking chieftain Olaf Haraldsson (St. Olav) attacks London by river and destroys London Bridge
• 1015 - Vikings abandon the Vinland settlements at the coast of North America.
• 1016 - Danes, under Canute the Great, gains full control over England.
• 1018 - The coronation of Canute the Great, as King of England. (And yet the British pretend that somehow they are not descendants of the Norwegians and Danes)
• 1035 - Canute the Great dies, Magnus, son of St Olaf, expels the Danes from Norway and regains the kingdom
• 1042 - Magnus, king of Norway, becomes king of Denmark.
• 1045 - Magnus grants Harald Hardraada half of Norway, as a co-king
• 1049 - Hardraada founds Oslo, Norway.

The reason for all of this is twofold 1) to explain how bad ass the Vikings were and 2) to show that the Vikings were all over Western Europe and often they settled in the lands they conquered. Vikings and their kin either ruled or founded Ireland, England, Normandie, the Isle of Man, Scotland (which was not a entity at the time, many of the early attacks were on what is now Scotland), Russia and Iceland. Here are some of the places where Viking genes run thick.

IRELAND: Vikings from Norway and Denmark began hitting away at Ireland in 795 and colonies of their ancestors in Ireland were still speaking Old Norse (the original Scandinavian tongue) through most of the 1200 ' s. During the interim, these Norsemen founded most of Ireland ' s major towns, such as Dublin, Wexford, Wicklow and Limerick, which became major trading centers. These Scandinavian traders and the Celtic natives married and otherwise intermingled, affecting the racial makeup of Ireland ' s royalty and common people alike.

SCOTLAND: Norwegians could sail to Scotland's northern islands (the Shetlands and the Orkneys) in a day or two. And they constantly did. In fact, those islands became Norse not long after the Viking Period began and the northernmost tip of Scotland's mainland was only a few miles away. Viking settlement in Scotland was both centered and quite heavy in her northeast, northern islands and western coastal islands. A dialect of Old Norse was still spoken in some of these areas as late as the 1700's. Scots of Viking blood today flaunt their heritage and many of their Nordic traditions into the 21st Century.

NORMANDY: Because Norse ships could easily travel rivers, places like Paris became easy targets. By 886, Vikings had besieged and plundered Paris to such an extent that a French king decided to buy them off with an enormous amount of treasure as well as a large, bountiful and breathtakingly beautiful territory in northern France. In droves, Danes settled its interior and Norwegians its coast. These Northmen were called "Normans" and the territory "Normandy". Although they were politically, militarily and probably numerically dominant, they soon let themselves become "French." Why the hell would they do that??? Those French whores must have been throwing themselves that the ultra-masculine Vikings....after not having sex for years due to rampant homosexuality of the French those women must have been happy to get banged by some real men!! Two centuries later in 1066, these francophone Vikings conquered England at the Battle of Hastings. That would become history's last major Viking invasion.

ENGLAND: Nordic blood flows thoroughly thick in England, which was hit by not one - but three major and unrelated infusions of Scandinavian settlers over a 600-year period. Each period of invasion destroyed the existing power and social structures and either totally replaced or substantially altered resident genes and tongues.

1. The first wave of Scandinavian immigrants to England came in the 5th Century when Angles (heavily Nordic), Jutes (Danes) and Saxons seized the whole country and simply pushed out the native Celts (the Britons). The new language of England was now a hybrid Germanic one known as Anglo-Saxon.
   
2. 300 years later, in 793, history's official "Viking Period" began with a Danish raid on the English coast. During subsequent countless major and minor Viking invasions over the next 250 years, almost all of England fell to the Danes. Viking soldiers liked England and chose to stay. The good word got back to Denmark and hordes of plain folk joined their Viking brothers for a new life in bountiful England, too. Not only were the Danes in control of England but half of the country (the north and the east) became largely Scandinavian in stock, speech and culture. The English language absorbed over 600 everyday words from the Danes: "law", "window", "egg", "knife", "die", "husband", "leg", "sister", "happy", "ugly", "skin" and so on. Countless common "English" names (such as "Eric" and "Tyrone"), surnames (such as those ending in "son" and "by") and place names (e.g. "York" and those ending in "by", "wick" and "dale") are actually of Norse origin. Not a few Danes today fondly claim that England's Danish blood is responsible for England's legendary history of adventure and conquest.
   
3. The third and most famous Scandinavian blood transfusion into England was the Norman Conquest. In 1066 Vikings from Normandy turned England upside down. By sword and with iron rule, William the Conqueror subjugated the people of England, many of whom were his own distant Nordic relatives. He imposed his acquired French language and culture upon them. There were half-serious jokes that English was French's northernmost dialect. Normans flocked to England to live a life of aristocracy. But Vikings had a habit of absorbing languages and cultures like a sponge. A hundred years later, a chronicler wrote of England that "the two nations have become so mixed that it is scarcely possible today.to tell who is English and who is of Norman race."

The impact of Scandinavians on the English language itself is both gigantic and easy to document. The impact of Scandinavians on the English gene pool is unquestionably large as well but long a subject of torrid debate when it comes down to estimates of percent. Trying to judge just by looks is tough, too, because all Northern Europeans share a number of physical characteristics. But it can be of little doubt that if the same amount of invaders and settlers in England had come from sub-Saharan Africa instead of Scandinavia, those of us of substantial English descent would easily qualify as "black" under current U.S. government standards.

RUSSIA: For starters, Vikings were responsible for Russia's very name. Rus was Old Norse for "he who rows". While Danes and Norwegians occupied themselves with Western European, North Atlantic and North American territories, the Swedes concentrated on western Russia and the Ukraine. They founded cities such as Kiev and Novgorod. And like many of their Danish and Norwegian brethren, the Swedes followed the familiar Viking pattern of conquest, substantial settlement and - ultimately - assimilation.

The Scandinavians left their blood behind to a somewhat lesser extent elsewhere. Hardly anywhere in Europe was untouched by them and some Vikings spread themselves as far as Istanbul. Long before the Viking period, Swedes had settled the southern and eastern coasts of the BALTICS and Vikings were familiar visitors there for hundreds of years. In FINLAND , Swedish Vikings maintained trading colonies along routes to Russia. Actual Swedish conquest of the Finns began in the 1100's and Swedish is still an official Finnish language. Much farther south in1061, Norman Vikings commenced their conquest of SICILY , which they finished in 1091. Those "Old Blue Eyes" were probably from some stud named Bjorn raping Frank Sinatra's distant grandmother!!

It is reasonable to think that many Norwegians who were looking for a new opportunity took the chance and emigrated to these lands. When you consider the fact that today there are only 4.5 million people in Norway and about 4 million of them are of Norwegian ancestry it is impossible to think that the vast majority of Viking genes are abroad and not in Norway. It is also important to note that not all Norwegians were Vikings...there were plenty of farmers and the like who stayed home. Many Viking warriors were the largest, bravest and strongest men of their villages. I would venture to say that the smaller men of the village were not volunteering for the raids. They were happy at home and they did not have the opportunity to take part in these dangerous but exhilarating adventures. Those people are the ancestors of the modern Norwegian.

The Real Viking Kingdom of England
Now that we know that most of what is now England was a Viking fiefdom it is important to understand that the Viking conquest of England laid the groundwork for the British Empire and later the United States. How you ask?? We all know that the Vikings were the premier naval technicians in the world....it was the dominance of the longboat (along with superior physical size and strength) that allowed the Norwegians to invade most of Western Europe. To me it is not a coincidence that by the 1500s the British Navy was the most feared military force in world history. The greatest naval commander in the history of the world still bore the name of his Viking ancestors, Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson.

Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson

The knowledge and skill of the Viking craftsmen was handed down through the generations and manifested itself in the birth of the Royal Navy. The naval power of the British was the reason why " The sun never set on the British Empire " . As a matter of fact, the British Navy's dominance of the world was more complete than Roman or Greek power....the only force in the history of the world that has ever surpassed the British Navy is the military power of its one-time crown jewel of the empire, the United States. It is clear that we have a succession here......Viking dominance of Western Europe and the creation of modern Britain, the use of inherited Viking skill and bravery that led to British military domination of the world which allowed them to colonize the world and their greatest colony, the United States utilizing the superior British thinking and technology (isn't it interesting that the Vikings created the first democracy in Iceland and then the United States becoming the first major democracy of the world.....coincidence....hell no) carrying on the Viking tradition of military supremacy of the world.

I know you are thinking....the British are not Vikings at least not genetically....well you are wrong as usual. Here is an article that will explain how a vast majority of "English" blood is of Angle (Early Norsemen, England is named after them), Jute (Danes from Juteland the main peninsula in Denmark), Saxon (Northern Germans...closely related genetically and socially to the Danes and the Norweigans), Norse and Danish origin. Here is the link....read it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1689955.stm

Here is another link talking about the Viking involvement in the Norman conquest the battle that "ended the Vikings in England" haha) http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Aegean/3532/estrithsson.htm

Viking Invasions and Settlements of America
We know that Leif Eriksson, son of Erik the Red, found North America and created the settlement of Vinland in 1000, now Newfoundland. That settlement did not last and they left about 20 years after they settled it. Not much is known about the fate of that expedition but what is known is that the Vikings left their mark in North America. There is evidence of earlier Viking landings in the interior of North America as early as the 800s. This evidence is widely debated amongst historians mostly because our lazy, worthless friends, the Native Americans do not want anyone to know that there were white people here much earlier than previously thought and thus calling into question their treaty claims. That is really irrelevant to my subject but any chance I get to bash drunk Indians I make sure to take full advantage.

The second and most important Norwegian wave started in 1825 with the arrival of the first Norwegian immigrants. They were the first of around 1 million Norwegian immigrants who not surprisingly settled in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and to our great state of Washington. It is important to note that at the time of the mass migration the population of Norway was around 2.5 million. That means that 40% of the Norwegian population emigrated to the United States. That number is only surpassed by the immigrants from Ireland.

The most important question that goes along with this fact is...Who were these Norwegians?? I previously mentioned that the bravest and strongest Norwegians settled in the British Isles from 800-1000 AD. The fact that the migrants had the balls to come here with nothing tells me that they are more likely to have true Viking ancestors. I talked about the farmers and merchants who stayed in Norway during the Viking Invasions....they were the class of people who were generally happy in their surroundings. This makes me think that their families held some of the rare and therefore precious arable farmland in Norway. It is not a leap of faith to think that those same families held most of that land 800 years later.

So the people who did not take part in the Viking raids were also the ones who would have been the least likely to pick up and leave everything behind to come to America. Which leaves the question unanswered..who were the Norwegians who came to America?? My contention that most of them were the poorer farmers and fishermen who were having a hard time with life in Norway....the same reason the Viking raids started in the first place. So I think it is fair to say that many of the returning Viking raiders who returned to their villages with a small part of the fortune from the raids but overall did not ascend the social ladder were the ancestors of the massive Norwegian influx in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Most of my family came to America in the 1890s...my great grandparents on both sides were born in Norway and they left, and yes they settled in Minnesota. Me, being a Norwegian American and my brothers here in America and England are the REAL VIKINGS. Those still in Norway are the cowards who did not have the sense of adventure and drive to leave either for Britain in the Viking Age or to America in the 1800s. There are 3 million Americans who count Norwegian as their primary ancestry...there are 4 million Norwegians in Norway. Along with Canada and Britain it is fair to say that most of the Norwegian population lives abroad and we are the true kin of the Viking... for a modern Norwegian to claim Viking ancestry is an insult to the Viking men who created Britain and changed the world forever. England and the United States carry the mantle of truly Viking nations whose influence and culture dominates the world...just as my ancestors dominated their world...Long live the Vikings!!

-Arthur@arthurshall.com