Penguin Classics has a great book containing translations of Ibn Fadlan and other similar Arab accounts, and has a great introduction describing the Arab world view of the time, particularly how the North was regarded. https://www.amazon.com/Ibn-Fadlan-Land-Darkness-Travellers/d...
This book really torpedoed any romantic notions I had of those eras. Basically you just had a lot of motorcycle gangs running around in the forest - imagine Negen from TWD and you get an idea —- it would have sucked to have been alive then. Fascinating talk of the slaving “season”, and comparison of prices for buying a blonde-haired girl at various points along the river. Life was very cheap and might made right. No thanks, man. Not to offend anyone, but it also makes me appreciate the gradual changes that Christianity brought to those forests and to European peoples in time.
> Basically you just had a lot of motorcycle gangs running around in the forest
Luckily however the Norse, as boat travelers, were mainly limited to the Volga and other large rivers. Outsiders were also reluctant to approach indigenous communities due to the risk of being struck with poison arrows. So, the local peoples could simply move a couple of dozen kilometers from the big river and then never encounter a Norse party in their lives.
> it also makes me appreciate the gradual changes that Christianity brought
Among the indigenous peoples of the Middle Volga, one finds a strong undercurrent of resentment of Christianity. Not only did people not like losing their traditional religion (animism for the Mari and Chuvash, for example), but the Christianity that the Russians brought was not often kind or compassionate, and it went together with serfdom that was hardly different from slavery. Some have even looked back on the era of Muslim Tatar rule as preferable, because the Tatar Khanate did not practice forced conversions of most other peoples. The Tatars were content to let most of them stay non-Muslim and move freely about the forests, because these peoples could then be used as a very lucrative source of fur taxation.
appreciate the gradual changes that Christianity brought to those forests...
To be fair, Christianity's position is that of chance, Europe could all just as well have been founded on Slavic Paganism, Islam (arguably it largely is and this is insufficiently recognized), Mongol pluralism or some similar belief system. Any nominally centralized society capable of a rule of law and literate record keeping would have had the same effect, if capable of gluing together society long enough to create a surplus and decrease the risks of increased specialization. See earlier civilizations, other parts of the world, etc.
The Norsemen TV series puts a hilarious dark comedy twist on that reality. Basically a workplace comedy where their job is capturing slaves instead of selling paper.
A fascinating excerpt:
"According to Noonan, some 100,000 dirham coins, most deposited between the years 900 and 1030, have been unearthed to date in Sweden alone, and there are more than a thousand recorded individual hoards of five or more coins recorded throughout Scandinavia, the Baltic countries and Russia. In addition to inscriptions, the Muslim coins bear the year and place of minting—vital details for modern numismatists and archeologists. One excellent find in Uppland, Sweden contained a mixture of coins minted in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Isfahan and Tashkent."
Banderas sits up all night listening to them speak in another language. By morning they’re all speaking English. When he speaks to them fluently, they’re surprised and ask how he learned their language.
That reminds me of reading the original Tarzan from 1912, in which Burroughs writes of how a boy raised in the jungle with only animals for company came to be able to read (and only later speak) English, all on his own.
Quoting for memory, after Tarzan finds some books and newspapers as a result of someone’s previous tragedy in the jungle: “Tarzan, being of superior intellect by virtue of being born to English parents, was able to figure out the meaning of the symbols he found in the books and realized they were forming words and sentences,” from which he not only learned to read English but also devoured the books (textbooks?) and their content.
The treatment in the actual text of the book is rather different, and goes into some delightful detail concerning Tarzan's self-study program, which begins at the age of 10 or so:
"Among the other books were a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and deepest thought."
These are materials his parents has gathered to take to their Colonial posting for the express purpose of educating their infant son over the next several years; he just gets a rather late start on the program.
"He did not accomplish it in a day, or in a week, or in a month, or in a year; but slowly, very slowly, he learned after he had grasped the possibilities which lay in those little bugs, so that by the time he was fifteen he knew the various combinations of letters which stood for every pictured figure in the little primer and in one or two of the picture books."
He takes several more years to piece together some of the mysteries of verbs and modifiers... I've always found it a fascinating thought experiment about language formation, given the era. In this context, I suppose the Hollywood presentation of Tarzan could be considered an application of the critical period hypothesis (had it existed at the time).
In less ethical times there have been experiments with children left to raise themselves in contained environments to discover - among other things - how people learn to speak, but unfortunately the experiments always ended in disaster because the moderators were unable to devise a method whereby they could guarantee the survival of the subjects but without influencing their behavior.
One of the most interesting language switches occurs in Hunt for Red October. It switches on the word “Armageddon” which is the same in both Russian and English.
These norsemen were known "by the ethnonym Rus (pronounced "Roos"). The origin of this term is obscure, and though some claim it stems from the West Finnic name for Sweden, Ruotsi, there is little agreement." (from article)
But "according to the most prevalent theory, the name 'Rus', like the Proto-Finnic name for Sweden (Ruotsi), is derived from an Old Norse term for "the men who row". (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people)
The ethonym is traceable in names such the eastern Swedish district of Roslagen (from where a lot of these norsemen presumably set sail), as well as 'Rus'sia.
People in the Near East (Syria, Lebanon, etc) had genes for light skin before most of Europe did, with the exception of Scandanavia. "Whiteness" may have arrived in Europe in three waves, one of which came from the Anatolian farmers that introduced farming and urban life to the continent. Those same farmers, who were similar/near to the Syrian farmers that invented agriculture, interbred with the continental European hunter-gatherers. So technically, a large % of Europeans can say that they have Middle Eastern ancestors and that they got the roots of civilization from Syria. That's without getting into the huge gene flow that later came in from the Caucuses/Indoeuropean Yamnaya culture.
What I found really interesting was that 10,000 BC, Britain was populated with blue-eyed people with dark skin. They got mostly replaced by Anatolians, who then built the Stone Henge and occupied Britain for a few thousand years. Anatolians were then replaced by continental Europeans (who by then had been breeding with the progeny of other Anatolians for thousands of years). At least while the Anatolians were around, the remaining dark-skinned natives, who were dwindling in number, resorted to inbreeding so as not to dilute their genes. Clearly they didn't care for lighter skin.
Ya, archaeogenetics is a real trip. The field can upend our already flimsy notions of race and the narratives that come with it. Modern sequencing technology is yielding huge new results on a frequent basis.
"Once the first farmers from the near East began to arrive in Europe, and who carried both genes for light skin, they began breeding with the “indigenous hunter gatherers”. One of the depigmentation genes became prominent throughout Europe to the point where central and southern Europeans developed lighter skin."
Some wild guesses: representation would be one's identity. Maori are supposed to have used depictions of their moko[1] as equivalents to signatures among us, and I can imagine it would be helpful for traders to be able to describe their agent, several months away, by their tattoos instead of relying on personal introductions.
As to being heavily tattooed, I'd imagine it implied an elite status proof-of-work. It takes several sessions with a cooperative artist to do a full body tattoo, and if one "doesn't deserve" the body art, that leaves a large window during which poseurs would be liable to retributive violence from the legit.
Then again, maybe they just enjoyed body art. For instance, I could easily imagine a Rus tattooing a new islamic dome (albeit in green instead of golden[2]) for every season they spent trading, far away from home.
I love original sources / historical witnesses, when it comes to both the vikings and arabians, so much of it is muddled by entertainment and media. That said, there's some made by historians; The Last Kingdom, books and Netflix series, is a pretty good take on history.
Anyway for more things like this, there's Voices from the Past on youtube, which is a guy narrating travel logs, e.g. from the first Japanese visitors to the US. Really interesting bits in there, like how they recognize a horse and carriage for what it is but still disassociate and need to be told how to use it, or shock at how a hotel is fully carpeted, or funny bits where the guy doesn't recognize an ash tray and puts the ash in a bit of paper up his sleeve instead (consequences ensue).
For a similar rare account I can recommend Ennin, a Japanese monk who visited Tang Dynasty China and wrote about it from ground level. Most chronicles were official and thus missed the juicy details. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennin
It's fascinating to see how certain groups and civilizations like the Vikings end up being acceptable, even venerated in our society despite their horrific behaviour (by current standards at least).
What is about societies like the Vikings (invaders, human sacrificers and slave traders https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/12/151228-vikin...) that means they don't get talked about in the same way that Germany's Nazi regime is? Is it politics? Or just time? But how come some groups statues and iconography are "acceptable" while others are not?
(sorry for the long post that's wandered off topic ;-) )
Its off topic, long (because of unneeded links, instead of content), and the argument is based on a perceived idea that Vikings are only revered. The nazi mention makes it almost seem like the comment is angling for drama.
Doesn't seem that mysterious. Nazi atrocities are still in living memory, and victimized people and countries are still around. If you walk around with an "SS" tattoo, those people are (rightly) going to take it as a personal affront.
On the other hand, while people might have strong opinions about a "Molon Labe" bumper stick, there isn't anyone with Helot grandparents who raised them on stories about how terrible the Spartans were to their slaves.
This book really torpedoed any romantic notions I had of those eras. Basically you just had a lot of motorcycle gangs running around in the forest - imagine Negen from TWD and you get an idea —- it would have sucked to have been alive then. Fascinating talk of the slaving “season”, and comparison of prices for buying a blonde-haired girl at various points along the river. Life was very cheap and might made right. No thanks, man. Not to offend anyone, but it also makes me appreciate the gradual changes that Christianity brought to those forests and to European peoples in time.