Viking longships, were they really that combat effective?

[Queequeg]

I too keep track of how much Saxon blood I have in me. I think it's a healthy pastime.

Its partially a Mormon thing.  My parents are obsessed with ancestry and family history.


I'm a bit confused as to what is weird here, though.  I'm not claiming to be proud of it; frankly, if anything, my interest in non-Western European peoples should prove the opposite. 

[The Brain]

I too keep track of how much Saxon blood I have in me. I think it's a healthy pastime.

Its partially a Mormon thing.  My parents are obsessed with ancestry and family history.


I'm a bit confused as to what is weird here, though.  I'm not claiming to be proud of it; frankly, if anything, my interest in non-Western European peoples should prove the opposite.

Frankly too?

[Vricklund]

So, what gives?

Once you've sailed a clinker built ship with dead silent cotton sails through the swedish archipelago on a sunny summers day with a steady onshore breeze you know that there is no greater means of transportation.

[Queequeg]

No medieval state was centralized in the sense that modern states are.  Comparatively speaking, Carolingian France and Anglo-Saxon England were pretty well organized by the standards of the time.  It is true that compared to the Arabs and Byzantines those states were culturally lacking in attributes like literacy and sewage systems, but I don't see the relevance of that to the question.  It wasn't access to good copies of the workds of Aristotle that kept the Vikings at bay.

The Viking way of life outside of raids on non-viking areas naturally lent itself to maritime raiding and settlement.  I don't think it lent itself to raw martial ability in the same way that steppe nomadism did.  A Saxon Thane and a Viking were equipped very similarly, but I think a Byzantine or Arab army would have been far better trained and far more at home with more advanced military tactics, and perhaps more importantly were also far better at organization and supply. 

I don't think it is fair at all to separate the cultural with the military; the cultural sophistication of the Byzantines, Chinese and Romans was, for the most part, a great asset in their wars against less-advanced peoples, at least until the first and third become over-dependent on barbarian mercenaries. 

[The Minsky Moment]

I don't think it is fair at all to separate the cultural with the military; the cultural sophistication of the Byzantines, Chinese and Romans was, for the most part, a great asset in their wars against less-advanced peoples, at least until the first and third become over-dependent on barbarian mercenaries.

But by that argument, the sophisticated Arabs and Byzantines of southern Italy and Sicily should have been able to handle the Normans, regardless of whether you term them Vikings or not.

[Caliga]

Not to mention the Chinese should have had no problem with the Mongols,  the Romans with the Vandals, and the Byzantines with the Avars, Slavs, early Arabs, and so forth.

Spellus's snobbery is amusing. 

[Queequeg]

 

I previously made exceptions for Steppe peoples, but it would appear that I had the relationship somewhat backwards.

I think a well organized, sufficiently powerful, functional state has little/no difficulty dealing with "barbarians".  The Romans in the time of Augustine didn't, and generally speaking, the Macedonian-era Byzantines, the Ummayads, the Abbasids and the Tang Dynasty were all capable of dealing with barbarians. 

The problem appears to be that success can lead to 'decadence'; monetarization of economy and shifts in culture of the conqueror result in complications and, frequently, the introduction of a foreign military class, either by invasion, migration, hiring or some combination of all three.

The Byzantines, Ummayads and Abbasids were all either at or near the peak of their respective martial prowess, and therefore I still suspect that the these three Empires had less problems with Vikings partially due to their well disciplined, organized forces; similarly, I think the Huns, early Turks, Arabs, Vandals, and other people had huge difficulty fighting the Byzantines and Sassanids before the plague and their near-World War destroyed their respective civilizations before the Arabs even came.   

That said, I have to acknowledge that there are exceptions even to this.  The Hittites fell to Barbarians at the height of their power, and the Mongols attacked and annihilated a lot of peoples at their peak.   
 

[Jaron]

His parentage changes every time he posts. Next he'll claim to be part African!!!

[Jaron]

With so many exceptions being made, one is tempted to say that perhaps your rule does not hold water.

[Queequeg]

Generally speaking though, Steppe peoples have a lot of advantages the Vikings just didn't though.

1) Horses, and tons of them.  Way more than sedentary peoples could ever hope to muster.
2) Knowledge of horses.  The leap from spending your life on the saddle, organizing herds to living on the saddle, fighting armies isn't as big as the leap from fishing to mass invasion.
3) Organization.  Steppe peoples, partially due to necessity of organizing flocks or the fact that most are highly militarized due to harsh nature of steppes, appear to naturally be far better organized than the armies of sedentary peoples.
4) Motive.  The necessity of raiding (for flocks, women) is far more omnipresent on the Steppe.  Big flocks meant you could pay bride price; raiding another village for a wife meant you could bypass that entirely.  This was more or less true from the time of the Proto-Indo-Europeans till Stalin, and is once again true in parts of Central Asia.

[Queequeg]

Interestingly, I think Feudalism developed to in to a kind of Faux-Post-Steppe set up, with a lot in common with the various Turkic states and the Parthian Empire; a militarized aristocracy based on equestrian warriors, decentralized rule enforced through landed titles granted to smaller groups of warriors granted on the understanding that they fight for their King/Shah/Khan.

[Richard Hakluyt]

'zounds Queequeg............you are a mighty bullshitter 

Looking forward to some raki-fuelled sessions in Constantinople in 4 weeks time 

[Queequeg]

'zounds Queequeg............you are a mighty bullshitter 

No joke.  Parthians and Sassanians were Feudal in every sense of the word.  Even had coats of arms and tournaments.

I'd prefer to not think of it as bullshitting so much as theory-formulizing.  A lot of this stuff has been kicking around in my head for a while, just  have not expressed it.  I actually might have heard some similar theory on the Europa Barbarorum Forum, where there are a ton of people who know more about Persian and Steppe history than I ever will.  Anna Comnena also draws on a lot of similarities between Turks and Franks.

Looking forward to some raki-fuelled sessions in Constantinople in 4 weeks time 

Getting Lunch with Tuna next week.  Hopefully we'll all be able to do something together.   

[Strix]

Cotton sails? Very few Negroes in Sweden 1,000 years ago.

Shush...don't let Al Sharpton hear you. Negroes built the modern world on their sweat and blood. There is nothing in history that was accomplished without the hard work of black slaves.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Yeah, cool that Tuna will be there 

I'm looking forward to discussions where people have actually heard of the Sassanids