Print this post.
By David Swanson
WARISACRIME.ORG
When the United States is identified as an empire, albeit of a different sort than some others, it’s common to point to the fate of ancient Rome or the empires of Britain, Spain, Holland, etc., as a warning to the Pentagon or even to CNN debate moderators.
Sitting on the border between England and Scotland, Lindisfarne Castle was also frequently attacked by the Vikings.
But a closer analogy to the current United States than ancient Rome, in a certain regard, might be the Vikings. The United States doesn’t create colonies in the places it wages war or wields influence. It raids. It pillages. It plunders resources. It manufactures smart phones. It fracks. It sets up isolated settlements, heavily fortified, also known as military bases, embassies, green zones, safe zones, and moderate rebel training camps. It sails for home.
What ever happened to the Vikings anyway?
I’d like to see a survey done on that question. I’m afraid many people would answer that the Vikings died out or got themselves slaughtered or slaughtered each other. That would certainly be an anti-imperial moral for the Viking story. It would also fit with the idea that violence controls people rather than the other way around.
Viking siege of Paris (845). Although the Vikings are best remembered for attacking the British isles, in fact their raids plagued most of continental Europe, including parts of Russia.
Others might respond that the Vikings mysteriously disappeared, but they actually did nothing of the sort.
Much of what we know about the Vikings comes from literate people in other cultures attacked and raided by the Vikings. Just as people around the world told Gallup in a recent poll that the United States is the greatest threat to peace on earth, people impacted by Viking raids viewed Vikings as warrior beasts. No doubt this produced exaggerations, but there can be no question that the Vikings routinely practiced what we today would call aggressive war or targeted humanitarian regime change, depending on who was paying us to label the acts.
There can also be no question that the Vikings never died out. Current understanding of DNA suggests that a significant percentage of people in Norway, Denmark, and Sweden are descendants of Vikings, as are many people in other parts of Europe and Britain (including over half the older families in Liverpool, for example — Viking Beatles?!).
Well, if they didn’t die out, what happened? Surely, common U.S. wisdom holds that if an evil violent people like, say, the Iranians were to continue to exist, they would continue to launch all the wars they keep launching all over the world. Surely, somewhat better informed opinion holds that the United States wages all the wars it wages because of tragic but unavoidable tendencies buried in our genes. In fact, I’m pretty sure that “Our Genes May Be Violent, But We Can Make a Buck Off That” was once the slogan of Lockheed Martin, or it may have been Raytheon. Surely, if the Vikings were warriors, their descendants must still be warriors.
Annoyingly, the facts are otherwise. The Vikings kept right on living and radically reduced their killing. “The transformation of the Northmen, the ‘scourge of Europe,’ into the architects of the most peaceful region of Europe, Scandinavia, and the designers of strategies and institutions to replace war is an intriguing story,” wrote Elise Boulding. As she tells that story, the Vikings gradually found consensus more useful than conquering, and negotiated trade more profitable than pillaging. They shifted from raiding to building settlements. They adopted some of the more peaceful ideas of Christianity. They began to farm more and sail less.
Other sources expand on this theme. The Vikings had profited by enslaving people where they raided. As the Christian church was established in Scandinavia, it insisted on enslaving only non-Christians, which badly damaged the profitability of European raiding. Viking (or former Viking) violence was redirected into the Crusades against Muslims and Jews. But, make no mistake, the quantity of violence was on a steep downward slope. The peaceful separation of Norway and Sweden in 1905 was a model for other nations that have a hard time accomplishing such feats without wars. The relative resistance of Scandinavia to militarism in recent times, including Sweden’s choice not to fully join NATO — as well as its choice to stay out of the two world wars — is a model as well.
But the real lesson is that the Vikings stopped being Vikings. And so can we.
David Swanson David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
Note to Commenters
Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: editor@greanvillepost.com
We apologize for this inconvenience.
Nauseated by the
vile corporate media?
Had enough of their lies, escapism,
omissions and relentless manipulation?
Send a donation to
The Greanville Post–or
But be sure to support YOUR media.
If you don’t, who will?
1 comment
There was never, at any time, a “Viking empire”. There were many “viking” countries, all at war with one another, at any given time. Scadanavian (“Viking”) society followed the general arc of European history, though as a lagging indicator mostly. They remained Pagan much longer than did continental Europe, or Britain – as late as 1200 in Sweden. Thats WELL into the middle ages. The middle ages were defined by an (exploitative) economic system, feudalism, and by the spread of mono confessional Christianity. The social , economic caste system of feudalism is what ended Viking raiding.They became sedentary farming societies like everyone else in Europe. The (near absolute) loss of Norse Pagan culture disconnected them from (smaller, more egalitarian) social structures that supported a maritime nomadism. Vikings can be though of in that way -as sea nomads-instead of Hun or Goth horses and wagons trundling over endless stepe-lands, they wandered on their magnificent streamlined longboats across “the whale road”. Viking longboats and the skill of their making also nearly completely disappeared.. The clumsy, heavy medieval barges (cogs) that replaced them did not compare in terms of function or design, – except for carrying large loads of coal, or manure, etc., which is what the middle ages were all about – proto capitalism.