2026-04-21 18:15 UTC
@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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@cholling@bytes.programming.dev 2026-04-21 18:44
@datarama @ZachWeinersmith @HighlandLawyer But they didn't consider themselves "vikings" and would be terribly confused if they were described as such."Why, I've never viked in my life!"