It's interesting, now that you mention it, about the depiction of violence and who that violence was done to. The English were responsible for their fair share of violence against First Nations peoples in Australia, the Americas and elsewhere, yet they don't admit to it as violence, they see it as the fair price of settlement. I guess it depends on who is telling the story.
If I may ask a second question, was the violence exceptional for that of any decentralized, tribal (if we may use that word) or clan-based culture in Europe? For example, I’m thinking of Ireland. Or, in raids against civilian centers performed by any military force, were the Vikings exceptionally violent? Granted, their violence was weighted more towards noncombatants, but maybe that is somewhat typical for an “irregular” force.
What were the raids designed to achieve? Taking plunder and captives. There is a good argument for polygyny in Scandinavia in this period, making access to women a matter of wealth and status. Raiding could provide both.
Hence the careful choice of targets - poorly defended civilian populations which obliging brought as many people together as possible at major liturgical feasts.
I’d also treat the rhetoric of apocalyptic destruction with a pinch of salt. I’m not arguing that vikings were hugge-loving tourists - but they kept on attacking the same places, meaning that they revived afterwards. They clearly knew how to shear the sheep rather than just butcher them. I struggle to think of any church in England which didn’t survive the ninth century as a going concern - though later generations found it convenient to claim greater destruction to justify refoundation.
That’s an interesting perspective, the raiding as an industry or a harvesting. If the cost or damage of the plundered sites could be absorbed by the local rulers, then maybe it was cheaper to just deal with it from time to time than to field the costly (maybe impossible) military protection that would be needed to protect them.
Robert Ferguson, in The Vikings, discusses the notion that early raids like Lindisfarne may have been more like religious war and retaliation for the military expansion of Charlemagne’s empire. Do you have an opinion about that? Was there a point at which plunder became a greater motivation, or perhaps there was never a clear line?
There is absolutely no reason to consider such raids religious wars. The raids in the West were most likely motivated by a decrease in the silver produced in the East and used for economic and social capital and a political fragmentation of Scandinavia resulting in the need to export violence to increase that capital. Plunder has always been a very strong motivation.
It's interesting, now that you mention it, about the depiction of violence and who that violence was done to. The English were responsible for their fair share of violence against First Nations peoples in Australia, the Americas and elsewhere, yet they don't admit to it as violence, they see it as the fair price of settlement. I guess it depends on who is telling the story.
If I may ask a second question, was the violence exceptional for that of any decentralized, tribal (if we may use that word) or clan-based culture in Europe? For example, I’m thinking of Ireland. Or, in raids against civilian centers performed by any military force, were the Vikings exceptionally violent? Granted, their violence was weighted more towards noncombatants, but maybe that is somewhat typical for an “irregular” force.
What were the raids designed to achieve? Taking plunder and captives. There is a good argument for polygyny in Scandinavia in this period, making access to women a matter of wealth and status. Raiding could provide both.
Hence the careful choice of targets - poorly defended civilian populations which obliging brought as many people together as possible at major liturgical feasts.
I’d also treat the rhetoric of apocalyptic destruction with a pinch of salt. I’m not arguing that vikings were hugge-loving tourists - but they kept on attacking the same places, meaning that they revived afterwards. They clearly knew how to shear the sheep rather than just butcher them. I struggle to think of any church in England which didn’t survive the ninth century as a going concern - though later generations found it convenient to claim greater destruction to justify refoundation.
That’s an interesting perspective, the raiding as an industry or a harvesting. If the cost or damage of the plundered sites could be absorbed by the local rulers, then maybe it was cheaper to just deal with it from time to time than to field the costly (maybe impossible) military protection that would be needed to protect them.
Robert Ferguson, in The Vikings, discusses the notion that early raids like Lindisfarne may have been more like religious war and retaliation for the military expansion of Charlemagne’s empire. Do you have an opinion about that? Was there a point at which plunder became a greater motivation, or perhaps there was never a clear line?
There is absolutely no reason to consider such raids religious wars. The raids in the West were most likely motivated by a decrease in the silver produced in the East and used for economic and social capital and a political fragmentation of Scandinavia resulting in the need to export violence to increase that capital. Plunder has always been a very strong motivation.