Vikings

>>287535
Danelaw and Normandy.

>>287535
Rape probably. No really, anyone with blue eyes/fair hair outside of Scandinavia can confidently say one of their ancestors was fucked by a viking.

>>287535
Viking is just the raider class in norse culture
So probably dispersing wealth and encouraging centralization to stop them.

>>287588
great meme

They sort of founded Russia.

Also the duchy of Normandy.

Also losing the Siege of Paris, which was key to the rise of the Capetians and of Paris, and to the formation of post Carolingian France.

>>287535

Improved navigation and the Thing, I'd say. Now the Thing did not really spread at all but it's interesting to note that Vikings had a concept of democracy since way back.

>>287535

literally nothing

>>287535
Its influence on the English language and >>287584.

I'd argue they did a lot of shit that was never recognised. Particularly their ships. They explored a whole new continent, which no one realised existed until after 500 years later. Their navigation abilities, like >>287638 mentioned, weren't really recognised by others it seems.

they influenced nordick fags trying to hold onto something that was never real

>viking influence
literally nothing

If those viking fugs had just thought to bring back some natives from North America, that might have sparked enough interest to establish a permanent colony there. Interesting that, unlike the Spanish, they didn't bring any diseases with them.

>>288538
The vikings found what was basically greenland 2.0, not the agriculturally rich Caribbean

>>287638
>the Thing
?

>>288562

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(assembly)

Doughnuts
Buckets
Tall people

The legacy of viking civilization is all around us

>Rus (russians today) were swedish settlers
>Normands (conquered britain) were descended from norwegians / danes
>Look at town names in northern scotland, it's all scandinavian names

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>>288573
>mfw tinget is called "thing" in english

makes for creepy conversations

>>288612
It's interesting how Res Publica is literally "common thing" in Latin.

Charlemagne and Otto

Wasn't Sicily ruled by normans?

>>288538
Unlike Spaniards/Christians in generals, the Norse peoples actually bathed.

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>>287535
>>287652

I'm going to reply to the OP and myself since this board moves so fucking slow. I was just off work when I posted before and since this is a meme thread I felt a meme was the only recourse available.

The vikings or Scandinavians as I think we actually mean here are interesting from a historical perspective, but their long lasting impact on Europe in the period specified by OP is almost non-existent.

A more interesting time to examine might be Sweden's involvement in the Napoleonic Wars and how that shaped modern Europe. Sweden(+Finland), Denmark(+Norway, Iceland, Faroes, Shetlands(Hjaltland), Orkneys) were literally fishermen and subsistence farmers up until after the 1500s. That's not to say they weren't fairly well educated people, but they did not create vast kingdoms of any sort. The closest thing that exists are the conquerings of Norwegian settlers in the North Atlantic, however I think to even call these settlers "Norwegian" is a bit anachronistic because Norway is hardly a unified nationstate until Harald Hårfagre and he LITERALLY does not appear until the end of the 900s. Additionally, many people here have mentioned the Thing as a contribution and, this system of governance was the primary form that existed until unified nationstates arose in Scandinavia.

pt1

>>288926
I think you have underestimated how extremely homogenous the scandinavian countries are, and to an even further extent have been. They have been "national states" forever simply due to that fact.

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>>288926

okay, so the sheep herders fled from norway because of economic/social pressures whatever that's not surprising. the danes got their asses kicked in england so that doesn't matter.

our anachronistic norwegians settled the entirety of the north atlantic and even managed to make it to north america where they got killed by the skrælingar and lost all of their settlements. in fact, they did such a bad job at settling the north atlantic they lost all contact with the greenlandic settlements by the 1400s.

and eventually through a series of court marriages and treaties the crown of scotland gained the shetlands and orkneys and the only remnants of any "culture" are place-names and linguistics nerds that jerk-off to fantasies about learning Norn. Meanwhile, the Finns are getting keked by Swedes who settle "Russland" which is the old word for Swedish and probably the evidence people keep mentioning that Russia was founded by swedes. of course we can see that aside from the name the country of Russia exhibits a staggering amount of scandinavian influence!

pt 2

pt2

>>288964

I will admit I am being a bit harsh at this point, but I think that -looking- for Scandinavian influence that is lasting from this period is like finding the evidence and making a proclamation from that. On the other hand, there's a tremendous amount of culture that Scandinavians did produce during the time given by OP, maybe a bit later into the 14th century. I'm not speaking just about vellum manuscripts from Iceland, but also the mainland has a lot of different scripts that were produced. The fortunate part of conversion, which is basically completed at this time was that there was an abundance of scholars who translated latin into the various dialects of old norse and gave us a very large suppository of texts from which we can recreate the language(s) of the time. You can also thank this time for the preservation of all the stories and myths from Scandinavia, which we probably would know even less about without them.

>>288940

le homogeneous society meme, my favorite. Were they also egalitarians because women controlled the gaard? Look, I don't care if they shared a similar culture, they were not nation-states as we know them today. They were high decentralized kingdoms controlled by landowners and whoever had the greatest might was ruler of his land. Although kings and freemen met at Things and made laws, this does not establish a nation-state.

In fact, this system of governance is what led Iceland in to complete anarchy prior to its annexation by the Norwegian crown. Icelanders were literally so caught up in blood feuds between cow farmers in the frozen tundra that their entire island was consumed with burning houses down and murdering entire families to the point that their society almost collapsed. Stop pretending muh-vikings.

>>289005

Also, sorry for a bit of clarification, I was focusing on Norway here. Sweden/Denmark are allowed to count as Kingdoms during the 900s. They're both much more continental than Norway, but still during the Iron Age the nation-state does not exist in Scandinavia.

>>288435
>which no one realised existed until after 500 years later.
The Irish monks knew about it before the Vikings, the Vikings recorded that they found the Monks on the Islands in the North ie Faeroe Islands and Iceland.

St. Brendan's writings were verified by the settlements in Iceland. Maybe the Vikings after raiding the monks found evidence of the places in the West and that was their inspiration.

>>288435

>Their navigation abilities, like >>287638 mentioned, weren't really recognised by others it seems.
Wut? But thats the most recognized Nordic archivement of the Middle Ages. Their shipbuilding techniques for the whole Atlantci Europe.

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>>287616
>Siege of Paris
Worst defeat I've ever heard about.

200 Men versus 40,000

>>288646
Yes, as well as southern Italy.

>>288926
I wonder what a "Norman" France would've looked like. Imagine if all those Danes and Norwegians concentrated on Francia instead of England, Ireland, the Shetlands, Hebrides, Orkneys, and Iceland.

The Normans were a dynamic fusion of Viking lust for land, loot, glory, and power with Frankish cavalry and castle-building.

>>289103
Normans were feudal Lords, they spread Turkic and Iranian genes to Britain.

Richard III was an Alan from the Alani.

>>289064

the irish monks did not know that north america existed. I have never read anything to substantiate such a ludicrous claim. Vikings were driven from Iceland by the lack of lumber available. They deforested the entire island and required additional materials for shipbuilding. The result was the colonization of Greenland and the failed colonization of the new world. In fact the settlement of the new world went so poorly that they tried several times, but were always eventually driven out, despite there being brief periods of lumber being brought back.

>>287588
What about Aboroginals and Pakistanis?

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>>289220


Video
> https://vimeo.com/40225298

Books
> 2010 The Brendan Voyage

> 1999 Brendan the Navigator: A History Mystery about the Discovery of America

> 2006 Discovering A Lost Heritage: the Catholic Origins of America
Website
> www.yourirish.com/history/christianity/st-brendan

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan

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>>289220
BTW he died in 577 AD

>>288993
>>288964
>>288926
The influence on the Scandinavians in England is massive, not to mention that without them there would be no Normandy to invade, the danelaw alone shaped the nature of northern England forever. Since the danelaw fell in 954 there have been massive cultural interactions between Northumbria and Scandinavians, not to mention political differences. During William the bastard's rule there were at least two insurrections in previously Scandinavian ruled areas that cause William to do the harrowing of the north that polarised opinions of the French for years. The families of bamburgh and the north have always been at odds with the south and many wars have been caused because of this. Just because there aren't more people with Viking sounding names doest mean they didn't an impact. Read some Peter Sawyer or DM Hadley

>>287588

about half-ish(maybe a third,it's been so long it hard to say) of the people in England are of viking blood,with the rest having atleast a bit due to intermarriage in the 1000 years since)
>>289743

harrying*

>>288612

ting and thing are the same word, so I dont see the creepiness in it.

>>289094

30,000-40,000 men?

I'd like to see how a scandinavian feudal lord could feed that many mouths on their trip to Paris...

Those numbers are impossibly exagerated.

Having said that, (and I am a swede) vikings do not strike me as masters of pitched battle. Their individual prowess was probably more impressive than their ability to fight in cohesion.

They had no cavalry, for one, so they could never become a dominant force to begin with.

>>289265


There is no archeological evidence to support this claim whatsoever.

>>290073
Two words buddy, shield wall.
While I agree with you that the vikings probably weren't the best at extended overland campaigns, individual prowess rarely mattered in engagements between two armies. They also conquered a pretty big chunk of Britain too, and if they were as rabble-like as you are implying then they would have probably been pushed off the island.

Plus, I can easily see how an army that size could feed itself in France, given how much arable land existed and the fact that armies foraging was a huge supplement to an army's food stores.

>>291922
Every fucking one used shieldwalls in that period. Only cavalry did not use shieldwalls.

>>289094
>30.000-40,000

I have some serious doubts about those numbers. Even a powerful king such as Knud the Great could only field 10.000 in his invasion of England.

But yeah, Scandinavians were notoriously bad at siege warfare.

>>287588
Blonde hair does seem to have originated somewhere around the Baltic Sea, but blue eyes are much older than that and originates from a single person living most likely somewhere around the Black Sea and can be found among all Indo-European people.

>>289265
not a fuckin chance. We got to Iceland first but saying Brendan discovered America is like saying Oisín discovered America, it's complete mythology.