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eschulz•about 1 hour ago

The voyages and sagas of the vikings are very interesting, but something I find to also be fascinating is the economic and cultural history that brought about the viking age and then several centuries later ended it. It does seem kind of sudden; there was a niche that suddenly caused vikings to travel everywhere, and then it was just over.

lukan•11 minutes ago

I think mainly it was, that they became civilized/baptized and christians were still free to plunder and enslave non christians, but not fellow christians.

So the vikings did not just stop, but rather became crusaders:

"In 1107, Sigurd I of Norway sailed for the eastern Mediterranean with Norwegian crusaders to fight for the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem; the kings of Denmark and Sweden participated actively in the Baltic Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings

(But otherwise of course many factors contributed to the rise and fall of the vikings and there indeed seems to have been a niche, with a temporary weakness, no christian nordic fleets etc.)

teiferer•5 minutes ago

> they became civilized/baptized

How are civilized and baptized comparable concepts? The vikings surely had a civilization before christianity took hold and ascribing sone kind of higher ethics to christianity is also quite a stretch.

lokimedes•about 1 hour ago

Maybe it was good weather [1] on the isles for once?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

England Runestones

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Discussion (4 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews