Historical Discussion

No problem.

I realize, I didn't talk much about the Northern or Western Isle. Just ask, or send me a PM, and I can't explain what I know about those too.

I am curious if anyone knows where to find a translated copy of the Norwegian "Book of the Hird" or Hirðskrá. Someone has already been kind enough to provide me with a translation of parts 1-37, but I was wondering if anyone knows of a translation to the rest.

Perhaps this is something one of the Fyrning could shed some light upon.
I continually find folk on various historical wargaming forums to wager that all fine Anglo-Dane folk (Swein & Canute onwards) were invariably split on their face furniture; that those of a predominant Saxon heritage preferred a large moustache and long hair, as opposed to the Danish choice of full beards. What sources are there for our knowledge on facial hair? This is of critical importance and may result in excessive tea-drinking (and stress!) if an answer is not appropriated.
(And this can be extended both before and beyond the Danish rule of England, if seen fit!)

Hmmm, Gale R. Owen-Crocker's Dress in Anglo-Saxon England has little to say on the subject beyond noting that different hair styles existed in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Danish art, and that the latter would probably have seemed foreign to a Saxon. I just don't think there's any evidence one way or the other, and I'm rather suspicious of any claims that fashion was so neatly confined within blurry ethnic lines (I think Eadric had some quote by an Anglo-Saxon monk or whatever who complained about hipsters copying Norse styles). I think that folk might be using circular reasoning: any depiction of styles associated with the Norsemen must represent an Anglo-Dane, and that Anglo-Dane with Norse styles reinforces the idea that they were specific to Anglo-Danes (and the same for Anglo-Saxon styles).

To paraphrase what Owen-Crocker says (on pages 261-2): Anglo-Saxon men were generally depicted cut short and cleanshaven. Harold and some of the Englishmen have long hair and long, thin moustaches in the Bayeux ‘Tapestry’. Some (mostly older) men had beards and these were often forked. Some had beards without moustache.

In contrast, Viking hair might generally have been longer, ‘dressed’. And: “A man depicted on a stone fragment from Old Malton, near York, has what appears to be a plait of hair over his head as well as a forked beard.” The Vikings may have adopted male hair plaiting from the Irish. Certainly the Scots had it too. Some Scandinavians, both male and female, apparently even had plaited pony tails, as shown on the Gosforth Cross. It’s unclear whether there was a specific Anglo-Danish style, inbetween Anglo-Saxon and Viking/Scandinavian.

But coming back to Anglo-Saxons, note the contemporary depictions of the style of kings Æþelstán (reigning 924-927) and Éadgár (reigning 959-975). Beards and hair that might have been long and tied at the back.


As for Anglo-Saxons copying Scandinavian style, there are multiple instances of Anglo-Saxons complaining about this. A good example is the letter of Ælfríc of Eynsham (950-1010) to one brother Éadweard in which, among other things, he objects to English men adopting Danish customs, specifically with ableredum hneccan and ablendum éagum ( ‘bared necks and blinded eyes’). The ‘blinded eyes’ apparently meaning eyes covered by a fringe. We are reminded of the Norman hairstyle as shown in the Bayeux ‘Tapestry’, but also the fifth(!) century description by Sidonius of the typical style of contemporary Frankish(!) warriors in Gaul: nape shaved and hair drawn towards the front. And carvings on the Oseberg ship (built before 800 AD) seem to depict the same hairstyle. If not a pan-Germanic thing, it was certainly a North Sea Germanic thing. Compare also Sidonius' fifth century description of (continental) Saxon pirates: hair shaved all around, save the top, a hairstyle that the Frisians still had in the High Middle Ages(!), as reported and depicted in contemporary sources.

Fantastic, cheers chaps!

Wernicke said:

That said, it's not as though the average Pict would've been bothered by the change of the aristocratic culture in the throneroom of Alba. To medieval peasants and earlier men, their village was usually the whole world

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Gaels had started raiding and even settling the western coast by 300 CE, if not earlier, and as such would've been slowly influencing Pictish culture from that time - Just as traces of Scandinavian influence may still be found. Though Celtic is right in stating Causantín's ascension as a major factor in the nobility's Gaelicisation, I'd like to bring to attention that conquest was in fact involved. The Kingdom of Dal Ríata, a most certainly Gaelic creation, found its roots on the western coasts of Scotland by the sixth century - If not earlier, the Duan Albanach's (mostly fictional) telling placing the kingdom's creation on the very turn of the century of therefore its conquest in the years before that.

However, even if the Gaels did pillage and conquer, it was most definitely not in one single conquest that Scotland fell under their rule. It's to this that I think Celtic referred, but nonetheless I'd like to clarify. Only after years of co-existence, wars and marriages, were the Picts and Gaels ever united as one - And that unification came not by sword, but by blood as King Cináed of Dal Ríata assumed rulership over his people's longtime enemies and brought both people under one banner, a kingdom later solidified into that of Alba by Domnall.

And, yes, I understand I'm a few months late to be particularly helping but it's still relevant.

Fellow history enthusiasts,

Recently I've come across some foxbeards who claimed that somewhere in the bronze-age, pre-civlization (5000-3000 BCE) pre-historic Scandinavians (presumably from the coast areas of modern day Sweden) sailed out from said land to settle on the Scottish islands, such as Orkney, Shetland, Stornoway and Skye, at the same time, or perhaps even before the Brythonnic peoples arrived from the European mainland as the first human beings on Britain.

Although unrelated to the period we all share a healthy degree of obsession for I wondered if some of you might know more on the subject, because personally, I don't.

I wondered how a pre-historic culture could possibly craft a sea-worthy vessel, capable of travelling long distances through open sea as would have been the case if this event did indeed occur, assuming there are no friendly whales in the North Sea and Atlantic. Human civilization is only ~4000 years old after all.

Their argument was that the people from northern Iberia (mainly the Basque area) pulled the same off when they migrated to settle in Britanny, Wales and Ireland as the first Gaels (don't quote me on this.), but if I remember correctly, this can't have happened much later after our lord and savior took his form from ghost sperm.

What do you think? Do these turd-chokers talk sense, or should we cut out their tongues and stomp the strips of muscle so the gods know we aren't all stupid?

Bull****.

Human civilization is a lot older than ~4000 years... As for seaworthy vessels, well, Australia was first settled some ~45,000 years ago by people who got there on boat, although obviously the conditions in the South Pacific and the North Atlantic have little in common, and those early settlers didn't exactly have to cross vast open oceans.

Anyway, yeah, bull****. As for those Iberian migrations, I'm not sure how accepted they are by real historians. The genetic similarity regarding R1b is there, but the explanation for it is not obvious, and as far as I know the only thing that suggests a direct migration over open seas is the legend of Breogán, Míl Espáine and the Milesians.

While this question may be interesting to some, it also happens to be irrelevant to the subject of the Vikingr sub-forum, this topic included.

That said, let me then pose a few queries to end the debate: Is it improbable? Not really. But where's the evidence supporting this hypothesis? Ancestors of aboriginals had navigated by sea from Asia to Australia over 50'000 years ago, but that's only evident due to archaeological finds and other forms of research.

Keep in mind that the British Isles weren't always islands. Until roughly 8,500 years ago they were still part of the mainland and were already inhabited.

The Celtic languages must've spread to the British Isles later since they are a branch of the Indo-European language family, which hadn't yet spread from its (most likely) area of origin somewhere to the East or Southeast of Europe. That spread of Celtic means people could traverse the Channel at least, obviously, no doubt in log boats, which should not be underestimated in terms of size and capability.

But whether people from Scandinavia travelled there too, thousands of years ago... what evidence do we have, indeed? And if they did, they weren't Scandinavians as we know them, because the language they spoke would either have been Pre-Indo-European (that is not Indo-European at all) or a dialect of Proto-Indo-European that hadn't yet formed into the Proto-Germanic language, let alone Proto-Norse.

Yngvald said:

While this question may be interesting to some, it also happens to be irrelevant to the subject of the Vikingr sub-forum, this topic included.

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Nobody is forcing you to answer Yngvald - if you do not feel comfortable with the question itself, or the place where it is asked, I advise you to look away and commit excessive tea-drinking to handle the overwhelming stress.

Back to the topic, I reckon many of you make good arguments, some being more... constructive than others. It seems a silly idea indeed, and thanks to doing a bit of homework I found that organised human civilization is indeed much older than I first anticipated, as is the inhabitation of Great Britan, or the landmass that would form it.

Moving on from this, I previously thought that the Brythonnic Celts were the first human beings to set foot on Britain some time around 5000 BCE and so formed the ancestry of all peoples populating the Isles before the Roman invasion and Migration Age, save for the Gaels (?).

But it seems that their roots are far older, some possibly completely unrelated to each other. According to Wikipedia human footprints were found in England ranging between 800 000 and 500 000 years in age. I'm sure some of you are knowledgeable on the subject concerning my next question, namely;

Do the Britons (that is, the peoples inhabitating the areas later known as England, parts of Wales and southern Scotland pre-Migration Age) share a common ancestry with the Picts whose culture and religion, barring the language seem rather alienated from each other?

It is why I reckoned the fable of the pre-historic Scandinavian settlers occupying some of the Scottish islands could maybe, perhaps, possibly, vaguely have some truth to it, despite the ludicrous grounding the theorists chose for it. If the Picts and Britons share a common ancestry and came upon the island (or landmass) from the same direction I couldn't comprehend whatever it is that differnated them so. Can't it then be more logical that they would not have the same roots?

While Scotland has quite a different geography from England and Wales, these slight alterations of the terrain can't be enough to warrant such a large difference between the two cultures, although it's hard to say what the terrain and even the climate was like such a long time ago.

What say you, word-warriors?!

Before I continue, can I seriously point out the differences in invasion, migration, integration etc!? I feel people get "migration and a change of culture and people" and "migration and completely replace previous dwellers entirely like a huge hole swollowed 'em up!" mixed up. I.e there's a difference between language and culture and DNA/ethnicity. For example, Spanish is labeled a Romance language because (among others) it's from Latin, does that then mean all Spaniards are Romans?

Wernicke said:

Moving on from this, I previously thought that the Brythonnic Celts were the first human beings to set foot on Britain some time around 5000 BCE and so formed the ancestry of all peoples populating the Isles before the Roman invasion and Migration Age, save for the Gaels (?).

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As Éadríc pointed out, Britain had been inhabited for thousands of years before anything we recognize as being "Brythonic". It's widely assumed that what we know as Brythonic peoples, and pre-Roman Celts of Britain are from, more or less, the same stock as Gauls. Weather that means two branches of the same people, one settling in Gaul one in Britain and just so happens they are similar or that Gauls settled Britain.

Wernicke said:

But it seems that their roots are far older, some possibly completely unrelated to each other. According to Wikipedia human footprints were found in England ranging between 800 000 and 500 000 years in age. I'm sure some of you are knowledgeable on the subject concerning my next question, namely;

Do the Britons (that is, the peoples inhabitating the areas later known as England, parts of Wales and southern Scotland pre-Migration Age) share a common ancestry with the Picts whose culture and religion, barring the language seem rather alienated from each other?

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Yes, their ancestry is possibly the same if you go back far enough. However, do the Picts and, say, very Southern Britons share anything other than a similar language, society and culture? Probably not.

Wernicke said:

It is why I reckoned the fable of the pre-historic Scandinavian settlers occupying some of the Scottish islands could maybe, perhaps, possibly, vaguely have some truth to it, despite the ludicrous grounding the theorists chose for it. If the Picts and Britons share a common ancestry and came upon the island (or landmass) from the same direction I couldn't comprehend whatever it is that differnated them so. Can't it then be more logical that they would not have the same roots?

While Scotland has quite a different geography from England and Wales, these slight alterations of the terrain can't be enough to warrant such a large difference between the two cultures, although it's hard to say what the terrain and even the climate was like such a long time ago.

What say you, word-warriors?!

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As I said earlier, bull****. Geography is, ofcourse, not the soul reason the Picts and other Brythonic peoples were so different. Culture and society is another, British Celts were very insular and inward looking. Taking care of their own and not travelling vast distances and therefore, in my mind, not sharing - and exchanging - huge amounts of similarities.

We have to remember also that the Picts were never exterminated ethnically, just their culture, language and much of their history was. As such an air of myth and legend surrounds them making them much more other, different and other-worldly than they actually were. Picts up untill their Gaelicization were Brythonic and it's thought a ancient Welshman and Pict would have conversed - with much difficulty - enough to perhaps trade or atleast get each others points across. Similar, I guess, to a Serbian and a Croatian conversing in their own languages to each other.

A few points I'd like to chip in with.

Firstly, the Basque people are often seen as an relic of pre Indo-European immigration into Europe. If a similar ethnic "footprint" were to be found in Britain, it is far more likely to be one of common roots winding into a larger group of peoples. Given the time period we are talking about, the British isles (or at least Great Britain) were a part of continental Europe and this migration would not be of any maritime methods - Simply a people spreading across a single land mass from the Pyrenees to the Grampians.

I also hold by the Picts as a Q-Celtic peoples, as opposed to the Brythonic P-Celtic. However, there is little evidence for this. Chalmer's original reasoning was based upon the transition of their description from "Caledonians" to "Picts" and, without any explanation as to how so, therefore surmises that an identical transition must have occurred from "Britons" to "Caledonians". His unbased "evidence" is evident, also claiming that the Briton's differences to their supposed northern kindred came only from Roman "civilisation" and they would be otherwise indistinguishable.

Meanwhile, later Gaelic influences are no explanation for the similarities in Pictish towns. Fortresses such as Duin Nechtain, often recorded as Dunnechten or Dunnachton by Northumbrians who would be likely unaware of Gaelic variations upon the name, are clearly a traditional Pictish name. Therefore, it is striking that they favour the Gaelic word for "fort" or "castle" (Dun) as opposed to the Welsh "Din" or Cornish "Dinas". Unfortunately, other evidence either way is scarce, but what little traces of the Picts that we do have appears to point towards their connections to the Gaels rather than any Brythonic roots.

Agreed about the pre-Indo-European population of Western Europe, but your argument for Pictish as Gaelic rather than Brythonic doesn't sound very convincing to be honest. As far as I can tell, the consensus by far is that the Picts originally spoke a Brythonic language. What's the dating for the forms "Dunnechten" and "Dunnachton"? At any rate, it should be born in mind that those "later" Gaelic influences still occurred early in the Middle Ages.

hrotha said:

Agreed about the pre-Indo-European population of Western Europe, but your argument for Pictish as Gaelic rather than Brythonic doesn't sound very convincing to be honest. As far as I can tell, the consensus by far is that the Picts originally spoke a Brythonic language. What's the dating for the forms "Dunnechten" and "Dunnachton"? At any rate, it should be born in mind that those "later" Gaelic influences still occurred early in the Middle Ages.

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Sources for the forms are anecdotal at the moment, though I'm trying to search for where I heard them from. Even so, if evidence for my argument is unconvincing so too is that of the opposite opinion.

Anyway, on Gaelic influences, in 685 the Gaels were far from dominant. Though most likely with some influence, Dal Ríata appears sole in its representation of the Gaels in Scotland and both Alt Clut and Goddodin could be equally responsible for corruption of the "original" and distinct Pictish language - Whatever its roots may have been.

Last time I wondered why light infantry units, such as Lidi in Nordmenn faction, have access to blue and red clothes. That's rather not historical, as long as those classess are supposed to picture lower rank of warriors, poor ones. Red and blue clothes were very hard and expensive to dye, and thats confirmed by sagas and modern experimental archeology. Those unit should wear green, yellow, orange, beige (colors of forest) woolen clothes. Linen was also very hard to dye, we have only one finding of dyed linen in early medieval Europe - Birka. But I never saw those findings, just trusted words of my swedish friend.
P.S. Deep-black color is also not confirmed, and is impossible to achieve with natural methods even nowadays.

This is a matter that was brought up not long ago. Eeven has an official name, and is referred to as "the holy trinity of colours". It is somewhat undesirable and hopefully to be addressed sooner or later.

This is a matter that was brought up not long ago.

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Im sorry - I was out of forums for a lot of time. If Vikingr is about to develop another version (i've heard lots of various talks on this topic) giving light infantry "colors of forest" clothes would be rad.