lonan said:
Pretty much all "traditional" terms are very doubtful, artificial, misplaced, misunderstood and so on, at times they are plain insulting to the subjects or were meant to insult (I don't even speak of the fiction and "historical" movies that corrupted the terms to most people eventually). But often those terms are all we have nowadays and we still need some names to call the things. Whoever called them "vikings" we still know what people we're speaking of, roughly at least. It's more tricky with "varangians", of course, as the term is more vague and interlaced with political matters.... Though we have drifted far away from the original topic already. My idea was pretty simple: cleanse the game terms to fit into the overall "mild fantasy" style and avoid doubtful references and direct conflicts with the real world stuff.
I can't see the problem here. You say that people a squeamish and that the matter has been politicized, yet the only one who has mentioned this is you. The scandinavian term "Väring" is the etymological predecessor of the word Varangian. The fact that Ibn Fadlan uses that name for the "vikings"(now there is a word with very weak etymological sources) he meets on the shores of the Volga would suggest that it was a common, if mispronounciation, name given to these people from Scandinavia druing the 10th century.
Anyway, most of the terms used to try and explain different cultures/societies in history is based on qualified guesses at best and folklore/mythology/19th-century romanticizing at worst. Are, as an example, the Saxons who supposedly invaded England (Horsa and Hringa in mythology) during the post roman era actually the same people as later Saxons? Are the Celts really one group of people?
What does the term Viking imply? I'm extremely interested in, what we in Sweden term, cultural meetings. That is, how cultures behave and change when faced with other cultures.
Long story short: When anyone meets or sees someone alien to them their culture changes and evolves. There are no pure cultures and never has been. To accomplish that that particular culture would have to be situated somewhere remote where noone would ever see or meet them. A recent example would be the native village discovered by National Geographic in the Amazon. As soon as that airplane flew over and the men of the village saw it and started firing arrows at it their whole beliefsystem changed.
Nor does cultural influences depend on whether or not a group is opressed in other areas (e.g. judicial and/or military).
The classic example being the movie "Deliverance" where the stereotypical picture of how white people in the southern states of the US are. Still, the guy on the porch playing a banjo is actually playing an instrument brought to the US by slaves and as far as the porch goes....well that's a typical trait of west-african architecture.
In other words, no point in arguing. If you don't like the fact that people make a mod using quasi-real cultures, then don't download it.
