Vikings, The History Channel and Lessons From the Past

For being a practicing, communing, believing Lutheran, I am also embarrassingly proud of my Viking ancestors.  I come from a long line of people who put their stamp on the terms, “rape, pillage and blunder.”  Since half my ancestors come from this Viking mold, and the other from the pagan heights of the Lancashire area near the town of Bleas Dale in Great Britain, there may well be a certain amount of incestuous inbreeding in my past.  The Vikings loved invading, inseminating and occasionally ruling the British Isles.  So it should be no surprise that my DNA shows strong intertwined strands of the peoples of this part of the world.  Add that to my two Norwegian grandmothers and you have two groups of people who may have come together more than once in the dim past.  Oh well, none of us are responsible for more than our own actions.

            It turns out that the History Channel will be airing a scripted series on the Vikings this coming March 3, 2013.  They did a good job on their previous series, an effective blend of acting, narrative and computer generated graphics to condense time and space.  Their series, “America: The Story of Us” made me a fan.  They have followed up with equally laudable efforts on, “Mankind: the Story of All of Us” and, “The Men Who Built America” about the titans who created our industrial might during the reconstruction.  Even though the, “Vikings” is a traditional dramatic series, I have every confidence that my ancestors will be carefully researched and presented.   I also believe that there are useful comparisons between these marauders and the threats we face from modern militants. 

            The Vikings were a fierce and frightening presence due to some factors that are applicable to us today.  First of all, they were foreign, they were unfathomably different from us and they were not Christian.  They were frequently called, “uncivilized” but that is charged with connotative application.  Vikings had a religion, a social order, customs, art, and a known and celebrated history.  I don’t know what else is needed for civilization, but evidently all of these things were trumped by the rest of Europe’s attitude that, “…if it isn’t ours, it isn’t real.”  Vikings also had an irreverent attitude toward attacking monasteries.  These religious houses were uniformly left vulnerable because Christian Europe would not attack them for fear of losing their immortal soul.  Vikings weren’t impressed with threats against their souls, which they surely thought were under the protection of different, militant and superior god.   (Lesson # 1)

            Starting in A.D. 793, the Vikings began attacking England, Ireland and, “Frankia” which is modern day France and Germany.  For a while, the Franks made a deal with the devil, hiring the Vikings to protect them and make war on their enemies.  Of course, such deals always fall through and anyone who thinks you are so weak you must hire protection, will, sooner or later, turn on you with not only force but contempt.  (Lesson # 2)  About a century later, the Franks decided they had had enough and started fortifying their cities, ports and monasteries.  The Vikings then turned to lower hanging fruit on the less protected British Isles.   After all, saying that something should not be attacked is not the same as saying something is worth defending.  (Lesson # 3)

            While I am a kinder and gentler version of my forebears, I know that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.   A deal with the devil, always ends in damnation.

            Protect what you value and keep the faith.