[socialdemocrat]

Viking ships are often portrayed as primarily an advantage in warfare, but they played a significant role in trade. People tend to forget about Scandinavia after the Viking age, but those rich shipbuilding traditions did not remain unused. Much of Norwegian prosperity after the Viking age was based on ship building. With few large urban centers and absence of a rich capitalist class, ship building was long a community oriented endeavor. Everybody who contributed got a stake in the profits.

I wrote an article about this stuff for anyone interested:

https://erik-engheim.medium.com/how-fjords-made-norway-rich-...