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by vintermann 36 days ago
"Civilization" is ill-defined anyway. What's certain is that long before they embraced Christianity in a form other European Christians would recognize as such, they admired Europe. Europe had great buildings, castles, cathedrals, palaces, walled cities, places of learning, markets, unlike anything in Scandinavia at the time. They wanted those things. And they could only get so far as pirates and slavers.
1 comments
pseudohadamard 35 days ago
Did they though? Before they went native, the crusaders looked down on muslims who lived in palaces, took baths (the horror!), knew about hygiene, and so on. Did a manosphere looksmaxxing viking really care about places of learning and soft beds?
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vintermann 35 days ago
I think you're maybe projecting modern ideas on them... Yes, it's easy to see from Norse poetry that "wisdom", knowing the secrets of the world, was extremely important to them. They were also fond of wealth, luxury goods and political power clearly.

Norse mythology is, like Greek mythology, extremely fatalistic. But there's also this idea that basically all power is stolen, and that fate will give the thieves their come-uppance. The first king got his power by murdering or dominating his brothers. The world as we know it was arguably created by a betrayal, if not a patricide - made from the body of the first giant - and his children are forever seeking revenge. The worm of spite gnaws at the tree of life, and is fated to eventually kill it. The closest thing to hope you have, is that old one eye might share some of his secret fate-postponing magic tricks with you.

So the natural conclusion when you hear of immensely powerful kings who seemingly get away with it, is that those guys must know some powerful secrets about reality.

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lukan 35 days ago
"The worm of spite gnaws at the tree of life, and is fated to eventually kill it."

But then again, there is the new beginning. Ragnarok is not the end of the world in a christian sense, but it goes in circles.

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teiferer 35 days ago
> manosphere looksmaxxing viking

That's more rooted in Hollywood than reality.

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