Why were vikings so good a fighting? Is it because of harsh scandinavian climate and their war like religion...

Why were vikings so good a fighting? Is it because of harsh scandinavian climate and their war like religion? They sacked Rome, Paris, Constantinopole and were an unstoppable force ravaging Europe.

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They weren't really better fighters than regular militiaries, they were just incredibly mobile. They could turn up on any shore, any time; their seaworthy vessels were just as good for sailing up the river, and since most settlements aren't very far from water, that meant everywhere that had something worth taking was under constant threat of Vikings.

You can't stop them from showing up, as naval combat wasn't really practiced in the dark ages besides what remained of Roman naval tradition (Muslims in Spain and The Byzantines). You can't really mobilize a force to intercept Vikings either, as standing armies were prohibitively expensive, and most troops were just peasant levies. Vikings could show up on shore and sack a town/village in a day or so; no way in he'll could people effectively respond to that. The solution? Castles.

Castles as we know them first came into being as defense against Vikings. The Norse weren't really known for their siege tactics, and they would much rather get 20 gold pieces and lose nobody than lose half their men and get 100. Attacking castles weren't worth it, so people built tons of them in places Vikings were likely to show up. Eventually after kingdoms started to fortify and Scandinavia was Christianized, the raids slowed to a halt.

The legend that Vikings were peerless warriors mostly came from the fact that they had little to no fear of death in combat (Valhalla awaits), meaning they were incredibly ballsy in battle. Once their inferior arms and armor (and numbers) succumbed to the development of standing professional armies, they ceased to be a raiding threat.

Are there any actual records describing their behaviour in battle?

General attitude toward vikings seems to be that they were pretty big guys and were a hardy bunch of fuckers but generally very useless in terms of any conflict that wasn't raiding.
They relied on being able to show up and surprise a lesser equipped enemy, fuck their shit up and then leave near immediately.

They weren't incredibly skilled soldiers, nor could they into tactics.

Irishboos always post a battle where thousands of norse soldiers fell against a few hundred irish shitters on a hill.
Vikings really aren't that great, lad. There's a reason they were stomped out of existence on Veeky Forums very quickly, because anyone who knows anything about anything knows that they're really just not that good if they aren't showing up to memeraid farmers or shitty guards whilst relying on better equipment, numbers and the element of surprise, lad.

>lesser equipped enemy

why people are so hell - bent on avoiding the term ''unarmed''? There were no fucking warriors in monasteries.

because if I say unarmed somebody will show up with "LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE TIME THERE WERE WARRIORS PRESENT" or something.

But yes, for the most part the targets were literally just peasants or monks.

Don't forget Egypt, China, and the Middle East.
I also heard they took over the united states and then left because there was no gold.

thetoptens.com/ancient-warriors/

here's the proof idiot

>and practically controlled the north of the entire known world (excluding Alaskan area)

>their war like religion
Get out

It depends what you mean by viking.

Raiders from Scandinavia succeeded a lot of the time because they usually attacked a weaker enemy but when matched with an equal or greater army they would usually either not fight (escape or negotiate) or lose. A good case of this is Björn Ironside's raids around the Mediterranean. He successfully raided around Spain, France and Italy and then when he tried to return home he had to battle with the Saracen navy from Al-Andalus and he lost 40 ships.

If you're talking about Scandinavian invaders/settlers then they were successful because most of the time because they attacked during the late spring and throughout Autumn and then would over-winter in the places they had conquered. It would be harder for the enemy to attack during winter and they would build up their defences.

It was more tactical than mere viking nature; exposing weaknesses in the enemy. Remember at the start of the viking age Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms were usually warring against each other just like the Scandinavian chiefdoms were in Norway, Sweden and Denmark until they united under one Kingdom each.

They never sacked Rome. Björn Ironside and Hastein thought they pillaged the town of Luni which they thought was Rome at the time. Paris was sacked twice, once by Ragnar Lothbrok in 845 and once by Rollo 885–886. And they never sacked Constantinople but the Rus' (descended from Germanic Scandinavian and Slavic tribes) raided the outskirts of Constantinople and people from Scandinavia were employed by the Byzantine empire as an elite unit known as the varangian guard who usually had the duty of defending the emperor

Rus had fuck all to do with vikings there is no archeological evidence for any norse activity in Russia.

lel

cos archaeological evidence is everything right

>Sacked Rome
No, that was a different group of barbarians
>Sacked Constantinople
Weird way to spell "Got repeatedly and severely anally penetrated by the ERE"
>Sacked Paris
They laid siege to Paris, and were payed to go away because it was cheaper than ruthlessly slaughtering them again. Including the siege of Paris, the Vikings fought pitched battles against the Franks 9 times. They lost 8

Snow niggers are inherently inferior to all other races and feel the need to overcompensate.

Yes? What else supposedly proves Rus were vikings?

Nestor the Chronicler says in the Primary Chronicle that the Chuds, Eastern Slavs, Merias, Veses, and Krivichs "...drove the Varangians back beyond the sea, refused to pay them tribute, and set out to govern themselves". (Varangian being the the Slavic and Greek name for the vikings). Afterwards the tribes started fighting each other and decided to invite the Varangians, led by Prince Rurik, to reestablish order.

There may not be archaeological evidence that has been discovered yet but sagas and chronicles do tell a true story most of the time, even if it is exaggerated. This is true to a lot of historical documents.

What about the sagas that say Sweden and Norway was founded by Finns?

Although many think vikings fought with axes or spears, they were actually predominantly stealth archers who would stealthily attack their enemies with arrows

I'd like to remind you that Normanist theory was started by a fucking German and he was so delusional that he unironically said ''glorious Scandinavians'' when refering to their supposed victories.

Another curious part is the fact that one of Rus achievements aka Rus - Byzantine war where Rus won WAS NOT MENTION BY BYZANTINES THEMSELVES

aka the bullshit is made up as they had no problems with mentioning other people who rekt them

Byzantine descriptions of the varangian guard. They were mostly deployed because they had no stake in dynastic warfare that afflicts the perfidious hellene, they grew bigger than most people, and they had so little the could be bought for cheap.

Which sagas are they? To my knowledge, the petty kingdoms in Norway were first united by Harald 'fairhair' Halfdansson. I don't know much about how Sweden was formed but from what I've read before it was created once the Geats and the Swedes united.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Normanist theory is the theory that the Normans created the Rus'. I never said this and after a few decades the Normans became more like their ancestors. Also there is no real evidence at all to suggest that the Normans came to the Rus'. And I suppose you could say that the Scandinavians were glorious in their victories otherwise why the fuck would we bother talking about them if they were utter failures.

Which Rus'-Byzantine war would this be? The war in 860, 907, 941, or the Paphlagonian expedition of the Rus' in the 830's. None really wars. They were more conflicts than all-out war.

There are also a lot of documents either don't mention something or have simply been destroyed or lost through history

...

>They laid siege to Paris, and were payed to go away because it was cheaper than ruthlessly slaughtering them again.
How come THIS isn't used for the "I'm going to pay you $50 to fuck off" image?

They were average warriors for their era. Their tactics and arms were on par with other Dark Age military forces save for the OP as shit Byzantines and Franks. The only thing that made them worth a damn were their ships.Their longships were basically intra-continental ballistic missiles filled with pirates that could strike nearly anywhere near a coast or river.

Varangian Guard wasn't viking.

The war from 907 and Normanist theory does not say it was Normans you dumb fucking pleb it claims it was Varangians the name just stuck for some reason.

Butthurt monk detected.

>tell me then, why does this image of the Vikings being a 'strong warrior people' even exist?

Because they were not soldiers or a military society (see Rome or Sparta) but an independent 'class' of people who were largely successful in an ancient European practice, the cattle raid, extended and propelled, of course, by ships.

The vikings took advantage of their systems of commons to prepare a segment of the regular population an armed them for the purpose of securing booty to share with their families(sending off people regularly to raid requires a high level of reciprocal trust both for the raiders to share and for their neighbors to watch over their property while they are gone).

In the 'viking age' hints of their success (despite his memes) is evident in the restructuring of their inheritance to encourage further raiding, by that, I mean that inheritance laws changed so that younger sons were not eligible for full inheritance, which puts pressures on people to go into certain kinds of lifestyles.

You know what Varyags were, right?

Depends on what you mean by 'viking' and what time period you mean.

They started off as Varangians, Norse, etc, but were later mostly Anglo.

That's because Norman also means 'Northmen' as in 'Norse', the connotation of 'Norman France' that it brings up is confusing though

Varangians were literally Finns

I feel the point has been mostly settled that their primary tactic that made them so successful was naval surprise attacks. They could show up to a coastal monastery, sack the town, and leave. Basically slightly more organized pirates, and didn't fight on major battlefields with lines of troops like in other wars in Europe. They're not particularly known for their tactics or discipline like Napoleon or the Spartans, more for brute force. Though that rhetoric I feel should be challenged, since most people saying that historically come from the losers, or victims of viking raids, so they demonized them as mindless barbarians, but you have to give them some credit for being organized enough to establish such a large domain and be so successful for so many years. That takes some ingenuity and I don't think they should be written off as mindless savages. Scandinavia has a long cultural history of being close to the sea, much of their food comes from the ocean, they live in fjords and must travel between towns via boats, they're a maritime people.

But one thing nobody has mentioned is the concept of a berserker. Legend has it that fierce viking warriors would go into a fit of rage and ruthlessly attack, like an animal. Some say they ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms to bring on this trance-like state. I don't know if you'd call that a tactic, but if I was fighting someone tripping out on mushrooms who believed in a glorious death by combat I would probably shit myself.

>Why were Viking so good at fighting?

They're not.

>slightly more organized pirates
>implying

Explain this then.

Normans are French, not Vikings.

They took up French culture, language, and admixed with the local French population.

By this logic then, they're Anglo Saxons too.

No, but it means modern Englishmen are English.

And?

shit meme. there are runestones all over sweden about people there traveling to byzantium to work as merchenaries.
Finns have allways had their ass handed to them and they have never been relevant in history.
Finnish nationalists are so desperate to make finland seem relevant and so butthurt over sweden ruling them for 600 years that they have to take credit for other peoples acomplishments.

>some strange men show up on your coast one day
>no one notices much happened
>a traveler reports months later that they have a full village with a wall built outside
>some scouts are sent to see what kind of men they are
>the scouts return, telling tales of impressively hairy men wearing chainmail
>send out another delegation to see what people these are and invite them back to meet with the lord
>do so
>realize these are strong fighting men with no major national allegiances
>the priests find it offensive that men can live in your lands who do not worship God
>send some priests to convert the strangers
>etc.

Mix various raids and warfare in, followed by retreats to the sea, and you have viking colonization. Remember that the local lord often had little more than a dozen men, untrained but with weapons and armor, who maintained order. Why would he risk those men against armed strangers? It is better to bring them into the fold and see what use they are.
Alternatively, there are enough vikings to be causing trouble, and the local lord is able to raise enough men to fight them. Defeat means more of the same, victory means they leave and go settle somewhere else where manpower cannot be raised against them.

Fact of the matter is that norsemen landed themselves plenty of settlements around europe. and they would most definetly have to fight to either earn or keep these settlements, for an extended period of time.

no kingdom, no matter how rich is gonna say "oh fuck it i'll just give these annoying cunts some land, its easier than just slaughtering them like the dogs they are."

oh i forgot my point.

my point is that you can't write off every viking raid to just "hit and run." They obviously had to fight established Armies at some point, since kings are not going to give away land or rather let the vikings take land, before exhausting every other options. which would be something like

>fight them off, push them off our land.
>pay them off
>build a wall

and sure by the time castles and forts were constructed, the vikings had a harder time to take land and raid villages in general. But they weren't exactly alone in having troubles with sieges. castles back then were notoriously hard to capture.

get out of here Dragonborn

Regardless of whether they were "actually" Norse/Viking, Varangian, etc., the Guard was fucking badass, tho.

Except you know, Runestones and what not

Vikings weren't good at actual organized warfare; it's that most male children and fighting-age men just more-or-less did what the Greeks did and spent most of their free time (especially during the winter) either exercising or training.

That's a bad strawman, OP. Vikings were terrible fighters against any actual soldiers. Vikings were literally pirates; northern farmers that would go off on random village pillages. That's all they ever were, and they only were a thing for not even three hundred years. Once they started getting retaliation from actual soldiers, the northerners just stopped because they realized they sucked ass and they went back to living their lives and cut the pillaging shit.

My impression of the vikings in general is that they were skilled sailors/shipwrights and adept at surprise attacks, not some godtier unstoppable warriors.

If they were they would have done a whole lot more than raid a few coastal settlements, and wouldn't have the list of defeats in organized fighting that they have.

They just ended up exploiting the general lack of fortifications and organized navies in europe at the time, and their success/raid rate went down as this changed.

>he dosen't know what a strawman is

>The legend that Vikings were peerless warriors mostly came from the fact that they had little to no fear of death in combat (Valhalla awaits), meaning they were incredibly ballsy in battle.
How is that different from the christians (Heaven awaits)

>runestones

lmao fucking nigger tier

ooga booga muh stone tells da great story

Or Muslims for that matter.

literally

...

It's in their superior aryan germanic genes

they sacked a couple of cities... So what? Usually helpless civilians and monasteries. In the US they got chased out by simple indians. Usually they took some loot and went on. They never really expanded much of their power except on barren frozen lands where almost none lived. They had an important influence, were strong navigators and made beautiful art. But let's not exaggerate: these are not the hardcore fighters they are sometimes claimed to be. Most of them were simple farmers. And most of their attacks were opportunistic and often cowardly.

How the fuck can people think like this? Almost All the the peoples of Europe were raiding like crazy, for example the magyar raiding as far as spain, yet it is called the viking age. Not hardcore you say? Being a farmer in scandinavia is tough enough (have any of you actually Seen how norway, iceland and Northern Sweden look like? add to that the warrior culture, high protein diet, experience (even in remote iceland, the settlers were constantly feuding) and you have excellent warriors. Many of you dont seem to understand the mentality of the norse, they were not some homogenic nation fighting for a common ideal/god/King, infighting was common in bigger hordes of vikings. See other atempts in history to unite celtic vor germanic tribes. No real armies were possible. Also many norse warriors were not vikings.

Normanist theory (aka Norman theory). A historical theory about the origin of states in Eastern Europe, particularly of Kyivan Rus’, and of the name ‘Rus'’. Drawing on the last redaction of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle (1118) and various linguistic data, the theory's adherents maintain that the creators of the Kyivan state and its culture were Normans (ie, Norsemen or Varangians) who arrived in Eastern Europe from Scandinavia in the 9th century, and that ‘Rus'’ is a word of Norman origin.
Source - encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages\N\O\Normanisttheory.htm

Calm down m8 I'm trying to understand half of what you're saying. From what I can tell of the Normanist theory, it bases itself from the Primary Chronicle and claims that the Scandinavian peoples came over and settled in what came came to be known as the Rus'. There is other evidence to suggest that this maybe true other than the Primary Chronicle. Skeletons found in Sweden have been found to to have to the same DNA as people from around the Volga river. This suggests that there was a connection between the two. The Annales Bertiniani tells us that the people who travelled from the Rus' to Constantinople identified themselves as Swedes.

:^)

>Viking redpill

>excellent warriors

yeah that's why they almost always lost pitched battles right?

>inb4 muh 1v1

yeah that's what warfare was all about right?

>snow niggers

...

Except they didn't

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_the_Vikings

except they did

lmao

As a whole, sure the Vikings were inferior to the other armies, but being an excellent warrior is about the parts, not the sum of the parts.The vikings lacked structure and sophisticated tactics and were probably too cocky, but their culture venerated great warriors more so than any European culture, which leads me to believe that on a case-by-case basis, the Vikings were superior warriors on average.

SNOWNIGS ABSOLUTELY BLOWN THE FUCK OUT

>Frankish victory
>still pays them silver

fucking saved

>more so than any European culture

yeah horse shit Saxons and Celts (both of which rekt vikings) also were pretty big on sucking warriors cocks just face it vikings were a meme

>saxons and celts
>rekt vikings

Stay mad, Per-Sven.

>Rurik was a Finnic Kven, i.e. he was "Finnish", in similar way an average Savonian, Tavastian or a member of some other Finnish tribe is Finnish. Rurik was the founder of the early stage of what gradually became Russia, and his descendants ruled what today is known as "Russia" well beyond the Middle Ages.

>The results of the Rurikid DNA study referred to below are not surprising, considering that other DNA studies and other evidence point to Finnic people having inhabited the modern area of Sweden for thousands of years, including the modern-day area of Southern Sweden:

>• "The hunter-gatherers show the greatest similarity to the modern-day Finns", says Pontus Skoglund, an evolutionary geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden, about ancient skeletal remains excavated in Gotland: gotland.3000.BC.kvenland.org

>According to the Family Tree DNA report published, the studies concluded "that the N1c1 Rurikid princes belong to the so-called “Varangian Branch” in this haplogroup. The study confirms Rurik to be genetically related to the later Baltic Finnic peoples.

>This DNA study is consistent with Roslagen in the northeastern corner of Uppland, a suggested birthplace of Rurik, having represented the southern border region of the land inhabited by Finno-Ugric people at the time of Rurik's birth.

>The DNA study also supports the view that Rurik descended from the Finnish-Kven royal ancestry introduced in many medieval accounts, similarly to many other members of the Scandinavian-Fennoscandian royal Yngling Dynasty, a.k.a. the Fairhair Dynasty.

Tell me how winning most battles is not wrecking them.

So why the fuck are Rus even called Norse if they were Finns?

Your lies won't sway me, Svecoman cuck.

Being the good Christians that they were, they were probably moved by pity after having so thoroughly trounced the invaders that they donated alms so those who hadn't been slaughtered would have something to show their wives and children when they returned home to their huts.

Rurik was from Sweden and is therefore falsely assumed to be Scandi despite the fact that at the time Finnics inhabited most of Sweden.

They did? They the Great Heathen Army conquered all the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms except Wessex and there would later be several viking kings of all of England

angelfire.com/mb2/battle_hastings_1066/saxonbattles.html

So we can now say the fierce Varangian Guard was finnish as well?

It's called Christian charity.

ctrl+f vikings won 37 results
ctrl+f anglo-saxons won 38 results

Clearly the vikings who horrible warriors and no match at all for the Anglo-Saxons

>except Wessex

And then the """"""great""""" heathen army got spanked by Wessex and Guthrum was baptized with Alfred as his godfather.

>Charles encircled Rollo and his army and set up a camp at Montmartre. However, Charles had no intention of fighting. He allowed the Vikings to sail up the Seine to ravage Burgundy, which was in revolt
Oh he just wanted them to go ravage his countrymen

They were driven away from England, they were driven away from Ireland, stone age native americans drove them away as well and they got stomped by moor niggers when they raided Spain.

They were shit.

>They were driven away from England, they were driven away from Ireland
[citation needed]

Yeah, but Charles was the emperor, he had nothing to do with the actually siege, and the Parisians disapproved of him paying the Vikings. In fact the Parisians didn't grant them passage on the Seine, the Vikings were forced to drag their ships over land to the Marne.

This is one of the reasons the Carolingians (like Charles) became unpopular in France, while the count of Paris Odo, who had led the siege, and his family (the Robertians and future Capetians) became very popular.

there were never any finnic tribes in sweden.
The Swedes, geats, gutes, helsingar and jamtar are all germanic.

the scandinavian part of the map is stupid

Battle of Tara, Battle of Sulcoit, Battle of Clontarf, etc.

House of Rurik, descended from a norseman of the same name, founded Novgorod which eventually grew to become Russia. This is basic fucking history you ignorant clod.

I've never heard of them be called Norse but if they have been called Norse it will be because the Rus' were descended from the Scandinavian people who spoke Norse. That's all that Norse means; people who speak Norse. So around this time all the Nordic countries were Norse people

Because heaven isn't something you get into specifically by dying in combat

Yet there were still Norse kings of Dublin until Normans conquered the city in 1171

Looks like the assblasted christards have arrived. Here you go boys, a nice little map for you to consider.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_involving_the_Vikings
So, I actually read some of this and of the first three only the very first shows a clear victory, the fourth also has a victory but only through subterfuge.

Yeah, not bothering to read the rest of this in depth right now. Your bias is obvious here.

Sure Per-Sven Rurik's daddy just happens to be a Finn

calm your tits, Pekka

allempires.com/article/index.php?q=Viking_Age_Finland