Page 64 - September 2022 Magazine - Bumper Edition

The Vikings
or were they?
TThe men (and women) from the North were Norsemen. Were they Vikings? Yes, and also no.
We will endeavour to be a little less vague, with a brief history of the Vikings in Britain.
By the ‘North’ we are referring to what we now call Scandinavia and in particular the people of the area stretching from Northern Norway to Southern Denmark.
That’s quite a distance, so the landscape and climate-related differences in lifestyle would have been significant. What bound the people over this vast area was their ancestry. They were descendants of the movement of Northern Germanic tribes.
So, when we refer to ‘Norse’ or ‘Viking’ we are actually referring to the Germanic tribes who began migrating North from about 250 AD.
This brings us to Norsemen, Danes, and Vikings. The
other commonality they shared was a lack of fear of the sea! They were great shipbuilders, travellers, and adventurers.
Much more importantly, was the development of their united belief system. All Norsemen shared a common religion. Based on the tree of life, (Yggdrasil). The Gods, led by Odin, and the total belief in the afterlife if they died honourably.
Nordic legends have many complex tales. The simplest being, as a warrior nation, if you died with a weapon in your hand you were destined for the great hall of Odin and would join the Gods in Valhalla.
The harsh conditions of the mountainous and cold Scandinavian coasts would have inspired the Norsemen to seek out the land they had heard of from traders, which was a much flatter fertile land that could be farmed and with a much more temperate climate - the British Isles.
64 | The Flickering Cauldron® Magazine - The Vikings