@@garretphegley8796 A year late, but; Rome changed vastly whilst the first Rome still stood, does that mean the Romans of, say, 356 CE are less Roman than those of, say, 79 BCE? Just because Eastern Rome continued to change and evolve, does not mean it arbitrarily and abruptly ceased being Roman. Constantinople was called at it's founding (Or rather perhaps refounding from the old Greek colony on it's site) as, variously, the New, Second Rome, Eastern Rome, and Rome Constantinople (Roma Constantinopolitana), the latter effectively meaning Constantine's city of Rome, which is where Constantinople then developed from.
@@Hatypus I would say that Rome stopped being Roman after the Republic, after that the nature of the people changed from an Agrarian Republic, to an an autocratic empire that was just based in Italy. They didn't care about tradional roman ideals after Caesar.
@@garretphegley8796 That doesn't make much sense. They stopped being Roman because of a very slow decay of the powers of the Senate and Republic in favour of autocracy? Caesar's taking of power was the final act in a long period of political change, and that political change was alongside the typical slow cultural change. Why the Republic? Surely they stopped being Roman after the end of the Kingdom, as then the traditional Roman values held in the kingdom changed? Or when the various periods of the Republic ended and changed, with their ideals changing as well. Ideals, Ideas, Politics and Culture changing, as I said before, are all natural things in a society, and Eastern Rome merely continued those societal trends. By your logic any nation that poltically or culturally changes to any reasonable degree needs a new demonym, as they no longer encompass the ideals of the previous demonym correctly.
I mean if you need to protect yourself the Scandinavians will probably do a damn fine job. There's just something about them. The Swedes are some of the biggest weapons exporters per capita, the Icelanders are some of the strongest people on earth and the Danes make really good beer. Combine the three and you've got yourself a platoon of drunk giants wielding recoilless rifles. A terrifying thought to be sure.
@@Onnarashi Oh yeah, it's not actually in Scandinavia. I'm Swedish and i can't really say anything about you Norwegians. Every year, like the vikings of old, you cross the border to occupy our beaches, filling them with charcoal grills and drunken laughter. You sure liven up the mood but I'm not sure what the nation of Norway actually does. Your salmon is pretty good but that's the only major thing i know of...besides your massive fucking pile of well invested oil money.
The idea that Bronze Age religions were like nature worship is severely flawed as the Indo-Europeans the people who introduced the Bronze Age to Europe in themselves had a pantheon
Exactly. However the Indo-Europeans didn't introduce the pantheon into Europe as all Europeans no matter where they are worshipped the same gods despite what their names were.
@@paulingvar It is not the same as nature worship the way Hilbert meant, that is the worship of primeval forces of nature rather than anthropomorphized gods who can also represent some aspect of nature, like Thor being a thunder god. And this doesn't prove that bronze age people were nature worshipers without a god pantheon either, since a sun deity is part of all indo-european pantheons (Sól, Helios, Surya etc), usually represented as riding a chariot across the sky and often also being the eye of the chief god of the pantheon.
yes oScuba, the roman catholic church and its archives,. depict several names of pre christian : pagan gods in europe, especially lunar & solar ones, that most probably originated in the east..., with some 20 or more names... and churches built directly on top of ancient pagan sites..., it maybe a coicendence but matriacal religions, from the east and later roman-greek patriacal ones, must have transformed viking ideas of religion*....
The lombard kingdom was never destroyed, Charlemaigne just annexed it, lombards remained as lords without much change. The lombards in the south didn't fled from the franks, they were already there.
I find the idea, that the Romans were the cause of a shift from nature worship, to pantheon worship a bit ridiculous, since Tacitus already attested (somewhere around year 9 AD if i a not mistaken) that the Germanic tribes worshipped gods named Wotanaz, (Odin) Teiwaz, (Tyr) and Donau (Thor). Keep in mind Tacitus was talking about people who lived in modern-day Bavaria, several centuries before any such Roman influence could have taken place. The Norse Pantheon is more likely a mix between Indo-European, and Pre-indo-European Deities and some interpreters of mythology have even suggested that the Vanir and Aesir clans represent this distinction.
@@garretphegley8796 the 'byzantines' didn't even call themselves that, they were Rome legally & culturally & that is what would matter to Romans & they identified themselves as such.
@@readmore8302 actually, the music is the optimal level of volume that he falls far below the halfway measurement point. All he needs to do is change up some settings, and he'd save a sum on needless microphone specs. If he leans closer to the mic, like from fingertips to the knuckle-segment of the palm as a measurement of spacing, he can add another couple DBs etc.
These Danes would have been very similar too the teutons, cimbrians and ambrones who came from northern Jutland who the Romans had fought in 113BC ... therefore the Romans may have had some prior knowledge of the danii?
The Danes was living in Southwest Sweden most of the roman era, they where part of the Goths tribes. They captured the area todays know as Danmark in 300 AD but you kinda rigth for they mixed with the Juts.
@@thomashankelbjerg72 thank you, yes I know that the Danes were originally from southern Sweden and the Zealand island? So yeah modern day Denmark(Jutland peninsular) during the republic and early-middle empire era would have been inhabited by jutes angles, cimbrians and others rather than Danes at this point
@@thomashankelbjerg72 I mean before the viking age Jutland was referred to as gotaland, theres a possibly that the Jutes were related to the geats or goths.
The similarites between the the Roman and Norse/Germanic pantheons don't directly come from Roman influence on the regions. Reconstructions of the Proto-Indo-European language have clearly indicated a that the Proto-Indo-European people had a pantheon, and that the core of many of the pantheons of the peoples belonging to the Indo-European group are derived from this Proto-Indo-European pantheon. For example Tyr, Zeus, Jupiter, are all derived from the same "Sky Father" god. Of course, as the different Indo-European groups developed on their own, their pantheons evolved, some gods became less important, some became more, some new ones were made, some old ones forgotten, and sometimes gods would combined into a single one. It is possible that Romans influenced how Nordic peoples perceived their gods, but the Nordic peoples, as an Indo-European group, almost certainly had a pantheon in place.
@De AIVD kijkt met u mee. Well, a lot of frisians were viking, especially in the northern parts, they either joined Scandinavian vikings or went themselves Don't get me wrong, a small population did this and it wasn't encouraged, but it did happen
Anglo saxons went viking too. Athelstan built a fleet, and then it went insubordinate after he died, pillaging the coast of france. I dunno if they had the same ships as the norse though (maybe not), but viking doesn't make the ship, merely the choice of action.
Very interesting video and subject matter! Unfortunately in many places, especially where we lack clear primary sources, you seem to be reaching quite a bit and pushing some kind of odd narrative as fact when there's quite a bit of evidence of the opposite actually being true. However your other videos I have always appreciated for their accuracy and being well-researched, you just dropped the ball on this one, happens to the best of us. Let me help you pick it up: I may have misunderstood your meaning here, but you seem to imply that elite rule appeared or first rose to prominence during the iron age, supplanting an earlier communal societal system. However the Nordic Bronze age elites were almost certainly far more rich and powerful than their iron age counterparts, the NBC being one of the most socially stratified eras of Scandinavian history according to archeological evidence. Remains of very large houses and ornately crafted bronze and gold tools, weapons, jewelry and other items point to great wealth disparity between the elites and the communal "peasants". Many of the most grandiose Scandinavian burial mounds are also from this era, especially the early NBC, and contain royals or powerful nobles buried with vast hoards of gold, bronze, intricate clothes, art and drinking vessels, sacrificed servants etc in mounds that would have taken thousands of man-hours to build, demonstrating the immense power possessed by the ruling class during that time. As a side-note, regarding the iron-age practice of keeping cattle indoors I've read that this was due to the drastic fall in average temperatures in Scandinavia after about 650 BC, leading to more fluctuating and unreliable weather which could often kill unsheltered cattle. However, keeping track of which cows were yours was probably also a factor, as well as protection from cattle-raiders, a practice sure to have increased in the more chaotic and violent iron age. The depopulation and destitution caused by worsening climate could also have been a reason for the collapse of larger clan systems and move towards survival as smaller, familial groups. The warrior elites also probably appeared at a much earlier stage judging from the greatly increased deposition of iron weapons in many sites during the time of the bronze age collapse. Imo the two critical factors for their rise would've been worsening climate and collapsing international trade routes, weakening the power of the bronze age elites and cutting of their bronze imports on which they relied to maintain military superiority, in combination with the discovery of bog iron and widespread adoption of iron technology, making weapons much more affordable and accessible to the average person and thus shifting the balance of power to individual warbands and their chieftains/petty kings. Finally, what I consider to be your most unsubstantiated claim, seemingly a conjecture based on falsely assuming a model of static in-situ linear theological development while ignoring evidence pointing to earlier ancestral theological diverge and later hybridization(s), is that the pre-Roman Scandinavians didn't have a God pantheon but rather worshipped abstracts concepts of nature/natural forces. This is almost certainly wrong (well, partly at least). There is no reason to believe the early Scandinavians didn't have anthropomorphic deities just like the Romans, Celts, Greeks etc, as comparative mythology and linguistics very strongly points to a shared heritage of all these pantheons from a common Indo-European pantheon dating back from millenia earlier in the late Neolithic. However Norse mythology also did include a non-IE set of divinities personifying amongst other things natural forces and fertility, the Vanir pantheon. These were likely gods absorbed from other peoples who the early Scandinavians had either conquered or integrated with, probably originally worshipped by Neolithic farmers and/or hunter-gatherers. The idea of the Aesir pantheon being a later borrowing from the Romans rather than the two having a shared heritage can be disregarded on the basis of characteristics shared between the Aesir and other temporally and geographically isolated Indo-European pantheons such as that of the Indo-Iranian Asuras, which later diverged into the Iranian Ahuras and Indian Asuras. Not only are the names of the pantheons very similar, also seen with the reconstructed Proto-Indo-Iranian 'Nsuras or 'Nsu and the Proto-Germanic Ánsuz, both dervied from the PIE Hensu-, but many of their gods also share similarities not seen in the Roman equivalents. For example the Asura Indra and the Aesir Thor both being gods of thunder and lightning, great heroes of war and protectors of their people as well as of humans, both having leadership positions (Indra being king and in that sense more similar to Jupiter while Thor is "second in command" to his father king Odin), both wielding throwing weapons which always return to their hand, the arch-enemies of both being world-ending serpents which they eventually slay etc. As an interesting bit of trivia, in both Indic and Old Iranian mythology the Asura/Ahura pantheon gradually falls from popular grace, as both peoples started to settle down and abandon their more warlike nomadic ways while absorbing theological ideas from the peoples native to those lands. Eventually Indians completely rejected their old gods in favor of the native Deva gods, and accused the Asuras of being selfish, violent, petty, power-seeking troublemakers and creaters of chaos, which doesn't seem that far off from the stories we have of the old European gods, them often being morally ambigious, acting rashly and selfishly, having very violent tempers and psychopathic behaviours, creating chaos by taking sides amongst humans and manipulating them into war and slaughter for their own petty reasons, thus usually being much more of a danger than blessing for humans to be around. The Iranian people also rejected the Ahuras, with the exception of Ahura Mazda, translated as the Lord/God (Ahura) of Wisdom (Mazda), who the Persians considered to be the only redeemable member of that pantheon and worthy of worship. In later Persian mythology he gave a vision to the prophet Zoroaster, encouraging him to found a new faith based on his divine insights of a good and just religion, which eventually grew into the Persian state religion of Zoroastrianism.
Well... not so devastating. Rome suffered a BIG loss in a single battle (Arausio) because of internal stupid politics... like one general being patrician serving under a homo novus consul, and then, when arriving at battle site, camping far away and at the other side of the river, not listening to the "plebe", despite the homo novus being above him in rank, etc. After the Senate convinced Gaius Marius of returning from the Jugurthan Wars and taking command of the war against the Cimbris and Teutones, Marius reformed the army and lost virtually no soldier while at the same time defeating half a million germanics.
Did I get it correctly, that you assume northern Germanics worshipped "Nature" and only from contact with Roman developed their gods? Sorry, this is the most outlandish claim I've heard ever. More correct would be that both Romans and Germanics have the same origin in regard to spirituality. The Thundergod is a central element of Indoeuropean religions. While the deities differed somewhat regionally, thunder was always the sign of an important deity. In this context deities sometimes possess a percussive weapon, but they don't have to be the same as the thundergod. E.g. Donar, Thor, Perun, Perkunaz and even Herakles with his club. It is safe to assume that the percussive instrument and thunder were a symbol of the heart and the heartbeat, and thus life itself. It beats and the lighting looks like blood pumping through veins. The point is that at no stage it was a mere worship of nature, which would be a really rough interpretation of modern scholars that cannot explain prechristian symbolism sufficiently.
I actually don't believe we have any evidence of specific germannic religions before the the norse pantheon. While i think something like that must have existed back in the roman days, it is not impossible that the roman contact changed such pantheon. Also, wouldn't some roman scripture mention such deities if they were very common?
@Dean Goldenstar: Roman literature of the first century AD (notably "Germania" by Publius Cornelius Tacitus) *did* describe the Germanic pantheon and Germanic religious practices, though it used the names of the closest matching Roman gods rather than transcribing the original Germanic names (much like how they called the Greek goods by Italic names), so the names of the Germanic gods as we know them today are largely reconstructed bassed the Norse names and comparative linguistics, after reverse-engineering Tacitus' descriptions to figure out which Norse god he was referring to with each Roman name...
@@deangoldenstar7997 We absolutely know the central elements of the pantheon of the Germanics, Protogermanics and Indoeuropeans. Also, it wasn't an unified church and deities differed religionally, especially the names- Tacitus mentions Ingvaeons, Irmions, Istvaeons. We know from Iron-Age Scandinavia that Ingve-Freyr was probably the most important deity before the Odin-Cult became popular. We know the Irmin-sul from Saxonia, which symbolizes the World-Tree, another central element of the pantheon (see Odin hanging in the tree). And Tuisto from the Istväonen, probably symbolizing the conjunction of sky and earth. All in all, it seems that no one really seemed to care about different aspects of the religion and just called the other European gods as he would in his own language. Because at the end of the day they were more or less the same. That everyone influenced each other is quite possible, but keep in mind that even the Samnite religious cult differed from the Roman one and so on so it's kind of a moot point. Religious cults would have merged with Germanic cults especially in border regions and colonies, as it has with Celtic/Gallic cults since forever, but you would be hardpressed to find significant differences to support the argument that Germanics "worshipped Nature" before the contact with Rome.
intresting mark, the proto indo europeans.... most probably took the *thundergod from the east, aka india.... one of the worlds oldest religions.... hinduism, with its many many many different gods, influences from other ancient nearby religions: maybe baylonian-assyrian-egyptian or even persian . the thundergod ..seems to be a common theme, everywhere from .the east to aztecs,incas,chinese and aborigine,moari cultures too...
Are you familiar with the Indo-European hypothesis? That part about the Roman influence on North religion can be explained by that. By that hypothesis this is less an influence, and more a common origin.
Completely incorrect, the scandinavian gods can be traced back to the indo europeans! Were the gods in germania, who were almost identicle to the ones in scandinavia, also taken off the romans?
@@jasonjuelg5045 Well the Urheimat, original Land of ALL GERMANIC TRIBES whether Vikings or the Germanics from Germany was Scandinavia. Some of the Germanic tribes moved to Germany and populated it.
@Jarl William Yep all Germanic people including those from Germany originated in Scandinavia. Keep in mind North Germany is very close to Scandinavia anyway. However several Germanic tribes left Scandinavia and move to Germany and populated entire Germany. That turned Germany to the second heartland of the Germanic tribes. Actually, the South of Germany prior to the Germanic migration was the heartland of the Celtic tribes. The Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings, the Teutones and Cimbri, Visigoths, Lombards or Longobards, Cheruscans were basically the same people.
The Roman Empire didn't fall in 476 ad. The Roman Empire survided and even retook Italy, africa and even a part of Iberia for a while. Byzantium never took over. Byzantium is only a old name of Constantinople.
Hildbert have you got any links or any info about this “Holgers Dike” you talked about? From my point, of view you are exaggerating the Scandinavian contacts with the romans. The fact that we find roman luxury items and Roman weapons in present day Denmark, doesn’t prove that men from here in big scale served in the Roman auxiliary’s. A Roman coin, glas, or a gladius could have ended up here simply by trade.
That was definitely interesting. I wasn't particularly aware of this- I may have heard some references though- so it was nice to hear. I'm interested in the link between the Latin script and the Runic scripts. I had kind of assumed this was coincidental, perhaps more to do with the limit of characters that one can make from straight lines but the influence of Rome makes a lot of sense, especially considering the timing. I can see I am going to be spending some time looking into these things. More of this always appreciated, sir!
They could have adopted it even earlier from the Phoenicians. Their cuneiform characters were the basis for the Greek and then Latin alphabets and probably also for the Futhark runes. Strange that he didn't mention the most beautiful artifacts from the Vendel age, its helmets. They were clearly inspired by the Roman generals highly decorated helmets but they became even more impressive in their Nordic rendition. There are some youtube videos showing some of the originals, which are quite damaged, and their respective, present day, handmade replicas. They're incredibly magnificent and very menacing at the same time. Try and see them if you don't already know about them. They're the most obvious Roman influence in Nordic weaponry.
@@pedrocacela1885 Yeah, the runic script looks a lot more like the earlier Phoenician-derived alphabets, most similar to Old North Italic, Etruscan or Raetic alphabets used before the Latin script was ever introduced there. It doesn't really make sense that the Scandinavians would learn Latin script from the Romans and then coincidentally develop it so that the characters would almost exactly correspond to archaic forms it had developed from and which hadn't been in use for hundreds of years. A more reasonable explanation is that either some wandering Germanic tribe or traders in the years before Rome's expansion encountered the alphabet and then brought it back to Scandinavia, or that it was introduced through Celtic middle-men.
Idk about the rest of the battle gear, but the helms were not the same at all. The Uppsala one looked much more like the Gjermundbu helm than King Rædwald’s.
Sutton Hoo is an anglo-saxon burial site and the Anglo-Saxons were a mix of Angles, Saxons, Frisians and Jutes, all of which belong to the same culture as the Swedes.
Your Danish is quite good! The relations between Denmark and the south actually goes far longer back than Roman times. Down the spine of Jylland there is a road called "hærvejen" (The road of armies) that dates back to the bronze age, and continues a long way into northern Germany. It makes sense to make a wall and demand toll where it leaves Denmark as it was a primary route for export of cattle, amber and slaves- and you need a military base to operate from, when you plan to invade southern Europe, which the Danes (and the other tribes, Cimbrians, Jutes etc) did often...
This is complicated, you also had Burgundians,Goths,Winnili to mention some, that actually were enemies to Rome, and they came from Scandinavia. Also, there is a finding in Öland, a massacre took place there aimed at a village fortress called Sandby Borg that had strong ties to Rome. You can find more information about it if you search for Öland massacre. Maybe the "Danes" were on more friendly terms with Rome, but i wouldnt say the more northern tribes was.
Also, i need to add that Danes didnt enter Denmark until around 500 AD, pushing the original "Danes", the Heruli to the south. So the Heruli might have been good friends with Rome, but not the danes.
They were Germanic Scandinavians, they were all a similar people with similar language and customs. The Cimbri and Teutons "germans" that invaded early Roman empire came from Jutland area, as well as Angles& Jutes of Anglo-Saxons later, and Danish Viking raiders later. It is like having a biker thug gang nearby, every once in a while you get trouble.
Wait, Romans around from 27 BC until 476 AD? More like 509 BC (Founding of the Roman Republic and the start of it's expansion) - 1453 AD (Fall of Constantinople and the eastern half of the empire)
What you said about the pantheon and runes is completely false. The names of the gods both Scandinavian and Roman come from the Proto-Indo-European names of the gods (Thor - Thurisaz) And the runes are similar to Latin because both languages are apart of the Indo-European language group.
Scripts are not determined by spoken language. The Greeks borrowed a Semitic script, which in turn inspired the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Also, runes are garbage.
Old comment but it very much could be before the Romans the germanic pagans didn't really assiosite their gods as actual conscience beings like tacitus said they worshiped nature like the moon and sun However other germanic people did associate these forces as real beings so it's probably a bit of both but we know with near certainly that ancient Scandinavians didn't worship Gods like odin and frey or had a complex religious culture but instead worshiped nature (so it seems) and they didn't attribute human features to these forces until later (We have no proof to say otherwise However we have tacitus and a lack of Scandinavian runes with names of gods on it)
Check out the great courses, they have an excellent video series on the vikings which goes into specifics of Norway, Denmark, Sweden etc. Even though this might be about "Danes" there were certainly later Swedes & Norwegians among them as well.
Alright i have alredy notiecd some wrong things here 5:35 Now IF i remember correctly "vikings" kept on being a sort of a "clan or rather village controlling themselves" system all the way into the early viking age. 6:59 sorry but there never existed a "warrior" class in scandinavia society until the later viking age, the farmers were the warriors, what i mean is that people weren´t warriors as a profession rather by necessity. As in let´s say that your harvest was shit well then you would be almost forced to go raid (wether that be the english or a neighbouring village). 7:45 I honestlly speaking don´t know to much about this but from what i do know the "norse" pantheon wasn´t influenced directly from the romans (from what i know, could have had some influence) since the germanic people alredy had words for gods like Woðanaz (odin in proto-germanic) so i think it was influenced from the germanic people in germania (Maybe they got it from the romans as i said im not really an expert in this area and i would appreciate it if someone could correct me on this with sources thank you very much). otherwise great video!
The warriors of Jomsborg liked raiding in the name of their port city, and so went Jomsviking. Later to be referred to in their acts by name, being called Jomsvikings by Englishmen etc. Word on the vine is that these dudes made quite a lot of money, and saved on a shitload of coin by perpetually spurning Wendland's monarch's demands for taxes. Tough ol' bastards, so they were.
@@Brahmdagh it could be interpreted to be but a more logical way to say it in my opinion would be to say someone is going on a viking as thats close to how the word is used in modern scandinavian languages
That there were Roman weapons in Denmark seems like a plausible explanation as to why the Vikings had equipment, like swords and helmets, so similar to late Roman equipment. But I'm curious if there is more evidence? Say for example swords from just before Roman contact that don't look like a spatha.
A late empire legionary equipment was basically identical to that of a rich viking, mail, spear, shield and a spatha as sidearm, wich was really similar to a viking sword.
Roman artifacts from the time of the Roman Empire has been found in Sweden in my county of Blekinge. Archeologists believe its from a wealthy man who had been serving in the Roman Army. Which was an important status thing even back then before the Viking era. And Roman artifacts has been found elsewhere in Sweden. And with that evidence of the treasures of Vång, its event more clear of the Roman presence back then.
"Who were around from 27BC to 476AD as an empire" Julius Nepos, Justinian, Belisarius, Heraklios, Alexios and Konstantinos XI Palaiologos: "EXCUSE US, WHAT THE FUCK?"
13:53 I know this is a stylized map, so some narrow waterways are removed, but the highlighted area is much bigger than Lolland. The Eastern half is another island called Falster.
Us Danes have always been ones for stealing good ideas as well as gold and women ;) However here we divide our iron age into Celtic, Roman and Germanic based on the dominant culture in Europe at the time, it's not all about the Romans lol. Also not sure how it got more violent than the bronze age since the Solensfolk were quite warlike themselves and fought over the copper and tin trade.
Nice video. Altho I should add that some of what you describe, such as the origin of the runes, is still a matter of debate. Some suggest a greek, rather then roman, influence concerning that one. And, more importantly, saying a pantheon of gods came to be due to roman influence is a claim I must dispute. The most accepted theory (and yes, it is used as a theory) is that the belief in the aesir came to the Nordics with indo-european culture, meaning it is far older then Rome. Maby the clearest example of this is that Tor/Thor is almost identical to the Indian god Indra. The vanir (the lesser known Nordic pantheon), however, is believed to have existed pre-indo-european influence, similar to the Titans in greek mythology. This is especialy interesting, as in the greek version the godly war ended with victory for the indo-european gods, while the Nordic version resulted in a peace treaty.
12:06 - *Danevirke* - is older, at least from around 500, probably yet older. _"we start to get the construction in the early __-7th-__ century..."_ according to English Wikipedia but not correct. The oldest parts of the "main wall" is dated to around year 500, yet built on older not yet dated ramparts possibly from around 450 - 500. Interestingly this coincides with the period of the fall of the Western Roman empire as well as the problems with the Huns in this part of the world. It's also interesting that the wall is built possibly between Angles and Saxons home territory at a time when they jointly (with others) start getting foothold in the British Isles. [Edit] The early start of the Danevirke wall perhaps means that it wasn't the Danes who initiated it (we don't know of Danes having power in this area that early), but we can't know if Danes were somehow involved. Maybe they helped financing it? We don't know. Only that it's older than 500 AD.
There's a poetic beauty in the Classical Romans helping the northern Germanic tribes kickstart the Viking age so they could become mercenaries for the Medieval Romans. It's like an alien race life-seeding a world so that the natives can later become part of their empire.
Apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation , roads, the fresh-water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us ?
Thank you! I swear this meme is so stupid. The celts, Germans, Greeks, etc all had these things before the Romans. The Romans copied many cultures which is one of the reasons why they have these things in the first place!
@@Biggvs_dickvs I was so happy when I heard about that. :D I also like the Normans, as Norse that settle in French lands and picked up (imo) Latin qualities.
dear Hilbert. have you studied "Troy towns", and do you have an opinion or hypothesis of about what culture did them? we have ~200 of them around in finnish coast areas, but very few in the inland.. One hypothesis (from Jukka Nieminen), if i remember it right, was that those stone mazes were linked to Roman imperium.. sidenote: He said also that the Romans might have founded cities here., those cities are connected to each other in semi specific lenghts, that would've been the army's marching distance for one (or two) days.., those cities here happen to be mostly near the same^ coastal areas. the Gulf of Finland and 'Bottom's sea' (sea of bothnia) used to have alot of trade going through.. Wouldn't be a surprise if someone wanted to get the area & people under tax
Wow! Communication between these 2 groups never crossed my mind! I would have thought the mainland Germans formed a buffer between then. Thank you for making me aware of this interesting piece of our shared history.
A proper understanding of the Roman limes and general foreign policy, I salute you sir! Very interesting that Scandinavians seemed to have picked all of this up, not surprising that it happened, but very interesting.
It is unlikely that Funen was Danish that early. It was the island of Heruli and the Heruli were also the inventors of the runes. Almost all Germanic tribes had warriors who hired themselves out to the Romans as mercenaries. The Saxons were also in Roman service before they conquered England.
The Roman never encountered the Vikings, but they did encounter and were defeated many times by their forebears which were referred as Barbarians....the Visigoths, the Goths. These nordic people left the southern part of modern Denmark to become wanderers all over Europe, modern Spain, France, Poland, etc. looking for lands to settle. They were nomadic tribes composed of tens of thousands, families, warriors, etc.
Well we don't where the goths came from There is 2 theories yours is that they came from Scandinavia and the other is they came from North Western Poland I'm more enclimed for the latter because the goths worshiped the same pagan gods as the rest of the germanic tribes, although norse gods are similar there are small differences, differences I would think that the Romans would've wrote down Also it makes it more easier to understand their quick expansion if they came from Poland
So according to this video. Norse Mythology is based on the Greco-Roman Mythology. I got a question where did the Greeks get their myths from? We need to understand the first European myths.
@@Timbo5000 and speaking in English, with an English accent, but then using Dutch pronoucination for Danish places doesn't make my point invalid. If you're going to pronounce things in a foreign accent, at least use the right one, surely?
considering the varangian guard roman artifacts from byzantium could have easily ended up in scandinavia, so it needs to be sourced from a period appropriate site ideally to be certain that the actual exchange occured during the earlier era, there seems plenty aside from that one though
This video should permanently silence the rumors that the etruscans, and the romans by extention, were germanic/nordic in origin because of language similarities. Your explanation of the romans lending their culture to the norse is actually more sensible than this pseudo pangermanic theory that people have been bringing up.
What he said was entirely false though. The germanic people already had a culture before roman contacts, the romans themselves even wrote about the germanic gods and compared them to their own. Both germanic and italic people came from the Indo-European people who migrated into europe from the Pontic-Caspian steppe.
@@vvaldbeere I'm sorry, sometimes I say some dumb shit or phrase it very poorly, it wasn't my intention to claim that germanic tribes did not have a culture, it was more of a jab at some people who pick the word "gods" in ancient etruscan, which sounds like the norse "Aesir", and use it as linguistic proof that italic peoples like the latins and etruscans were germano-nordic peoples.
@@xyAKMxy Oh yes, I know what you mean. I've heard that theory before, it's pretty funny, because it couldn't be further from the truth. Etruscans weren't even Indo-European, but descendents of a neolithic population. So their language was completely unrelated to proto-germanic. Germanic people are closer to slavs, celts and even scythians than the etruscans.
Also if you really like roman engineering being co-opted by the Danes, check out Jelling. The walls can be actually measured precisely in meters because those are based on the old Roman measurements. Again, not just gold and slaves we took from people ;)
So, a question: if the Jutes were so organised and Danish, how come the Jutes who came and settled in Kent and the Isle of Wight some a West Germanic Dialect? Or are they different Jutes?