Were vikings good fighters?

boatniggers basically

>Battle of Svolder included in the list
Literally viking on viking violence

They were fucking brutal as fuck.

>vikings
>existing in the first place

They were poets and artists before anything else

Yes they were.

Especially compared to other contemporary Europeans who didn't really have any professional soldiers.

There is a reason why Britain, Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire employed them as elite mercenary units.
Nice cherrypicking

...

Can you please elaborate on that? Are you saying they weren't disciplined and rather focused more on personal glory?

I don't get this. Didn't the great heathen army conquer most or half of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms?

Also, wouldn't shieldwall tactics imply some level of discipline and "teamwork"?

>There is a reason why Britain, Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire employed them as elite mercenary units.

Either you're very misinformed or retarded, mercenaries were hired everywhere because they wouldn't be involved in state politics, not because they're super duper ultra ninja warriors Varangian guard came into existence for the very same reason.

Generally yes, they needed higher quality soldiers to make the most of the long supply lines by sea on their raids and invasions.

During their raids they were often up against hastily raised militias and left before the regular army arrived, which is possibly how they gained their reputation. They also attacked disorganized tribes and small clans in regions with poor agriculture who could not support much professional heavy infantry.

However in a pitched battle against an Anglo Saxon kingdom or the Franks there was no significant difference, you could speculate the vikings had more experience, but if this is true it didn't give them a clear advantage. Their advantage was obviously naval power.

>wipe unarmed villages off the map
>"hey these guys are pretty brutal, I'm gonna employ them"

their reputation was fierce, and they could scrap, but they're still garbage tier compared to most military's of their period

I would say yes, especially when you consider that the Rus destroyed all the Turkic states from Kiev to the Caspian Sea.

Even the Khazar Khanate was genocided off the map by them.

However, most of the Rus soldiers were Slavs;

"Leaving Igor in Kiev, Oleg attacked the Greeks. He took with him a multitude of Varangians, Slavs, Chuds, Krivichians, Merians, Polianians, Severians, Derevlians, Radimichians, Croats, Dulebians, and Tivercians, who are Torks. All these tribes are known as Great Scythia by the Greeks. With this entire force, Oleg sallied forth by horse and by ship..." - Primary Chronicle

...so I guess it depends on what you determine as viking.

>garbage tier compared to most military's of their period
Byzantine sources does certainly not describe them as "garbage", rather they're described as competent soldiers by pretty much everyone who employed them.

That's the general consensus among all the barbarian cultures.

competent means they're ok, average, satisfactory, certainly not the elite seal teams of the olden days. they traded on their reputation more than on their martial prowess

Jordanes, towards the middle of the sixth century, said of Scandinavia that this island (the Latin cartographers and historians took it for an island) was like the workshop or seedpod of nations; Scandinavia's sudden eruptions at the most heterogeneous points of the globe would seem to confirm this viewpoint. In the ninth century, the Vikings invaded London, demanded from Paris a tribute of seven thousand pounds of silver, and pillaged the ports of Lisbon, Bordeaux, and Seville. Hasting, by a wily strategem, took control of Luna, in Etruria, put its defenders to the knife, and burned down the city, in the belief that he had seized Rome. Thorgils, chief of the White Foreigners (Finn Gaill), ruled the north of Ireland; after the libraries were destroyed, the clerics fled; one of the exiles was John Scotus Erigena. Rurik, a Swede, founded the kingdom of Russia, whose capital city, before it was called Novgorod, was called Holmgard. Toward the year 1000, the Scandinavians, under Leif Eriksson, reached the coast of America. No one bothered them, but one morning (as Erik the Red's Saga tells it) many men disembarked from canoes made of leather and stared at them in a kind of stupor. "They were dark and very ill-looking, and the hair on their heads was ugly; they had large eyes and broad cheeks." The Scandinavians gave them the name of skraelingar, inferior people. Neither the Scandinavians nor the Eskimos knew that the moment was historic; America and Europe looked upon each other in all innocence. A century later, disease and the inferior people had done away with the colonists. The annals of Iceland say: "In 1121, Erik, Bishop of Greenland, departed in search of Vinland." We know nothing of his fate; both the bishop and Vinland (America) were lost.

If you hire mercs for 10 years, and they don't take bribes, and do their jobs.
Then for those 10 years, those mercs are 10/10.
That doesn't mean they are 10/10 FIERCE WARRIORS, in combat.

Its basically the same that The Swiss Guard is awarded for: Stay on job, do the job, be loyal.

Snorri Sturluson, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, wrote a series of biographies of the kings of the North; the geographic nomenclature of this work, which covers four centuries of history, is another testimony to the breadth of the Scandinavian sphere; its pages speak of Jorvik (York); of Biarmaland, which is Archangel or the Urals; of Norvesuud (Gibraltar); of Serkland (Land of the Saracens), which borders the Islamic kingdoms; of Blaaland (Blue Land, Land of Blacks), which is Africa; of Saxland or Saxony, which is Germany; of Helluland (Land of Smooth Stones), which is Labrador; of Markland (Land of Forests), which is Newfoundland; and of Miklagard (Large Population), which is Constantinople, where, until the fall of the East, the Byzantine Emperor's guardsmen were Swedes and Anglo-Saxons. Despite the vastness of this list, the work is not the epic of a Scandinavian empire. Hernan Cortes and Francisco Pizarro conquered lands for their king: the Vikings' prolonged expeditions were individual. "They lacked political ambitions," as Douglas Jerrold explains. After a century, the Normans (men of the North) who, under Rolf, settled in the province of Normandy and gave it their name, had forgotten their language, and were speaking French ....