History Channel Gets Vikings Precisely Wrong

The American Spectator ^ | March 12, 2013 | Lars Walker

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Those who enjoy Viking culture and history would be hard pressed to find a better narrative than in the book, The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. It is truly one of the great novels of the Century, and a very good read.

Hugely popular in Sweden, it has been translated into 23 languages, and though there have been efforts to make it into a movie, they have never quite worked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Ships

[bagman]

Of course the Vikings knew about the British Isles in the Eighth Century. When they weren’t plundering and pillaging, they were trading. As traders, they would have known about the British Isles.

[frankenMonkey]

"On Iceland the Y chromosome is predominantly from Norway and the X chromosome is from Whales."

You, sir or madam, and your post, will soon become an Internet legend.

[allmendream]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288180/

A comparison with published mtDNA lineages from European populations indicates that, whereas most founding females probably originated from Scandinavia and the British Isles.

The ancestry of the settlers is more controversial. Historical evidence suggests that not all of the settlers in Iceland originated from Scandinavia (Jones 1984). At the very least, it is believed that the settlers included a number of women and slaves from Norse settlements in the British Isles. There are numerous references in Icelandic medieval writings to the keeping of slaves, many of whom were obtained through raids on settlements in the British Isles (Jones 1984). Thus, the Icelandic founding gene pool may have received a substantial maternal contribution from the British Isles.

[allmendream]

Wales, LOL.

Damn autocorrect! ;)

[ozzymandus]

I saw a few of the commercials for this show and had no desire to watch it. Looks like a ripoff of that crappy biker show with Peggy Bundy in it.

[Max in Utah]

Everyone will speak carefully reconstructed Vikingish.

Maybe they'll get Icelanders to act in it, and they can just speak their regular Norshish language.

[frankenMonkey]

Autocorrect.... yeah, that’s the ticket!
;-)

[wally_bert]

I saw the trailer for that on youtube months ago. Thought it was hilarious and prime MST3K material.

[ansel12]

Huh?

[muawiyah]

later later later ~ they were miserably ignorant people living in a primitive undeveloped part of the world in the 7th century ~ and most of the 8th wasn't that much better ~ it's the last of the 8th where they show up with seaworthy boats. That's also when they showed up on the Northern river systems with heavy duty craft.

[muawiyah]

Not the Icelanders, for authentic dialects you need to go to the Faroes Islands ~

[muawiyah]

last scientific estimate based on DNA analysis had it down to 1 Norse to 7 Irish slaves ~ hence the red heads!

Remember, Snorri, first European baby history knows to have been born in America had a mother who was a daughter of the Irish high king ~ CARHAL

[cuban leaf]

I think all the best Viking documentaries were made by Monty Python.

[philled]

Sadly, the term “squander” has replaced “plunder” in association with the Vikings.

[allmendream]

Link? Never seen any estimate of norse ancestry that low.

[rfreedom4u]

The Travel channel is a joke too. I’m trying to plan a trip to Europe and at least 90% of their shows are about food.

Of course being the brilliant planner that I am I use multiple other sources.

[muawiyah]

Vikings were manly men. They did what they pleased

[dfwgator]

I got them wrong too, I thought for sure they’d beat the Steelers in SB IX.

[Vigilanteman]

Interesting stuff. I think the Saxons actually started arriving about a century earlier but, as you say, English history is rather sketchy before 700 a.d. or so.

To the English mix, one needs to add the arrival of North Africans (many of whom were probably the common ancestors of Berbers) which started roughly 200 BC, by encouragement of the Roman ruling class. Therefore, for the millions of people who claim English blood, a good share of them (particularly if they trace back to the Colechester area) have North Africans in the mix.

Colechester's origins actually date back to Ancient Carthage. A century or so after the Romans destroyed Ancient Carthage in the Third Punic War (146 BC), Julius Caesar allowed the city to be rebuilt. By 100 a.d., it had grown to a city of a half million, second only to Rome in size in the western part of the empire.

The decline begin shortly thereafter as the surrounding area begin to turn into desert. The Angles, Picts, Celts and Brits, meanwhile were a rather unruly lot and difficult to rule so the Romans actively encouraged their North African subjects to emigrate, where they founded Colechester.

The old nursery rhyme Old King Cole refers to the king of Colechester who was of North African stock. His blackness, of course, is subject to debate since even a bronze skinned Berber would look black to the fair skinned locals.

But, I digress. As you know, the various groups fought for control of the British Isles until the Normans (yet another group seeded by vikings) came out victorious in the pivotal October 14, 1066 Battle of Hastings. But that still didn't settle the matter completely as the Irish, Scots, Welsh and others will tell you.

BTW, I really enjoy your posts and added knowledge of history, even if I don't always agree. You appear to be very well read on the subject. Is it a professional specialty or just a hobby (like me)?