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• @datarama@hachyderm.io 2026-04-21 18:15

  @cholling @ZachWeinersmith @HighlandLawyer I mean, vikings definitionally got into ships and went plundering. "Viking" was a job description - though a part-time one. Of course, most Late Iron Age Norsemen were full-time farmers and never went raiding. But they didn't consider themselves "vikings" and would be terribly confused if they were described as such. (Footnote on piracy: AFAIK piracy refers to all acts of robbery or criminal violence by ship, including attacks on coastal settlements; the target of the violence doesn't have to be a ship. The 1600s European pirates in the Caribbean often attacked coastal settlements - and their roughly-contemporary North African colleagues would often *preferentially* attack Spanish and Italian coastal towns, because the looting in those was a lot better than what they'd get out of hitting ships.)

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