Swedish vikings travelled deep into Russia, Ukraine and some ended up in Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey), the descendants of the Eastern Roman Empire. They used longboats able to travel narrow shallow waters and being hauled over patches of land connecting the rivers. A Norwegian viking crew sailed to Iceland, Greenland and continued West until they reached New Foundland in present day Canada, +400 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean. Their settlement was shortlived; only one settlement was discovered in the 1960s. The vikings called the American continent 'Vinland'
The map he show was like 100 year after the viking age officially stooped.During the viking age there was between 20 and later about 15 kingdoms in Nordic countries. Denmark was the only country of today that existed even at the tale end of the viking age. Svea kingdom, what later would merge with göta kingdom (pretty much right after, to make Sweden did exist, but was yet to be Sweden. Skåne kingdom merged with Denmark right after the end as well. As well as the other smaller nation that did colonize England already prior to the viking age. Viking age is really sort of a misnomer. What happen was that during that period there was mostly peaceful relationship internally in Nordic country and all the areas explored outwards. The viking age is really defined by the beginning of raids on England and the end of with the battle of Hastings. Its a lot more complicated than barbarians raiding England. In reality it was more of a English civil war where one part got supported from Denmark and the other part got supported from Rom. Most of the written words have today is from the Roman side. Due to many factors the king of Denmark lossed quite a lot of power after 1066 and as sort of a peace deal he converted to Christianity (this was probobly a false conversion). Ass a result of that Danish king become accepted in to the European community allowing Denmark to basically just collect all the minor countries around with hardly any resistance. So did Svea-kingdom and eventually Norway. After a very short period all other Nordic state and kingdoms was absorbed into those 3. Basically as a result of that the three kingdoms or Norden is the same 3 kingdoms as exist today... Well plus Finland that is really basically a break away state of Sweden (or .. technically Russia). Because the Three kingdoms was established and reach basically the full coverage of nordic area so fast after the end of the viking age, those are typically refereed of as the three groups. And this is sort of how history is tought. In reality its way more complicated. What is current day Germany "converted" to Christianity a bit prior to the Nordic countries, hence forming the Holy roman empire that did a lot of war with Nordic countries. (Denmark did lose a bit of territory that there live danes to this day but still is party of Germany. So basically nations that was christian and catholic was only alowed to go to war with each other if Rome was on there side. Hence what would become the Holy roman empire basically just occupy the Vatican to dictate the rules. So the conversion of Nordic countries and the peace in current day UK created a sort of quasi Roman super block. Basically in those nations the church was over the king, and the church in turn was controlled by the Vatican that inturn was occupied by basically what we would call Germany. During this time Nordic countries also created a super block called Kamlar union. Then a dude popped up called Luther and claimed that the king was over the pope. Hence the roman super block split in two, and then there was quite a bit of war between the new blocks The point is, the Nordic countries really didn´t change that much. It was all just propaganda. And current day UK was formed mostly by the nordic occupation. There is something like a 40-30-30 spreed (hence Robin hood speak french)
Hi, Connor! I'm Mike from Sweden, and I'm gonna try and answer your questions that this video didn't. "Velkommen" is Welcome in both Norwegian and Danish (Välkommen in Swedish). The Saxons were from northern Germany, not from Denmark, and therefor not Vikings. The Vikings and the Romans never met because the Viking age started after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Romans spoken of in this video are the people of the Holy Roman Empire (ca 800-1806). The name of the mountain range is the Scandinavian mountains. It goes through most of Norway, the westernmost parts of middle and northern Sweden, and the north-westernmost part of Finland. Here you can fins all three countries' tallest mountains: Galdhøpiggen in Norway (8,100 feet), Kebnekaise in Sweden (6,877 feet), and Halti in Finland (4,478 feet). The Sámi people are Indo-Europeans just like the Vikings were, but they arrived in Scandinavia long before the Vikings did, and are their own group with their own religion and traditions. They are not related to the Inuits or the Siberian tribes. The Kalmar union was created 331 years after the end of the Viking age to counter the German Hanseatic league which dominated trade in the Baltic region at the time. The reason for the guy having such good English is because in Scandinavia, English is mandatory in schools from the 3rd grade. We also never dub English speaking movies or TV shows (we subtitle them) so we hear English daily. The reason the Danish Vikings were the weakest naval fighters is because of the land border with Germany. This gave them easier access to mainland Europe and they didn't have to rely on sea faring as much as the Swedes and Norwegians. The Swedish Vikings traveled southeast along the Dnieper down to the Black sea, and the Volga down to the Caspian sea. Midsummer has probably been celebrated in Scandinavia for a very long time, but the first written sources about it are from the 13th century. It was originally celebrated at the summer solstice, but nowadays it is celebrated on June 23rd in Norway and Denmark, and on the Midsummer's eve which is on the Friday that falls between June 19th and June 25th in Sweden and Finland. No most Scandinavians can't read runes. There is a place in Sweden called Älvdalen (the River Valley) where they speak an Old Norse dialect called Elfdalian, and some of them still used the runic alphabet up until the mid 20th century. "Vi sees neste gang" does indeed mean See you later. In Sweden we say "Vi ses nästa gång" and in Danmark they say "Vi ses næste gang".
"but they arrived in Scandinavia long before the Vikings did" not really true fact due to the inland ice melted from the south on northwards and the indoeuropean tribes migrated along the ice from the south, while the sami tribes migrated from northeast thousands of years later when the inland ice had melted. Who did live in north Europe before the last iceage is not known.
@@Dougie-Lol and who were they then, well if we say the viking age period but that is only semantics still same peoples whose forbearers had lived there for eons that later historians named vikings. Vik = bay in the scandinavian dialects.
@@jarlhedberg435 Of course. I was being funny about it. As vikings is a term used for a very specific time period. And what to become Norwegians & Swedes settled probably 10.000 years before that.
Bysantium(ERE) existed and they very much viewed themselves as Romans and many Scandinavians traveled to Miklagård(Constantinople/Istanbul). It was so common it was written in the first papperwritten law that men in Greece cannot inherit.
The Sami came to Scandinavia thousands of years later then others but settled in areas that were largely empty in the far north. The Sami is originally from the Ural mountains and has only been in Scandinavia for a couple of thousand years and were even 10000 years after other people in the north. In the south it’s been setllements for well over 10000 years.
Most people don’t know or recognise that “Viking” was a job title rather than the name for a unified people. Viking became a catch all term used by foreigners for Scandinavians in that period because they were the Scandinavians that they mostly came into contact with. (I guess the modern equivalent would be calling everyone in the Somali Sea “Pirates”)
The word "viking" comes from the coast of Southern Norway - the area that was called "Vik". In old norse they were called "vikin", meaning "from Vik". These were known for violent raids. It was only later that it became a general term for "vikings", as we know it today.
@@BastianNorW Yes, it just means the people from the coastal fiords...same as the vik in Reykjavik (smoky bay). I think the Old Norse version of 'people belonging to' was ingar, whereas the Old English was ingas...as in the village of Bjornmund's people...Beornmund ingas ham...Birmingham.
@@BastianNorW There are many Norse place names where I live, just north of Liverpool. I'm in Formby, which used to be spelled Fornebei in olden days. It's exactly the same origin as Fornebu by Oslo airport. The whole area is called Sefton (siv tun). Yes, there are lots of marshes and lots of reeds. :)
Keep in mind that he is generelizing a lot as basically every scandinavian country had both what you describe as the stereotypical Viking who would raid on Drakkar or dragonships aswell as tradesmen and explorers who would trade on Knörr ships which were smaller. Also in scandinavia at the time like he mentions it is important to remember that most people would not identify with the modern countries and most likely would state which village they came from or which Jarl they had allegience to. He also says in the video that we don't have many sources for a lot of things especially when it comes to the swedes and he portrays them as very religious/spiritual most likely because of the great temple of Uppsala north of modern Stockholm for which there are sources of but otherwise we know that the famous Viking Ragnar Lodbrok was king of Sweden and was known to raid England and France and his son also a famous Viking known as Björn Ironside raided as far as Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Italy. Enjoy ur content!
He forgets to mention the 1000's of original documents from the time period. Sweden is packed with rune-stones while Norway has very few. The answer to that is probably that the people from the Norwegian part of Scandinavia left for other lands to settle. The prospects for farming in Norway is abysmal and farming was the backbone of the economy at the time. Farming provided food and wealth for the Jarls and was directly responsible for how many men he could have under his rule. In short. Swedish and Danish vikings left for trade, fame and silver and many returned to their lands to write about it. Granted that there were settlements by the Danes and Swedes...sure thing. But the motives for the average Danish, Swedish or Norwegian viking was different.
@@secularnevrosis Fair enough though back in the Viking age Sweden was about as arable as Norway maybe just a little bit more since the southern Scania region were most of the modern farming happens was under Jarls whos allegience lay with the Danish kings, we simply don't know that much about it partly because of the fire of Tre Kronor Borg or castle which burnt down in te begging of the sixteenth century which contained many old manuscripts and illuminated chronicles which were sadly lost :(.
@@gaynor1721 Swedish Vikings did raid England but not as much as Danes or Norweigans just like Danes and Norweigans raided East although it is common to say that only swedes raided East, it's generelizations.
Scotland and parts Island were invaded by Norwegian vikings, Shetland is a viking island as is Orkney. As was Ireland, Dublin being founded by Norsk vikingar. The Swedes went east, through today's Estland across and downwards to today's turkey and other parts of the Med. Even as far as India, apparently. These were called Rus or Rus Kiev by those living in and around Constantinople. Finns were also vikings as were todays northern Dutch, Frisia their language still very similar today. I can read some Dutch as it is quite similar to Scandinavian.
There are runestones in Sweden raised in memory of vikings who died in the west. I bet danes and norwegians died in the east as well, and like someone said earlier, none of the scandinavian countries existed at the time.
The Sami are a Uralic people wandering over from Russia and Finland after the Norse started to settle the area at first the were separate as the lived far to the north east but as the Norse started to form kingdoms and unify they started having issues and since the Norse were the dominant people in the area they quickly made it very clear that they were part of the kingdoms and was expected to pay taxes and so forth, they were not treated well and was left to places were the Norse didn't want to live but then again they could easily have been eradicated and no one would bat an eye in those times it kinda happened a lot and was considered justified and when Christianity arrived we did the same as always happens with religion follow or perish.
There is little proof of any wrongdoings by vikings vs sami people in the viking age from what I know and have read. No eradication proof that I know of.No subjegation. Propably were skirmishes and trouble but there is little known about this. This mainly came later, under christianity where they were treated a lot worse, but so were the pagan norse. There was death penalty for pagan activities, at least for the norse, unsure about the Sami. The vikings did actually trade a lot with them. Also, remember the "norse" were there from 11,000 years ago, the sami, what 1500-2000 years ago?
Many English words originate from Danish words, due to the Danish Vikings who occupied large parts of England, e.g. a word like knife originates from the Danish word kniv, the word is pronounced by placing stress on the K and is pronounced [ˈkniwˀ]
New archeological findings are changing these perceptions quite rapidly. Swedes did, in fact, do a whole lot of raiding. Lindisfarne used to be considered the first major international Viking raid, but new evidence indicates Swedish Vikings raided the Baltics more than 50 years earlier. They kept on going through Eastern Europe all the way down to the Middle East. (And the Asa beliefs were quite bloody).
the 3 groups from who invaded England was Jutes, Angles and Danes (Vikings) , Norweigians and Swedes also invaded the Britis Isles but they are often refered to as Danes in Britain because they were most dominant and ruled England for a while , the Saxons were from the area of the Netherlands and northern Germany
Jutes angles and Saxon we pure blooded white English our descendants of the angles and Saxon know as Anglo Saxon and we pure blooded English our proud of our Anglo Saxon heritage Anglo Saxon blood run through us English like a warm spring and we our proud of that 🏴❤️✝️⚔️
Not "Sammy", "Sámi" (saami), like the "sah" in "Sahara" but tiny bit longer. Try "sah-mee". EDIT: never mind, US pronounces Sahara "wrong" as well... well, it's a "sa" as in "saké", open vowel with clear A sound.
On the question about reading runes, it's not generally something Scandinavians are able to do but it isn't that difficult to learn. The younger Futhark only had 16 letters, so it probably wouldn't take long for you to learn how to read it. I remember having a quick introduction to it in Swedish class where we learned to at least spell our names and read a shorter text. I've forgotten most of it though since it has very little practical use outside of reading old runestones. Old Norse is very different from the modern Scandinavian languages so while you can definitely recognize many words and can make out some sentences, it's generally not intelligible even when transilterated in the Latin script.
The Scandic mountain range stretches from the south of Norway, separating Norway and Sweden and ends in the north of Finland. We hike there several times every summer, wonderful!
Scandinavia (with the Scandes mountain range) was settled by hunter gatherers from the south when the ice cap retracted. The sami arrived much later from the north and mixed with the existing population and other immigrants over time. So there is no obvious difference in appearance today. It's a sensitive topic since "scientists" in the 19th and first half of the 20th century tried to prove that the sami were a different, inferior race by skull measurements.
Hi Connor, a quick way to discover if you have Saxon/Danish* DNA is a physical feature called the Saxon 'split nose'. It's not that obvious to the eye, but if you run your finger over the tip of your nose you will feel it's divided down the middle to produce a split tip. Looking at you I suspect you have this. * Whilst culturally different Saxons and Danes were genetically the same. Vikings from what's now Noway & Sweden are genetically different to Danes. Here in the UK Danish vikings settled in what's now England in the Daneland which comprised the North, part of the midlands and East Anglia. The Norwegian vikings (Norse) settled in Orkney and then, Shetland the Hebrides and down into the Irish sea, particularly the Isle of Mann. They also established settlements on the Irish coast which became the cities of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick. If you visit places like Dublin you will see many girls that my friends and I call 'The Dublin look', a stunning combination of long dark hair with sparkling blue/green eyes which I suspect is a mix of Norse & Celtic DNA. The Swedish vikings (Varangians) established settlements on the East Coast of the Baltic Sea such as Novgorod and Moscow and became the Rus (Russians). They then spread down the river routes to the black sea and Kiev. Swedish vikings even reached Constantinople and became the Varangian Guard of the Byzantime Empire*, basically the Emperor's elite bodyguard. * The Byzantines were the Eastern Roman Empire after it split. You may also be interested in the Joms Vikings, a warrior order of vikings in the East Baltic. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_(people) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jomsvikings en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard
"Hold din kæft" means "shut up" The Danish vikings, were as he said the first to christianize, this happened under Harald Bluetooth, as he brought christianity to Denmark and Norway. This doesnt mean the viking age ended in Denmark before the rest of Scandinavia, as the last viking kings of Denmark was the sons of Sweyn Estridsson, he had atleast 19 children whereas 5 of his children became kings after his death. The last Danish viking raid of England, happened in 1069 by Sweyn and his sons Harald Hen and Canute the Holy, where they tried to conquere back England from William the conqueror. Fun fact about Canute the Holy of Denmark, in parts of Spain, they have a day called Canute's feast day, named after Canute the Holy. Interestingly, Denmark in later years had a navy to be reckoned with, one of the strongest in Europe, after the British of course. It was under the Danish-Norwegian period. This was because of Denmarks interest in controlling the Øresund, and much of the navy got financed by the tolls that ships had to pay to pass through the Sound. Denmark also had to maintain a great navy, because of its rivalry to Sweden, the Hanseatic League, and the on and off rivalries to the British and sometimes also the Dutch
I do think he downplayed the Swedish importance exploring the east. Rurik became the ruler of the Kiev rus and his descendants ruled for hundreds of years. The Rus are people from Roslagen Sweden, hence the name Russia and Russians.
A very basic way of getting an understanding is that the Norwegians had extremely few resources and harsh conditions and therefore much higher incentive to go on raids to survive and prosper, ie. great warriors and raiders. Danes were more well off but there was little free land available and a great degree of family politics, hence higher incentive to explore and settle or conquer, ie great colonizers and conquerors. The Swedes as described had a great period of migration during the end of the Western Roman Empire and subsequently during the viking period Sweden had plenty of free land and resources and very little incentive to raid or conquer as the Norwegians and Danes, there was also less turbulence and troubles which ultimately would lead to more time for religion and trade ie things that you do not have time for if you dont have safe land to live on or enough to survive.
9:31 The highest peak is Galdhøpiggen at 2469 moh.. The mountainrange is the northern part of the Caledonian mountainrange. And it is ansient.. The bedrock under the range is even older then the range tho (at like 2,6 billion years if i remeber..)
People mostly think of Denmark or Norway, but look at the runestone distribuition in scandinavia... Norway has 50 runestones, Denmark has 250 runestones, Sweden has 2500 runestones! Either Swedes just had more literate citizens, or we had many more vikings....
Runestone production doesn't have much to do with vikings, only a small minority mention people who died in an expedition. And literacy is too big of a subject to be judged only by the number of runestones. Among other things because runes were carved on different kind of support and not just stone. But Swedes were undeniably the most prolific runestone producers!
@@AXU67 Where I live (Uppland/Mälardalen) most runestones (~1200) mention their fathers, brothers, or sons going or dieing (mostly to the east or south) on raids or trade missions, almost every stone I see does this...
@@marcusfridh8489 Hard to say as the stones never reference anything christian, but absolutely most were made in the late viking era (Sweden was the last to christianize tho). The church wasn't that happy about them though and smashed many up and incorporated the pieces in the churches foundations to show their triumph of the heathen vikings.. (most churches here today still show the pieces and havent been bricked over).
A lot of have been used as foundations in buildings, churches and the like in Denmark. It’s not as if we have quarries when we can run out and get stones like the rest of Scandinavia. But if We are measuring dicks biggest Viking castle and ship was found in Denmark. Also Denmark became an actual country in the Viking age which included the southern part of what is now Sweden. While we were out invading England you were busy getting high on mushrooms and chipping at stones.
To be finicky: The Celtic culture originated in what is today Austria, expanding from there to the East (Slovenia, Hungary, ...) and to the West. So the Celts in the British Islands were simply immigrated before the Romans conquered and romanized the southern part of Celtic Great Britain, while the Angles and Saxons came only after the Romans left again; the Angles gave England its name, the Saxons Wessex and Sussex, while the Jutes ruled in Kent. 6:25 At the time of Gaius Julius Caesar and Gaius Octavius Augustus the Romans set out to conquer all the Celtic kingdoms and tribes, starting with Gallia and Helvetia, then also the regions to the East (the name of the Roman province Raetia et Vindelica refers to the non-Celtic Rhaetian and the Celtic Vindelici, while the Celtic kingdom of Noricum first allied with Rome, but was then annexed also). The Romans considered the Celts as a major threat to their empire since Celts had sacked Rome twice, and seized any opportunity to remove that threat. The Romans did conquer also the western German regions, but failed in securing their conquests in the northern German plains between rivers Rhine and Elbe. They ruled however for more than 250 years the regions south and west of river Main and south of river Danube (and also some regions north of Main like the Rheingau and parts of the Taunus hills). After the Roman troops left, Alemans and Franks occupied the abolished Roman provinces and used them as base for further expansion, while at the same time mixing with the Romanized-Celtic population. 11:00 Culturally and linguistically the Sami people are completely different from the Germanic tribes; their language belongs to the Uralic family, like the Finnic languages, the Ugric languages (Hungarian) and Samoyedic languages.
25:05 Nobody knows how far back the midsummer tradition goes, but we do know that the may-pole became the symbol of Midsummer in 17th Century Sweden or so which is relatively recent compared to the viking age and pre-viking age. We also know that it was originally a tradition of celebrating fertility and prosperity as they thought that midsummer was a magical day because it never get dark as Midsummer occures during the summer solstice, the longest day of the year pretty much. So in short, the symbolism of midsummer is a more recent idea, but it is most likely a tradition that dates back much, much further. And no... reading runic scripture is damn near impossible. We can decipher the runic letters, know which rune correlates to the correct letters in modern writing. But nobody would know exactly what it means as all the languages up here are developing languages, just like everywhere else. And even if we could read it, there is no telling what they really meant. Heck, even the runic alphabeths has went through many changes long before the roman writing system was implimented.
To me it sounds like he as an accent, except it sounds Swedish to me. 31:07 ~"Vi ses näste gång" (approximately, I am not norwegian). Means "We will see each other next time.".
The way you asked if we actually can read runes 😂❤! No dear, we can't but by your facial expression i guess you seemed to realize how silly your question was right after you said it 🤣. No insult intended just found it really funny. Thanks for the video! Love from Sweden ❤
@@bjørnjacobsengaming the point is that it can be deciphered. That's not always the case with old written languages/letters (not sure what you call it in english).
More correctly is to say that English and the Scandinavian languages, except Finnish, originated from Germanic. The "vikings" had little trouble communicating with the people on the British isles. There had not been enough time for the old Germanic dialects to differentiate into distinct languages.
I mean making fun of our nordic brethren and sisters is a national pastime but in all honesty if others start being annoying to them then the whole defensive sibling energy kicks in pretty hard.
The Norse generally called Sami "Skrælingar", they were kind of considered their own thing, and they had their own mythologies and such just like today, however there was absolutely trade and interaction between the Sami peoples and Norse peoples during the viking age (and before). Some scholars have also suggested that Norse mythology (at least in the versions we have it preserved in in our sources) also incorporated some Sami elements of religion into itself, like the goddess of hunting and skiing, Skaði! But as I said, this is based on the sources we have available, and since a lot of those are post-Christianization, and while they may well preserve much older oral traditions, we can't entirely know for absolute certain what norse religion and ontology really would have looked like. For example, we have stories of Odínn that are incredibly similar to some narratives of Jesus in the Gospels. In Hávamál I believe, a poem in the poetic Edda, Odin sacrifices himself for himself by hanging on a tree and being impaled with his own spear Gugnir, in order to learn runic writing - or more abstractly, perhaps, Wisdom, kind of paralleling the "Word" aka. Jesus in Christian philosophy and mysticism. About the runes: Runes were the script used in Scandinavia (and other places in the Germanic areas) before the introduction of the latin alphabet in the sort of 9th-13th centuries ish. The "birth certificate" of the Danish kingdom (a stone set up to mark the Christianization of the Danish kingdom by king Harald Bluetooth) is a set of Rune stones set up next to a church in the mid-900s by Harald, the alleged "First king of Denmark", and we all (Danish citizens) still have a print of one of those stones on our passports today! (but most of us can't read runes lol)
About strength: There was a mesure called a"mans strength" - this was if you could deadlist about 100 pounds with one arm. Gretter the Strong in Iceland had the strength of six.
Funny man, entertaining for sure The mountain range on the long Norwegian- Swedish border. is kalled KJØLEN , meaning the KEEL (of.a boat). not very high. I think the professor underestimated the Swedish adventures to the East They were substansiel It seems the word rus is Swedish - there you have Russia. Later, in the middle ages, there are Scandinavian soldiers in the army of the Byzantine emperor, There is a nordic name for Konstantinopel , MIKLAGARD, a rather impressive place for us. Not used today, mind you.
I believe he pointed at the center of the Scandinavian Mountain Range, and not Kjølen (the Keel). Kjølen is only a short eastern side-segment of the Scandinavian Mountain Range (which is the most visible mountain range, and runs mainly north-south down through most of the length of Norway), which again is the northern part of the Caledonian Mountain Range above and below sea level. Lyngen Alps, Lofoten, Sunnmøre Alps, Jotunheimen, Hardangervidda, Shetland, Orkneys, the Scottish Highlands with Ben Nevis, etc, are all part of the Caledonian Mountain Range. The Scandinavian Mountain Range is the longest mountain range in Europe (even if you exclude the subsea range), and includes the highest mountains in Northern Europe - of these Norway has 377 peaks higher than 2000 MASL (6,560 feet above sea level), and Sweden has 13 peaks higher than 2000 MASL. Steep slope angles is the main barrier, and the closer you hike towards the coast, the steeper the landscape gets. Norway has a topology of very high density, compared to other countries: Norway has 13,278 mountains (prominence > 100 m), 239,057 islands and 1,732 named fjords, spread out from 58th to 71st parallel North. As a consequence, for more than a thousand years the coastal route (by ship) has been the main transport route in Norway, at least until modern times of cars and airplanes.
The word "Rus" is belived to originate from the people of Roslagen, an area northeast of modern day Stockholm. This was outer archipelago at the time (the land have risen several meters in the area since the early viking age due to post-glacial rebound, the larger stockholm area is unrecognicable on a 1000 year old map, as is many areas in Scandinavia) and the word "Roslagen" means something like "the area/land of rowers". Probably where the Finnish word for Sweden, Routsi, comes from as well (this area is the closest to Finland by sea from Sweden except for in the very north). The Swedish vikings that went east, into modern day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, probably assimilated into the native Slavic culture pretty fast (like the Danes in France), and since the written first hand records are so sparse in these areas due to a lack of central authority at the time, there's been fierce debates about how much of the Russian orgin story should be contributed to Sweden. If you ask a Russian, it should be very little if any, if you ask a Swede, it should be a lot. If you ask a serious schollar they tell you that in 850, the Rus were Scandnavian, but in 1010 they were Slavs.
Tack! So fun to hear your thoughts about this! And no, Samis are not blond, they are dark haired mostly. Runes, some of us understand some, we did learn in school most of us. But very few get the full picture.
I know some of the runic inscriptions, the language is split into elder futhark and younger futhark. I used to be able to understand more letters than I do today but even so I wouldn't understand all of it anyway because it was written in old norse. A lot of words are still pretty similar but you can't just read it letter for letter and hope you understand it. And yeah, as he says Sweden was a bit more peaceful but there were also some extremely tough times. In the 500s there was a big famine because crops failed and of course people looked to the gods. But later in the Viking era I would say most Swedes were traders and farmers instead of actual raiders. And as he says, there is so much more stuff preserved in Sweden compared to Norway and Denmark. I believe that you can combine each and every old Norse runic inscription in the world and Sweden will still be ahead, that's how much stuff here has been preserved.
Edit: Gross simplification (from a Dane) - Danes - Farmers - capable against Monks in England and civilians in France. Swedes - -Fairies- Merchants in the Hanseatic spirit. The threading that stitched the existing Slavic groups into something with a bit more solidarity, that can be traced back to their time. Norwegians - Warriors. The guy that's just bigger and hairier than the rest. They're the lumberjacks that gave the Canadians their 'aboot' (imo). 'Vi ses næste gang' (Danish version of the Norwegian..) basically 'we'll see each other next time' You're spot on, the Germanic tribes held the line in the forests, kept the Romans on 'their side of the river' [Rhine] as it were, just as they did in Scotland - take a Legion and their colours to let them know you mean it.. We traded with Rome, "Danes" supplied them with beef and dairy products via their southern Germanic neighbours. On a reasonable scale. Tacitus didn't quite make it up here but wrote about it. At this time in history - the Swedes were only just done venturing down out of the forests and pushing the Danes out of (todays) Southern Sweden and into the sandbank we live on today. Angles and Jutes didn't just take the trip over because they fancied it, there were "pressures". This is essentially the era that gave us the concepts of "our Nations" in Scandinavia it was the time of the first unifiers. From glorified tribal chieftains to a Royal line that still sits on the throne today. Norway - Nordvej - North way. We call Norwegians 'Nordmænd', literally Northmen. They're the northern explorers than came to L'anse aux meadows. Like the Scots to the English, they're our scary, lairy, hairy-arsed brethren that we'd much rather fight beside than across from. Also the kindest people you'll meet, in Scandinavia (all is relative..). We only converted to keep the "Germans" and Holy Roman Empire out - so yeh, we took that out on the English and French, that's fair!! Swedes went East and South - did quite well lol. Finns and their nomadic northern brothers kinda at their furthest West where they met us lot - the Saami are reindeer herders, they do not like the mountains and fjords of Norway and it seems the Swedish/Finnish borders are kinda the furthest West. Considering the vast Russian and Siberian forests across the whole Northern coast of Russia - it's more likely they've been going back and forth there since we were wandering from Russia to Alaska on foot. I'd imagine they've been minding their own up there in the cold and no one cared because 'fts, it's cold in Siberia!!' Good for Reindeer herding though, frozen steppes.
I think the Canadians got their 'aboot' from the Scots. There are a LOT of them in Canada. But then the Scots may have got it from the Norse. They do, after all, pronounce house pretty much the same as you would say hus and the word for child is bairn.
@@alfresco8442 You're probably right there, it could have ping-ponged across the North Sea a few times before it got to Canada. Makes me think of the old 'Hoots Mon' Winegums advert they ran back in the 90s though: 'There's a moose loose aboot this hoose'. The words that always made me think just how early they got to Scotland is that Kirk and Kist(e) are our Scandi versions of Church and Coffin. Honestly, the proto-Norwegians were likely making their way across and exploring whilst the whole Anglo-Saxon invasion jobbie was going on down South. If there wasn't a bromance, there should have been.
@@rickybuhl3176 Yes, Northern English and Scottish is full it. There are more Norse place names where I live than English ones. Not forgetting things like in the north we often say 'Ey up! as a warning. Stick an 'S' in front of that and you can probably guess where it comes from...although the Danish is different from the Norwegian isn't it?
@@alfresco8442 On paper, yes. We have 3 languages and 3 flags only because we're 3 Nations though. Were we one, they'd be dialects. Danish and Norwegian are relatively similar, Swedish a little Panglish in that have these random English inserts but we can converse in our 'native' languages and understand each other for the most part. At least as well as an Essexboy and a Geordie or Scouser.. They [Swedes] count differently to us though - we still do the old 'four and twenty', where they adopted the 'twenty four'. But let's not get onto numbers, 50 in Danish is 'halvtreds', from halvtredsindstyve - which is basically 'a half short of 3 times 20'. Dunno what smug git came up with that system but he's owed a slap.
2:00 Yes, the Jutes and the Angles (giving England its name) were indeed from what is now Denmark. And the Saxons were their direct neigbour to the south, in Saxony of current northern Germany. However, this was in the 400s, some 400 years before the era called the Viking age. During the Viking era, the Danes invades England again, creating the Dane law around the 800s. That period of intense mixing of Old English and Old Norse (Danish) transformed Old English into a more modern form, closer to today's Scandinvavian languages. After the Normans (also old Vikings) invaded in 1066, this was then mixed with their dialect of Old French, which evolved into modern English.
2:54: At least in Norway, we learn the runic language in school, but most people never think about it again, so we forget. But even if you could read the letters, you still wouldn't know the language.
The Sami and the Norse were completely separate people in the viking era, like Norwegians and Finnish today, but that doesn't mean they always were. We don't know. Here in Oslo, people have been living for more than eleven thousand years and that goes back far before either Sami or Norse culture, but we know very little about them. There is a mythology of King Nor, who united all of Norway in ancient times and gave name to Norway. But we think it's just mythology.
Back in the day the Sami people were nomadic tribes of reindeer herders. They lived everywhere from Ural to modern Norway, rarely settling down for longer than a season.
Sami was originally black haired Asian but today very mixed with everyone else, but you can still see a difference today. The Swedish Midsummer celebration, deeply rooted in various traditions, indeed has connections that go back to the Viking Age and even further, into pagan times. Midsummer festivities mark the summer solstice and have been observed since time immemorial to herald the longest day of the year. These celebrations are rich in rituals that are thought to ensure good health and a prosperous harvest. Historically, Midsummer was intertwined with ancient fertility rites and the worship of sun deities, common among pagan cultures. The Vikings, known for their close connection to nature and the seasons, also celebrated this time, although direct links between Viking rituals and modern Midsummer traditions are more inferential than directly documented. One of the most recognizable symbols of Midsummer in Sweden is the maypole (or Midsummer pole), which is decorated and danced around. This tradition, although widely associated with Midsummer today, does not have a clear origin in Viking or pagan rituals as documented by historical texts. However, it is believed that celebrating the solstice with bonfires and other fertility rituals does have pagan origins, possibly predating the Viking era. The transition from pagan to Christian traditions also saw Midsummer being adapted and incorporated into the Christian calendar, with the celebration of the birth of John the Baptist (St. John's Day) coinciding closely with the summer solstice. Over centuries, the Christian and pagan elements have intermingled, evolving into the uniquely Swedish tradition observed today. In summary, while modern Midsummer celebrations in Sweden are a blend of various historical and cultural influences, they certainly draw upon practices that reach back to the Viking Age and pagan times, celebrating nature, fertility, and the power of the sun.
I kinda figured out what vikings, pirates and ninjas have in common. They're all pirates actually, plundering and killing, stealing. But ninjas being the more sophisticated type maybe. I guess the mountain in Norway back then were called Jotunheimen, taking a guess. And he said "Olav Tryggvason". If you want a norwegian with accent, then just look at Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO leader. Or even Petter Solberg, the rally driver. This guy could have learnt the pronunciation well, or even lived in America for some time. Or as a student. Also "Vi sees neste gang" is "See you next time".
"Norway is like... what everyone wants to be! What do you mean?" He means... he's a libertarian. We do have a few here too and they love to pretend like we have no freedoms here and often end up moving to the US.
I see there is a lot of confusion about The mountain range in Norway and Scandinavia. The mountain range in Norway is the Caledonian Mountain range that begins in the very north of Norway and extends all the way down through Norway, goes down under the North Sea and pops up again in Scotland. It is in fact an ancient crumpling zone between the Baltica Plate and the Laurentia plate (North America, Devon period) and even the Appalachias in the US were once part of this range.
Part Danish 150 years ago. Likely reason for migrating was poverty. Other Scandia farther back, maybe a lot farther back. Gorm the Old .> Harold Bluetooth -> Svein Forkbeard ... maybe my old Danish ancestral line.
Sami people although they have indigenous status they are actually the last people to arrive tn Scandinavia about 2000 years ago , they did live separate and some still do I think, not 100% sure as I am Danish and there were never Sami here , they are not Inuits , Inuits are native to Canada and migrated to Greenland 7-800 years ago, the only Inuits in Scandinavia came in modern day, mainly to Denmark from Greenland , Sami people came from area of Russia like the Scandinavians
Most likely you think of us Danes first because most of the stuff in England is thought to be attacks by Danes and the Dane axe a horrible 2 handed axe that took the isles by storm during the great heathen army
Why would you think the danes were the better Sailors? Look at the coast of Norway, and then how far we settled. Iceland, greenland, orkneys, shetland etc. Also icelanders were "norwegian" pretty much at that time, Leif Eriksson was the son of Eirik the Red who was banished from Norway etc. The danes were big scale, but there is NO doubt who the best sailers were.
it's not that Norweigians were more barbaric but they lasted longer as Vikings you can say, and they lived more secluded before the Viking age, about the Swedes we know more now from dna and findings that Swedes influenced Russia and Ukraine quite a bit, the founded Russia and you find the higest norse dna outside Scandinavia and Iceland in some areas of Russia and Ukraine
The Jutes were from Jutland, the Angels from approximately today's Schleswig Holstein, and the Saxons from today's Niedersachsen (just South-Southwest of Holstein). And the Angels and Saxons = the Anglo-Saxons from 500-700 😊 The Jutes? The went back home again untill the Viking age 🤭
No the Swedish Vikings didn't do much, just founded "Russia" (Kievan Rus) and were life guards in Konstantinopel. They ventured east. Also, midsommar is based on very old traditions. And some can read runes, it's not common knowledge but they are readable.
I always find it interesting when Norway is portrayed as the youngest sibling, but the fact is that Norway and Denmark are about the same age as kingdoms and Sweden as a kingdom didn't exist until after the viking age.
In general, we can't read runes, the Icelandics are probably best at that skill. The Swedish Vikings (and their decendants) were known as "Rus" and founded the Kievan Rus empire, so I guess one can blame us for Russia... One thing to remember is that "Viking" means Explorer/Invader/Raider/Settler/Trader/Fighter, most Scandinavians were not Vikings, they had other trades such as Farmers, Smiths, Peasants, etc. Viking was a work title, not a race thing. The Sami are originally of a Finnish-Urgic decent, and blonde hair/blue eyes were (and still is) not very common.
No, we can't read runes. We can however, translate runes. Would be cool if I could read and write in rune but it was never a class while I was in school.
10:35 The Sami were not part of Viking culture, at all. And not very blond either. That blond hair color stems from later mixing with other Scandinavians (including Finns). For the same reason, many Norwegians have a somewhat asian look, and Swedes and Finns often have (visible) Sami genetics as well. In Denmark this is more about Greenland, rather than Sami, for obvious reasons
the Sami, the Fins and estonian people are a different kind of people. Cultural and language based. The have simalarity with hungarians and oegoeren a tribe in northern russia. Scandinavia are 3 country's Denmark Sweden and Norway. Iceland is somewhat scandivanian. Finland belongs to the northern counrty group with iceland, norway, sweden and denmark
Interesting, i am a Swede and i eat horse, i will say it like "toppings, thats what google translate sais" you make a sandwish with cheese and a slice of turkey/ham or horse and it is fabulous. Edit. Uppsala is the name today, East Aros or Ubsola in the old days, dont remember what came first, but it was like the Vatican or Mecca for scandinavian paganism. I might be wrong but my niece is a viking historian and she told me this and i belive her.
Norway started what we calls "Vikingtiden" It was the Norwegians who raided Lindisfarne, which is considered the start. Yes there had been Danes in the fartest South parts but Lindisfarne were the Norwegians.
@@kristianpedersen1163Norwegian and Danish vikings had different colours on their sails and often different clothing. The people at Lindisfarne wrote down that they were attacked by northmen/norsemen which is what the norwegian vikings were called and that they came from the north (which wouldn't make sense if they were danes). The danish ones were called danes as in Danelaw. Norwegians generally attacked the northern parts of England (north of York) while the danish attacked south.
3:23 you said orkney and shetland right? thats where the nornir language developed from norse and gaelic (its extinct as far as i know but it was supposedly a mix between local gaelic and old norse linguistics and its not certain how the languages were combined) and well vikings did go as far as dublin - well it was actually norse at some point. a tribe i believe was called Laigin or Lind Duachaill ... since Dubh Linn, Duibh Linn and Dubh Lind are old names for Dublin itself, i believe it was the latter one ... where the Laginn, Lagin or Laigin settled all of Leinster and yes even the scottish had contact... and before them even the picts, they supposedly wiped out the picts actually or brought them close to extinction, before the dal riada came with the irish gaelic kings and merged with the last of the picts. founding the kingdom of scotland, or Alban - a link could be found here in arthurian legend to Albyon or more commonly Albion the celtic and english name for the land arthur sought to build and in later times the name for Scotland and even England itself, probably in honor of his legend like the red dragon is associated with Welsh lore (another branch of celtic which is commonly thought to be the original british celt)
The language in Norway, Sweden and Denmark is quite similar. We can all understand eachother. But the Norwegians are generally better speaking english. Norwegian is closer to english tonally than swedish and danish. When it comes to sea and boats, the norwegians are best. That is no mystery when you see the lands coastline
Mountain range is called The Scandinavian Peninsula! It even goes as far north as Finland. So when somebody say Finland is not part of Scandinavia they are both right and wrong at the same time :D
about the runes is kindof similar to some letters today, but the norse language isn't that similar to the modern language. so even if we can understand the leters we don't understand unless we learn the old language
Swedish vikings travelled deep into Russia, Ukraine and some ended up in Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey), the descendants of the Eastern Roman Empire. They used longboats able to travel narrow shallow waters and being hauled over patches of land connecting the rivers. A Norwegian viking crew sailed to Iceland, Greenland and continued West until they reached New Foundland in present day Canada, +400 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean. Their settlement was shortlived; only one settlement was discovered in the 1960s. The vikings called the American continent 'Vinland'
Swedish / Finnish vikings
@@filipohman7277???
@@Greksallad Ja o Vad me det Greksallad???
The most badass Swedish vikings was danish :o)
@@HeineHard And the most badass Danish viking was a Swede :o
Swedes, Norwegians and danish are just messing with eachother. It's essentially the same people, distinguishing it is like splitting hairs.
Yes the same german Tribeca mixed with eatern Tribes
Danes not Danish. And no not at all 😂
All love to my Norewegian and Swedish brothers and sisters ... along with the Finns and Icelandics ...
what about the Faroese then?? på Færøerne taler de skam ikke dansk min ven... lol jk you probably know but still, had to say it.. ;)
The map he show was like 100 year after the viking age officially stooped.During the viking age there was between 20 and later about 15 kingdoms in Nordic countries. Denmark was the only country of today that existed even at the tale end of the viking age.
Svea kingdom, what later would merge with göta kingdom (pretty much right after, to make Sweden did exist, but was yet to be Sweden.
Skåne kingdom merged with Denmark right after the end as well. As well as the other smaller nation that did colonize England already prior to the viking age.
Viking age is really sort of a misnomer. What happen was that during that period there was mostly peaceful relationship internally in Nordic country and all the areas explored outwards. The viking age is really defined by the beginning of raids on England and the end of with the battle of Hastings.
Its a lot more complicated than barbarians raiding England. In reality it was more of a English civil war where one part got supported from Denmark and the other part got supported from Rom. Most of the written words have today is from the Roman side.
Due to many factors the king of Denmark lossed quite a lot of power after 1066 and as sort of a peace deal he converted to Christianity (this was probobly a false conversion). Ass a result of that Danish king become accepted in to the European community allowing Denmark to basically just collect all the minor countries around with hardly any resistance. So did Svea-kingdom and eventually Norway. After a very short period all other Nordic state and kingdoms was absorbed into those 3.
Basically as a result of that the three kingdoms or Norden is the same 3 kingdoms as exist today... Well plus Finland that is really basically a break away state of Sweden (or .. technically Russia).
Because the Three kingdoms was established and reach basically the full coverage of nordic area so fast after the end of the viking age, those are typically refereed of as the three groups. And this is sort of how history is tought.
In reality its way more complicated.
What is current day Germany "converted" to Christianity a bit prior to the Nordic countries, hence forming the Holy roman empire that did a lot of war with Nordic countries. (Denmark did lose a bit of territory that there live danes to this day but still is party of Germany.
So basically nations that was christian and catholic was only alowed to go to war with each other if Rome was on there side. Hence what would become the Holy roman empire basically just occupy the Vatican to dictate the rules.
So the conversion of Nordic countries and the peace in current day UK created a sort of quasi Roman super block.
Basically in those nations the church was over the king, and the church in turn was controlled by the Vatican that inturn was occupied by basically what we would call Germany. During this time Nordic countries also created a super block called Kamlar union.
Then a dude popped up called Luther and claimed that the king was over the pope. Hence the roman super block split in two, and then there was quite a bit of war between the new blocks
The point is, the Nordic countries really didn´t change that much. It was all just propaganda. And current day UK was formed mostly by the nordic occupation. There is something like a 40-30-30 spreed (hence Robin hood speak french)
Hi, Connor! I'm Mike from Sweden, and I'm gonna try and answer your questions that this video didn't.
"Velkommen" is Welcome in both Norwegian and Danish (Välkommen in Swedish).
The Saxons were from northern Germany, not from Denmark, and therefor not Vikings.
The Vikings and the Romans never met because the Viking age started after the fall of the Roman Empire. The Romans spoken of in this video are the people of the Holy Roman Empire (ca 800-1806).
The name of the mountain range is the Scandinavian mountains. It goes through most of Norway, the westernmost parts of middle and northern Sweden, and the north-westernmost part of Finland. Here you can fins all three countries' tallest mountains: Galdhøpiggen in Norway (8,100 feet), Kebnekaise in Sweden (6,877 feet), and Halti in Finland (4,478 feet).
The Sámi people are Indo-Europeans just like the Vikings were, but they arrived in Scandinavia long before the Vikings did, and are their own group with their own religion and traditions. They are not related to the Inuits or the Siberian tribes.
The Kalmar union was created 331 years after the end of the Viking age to counter the German Hanseatic league which dominated trade in the Baltic region at the time.
The reason for the guy having such good English is because in Scandinavia, English is mandatory in schools from the 3rd grade. We also never dub English speaking movies or TV shows (we subtitle them) so we hear English daily.
The reason the Danish Vikings were the weakest naval fighters is because of the land border with Germany. This gave them easier access to mainland Europe and they didn't have to rely on sea faring as much as the Swedes and Norwegians.
The Swedish Vikings traveled southeast along the Dnieper down to the Black sea, and the Volga down to the Caspian sea.
Midsummer has probably been celebrated in Scandinavia for a very long time, but the first written sources about it are from the 13th century. It was originally celebrated at the summer solstice, but nowadays it is celebrated on June 23rd in Norway and Denmark, and on the Midsummer's eve which is on the Friday that falls between June 19th and June 25th in Sweden and Finland.
No most Scandinavians can't read runes. There is a place in Sweden called Älvdalen (the River Valley) where they speak an Old Norse dialect called Elfdalian, and some of them still used the runic alphabet up until the mid 20th century.
"Vi sees neste gang" does indeed mean See you later. In Sweden we say "Vi ses nästa gång" and in Danmark they say "Vi ses næste gang".
"but they arrived in Scandinavia long before the Vikings did" not really true fact due to the inland ice melted from the south on northwards and the indoeuropean tribes migrated along the ice from the south, while the sami tribes migrated from northeast thousands of years later when the inland ice had melted. Who did live in north Europe before the last iceage is not known.
@@jarlhedberg435He's right about arriving in Scandinavia before the Vikings though. Just not before the Norwegians & Swedes.
@@Dougie-Lol and who were they then, well if we say the viking age period but that is only semantics still same peoples whose forbearers had lived there for eons that later historians named vikings. Vik = bay in the scandinavian dialects.
@@jarlhedberg435 Of course. I was being funny about it. As vikings is a term used for a very specific time period. And what to become Norwegians & Swedes settled probably 10.000 years before that.
Bysantium(ERE) existed and they very much viewed themselves as Romans and many Scandinavians traveled to Miklagård(Constantinople/Istanbul). It was so common it was written in the first papperwritten law that men in Greece cannot inherit.
The Sami came to Scandinavia thousands of years later then others but settled in areas that were largely empty in the far north. The Sami is originally from the Ural mountains and has only been in Scandinavia for a couple of thousand years and were even 10000 years after other people in the north. In the south it’s been setllements for well over 10000 years.
Yes, they are mongols. Swedes came from the south.
I did not know that! Thank you 🥰
Most people don’t know or recognise that “Viking” was a job title rather than the name for a unified people. Viking became a catch all term used by foreigners for Scandinavians in that period because they were the Scandinavians that they mostly came into contact with.
(I guess the modern equivalent would be calling everyone in the Somali Sea “Pirates”)
The word "viking" comes from the coast of Southern Norway - the area that was called "Vik". In old norse they were called "vikin", meaning "from Vik". These were known for violent raids. It was only later that it became a general term for "vikings", as we know it today.
@@BastianNorW Yes, it just means the people from the coastal fiords...same as the vik in Reykjavik (smoky bay). I think the Old Norse version of 'people belonging to' was ingar, whereas the Old English was ingas...as in the village of Bjornmund's people...Beornmund ingas ham...Birmingham.
@alfresco8442 That's very true. It still means the same in Norwegian today - eg. a person from the county of Finnmark is called a "Finnmarking"
@@BastianNorW There are many Norse place names where I live, just north of Liverpool. I'm in Formby, which used to be spelled Fornebei in olden days. It's exactly the same origin as Fornebu by Oslo airport. The whole area is called Sefton (siv tun).
Yes, there are lots of marshes and lots of reeds. :)
@@alfresco8442 Exactly
Keep in mind that he is generelizing a lot as basically every scandinavian country had both what you describe as the stereotypical Viking who would raid on Drakkar or dragonships aswell as tradesmen and explorers who would trade on Knörr ships which were smaller. Also in scandinavia at the time like he mentions it is important to remember that most people would not identify with the modern countries and most likely would state which village they came from or which Jarl they had allegience to. He also says in the video that we don't have many sources for a lot of things especially when it comes to the swedes and he portrays them as very religious/spiritual most likely because of the great temple of Uppsala north of modern Stockholm for which there are sources of but otherwise we know that the famous Viking Ragnar Lodbrok was king of Sweden and was known to raid England and France and his son also a famous Viking known as Björn Ironside raided as far as Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Italy. Enjoy ur content!
He forgets to mention the 1000's of original documents from the time period. Sweden is packed with rune-stones while Norway has very few. The answer to that is probably that the people from the Norwegian part of Scandinavia left for other lands to settle. The prospects for farming in Norway is abysmal and farming was the backbone of the economy at the time. Farming provided food and wealth for the Jarls and was directly responsible for how many men he could have under his rule.
In short. Swedish and Danish vikings left for trade, fame and silver and many returned to their lands to write about it. Granted that there were settlements by the Danes and Swedes...sure thing. But the motives for the average Danish, Swedish or Norwegian viking was different.
@@secularnevrosis Fair enough though back in the Viking age Sweden was about as arable as Norway maybe just a little bit more since the southern Scania region were most of the modern farming happens was under Jarls whos allegience lay with the Danish kings, we simply don't know that much about it partly because of the fire of Tre Kronor Borg or castle which burnt down in te begging of the sixteenth century which contained many old manuscripts and illuminated chronicles which were sadly lost :(.
Ragnar was king of the Danes
Swedish Vikings didn't raid England. It was the Danes. Here in the north of England, we lived under Danelaw.
@@gaynor1721 Swedish Vikings did raid England but not as much as Danes or Norweigans just like Danes and Norweigans raided East although it is common to say that only swedes raided East, it's generelizations.
Scotland and parts Island were invaded by Norwegian vikings, Shetland is a viking island as is Orkney. As was Ireland, Dublin being founded by Norsk vikingar. The Swedes went east, through today's Estland across and downwards to today's turkey and other parts of the Med. Even as far as India, apparently. These were called Rus or Rus Kiev by those living in and around Constantinople. Finns were also vikings as were todays northern Dutch, Frisia their language still very similar today. I can read some Dutch as it is quite similar to Scandinavian.
There are runestones in Sweden raised in memory of vikings who died in the west. I bet danes and norwegians died in the east as well, and like someone said earlier, none of the scandinavian countries existed at the time.
The Sami are a Uralic people wandering over from Russia and Finland after the Norse started to settle the area at first the were separate as the lived far to the north east but as the Norse started to form kingdoms and unify they started having issues and since the Norse were the dominant people in the area they quickly made it very clear that they were part of the kingdoms and was expected to pay taxes and so forth, they were not treated well and was left to places were the Norse didn't want to live but then again they could easily have been eradicated and no one would bat an eye in those times it kinda happened a lot and was considered justified and when Christianity arrived we did the same as always happens with religion follow or perish.
There is little proof of any wrongdoings by vikings vs sami people in the viking age from what I know and have read. No eradication proof that I know of.No subjegation. Propably were skirmishes and trouble but there is little known about this. This mainly came later, under christianity where they were treated a lot worse, but so were the pagan norse. There was death penalty for pagan activities, at least for the norse, unsure about the Sami. The vikings did actually trade a lot with them. Also, remember the "norse" were there from 11,000 years ago, the sami, what 1500-2000 years ago?
Many English words originate from Danish words, due to the Danish Vikings who occupied large parts of England, e.g. a word like knife originates from the Danish word kniv, the word is pronounced by placing stress on the K and is pronounced [ˈkniwˀ]
New archeological findings are changing these perceptions quite rapidly. Swedes did, in fact, do a whole lot of raiding. Lindisfarne used to be considered the first major international Viking raid, but new evidence indicates Swedish Vikings raided the Baltics more than 50 years earlier. They kept on going through Eastern Europe all the way down to the Middle East. (And the Asa beliefs were quite bloody).
the 3 groups from who invaded England was Jutes, Angles and Danes (Vikings) , Norweigians and Swedes also invaded the Britis Isles but they are often refered to as Danes in Britain because they were most dominant and ruled England for a while , the Saxons were from the area of the Netherlands and northern Germany
Jutes angles and Saxon we pure blooded white English our descendants of the angles and Saxon know as Anglo Saxon and we pure blooded English our proud of our Anglo Saxon heritage Anglo Saxon blood run through us English like a warm spring and we our proud of that 🏴❤️✝️⚔️
Not "Sammy", "Sámi" (saami), like the "sah" in "Sahara" but tiny bit longer. Try "sah-mee".
EDIT: never mind, US pronounces Sahara "wrong" as well... well, it's a "sa" as in "saké", open vowel with clear A sound.
He said right in his own language..so dont understand the point you making..in our language swedish it's called same,but he's not talking swedish
On the question about reading runes, it's not generally something Scandinavians are able to do but it isn't that difficult to learn. The younger Futhark only had 16 letters, so it probably wouldn't take long for you to learn how to read it.
I remember having a quick introduction to it in Swedish class where we learned to at least spell our names and read a shorter text. I've forgotten most of it though since it has very little practical use outside of reading old runestones.
Old Norse is very different from the modern Scandinavian languages so while you can definitely recognize many words and can make out some sentences, it's generally not intelligible even when transilterated in the Latin script.
The Scandic mountain range stretches from the south of Norway, separating Norway and Sweden and ends in the north of Finland. We hike there several times every summer, wonderful!
Love it ❤ Greetings from Norway ❤
Scandinavia (with the Scandes mountain range) was settled by hunter gatherers from the south when the ice cap retracted. The sami arrived much later from the north and mixed with the existing population and other immigrants over time. So there is no obvious difference in appearance today. It's a sensitive topic since "scientists" in the 19th and first half of the 20th century tried to prove that the sami were a different, inferior race by skull measurements.
Hi Connor, a quick way to discover if you have Saxon/Danish* DNA is a physical feature called the Saxon 'split nose'.
It's not that obvious to the eye, but if you run your finger over the tip of your nose you will feel it's divided down the middle to produce a split tip. Looking at you I suspect you have this.
* Whilst culturally different Saxons and Danes were genetically the same. Vikings from what's now Noway & Sweden are genetically different to Danes.
Here in the UK Danish vikings settled in what's now England in the Daneland which comprised the North, part of the midlands and East Anglia. The Norwegian vikings (Norse) settled in Orkney and then, Shetland the Hebrides and down into the Irish sea, particularly the Isle of Mann. They also established settlements on the Irish coast which became the cities of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork and Limerick.
If you visit places like Dublin you will see many girls that my friends and I call 'The Dublin look', a stunning combination of long dark hair with sparkling blue/green eyes which I suspect is a mix of Norse & Celtic DNA.
The Swedish vikings (Varangians) established settlements on the East Coast of the Baltic Sea such as Novgorod and Moscow and became the Rus (Russians). They then spread down the river routes to the black sea and Kiev. Swedish vikings even reached Constantinople and became the Varangian Guard of the Byzantime Empire*, basically the Emperor's elite bodyguard.
* The Byzantines were the Eastern Roman Empire after it split.
You may also be interested in the Joms Vikings, a warrior order of vikings in the East Baltic.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_(people)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jomsvikings
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangian_Guard
"Vi sees neste gang" = "See you next time"
or in the correct way, which is danish btw. " Vi ses næste gang" 😘😘❤🤍
@@Navy-Seal-Ninja90Vi ses nästa gång, prata korrekt, danskjävel.
@@英語わかりません jep😁😁 det gør vi
@@英語わかりません LOL, nice.
@@英語わかりません Ha ha, danskepølser og svenskefaen. Glad i dere da 🥰
"Hold din kæft" means "shut up"
The Danish vikings, were as he said the first to christianize, this happened under Harald Bluetooth, as he brought christianity to Denmark and Norway. This doesnt mean the viking age ended in Denmark before the rest of Scandinavia, as the last viking kings of Denmark was the sons of Sweyn Estridsson, he had atleast 19 children whereas 5 of his children became kings after his death.
The last Danish viking raid of England, happened in 1069 by Sweyn and his sons Harald Hen and Canute the Holy, where they tried to conquere back England from William the conqueror.
Fun fact about Canute the Holy of Denmark, in parts of Spain, they have a day called Canute's feast day, named after Canute the Holy.
Interestingly, Denmark in later years had a navy to be reckoned with, one of the strongest in Europe, after the British of course. It was under the Danish-Norwegian period. This was because of Denmarks interest in controlling the Øresund, and much of the navy got financed by the tolls that ships had to pay to pass through the Sound. Denmark also had to maintain a great navy, because of its rivalry to Sweden, the Hanseatic League, and the on and off rivalries to the British and sometimes also the Dutch
nope. It means; Shut your mouth
I do think he downplayed the Swedish importance exploring the east. Rurik became the ruler of the Kiev rus and his descendants ruled for hundreds of years. The Rus are people from Roslagen Sweden, hence the name Russia and Russians.
9:35 That mountain range is called Skanderna (from southern Norway, via northern Sweden and into Finland).
A very basic way of getting an understanding is that the Norwegians had extremely few resources and harsh conditions and therefore much higher incentive to go on raids to survive and prosper, ie. great warriors and raiders.
Danes were more well off but there was little free land available and a great degree of family politics, hence higher incentive to explore and settle or conquer, ie great colonizers and conquerors.
The Swedes as described had a great period of migration during the end of the Western Roman Empire and subsequently during the viking period Sweden had plenty of free land and resources and very little incentive to raid or conquer as the Norwegians and Danes, there was also less turbulence and troubles which ultimately would lead to more time for religion and trade ie things that you do not have time for if you dont have safe land to live on or enough to survive.
9:31 The highest peak is Galdhøpiggen at 2469 moh..
The mountainrange is the northern part of the Caledonian mountainrange. And it is ansient.. The bedrock under the range is even older then the range tho (at like 2,6 billion years if i remeber..)
People mostly think of Denmark or Norway, but look at the runestone distribuition in scandinavia... Norway has 50 runestones, Denmark has 250 runestones, Sweden has 2500 runestones! Either Swedes just had more literate citizens, or we had many more vikings....
Runestone production doesn't have much to do with vikings, only a small minority mention people who died in an expedition. And literacy is too big of a subject to be judged only by the number of runestones. Among other things because runes were carved on different kind of support and not just stone. But Swedes were undeniably the most prolific runestone producers!
@@AXU67 Where I live (Uppland/Mälardalen) most runestones (~1200) mention their fathers, brothers, or sons going or dieing (mostly to the east or south) on raids or trade missions, almost every stone I see does this...
However the most of the runestones are Christian ones
@@marcusfridh8489 Hard to say as the stones never reference anything christian, but absolutely most were made in the late viking era (Sweden was the last to christianize tho). The church wasn't that happy about them though and smashed many up and incorporated the pieces in the churches foundations to show their triumph of the heathen vikings.. (most churches here today still show the pieces and havent been bricked over).
A lot of have been used as foundations in buildings, churches and the like in Denmark. It’s not as if we have quarries when we can run out and get stones like the rest of Scandinavia.
But if We are measuring dicks biggest Viking castle and ship was found in Denmark. Also Denmark became an actual country in the Viking age which included the southern part of what is now Sweden. While we were out invading England you were busy getting high on mushrooms and chipping at stones.
To be finicky: The Celtic culture originated in what is today Austria, expanding from there to the East (Slovenia, Hungary, ...) and to the West. So the Celts in the British Islands were simply immigrated before the Romans conquered and romanized the southern part of Celtic Great Britain, while the Angles and Saxons came only after the Romans left again; the Angles gave England its name, the Saxons Wessex and Sussex, while the Jutes ruled in Kent.
6:25 At the time of Gaius Julius Caesar and Gaius Octavius Augustus the Romans set out to conquer all the Celtic kingdoms and tribes, starting with Gallia and Helvetia, then also the regions to the East (the name of the Roman province Raetia et Vindelica refers to the non-Celtic Rhaetian and the Celtic Vindelici, while the Celtic kingdom of Noricum first allied with Rome, but was then annexed also). The Romans considered the Celts as a major threat to their empire since Celts had sacked Rome twice, and seized any opportunity to remove that threat. The Romans did conquer also the western German regions, but failed in securing their conquests in the northern German plains between rivers Rhine and Elbe. They ruled however for more than 250 years the regions south and west of river Main and south of river Danube (and also some regions north of Main like the Rheingau and parts of the Taunus hills). After the Roman troops left, Alemans and Franks occupied the abolished Roman provinces and used them as base for further expansion, while at the same time mixing with the Romanized-Celtic population.
11:00 Culturally and linguistically the Sami people are completely different from the Germanic tribes; their language belongs to the Uralic family, like the Finnic languages, the Ugric languages (Hungarian) and Samoyedic languages.
25:05 Nobody knows how far back the midsummer tradition goes, but we do know that the may-pole became the symbol of Midsummer in 17th Century Sweden or so which is relatively recent compared to the viking age and pre-viking age. We also know that it was originally a tradition of celebrating fertility and prosperity as they thought that midsummer was a magical day because it never get dark as Midsummer occures during the summer solstice, the longest day of the year pretty much.
So in short, the symbolism of midsummer is a more recent idea, but it is most likely a tradition that dates back much, much further.
And no... reading runic scripture is damn near impossible. We can decipher the runic letters, know which rune correlates to the correct letters in modern writing. But nobody would know exactly what it means as all the languages up here are developing languages, just like everywhere else. And even if we could read it, there is no telling what they really meant. Heck, even the runic alphabeths has went through many changes long before the roman writing system was implimented.
To me it sounds like he as an accent, except it sounds Swedish to me. 31:07 ~"Vi ses näste gång" (approximately, I am not norwegian). Means "We will see each other next time.".
The way you asked if we actually can read runes 😂❤! No dear, we can't but by your facial expression i guess you seemed to realize how silly your question was right after you said it 🤣. No insult intended just found it really funny. Thanks for the video! Love from Sweden ❤
But it can be read - just not by ordinary people :-)
Some of us can...
Yes, some Scandinavians can also read Chinese, but the majority can't and I would probably say that is the norm, your point is?
@@bjørnjacobsengaming the point is that it can be deciphered. That's not always the case with old written languages/letters (not sure what you call it in english).
@@ellenstergaardgravesen1011 Norsk, Svensk eller Dansk ?
We have 3 viking graves on our farm and runestone at the end of one our fields. Love it!
The reason why Danish people today speaks English so nicely, is the english spoken word evolved from Norse/Danish...We mumble in the same temp!!!
More correctly is to say that English and the Scandinavian languages, except Finnish, originated from Germanic. The "vikings" had little trouble communicating with the people on the British isles. There had not been enough time for the old Germanic dialects to differentiate into distinct languages.
Swede here. He's pretty much spot on. We are a bunch of lazy pagan/buddhist horse eaters. :D
Vi vil have skåne tilbage. djævle svensker
Man, things got stiff when we became Christians. The Asatro was so cool... minus all the blood sacrifices.
I mean making fun of our nordic brethren and sisters is a national pastime but in all honesty if others start being annoying to them then the whole defensive sibling energy kicks in pretty hard.
The Scandinavian mountains, highest peak is Galdhøpiggen at 2469 meters, the mountain range varies a lot in height.
The Norse generally called Sami "Skrælingar", they were kind of considered their own thing, and they had their own mythologies and such just like today, however there was absolutely trade and interaction between the Sami peoples and Norse peoples during the viking age (and before). Some scholars have also suggested that Norse mythology (at least in the versions we have it preserved in in our sources) also incorporated some Sami elements of religion into itself, like the goddess of hunting and skiing, Skaði!
But as I said, this is based on the sources we have available, and since a lot of those are post-Christianization, and while they may well preserve much older oral traditions, we can't entirely know for absolute certain what norse religion and ontology really would have looked like. For example, we have stories of Odínn that are incredibly similar to some narratives of Jesus in the Gospels. In Hávamál I believe, a poem in the poetic Edda, Odin sacrifices himself for himself by hanging on a tree and being impaled with his own spear Gugnir, in order to learn runic writing - or more abstractly, perhaps, Wisdom, kind of paralleling the "Word" aka. Jesus in Christian philosophy and mysticism.
About the runes: Runes were the script used in Scandinavia (and other places in the Germanic areas) before the introduction of the latin alphabet in the sort of 9th-13th centuries ish. The "birth certificate" of the Danish kingdom (a stone set up to mark the Christianization of the Danish kingdom by king Harald Bluetooth) is a set of Rune stones set up next to a church in the mid-900s by Harald, the alleged "First king of Denmark", and we all (Danish citizens) still have a print of one of those stones on our passports today! (but most of us can't read runes lol)
About strength: There was a mesure called a"mans strength" - this was if you could deadlist about 100 pounds with one arm. Gretter the Strong in Iceland had the strength of six.
Hi Connor, new sub from Manchester England, I live in Dane bank, Denton named after the Vikings. Let's do some pillaging 🪓
A lot of my English ancestry is from York & North Yorkshire generally. Would not be at all surprised to find I have Danish genetics haha
I think my surname is Anglo Saxon 💪
His info is so generalizing it almost borders on being worthlessly incaccurate. He's definitely not entirely wrong about everything though.
Funny man, entertaining for sure The mountain range on the long Norwegian- Swedish border. is kalled KJØLEN , meaning the KEEL (of.a boat). not very high. I think the professor underestimated the Swedish adventures to the East They were substansiel It seems the word rus is Swedish - there you have Russia. Later, in the middle ages, there are Scandinavian soldiers in the army of the Byzantine emperor, There is a nordic name for Konstantinopel , MIKLAGARD, a rather impressive place for us. Not used today, mind you.
I believe he pointed at the center of the Scandinavian Mountain Range, and not Kjølen (the Keel). Kjølen is only a short eastern side-segment of the Scandinavian Mountain Range (which is the most visible mountain range, and runs mainly north-south down through most of the length of Norway), which again is the northern part of the Caledonian Mountain Range above and below sea level. Lyngen Alps, Lofoten, Sunnmøre Alps, Jotunheimen, Hardangervidda, Shetland, Orkneys, the Scottish Highlands with Ben Nevis, etc, are all part of the Caledonian Mountain Range.
The Scandinavian Mountain Range is the longest mountain range in Europe (even if you exclude the subsea range), and includes the highest mountains in Northern Europe - of these Norway has 377 peaks higher than 2000 MASL (6,560 feet above sea level), and Sweden has 13 peaks higher than 2000 MASL. Steep slope angles is the main barrier, and the closer you hike towards the coast, the steeper the landscape gets.
Norway has a topology of very high density, compared to other countries: Norway has 13,278 mountains (prominence > 100 m), 239,057 islands and 1,732 named fjords, spread out from 58th to 71st parallel North. As a consequence, for more than a thousand years the coastal route (by ship) has been the main transport route in Norway, at least until modern times of cars and airplanes.
The word "Rus" is belived to originate from the people of Roslagen, an area northeast of modern day Stockholm. This was outer archipelago at the time (the land have risen several meters in the area since the early viking age due to post-glacial rebound, the larger stockholm area is unrecognicable on a 1000 year old map, as is many areas in Scandinavia) and the word "Roslagen" means something like "the area/land of rowers". Probably where the Finnish word for Sweden, Routsi, comes from as well (this area is the closest to Finland by sea from Sweden except for in the very north).
The Swedish vikings that went east, into modern day Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, probably assimilated into the native Slavic culture pretty fast (like the Danes in France), and since the written first hand records are so sparse in these areas due to a lack of central authority at the time, there's been fierce debates about how much of the Russian orgin story should be contributed to Sweden. If you ask a Russian, it should be very little if any, if you ask a Swede, it should be a lot. If you ask a serious schollar they tell you that in 850, the Rus were Scandnavian, but in 1010 they were Slavs.
Tack! So fun to hear your thoughts about this!
And no, Samis are not blond, they are dark haired mostly.
Runes, some of us understand some, we did learn in school most of us. But very few get the full picture.
The Caledonian mountain chain is a ancient continent collision and today stretches from norway all down through spain.
I know some of the runic inscriptions, the language is split into elder futhark and younger futhark. I used to be able to understand more letters than I do today but even so I wouldn't understand all of it anyway because it was written in old norse. A lot of words are still pretty similar but you can't just read it letter for letter and hope you understand it.
And yeah, as he says Sweden was a bit more peaceful but there were also some extremely tough times. In the 500s there was a big famine because crops failed and of course people looked to the gods. But later in the Viking era I would say most Swedes were traders and farmers instead of actual raiders.
And as he says, there is so much more stuff preserved in Sweden compared to Norway and Denmark. I believe that you can combine each and every old Norse runic inscription in the world and Sweden will still be ahead, that's how much stuff here has been preserved.
Edit: Gross simplification (from a Dane) - Danes - Farmers - capable against Monks in England and civilians in France. Swedes - -Fairies- Merchants in the Hanseatic spirit. The threading that stitched the existing Slavic groups into something with a bit more solidarity, that can be traced back to their time. Norwegians - Warriors. The guy that's just bigger and hairier than the rest. They're the lumberjacks that gave the Canadians their 'aboot' (imo).
'Vi ses næste gang' (Danish version of the Norwegian..) basically 'we'll see each other next time'
You're spot on, the Germanic tribes held the line in the forests, kept the Romans on 'their side of the river' [Rhine] as it were, just as they did in Scotland - take a Legion and their colours to let them know you mean it.. We traded with Rome, "Danes" supplied them with beef and dairy products via their southern Germanic neighbours. On a reasonable scale. Tacitus didn't quite make it up here but wrote about it. At this time in history - the Swedes were only just done venturing down out of the forests and pushing the Danes out of (todays) Southern Sweden and into the sandbank we live on today. Angles and Jutes didn't just take the trip over because they fancied it, there were "pressures". This is essentially the era that gave us the concepts of "our Nations" in Scandinavia it was the time of the first unifiers. From glorified tribal chieftains to a Royal line that still sits on the throne today. Norway - Nordvej - North way. We call Norwegians 'Nordmænd', literally Northmen. They're the northern explorers than came to L'anse aux meadows. Like the Scots to the English, they're our scary, lairy, hairy-arsed brethren that we'd much rather fight beside than across from. Also the kindest people you'll meet, in Scandinavia (all is relative..). We only converted to keep the "Germans" and Holy Roman Empire out - so yeh, we took that out on the English and French, that's fair!! Swedes went East and South - did quite well lol. Finns and their nomadic northern brothers kinda at their furthest West where they met us lot - the Saami are reindeer herders, they do not like the mountains and fjords of Norway and it seems the Swedish/Finnish borders are kinda the furthest West. Considering the vast Russian and Siberian forests across the whole Northern coast of Russia - it's more likely they've been going back and forth there since we were wandering from Russia to Alaska on foot. I'd imagine they've been minding their own up there in the cold and no one cared because 'fts, it's cold in Siberia!!' Good for Reindeer herding though, frozen steppes.
I think the Canadians got their 'aboot' from the Scots. There are a LOT of them in Canada. But then the Scots may have got it from the Norse. They do, after all, pronounce house pretty much the same as you would say hus and the word for child is bairn.
@@alfresco8442 You're probably right there, it could have ping-ponged across the North Sea a few times before it got to Canada. Makes me think of the old 'Hoots Mon' Winegums advert they ran back in the 90s though: 'There's a moose loose aboot this hoose'. The words that always made me think just how early they got to Scotland is that Kirk and Kist(e) are our Scandi versions of Church and Coffin. Honestly, the proto-Norwegians were likely making their way across and exploring whilst the whole Anglo-Saxon invasion jobbie was going on down South. If there wasn't a bromance, there should have been.
@@rickybuhl3176 Yes, Northern English and Scottish is full it.
There are more Norse place names where I live than English ones.
Not forgetting things like in the north we often say 'Ey up! as a warning. Stick an 'S' in front of that and you can probably guess where it comes from...although the Danish is different from the Norwegian isn't it?
@@alfresco8442 On paper, yes. We have 3 languages and 3 flags only because we're 3 Nations though. Were we one, they'd be dialects. Danish and Norwegian are relatively similar, Swedish a little Panglish in that have these random English inserts but we can converse in our 'native' languages and understand each other for the most part. At least as well as an Essexboy and a Geordie or Scouser.. They [Swedes] count differently to us though - we still do the old 'four and twenty', where they adopted the 'twenty four'. But let's not get onto numbers, 50 in Danish is 'halvtreds', from halvtredsindstyve - which is basically 'a half short of 3 times 20'. Dunno what smug git came up with that system but he's owed a slap.
2:00 Yes, the Jutes and the Angles (giving England its name) were indeed from what is now Denmark.
And the Saxons were their direct neigbour to the south, in Saxony of current northern Germany.
However, this was in the 400s, some 400 years before the era called the Viking age.
During the Viking era, the Danes invades England again, creating the Dane law around the 800s.
That period of intense mixing of Old English and Old Norse (Danish) transformed Old English into a more modern form, closer to today's Scandinvavian languages.
After the Normans (also old Vikings) invaded in 1066, this was then mixed with their dialect of Old French, which evolved into modern English.
"Immigrant Song Cover in Old Norse 700 A.D - 1500 A.D" gives you a feel for these pirates
2:54: At least in Norway, we learn the runic language in school, but most people never think about it again, so we forget. But even if you could read the letters, you still wouldn't know the language.
Used to be the same in Sweden when I grew up.
The Sami and the Norse were completely separate people in the viking era, like Norwegians and Finnish today, but that doesn't mean they always were. We don't know. Here in Oslo, people have been living for more than eleven thousand years and that goes back far before either Sami or Norse culture, but we know very little about them. There is a mythology of King Nor, who united all of Norway in ancient times and gave name to Norway. But we think it's just mythology.
Back in the day the Sami people were nomadic tribes of reindeer herders. They lived everywhere from Ural to modern Norway, rarely settling down for longer than a season.
About runes: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes
Sami was originally black haired Asian but today very mixed with everyone else, but you can still see a difference today.
The Swedish Midsummer celebration, deeply rooted in various traditions, indeed has connections that go back to the Viking Age and even further, into pagan times. Midsummer festivities mark the summer solstice and have been observed since time immemorial to herald the longest day of the year. These celebrations are rich in rituals that are thought to ensure good health and a prosperous harvest.
Historically, Midsummer was intertwined with ancient fertility rites and the worship of sun deities, common among pagan cultures. The Vikings, known for their close connection to nature and the seasons, also celebrated this time, although direct links between Viking rituals and modern Midsummer traditions are more inferential than directly documented.
One of the most recognizable symbols of Midsummer in Sweden is the maypole (or Midsummer pole), which is decorated and danced around. This tradition, although widely associated with Midsummer today, does not have a clear origin in Viking or pagan rituals as documented by historical texts. However, it is believed that celebrating the solstice with bonfires and other fertility rituals does have pagan origins, possibly predating the Viking era.
The transition from pagan to Christian traditions also saw Midsummer being adapted and incorporated into the Christian calendar, with the celebration of the birth of John the Baptist (St. John's Day) coinciding closely with the summer solstice. Over centuries, the Christian and pagan elements have intermingled, evolving into the uniquely Swedish tradition observed today.
In summary, while modern Midsummer celebrations in Sweden are a blend of various historical and cultural influences, they certainly draw upon practices that reach back to the Viking Age and pagan times, celebrating nature, fertility, and the power of the sun.
I kinda figured out what vikings, pirates and ninjas have in common. They're all pirates actually, plundering and killing, stealing. But ninjas being the more sophisticated type maybe.
I guess the mountain in Norway back then were called Jotunheimen, taking a guess. And he said "Olav Tryggvason". If you want a norwegian with accent, then just look at Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO leader. Or even Petter Solberg, the rally driver.
This guy could have learnt the pronunciation well, or even lived in America for some time. Or as a student.
Also "Vi sees neste gang" is "See you next time".
"Norway is like... what everyone wants to be! What do you mean?"
He means... he's a libertarian. We do have a few here too and they love to pretend like we have no freedoms here and often end up moving to the US.
I see there is a lot of confusion about The mountain range in Norway and Scandinavia. The mountain range in Norway is the Caledonian Mountain range that begins in the very north of Norway and extends all the way down through Norway, goes down under the North Sea and pops up again in Scotland. It is in fact an ancient crumpling zone between the Baltica Plate and the Laurentia plate (North America, Devon period) and even the Appalachias in the US were once part of this range.
Part Danish 150 years ago. Likely reason for migrating was poverty. Other Scandia farther back, maybe a lot farther back. Gorm the Old .> Harold Bluetooth -> Svein Forkbeard ... maybe my old Danish ancestral line.
Very enlightening not a subject I knew anything about.
Sami people although they have indigenous status they are actually the last people to arrive tn Scandinavia about 2000 years ago , they did live separate and some still do I think, not 100% sure as I am Danish and there were never Sami here , they are not Inuits , Inuits are native to Canada and migrated to Greenland 7-800 years ago, the only Inuits in Scandinavia came in modern day, mainly to Denmark from Greenland , Sami people came from area of Russia like the Scandinavians
Most likely you think of us Danes first because most of the stuff in England is thought to be attacks by Danes and the Dane axe a horrible 2 handed axe that took the isles by storm during the great heathen army
"What is this mountain range called?"
That's called Norway.
Midsommar seems to date to the 1500s. So way after vikings. It was a farmers holiday since it had to do with praying for fertile lands and such.
Why would you think the danes were the better Sailors? Look at the coast of Norway, and then how far we settled. Iceland, greenland, orkneys, shetland etc. Also icelanders were "norwegian" pretty much at that time, Leif Eriksson was the son of Eirik the Red who was banished from Norway etc. The danes were big scale, but there is NO doubt who the best sailers were.
The Holy Roman Empire is not Roman, it is a frankish empire, in french it is called "Saint Empire Romain Germanique " (Holy Germanic Roman Empire).
it's not that Norweigians were more barbaric but they lasted longer as Vikings you can say, and they lived more secluded before the Viking age, about the Swedes we know more now from dna and findings that Swedes influenced Russia and Ukraine quite a bit, the founded Russia and you find the higest norse dna outside Scandinavia and Iceland in some areas of Russia and Ukraine
The Jutes were from Jutland, the Angels from approximately today's Schleswig Holstein, and the Saxons from today's Niedersachsen (just South-Southwest of Holstein). And the Angels and Saxons = the Anglo-Saxons from 500-700 😊 The Jutes? The went back home again untill the Viking age 🤭
No the Swedish Vikings didn't do much, just founded "Russia" (Kievan Rus) and were life guards in Konstantinopel. They ventured east.
Also, midsommar is based on very old traditions. And some can read runes, it's not common knowledge but they are readable.
Which he mentioned.
@@Dougie- Kievan Rus wasn't mentioned.
We need to get united again brother. Have a lot of respekt for the brother countries ,from The heart of a dane
I always find it interesting when Norway is portrayed as the youngest sibling, but the fact is that Norway and Denmark are about the same age as kingdoms and Sweden as a kingdom didn't exist until after the viking age.
In general, we can't read runes, the Icelandics are probably best at that skill.
The Swedish Vikings (and their decendants) were known as "Rus" and founded the Kievan Rus empire, so I guess one can blame us for Russia...
One thing to remember is that "Viking" means Explorer/Invader/Raider/Settler/Trader/Fighter, most Scandinavians were not Vikings, they had other trades such as Farmers, Smiths, Peasants, etc.
Viking was a work title, not a race thing.
The Sami are originally of a Finnish-Urgic decent, and blonde hair/blue eyes were (and still is) not very common.
1:55 i subscribed because im impressed right here
Should've spoke more about Varangians considering they were very impressive too
During the so called Viking age, sweden as a country didn't exist, but Norway and Denmark did.
Or not...
Dammit, Celtic is NOT a DNA type, its a culture... A few misleading/factually incorrect items in their vid but still worth a watch
The mountain reign do not have a unified name. The mountain reign is has many regional names. It was not discoverd and named
you can learn to read it but the runes neither older or younger futharker is taught and the icelanders are the closet to talking it
No, we can't read runes. We can however, translate runes. Would be cool if I could read and write in rune but it was never a class while I was in school.
You were right. Arminius or Hermann defeated the Romans in the forest of Teutoburg.
10:35 The Sami were not part of Viking culture, at all. And not very blond either.
That blond hair color stems from later mixing with other Scandinavians (including Finns).
For the same reason, many Norwegians have a somewhat asian look, and Swedes and Finns often have (visible) Sami genetics as well.
In Denmark this is more about Greenland, rather than Sami, for obvious reasons
We did have a mountain of a man even bigger than the rest of the Norse called Thorkell the tall
the Sami, the Fins and estonian people are a different kind of people. Cultural and language based. The have simalarity with hungarians and oegoeren a tribe in northern russia. Scandinavia are 3 country's Denmark Sweden and Norway. Iceland is somewhat scandivanian. Finland belongs to the northern counrty group with iceland, norway, sweden and denmark
Interesting, i am a Swede and i eat horse, i will say it like "toppings, thats what google translate sais" you make a sandwish with cheese and a slice of turkey/ham or horse and it is fabulous.
Edit.
Uppsala is the name today, East Aros or Ubsola in the old days, dont remember what came first, but it was like the Vatican or Mecca for scandinavian paganism.
I might be wrong but my niece is a viking historian and she told me this and i belive her.
He said, "we see you next time"
Norway started what we calls "Vikingtiden"
It was the Norwegians who raided Lindisfarne, which is considered the start.
Yes there had been Danes in the fartest South parts but Lindisfarne were the Norwegians.
how do we know?
@@kristianpedersen1163Norwegian and Danish vikings had different colours on their sails and often different clothing. The people at Lindisfarne wrote down that they were attacked by northmen/norsemen which is what the norwegian vikings were called and that they came from the north (which wouldn't make sense if they were danes). The danish ones were called danes as in Danelaw. Norwegians generally attacked the northern parts of England (north of York) while the danish attacked south.
@@bubble0 thx 😉
Keep in mind that it's a norwegian saying norwegian vikings are the most hardened
3:23 you said orkney and shetland right? thats where the nornir language developed from norse and gaelic (its extinct as far as i know but it was supposedly a mix between local gaelic and old norse linguistics and its not certain how the languages were combined) and well vikings did go as far as dublin - well it was actually norse at some point. a tribe i believe was called Laigin or Lind Duachaill ... since Dubh Linn, Duibh Linn and Dubh Lind are old names for Dublin itself, i believe it was the latter one ... where the Laginn, Lagin or Laigin settled all of Leinster and yes even the scottish had contact... and before them even the picts, they supposedly wiped out the picts actually or brought them close to extinction, before the dal riada came with the irish gaelic kings and merged with the last of the picts. founding the kingdom of scotland, or Alban - a link could be found here in arthurian legend to Albyon or more commonly Albion the celtic and english name for the land arthur sought to build and in later times the name for Scotland and even England itself, probably in honor of his legend like the red dragon is associated with Welsh lore (another branch of celtic which is commonly thought to be the original british celt)
yeah like dwarf and efls i dnd and tolking are from nordic scadiavine folk tales
Germanic people are not the same as sami or sapmi. We Germanic people was in Scandinavia long before the sami/sapmi.
The language in Norway, Sweden and Denmark is quite similar. We can all understand eachother. But the Norwegians are generally better speaking english. Norwegian is closer to english tonally than swedish and danish. When it comes to sea and boats, the norwegians are best. That is no mystery when you see the lands coastline
in the end he sayes "Vi ses næste gang" "see you next time"
Sami = Grendel's people in 13th Warrior
reading history books is sometimes better than watching guys with their 21st century point of view, sometimes with racist and politicized views....
Mountain range is called The Scandinavian Peninsula! It even goes as far north as Finland. So when somebody say Finland is not part of Scandinavia they are both right and wrong at the same time :D
Hej fra Danmark = Hi from Denmark, you should take a DNA test
The sami are sperate people, they are more steppe/asiatic looking and have a culture similar to the inuit.
see you next time
Roman empire and holy roman empire is 2 different things
He's missing the geography of each people here, as the Swedish were in the baltic area, the Danish and Norwegian were on the sea !!!
No, Sami are not related to vikings. Different ethnic groups
Sweden / Finland Vikings. Finland was Sweden in that time.
No,,Finland became a part of Sweden in the 13th century,,after the so called Viking age.
about the runes is kindof similar to some letters today, but the norse language isn't that similar to the modern language. so even if we can understand the leters we don't understand unless we learn the old language