HI127 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Danelaw, Paschasius Radbertus, Longship
Document Summary
The problem with ecclesiastical sources, (christian churches) was they were biased, did not like vikings. One author paschasius radbertus wrote that vikings were a base and filthy race , they would often burn churches which were very important to the christians. Traditional vs. revisionist narratives, conflicting opinions that vikings were traders and raiders. Scandinavia known as the ship builder"s lab, due to the deep waters it was a great place to build and test ships. Drekar: dragon ships, big ships mainly for royalty or powerful groups. Increases in ship sizes meant more men on each ship, which meant bigger military operations. Scandinavian culture was based on land would be split between children of the father, this pattern led to little land for each child, therefore raiding would bring more land. Many scandinavian resources were in high demand, thus when trading it was easy to gather intel to raid.
