Talk:Vikings

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Viking Dating

Scandinavian men and women have among the highest life expectancy in the world and fertility rates among European countries second only to Ireland. Although Scandinavia has an aging population, it has no shortage of young adults starting families. Scandinavian men and women have developed dating practices that are outwardly progressive while remaining humble in spirit. With a recent influx of asylum seeking immigrants that has altered the homogeneity somewhat, Modern day Viking men and women are open to outsiders in the dating world, as long as they are not subject to archaic traditions and values. Class stratification is rare in Scandinavian social interaction and the culture instills the notion that mates should be chosen based on compatibility and with goals of equal partnership. While marriage remains popular, Scandinavia has seen cultural acceptance of unmarried cohabitation and alternative lifestyles. Scandinavian singles are demographically well-educated, humble and egalitarian in their beliefs. According to Statistics, 70 percent of Scandinavians use the Internet daily. They enjoy the resources that the modern world of dating provides, including Internet matching sites, singles clubs and nightlife in cities such as Stockholm, Copenhagen, Reykjavik, Helsinki and Oslo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vikingnomads (talk • contribs) 11:12, 3 May 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 May 2020

Hi my name is professor Johanneson and I believe that a lot of the information is highly incorrect. Professor Johanneson (talk) 15:44, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Favonian (talk) 15:48, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

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Adam von Bremen is wrongly cited

Adam von Bremen is wrongly cited in the article, which claims he said vikings were Scandinvian, which is not true; this the original text: Aurum ibi plurimum, quod raptu congeritur piratico. Ipsi enim piratae, quos illi Wichingos as appellant, nostri Ascomannos regi Danico tributum solvunt. What he says, ist that the local people, most probably Norse people living close to the vikings, call those pirates vikings, while we call them askomen. The present text is not true, its desinformation. In reality, we dont have a clue of the origin of the vikings Adam writes about. Adam also adds, with surprice, that the viking paid tax to the danish king. Dan Koehl (talk) 19:02, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

Um, where are you getting your translation, because that's not what he says. The full quote in context is: "Ab ortu quidem respicit promontorium Sconiae, vbi est ciuitas Lundona. Aurum ibi plurimum, quod raptu congeritur piratico. Ipsi enim piratae, quos illi Wichingos as appellant, nostri Ascomannos, regi Danico tributum solvunt, vt liceat eis praedam exercere a Barbaris, qui circa hoc mare plurimi abundant."

My Latin is a bit rusty, but literally translated that reads: "Sconia promontory rising from the sea, where is the city of London. The gold is there for the most part, against the pirates, that rape that take the spoil. For they themselves show of the pirates, who they thought were Wicing as they call it, and our men Ascomannos, the Danish king paying tribute, so that it is lawful for them to prey upon the Barbarians, those who behave thus in great abundance in the sea."

More directly translated, what he says is that following a course along the Sconian peninsula lies the city of London where there is much gold guarded against the pirates, who they (Londoners) call Viking, and our men call Askomen. The Danish king paying mercenaries to hunt the Vikings." Now my Latin may be a bit rusty, but if nothing else I am fairly certain that the "locals" he's referring to are the English. Zaereth (talk) 23:15, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

My Latin is even worse, but I do own a translation into Swedish. "Lundona" is Lund, not London. The quote above is a bit misleading since the sentence beginning "Aurum" marks a new chapter. "There" refers to Zealand (Sjælland), which Adam is in the process of describing;Scania and Lund are just places right next to it. The translation I have says that the gold is gathered through piracy, and it clearly says that the pirates are locally called vikings, and that they are countrymen with the Danes. It does not make it clear whether "vikings" is a general word for "pirate", or just the word used for these specific pirates and no one else, or something in between.

Andejons (talk) 06:20, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Well, that's the thing about Latin that makes it so difficult to translate accurately unless you speak it fluently. Syntax means very little in Latin, far from how important it is in determining the meaning of a word in Swedish or English. You can't just go to a Latin/English dictionary and look it up. Latin relies on a huge variety of prefixes and suffixes to do the job of things like articles and prepositions in English (which is more Scandinavian than anything else, even closer to Swedish than English is to French). To make things more complicated, any word can often have a slew of meanings depending on context. Latin relies very highly on context to determine the meaning of a word; much more than syntax.

For example, Libralces could easily translate as "book moose" or "free moose", but when put into context the only definition that makes sense is "source moose", meaning the earliest known species.

I don't see where in the original Latin it says anything about locals. I'm pretty sure Collect speaks Latin fluently. Perhaps he could chime in a give us his version, out of talk page curiosity, but I think this is all a very good example of why we Wikipedians shouldn't be translating this stuff ourselves, and then drawing our own conclusions from it. That should all come from reliable sources, and conclusions attributed to those sources. Zaereth (talk) 07:18, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. Just to be clear: the part about "countrymen" comes in the sentence following the quote above. And it all comes from Adam's book 4, chapters 5 and 6.

Andejons (talk) 10:15, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, and that missing context makes a huge difference. For example, if I were to literally translate the first clause of the above, "ab ortu quidem respicit promontorium Sconiae", I get "from rising indeed respect promontory Sconia" (or more technically the plural "Sconii"). But then again, when you put "ab ortu" together like that, it often means "east" (where the sun rises). In this context, however, that wouldn't make sense. In this context, respicit (respect), which I took a bit of liberty in translating as "the sea", more accurately translates as "the course", as in the direction of a ship's travel. So instead of just translating it we have to also interpret it, and that's where it becomes very tricky, because while syntax can be summed up with a bunch of rules you can put in a book about grammar, context is far more subjective.

I checked around the net, which is where I found that quote, but haven't found any reliably sourced translations into English. So, until we do, I think it's best that we don't do it ourselves. Zaereth (talk) 20:28, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

So why does the text claim the term generally referred to Scandinavian pirates or raiders when this is not what Adam wrote? Dan Koehl (talk) 20:43, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I don't know. I didn't write it, so I'm assuming it came from a reliable source. Have you tried checking the sources following that info? (It may not necessarily be at the end of the sentence; perhaps at the end of the paragraph or section.) I haven't yet dug that deep, but that's where I'd begin. Without a reliable translation into English, in the full context, I'm not 100% sure who he's referring to, which was my point.

For example, "tributum solvunt", used with a neutral suffix like that, seems quite clear to me not to be referring to taxes paid to the King, in this context, but I would be more inclined to translate that as the King paying "hard cash" or "coins", or more loosely, a "bounty". But that all depends on the rest of the context. I would much rather see this come from a reliable source.

My advice is, check out the sources and see what they say. If it is not in there anywhere, then you have some good grounds for removing it or correcting it. Zaereth (talk) 21:06, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from this page with the latin text of Adam's Gesta, he only uses "wichingos" (or any word containing "wich" or "vich" except for "Sleswich") in the one passage we discussed above, so the construction with "generally" is probably wrong. Whether one can use the passage to say that Adam can support a claim that "wichingos" were used for Scandinavian pirates in general is another matter.

(Also, Scania is to the east of Zeeland; so that seems like the correct interpretation to me).

Andejons (talk) 11:53, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, uh, I can see where at first glance "east" might seem to be the better term, but that doesn't really make sense within the context of the sentence. What we have is, if I translate that as literally as possible, "Rising from indeed the course is the tall mountain jutting out into the water called the Sconii." If I replace "rising from" with "east", then I'm left with the adverb "quidem" (indeed, certainly, at least, etc.) describing another adverb, ab ortu (east). In the sentence, it makes more sense to use it as a verb (rising), then the adverb makes more sense in describing it. Do you see what I mean? Then, since what we're talking about here is basically one of the mountains surrounding a fjord, it also makes more sense to use it as "rising from". I read that as giving a direction, as if saying, "follow a course in the direction that this mountain points..., or rather, "begin a course with respect to this mountain..."

But, like I said, I'm not fluent in Latin, and the previous sentences (which I don't have access to) may make a huge difference in how this one should be read. In Latin, it's all about context.

My knowledge of Latin comes mostly from, believe it or not, the study of the English language. I'm fascinated by the etymology and the history of the language, which is really a hodge-podge mixture of about 6 different languages. Everybody wanted a piece of England, so if you can read English then parsing through Swedish, French, German, and Latin is not really that difficult. If you really want to understand a people, first learn their language to understand how their minds worked, then understand their religion to know their hearts.

What's interesting to me is that the word "Viking" as used in English is often attributed to the word "wic", which is defined as "an encampment" or "a place", but the real meaning of this word is a lot more subtle than that. More often as it's used it means something more of a "gathering place" or "a coven". When used in the form "wicca", it means "witch", which at the time was a term used for anyone who were still worshiping pagan gods, usually Celtic gods like Cernunnos, which eventually became the Catholic-English vision of "the devil". But, regardless of whether or not one has anything to do with the other, the history of the word makes no difference upon how it is used in the English language today. Language constantly changes, and it is what it is, so we just have to work within those constraints, and go with what the sources say on the matter. Zaereth (talk) 18:31, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Ok, I did a lot more digging, and found a copy of the book. It's still in Latin, but I was right, in context that is giving a direction. It's just a fragment of the full sentence, But, basically this entire paragraph (or chapter) is describing the isle of Zealand in some detail, including size and location. It talks about the "straight of the Norsmen", and "Promontorium Sconiae", in this context, I'm pretty sure is referring to all of Scandinavia, rather than the state of Sconia, which is mentioned earlier in the paragraph with that exact spelling. And it is giving a direction to Lund as it relates to Zealand.

The next chapter, I believe, relates to the last chapter (paragraph) via context, which is how the full manuscript is laid out. That chapter starts out, "The gold is there for the most part...", but it's unclear to me whether "there" refers to Zealand or Lund. The king pays cash, giving license for them to prey upon the barbarians, who misuse that license and rape and sell the women while beheading the men without beating them, yada yada yada.

In historical writings, I can only find the term "Wichingos" used in one place, which is this very book. In this part of the world, and including England at that time, the word "wich" or "wic" were often used as a suffix for places and even townships of a very specific nature; meaning a "place where a craft occurs". Now "craft" in this context would typically refer to manufacture, such as refined metals like iron, weapons, ship building, textiles, etc., thus you see this as a suffix on the names of many townships. The term "Ascommanos" or "Askomen" I only found in a few places, which apparently translates as "men of the ash-built boats" (yes, that etymology came from a reliable source), but nothing that says really where they came from in specific.

Of course, all of this is merely to satisfy my own talk-page curiosity. Some reliable source needs to look at all the evidence and put all the pieces together, and give they're theory of where this word actually came from, so don't quote me on any of this. My main point when I started out is that with Latin, you really, really need that context to know what it's saying, so it was helpful to see that context. Latin is one of those languages where it's so easy to take things out of context and give it a different meaning. Zaereth (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

The danish historican John H Lind delivers following translation: «These pirates, whom they call wichingi and we call Ascomanni, pay tribute to the Danish king in order to be allowedto plunder those barbarians who live in great numbers around this sea»

In one of more recent documents he starts with the introduction:

The term ”Viking” appears in Anglo-Saxon or Norse sources in the so-called Viking Age. Here it simply denotes pirates, no more, no less. It had no geographic or ethnic connotations that linked it to Scandinavia or Scandinavians. By contrast, in these sources we find it used anywhere about anyone who to an Anglo-Saxon or a Scandiniavian appeared as a pirate. Therefore we find it used about Israelites crossing the Red Sea; Muslims in Galleys* encountering Norwegian crusaders in the Mediterranean; Caucasian pirates encountering the famous Swedish Ingvar-Expedition, and Estonian and Baltic pirates attacking Scandinavians in the Baltic Sea. Thus the term was never used to denote Scandinavians as such. Therefore, if we wish to maintain Viking-Age studies on a scholarly level, we must stop acting as an appendix to the tourist industry by using the term Viking as if it was synonymous with Scandinavian and Scandinavians.

Dan Koehl (talk) 19:20, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 August 2020

In the introduction, please remove "modern Skandinavian descendants" and add "modern Scandinavian descendants" in its place. 64.203.187.108 (talk) 20:39, 31 August 2020 (UTC)