Danelaw to Denmark: A Viking Journey

The entire history of the United States falls within the Modern era.

The ethnic and cultural distinction between Yankee and Southerner can similarly be traced back to the Early Modern Era and has its roots in divisions over climate, slavery and religion. The Anglo-American founding stock came from different parts of the British Isles. The Puritans famously came from East Anglia while lowland Southerners came from the south and west of England. The Scots-Irish came from Ulster and the Borderlands of the north of England.

The overwhelming majority of Southerners and millions of other Americans can trace their ancestry back to the British Isles. We came from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Those who didn’t come from the British Isles tended to come from Northwestern Europe: Germans, Dutch, French and Scandinavians. We’re broadly Germanic and Celtic. Prior to the 17th century, all of our ancestors were still in Northwestern Europe around the North Sea. There are White Americans whose ancestors came here from Southern Europe and Eastern Europe, but they are a minority. The great bulk of White Americans came here from either Britain, Ireland or Germany and most now have ancestors that at some point came from all three of these countries.

In this documentary, we go back and continue to explore Britain after the fall of Rome. The Angles, Saxons and Jutes arrive in post-Roman Britain from their ancestral homeland on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands, northern Germany and Denmark. Originally, the Angles and Saxons (their merger is a product of later English history) were seafaring peoples, but after arriving in Britain, settling down to become farmers and converting to Christianity, they became land dwellers and lost interest in the sea until the Viking invasions of the 9th century in King Alfred’s time. They built wooden settlements next to the old Roman towns which were constructed of stone. The Roman ruins of Londinium were reoccupied and refurbished during the pagan Viking invasions and the development of modern London traces back to this period.

In between the withdrawal of the Romans around 410 AD and the invasion of Britain by the Great Heathen Army in 865 AD, seven major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms emerged in what became England which was unified under Æthelstan in 927: Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Kent, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria. Celtic Britons held out in the far west of Britain in what is now Cornwall, Wales and Cumbria and Strathclyde. Interestingly enough, the Scots-Irish can partially trace their ancestry back to these Britons who were sandwiched between what later became England and Scotland. The area was also overrun and settled by the English, Scots and Norse though.

As the Norse and Danes developed a trading network around the North Sea and as the English unified and developed a navy to fight off the Viking invasions, the English developed a renewed interest in the sea and began traveling to distant parts of Northern Europe to trade. Scandinavia, Kievan Rus and Poland began to convert to Christianity around 1000 AD. The Viking Age came to an end around the time Harold Hardrada, the king of Norway, died while invading England which only a few weeks later fell to the Normans in the Norman Conquest.

Whether it was Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norse, Frisians or Normans, these people were racially, culturally and ethnically similar enough to be almost indistinguishable from each other. They all came from the same area and founding stock and were only briefly divided by their respective conversions to Christianity. The Celtic Britons and Irish weren’t dissimilar enough to merge with the English, Danes and Norse in all sorts of ways over time. The Norse who settled in Ireland and Scotland were also absorbed into those nations.

It goes without saying that trying to repeat this experiment with every racial, ethnic, cultural and religious group in the world who separated by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution on different continents is a disaster that will not and cannot produce the same result.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

2 Comments

  1. The ‘Great Heathen Army’ – what a wonderful name and notion

    Non-Abrahamic warriors ready to put an axe into the skull of an enemy

    Mediaeval Christians perhaps gained strength from their clearer picture of an afterlife, which was relatively weaker in definition amongst European pagans … who did however hold out in the Baltics till nearly the end of the middle ages

    Versus in classical Hindu paganism, where the course of many lives, ending in heaven and bliss, was very clear, and the warrior was a greatly honoured figure

    A warrior even being the central human character of the most-loved Hindu story, the Bhagavad-Gita, which has God telling a warrior to be brave and fight, because there is nothing to fear

    But then over centuries, the warrior and sensual traditions of Hinduism, were pushed to the margins by the success of the Buddhist outgrowth, which focused instead on ‘taming desire’ and being non-violent and scorning the culture of weapons … much like today’s ‘liberals’

    Which then led to India being conquered by Muslims and Christians, and occupied for 1000 years, Hindus taking centuries to re-group and push back … with the scars still showing in today’s Indian society, rather a mess

    Christianity, viewed from outside, is essentially a Buddhist overlay on Judaism

    And now ‘leading Christians’ like Pope Francis, are using those Buddhist-echoing themes of Jesus and Paul, to tell the European peoples to stop being warriors

    • You have a distorted view of Hinduism.

      Ramayan is actually the most important story.

      Hanuman a devoted servant and combination of Bhakti and Shakti, Devotion and Ferocity is the most important model for Hindus to follow.

      All respect to Sri Krishna but it was In Ayodya that the Khalsa uprooted the mark of the oppressors.

      Mathura remains besieged.

      ?? ????? ???? ?? ??? ????? ??? ? ??? ???? ?? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?
      After the ten avatars of Rudra, the eleventh avatar is Hanuman. In the same manner, after the Ten Gurus, recognize the eleventh [Guru], the Sikh Panth, as Hanuman-like. .

      ???? ?? ????? ?? ??? ??? ?? ???? ? ??? ???? ????? ??? ?? ?? ???? ???? ?
      That great strength that Hanuman has, that strength is within the Khalsa. The Poet Kankan reflects upon this with no doubt in his mind.

      https://defenceforumindia.com/forum/threads/sikh-hindu-relationship.81915/

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