[iguy]

They also aren't a useful rhetorical foil for any present-day arguments. In none of their former territory can you make political hay by deflecting present-day problems onto those particular earlier rulers. That's related to time, of course, but also very much related to what else has happened since, or has failed to happen.

[throwaway894345]

Rest assured, plenty of hay gets made about how "progressive" vikings were with respect to gender (apparently there were female viking warriors) and sex (not so strict about monogamy) compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians. Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups.

[hguant]

>apparently there were female viking warriors

This is a MUCH more controversial idea than pop-history would have you believe. There have been Viking women found buried with weapons and armour; however, there are also men who weren't warriors found buried with arms and armour as well. Scholarship on the matter isn't really sure if the women found buried that way were warriors being honored as such, or rich/wealthy/politically powerful people who were buried in the trappings of a martial society. Also, the extrapolation of "a shockingly small number of women were buried with swords" to "the Vikings had gender equality and badass warrior women in every port" is great Netflix fodder, but not really backed up anywhere else.

>Never mind of course that vikings weren't big on "consent" or that they're darlings of far right groups.

Vikings also literally had a slave based economy; the only thing that got the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms to unite was "hey, we don't want to be slaves/the main event of excruciatingly brutal human sacrifices."

>compared to those awful Anglo-Saxon Christians

Interestingly enough, almost all the Vikings converted peacefully to Christianity within a decade or two of settling in Britan.

[iguy]

Yes. The political point being made with this history is different too, it's one of pride, not shame. It's "Our great ancestors were nice social democrats, too! Unlike your cold-war army, grandpa, they let woman have front-line jobs!"

Compare: "Those evil germanics who sailed up the Volga and subjugated our ancestors, you know how much silver they took home? And you've seen how wealthy Copenhagen is now? My buddy Igor ran the numbers, and compound interest explains it all!". That's not a speech which will improve your political career in Russia.

[throwaway894345]

I don't doubt this, but for the record Scandanavians are not the people in my sphere who are doing a significant share of the Vikings-glorifying. It seems to be oriented on a political axis rather than a national axis.