Probably because it really helped them do business, you know in slaves and such.
Vikings settled in Russia to get better access to the Islamic regions for trade.
EDIT: But these could also be the death robes of Slavic or Islamic personnel that were part of some Viking trade enterprises, as translators, regional experts etc. I mean they are not necessarily garments reflective of the pagan/Christian Viking culture of the day.
Possible, but it seems simpler that they included luxury items from the Islamic world in their burial practices without understanding or worrying about the religious connotations of the script on them.
Ibn Fadlan observed the "viking" Rus in southern Russia. It would be more surprising if there was a significant community of Muslim converts in the Scandinavian homeland.
Fascinating stuff.
Edit: and another guy posted a link that makes a great argument that this was fake news in the first place
I'm disappointed there's no counter argument presented in the linked article, especially given this interpretation of the embroidery is highly subjective. This other article gives some rebuttals from others in the field
It's widely known to academia (but often ignored by popular history works) that the vikings (especially the Swedish vikings) spend more time trading with the Arabs then raiding England to the point where several sultan's had viking mercenaries as their private bodyguards.
In fact the best contemporary description of an viking burial comes from an arab trader who observed one in what is today Ukraine.
Yep. Russia (now: Ukraine, Belorussia, and small western part of Russian Federation) got it name from vikings, which are from "Russia" town (now: "Old Russa", but town moved up by river, so original town is at other place down the river).
I was surprised to learn that Baltic/Arab trade dates all the way back to neolithic times and was prevalent during the second century BC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_Road
Maybe so, but it doesn't change the fact that the Vikings would have happily sacked the Arabs and anyone else. It's not like they were culturally sensitive--at all.
I'm pretty sure that depends on which "Vikings" you are talking about, Swedes vs Danes & Norwegians. Also vikings refers to people engaged in raiding, so people who were engaged in trade would not be vikings.
Two years ago I attended a friend's wedding near Uppsala, Sweden and had the chance to speak with a retired man who was now volunteering time on Viking archaeology digs in the country and a little in some other Baltic nations. He said much the same as you: that Vikings did a lot of exchange with Arab traders, which was surprising. That there were Vikings traveling at least as far as Ukraine is really interesting!
2) ...but the current political climate in Sweden is such that there is a frantic search for anything and everything which can be used to 'prove' that Sweden has always been a melting pot of different cultures (which it hasn't, it used to be one of the most homogeneous mono-cultural countries in the world) so that those who decry the current efforts to make it so can be countered with those arguments. Truth or fiction does not really matter here as those who tend to proffer these 'truths' also tend to adhere to the school of thought which does not hold with 'absolute' truth, instead posing that all truth is relative and should be seen in context of 'alternative' explanations.
The underlying evidence in this case is clearly fragmentary and unclear. When doing historical research, one should always be wary of finding precisely what one is looking for. Any definite statements about these items will require more research, more analysis, and most of all more data.
That said, the idea that Vikings of this era would possess important items with Arabic lettering on them should by no means be seen as a surprising discovery. The Vikings and Arabs of this period were engaged in a truly staggering amount of travel and trade, and the southernmost parts of the Viking area overlapped with the northernmost parts of Arab expansion--particularly in places like Sicily.
For just one hint of the kind of intermixing that was going on, I would recommend skimming the "Viking Age" section of the Wikipedia page on the history of Sicily:
> The underlying evidence in this case is clearly fragmentary and unclear.
At least based on what's being reported in the Atlantic article, it seems pretty clear to me: The most distinctive features of the word are inferred, and they're inferred well out past a selvedge. The presumed style of calligraphy appeared 500 years after the textile was made. And people who are familiar with the script are saying that even the parts of the pattern that we have aren't compatible with the idea that it's meant to spell Allah.
I don't have the expertise to evaluate any of those lines of evidence, except perhaps the selvedge question, myself, but, if we take, for the sake of argument, that they're accurate, that is multiple very different lines of evidence that all conflict with the hypothesis. I wouldn't be surprised if that's as clear a disconfirmation as you can typically get in archaeology.
That said, it doesn't render the basic idea risible; we know there was plenty of trade and cultural exchange, and we have plenty of other examples of artifacts with Arabic writing being found at Viking sites. It's just that it seems much more likely that this particular artifact merely exhibits an abstract motif.
Specifically the square version of Kufic, which is apparently a more recent variant.
First, the style of Arabic that Larsson says she has identified—square Kufic—is not known to have been used in the 10th century; it only became common about 500 years later.
I imagine it's just like how, with the Latin script, anachronistic letterforms can be used as a line of evidence in identifying less-skillful forgeries.
> which it hasn't, it used to be one of the most homogeneous mono-cultural countries in the world
Really? Well let's take a few seconds to see what Wikipedia has to offer on the subject:
"Five national minority languages are also recognized by Swedish law: Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani and Sami. "
Interesting approach for a "mono-culture".
"For most of its history, Sweden was a larger country than today. At its height in 1658, the Swedish Empire comprised the territories of what is Finland and Estonia as well as parts of Russia, Latvia, Germany, Denmark and Norway. Hence, Sweden's linguistic landscape has historically been very different from that of today."
And historically, even more diverse. Or is all the above wrong?
Yes, they are mostly wrong. The five national minority languages were explicitly written into law in 1999. In the same article where you got that quote you'll have read (but failed to mention) that 'A significant immigration to Sweden did not start until after World War I' [1]. Also it is a little... far-fetched... to pull in the fact that Sweden used to be a conquering nation - the period called 'stormaktstiden' [2] (the time of great power) here - as 'proof' that Sweden used to be more diverse. It wasn't Sweden which used to be more diverse, it was just that the Swedish kings had turned their country into a well-oiled military machine which was used to spread Swedish influence and power over a large area. It was actually the fact that Sweden was so homogeneous which made it possible for King Gustav I Vasa to take over from the Roman Catholic church and found the Church of Sweden (in 1536) and use its organisation to help create that well-oiled military machine in the first place.
I don't have much of an opinion other than to observe that Yiddish & Romani being on that list is worthy of a good chuckle. (I happen to be able to speak a bit of both and I've visited Sweden several times)
Swedish empire was of obvious reasons not a homogenous rule, however the Swedish homeland was except parts of today’s Finland.
Forty percent of all ethnic Swedish males all share the same ancestor Ivar, who came from today’s northern Germany 3500 years ago. This tells us that Sweden didn’t have a lot of migration from the Bronze Age until modern era.
The different minorities where in total numbers compared to ethnic Swedes not that many except the Finns, but after the separation with Finland in 1809 that number decreased significantly.
In 1940 the numbers of individuals that was counted as Romani was about 8000, however many of the Romani arrived in the late 1900th century to Sweden.
Meänkieli is basically a Finnish dialect, a consequence of the separation of Sweden & Finland in 1809.
Many Yiddish speakers arrived to Sweden with the Second World War and the in the late sixties from Poland. In 1930 they where about 6000.
In 1945 it is believed that about 10 000 spoke Sami.
0.7 percent of people living in Sweden year 1900 was born abroad.
I was in Stockholm a few months ago and visited the Viking Museum. One of the most fascinating things were the maps. They highlighted where they knew vikings visited (and rampaged) and where they think they visited (and rampaged). Vikings may have visited Egypt.
It's feasible there were Arabic scripts in relics found in viking graves but asserting they were Muslim is radically different than realizing it could have been pillaged just as easily.
Funny, I see just as many attempts at proving the opposite points, often twisting current news and historical events to fit the narrative.
As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions, given the vast trade networks. And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times? Getting triggered like this indicates the opposite of the trend you're pointing out (not that they are mutually exclusive).
Also, in Sweden today I could be in actual danger if I made this comment publicly in my own name, for whatever that's worth.
> And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times?
So what, it must be true because if you don't think it's true, you're a racist?
This particular article points out a specific piece that apparently spells "Allah" only when viewed in a mirror, in a style that didn't exist for another 500 years, with a spelling error.
And no, it's not problematic if it were true. It's problematic that this is being passed as real archaeology when the methodology is extremely biased.
Don't forget that you have to assume they were using some sort of special Tardis textile that's bigger on the inside. That, to me, is the most compelling criticism. Everything else is arguably circumstantial, but it's kind of hard to look past a hypothesis apparently resting on a physical impossibility.
It's hard for me to see this as a big moral loss, either. A more compelling poster child for Vikings' relationship with Islam would be the examples of Vikings converting to Islam that are documented in the historical record. The garment, even if you accept for the sake of argument that it does read Allah, could still just be a prized souvenir.
> As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions
Sure, but it also requires time travel into the future to use a script that wasn't used at the time and won't be common for another 500 years, if it was to be Allah, they spelled it wrong (and got lllha), and even this is conjecture based on what they think the pattern would have been because half of that isn't even there and the band would have to be a lot wider than it is to fit that text.
These are some pretty compelling criticisms to which no good answer is given, especially the fact that the text is from the future, which gets no real answer at all except that she "does not agree" for reasons that are left unstated.
The white supremacists are idiots, but this just looks like someone trying to sell alternate history books to me.
The larger the population, the more unique social events there are, allowing the potential to overfit on any narrative you can conjure up. Today I just saw a headline about one marine who walked out on Trump's SOTU. How many marines attended proudly?
>As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions, given the vast trade networks
And it would still be an irrelevant minority -- not what "vikings" in general "have" embroidered.
> And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times?
I don't know, ask the people "[franticly searching] for anything and everything which can be used to 'prove' that Sweden [or anywhere else] has always been a melting pot of different cultures". They're the ones implying this is relevant, and that Vikings not being influenced by Arabic
culture would somehow make white supremacism less stupid.
Also, to add to what several other people have said, modern Arabic, even more so that most illegible scribbles^W^W cursive scripts, is notorious for any random collection of curves looking like a word; I think we're up to three different cases of someone catching a fish with "Allah" written on it's scales. Somehow, I doubt the situation with older Arabic writing systems is any better.
> As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions, given the vast trade networks. And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times? Getting triggered like this indicates the opposite of the trend you're pointing out (not that they are mutually exclusive).
Eh, this is too close to suggesting that anyone who "got triggered" by The Mar Saba Letter is a homophobe. After all, "it would by no means be impossible" that Jesus practiced homosexuality.
> Also, in Sweden today I could be in actual danger if I made this comment publicly in my own name, for whatever that's worth.
The ruling class has always used history as weapon against the people. This has been true thru all of mankind’s history to this day, this piece included.
So why would you then be in trouble when you are just carrying water for the ruling class?
> it used to be one of the most homogeneous mono-cultural countries in the world
I'm having a difficult time understanding what "mono-cultural countries" has to do with this topic.
The modern concept of "country" is often attributed to Westphalian sovereignty from the 1600s, but this article concerns the Norse era.
Norse territory wasn't a mono-culture. The Norse controlled lands on Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere, where the Norse were ethnic minorities.
The ethnic Norse on the Scandinavian peninsula were not a mono-culture because some were followed the Christian religion and some followed the Old Norse religion.
Nor were the genetics a mono-culture. During the Norse times, about 10% of the population were thralls, and a substantial fraction of that captured non-Norse slaves, some of whom became freedmen.
Then there were the Geats, Swedes, and Gutes.
That said, I'm fine with saying that the diversity of the Scandinavian peninsula has varied, and that in more recent history, especially after the rise of the strong centralized state, it was much closer to a mono-culture.
This research is a complete fraud. What is was about was to get funding for exhibition about Islam & Sweden, it was not qualified research.
What the researcher Annika Larsson did was to take a piece of Viking cloth, made a cut & folded it 90 degrees & matched it together from the original cut & then read some ornaments backwards to get the word Allah. This is the equivalent of seeing Jesus' face in a toast.
> Enlarging the patterns and looking at the reflection in a mirror revealed the word 'Allah' (God) in Arabic
That's really grasping at straws.
Not that it would be problematic if they really did find Arabic writing. Vikings traded with and had conflict with Arabs and were well known to take religious artifacts as bounty.
Lol, it was just the cloth. It was typically made in Syria and sold worldwide. As recently as in 1990s, Patriarch of Russia was hinted by the late ex-Prime Minister Primakov, who was a specialist in the Middle East and could read Arabic very well, that he wore one garment with the inscription "There's no God except Allah", and it turns out that Partiarchs of Russia wore those for centuries never having an idea. Just because the traditional ritual cloth have been for centuries bought in Syria.
I would be highly surprised if Vikings have been Shia Muslims :D
Not a myth. Yes it has been exaggerated by later stories, as if the print was clearly visible, while in fact it was 'white on white' (letters were pressed into cloth, as watermarks on the money) and difficult to even mention let alone read.
A translation of the first statement of the shahada into most languages would be "there is no god but God", or "there is no deity but God" - it's not objectionable in any Christian church unless you refuse to translate only the last word. It could've be made by Syrian Christians.
(The remainder of the shahada would be more surprising.)
I've never seen the originals but I've seen some of the research...
Likelihood some knew what it said? High. Lots of trade history, going back thousands of years. (really confirmed for King Tut, but yes, goes back a while)
Likelihood aesthetics over worrying about what it said? Who really knows... with enough evidence to suggest the range between "some did care" and "as secular as a modern atheist" all being not unheard of.
Likelihood of it saying what the researchers said? Middling, but there are other finds like it which are a bit more consistent...
For the same reason the Western people have tattoos of Japanese or Chinese characters inked onto their body. They think it looks great and it's affordable.
I venture to say that 99.9% of Vikings had no idea those pretty designs in gold thread said anything at all, much less the word 'Allah'.
53 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 48.5 ms ] threadVikings settled in Russia to get better access to the Islamic regions for trade.
EDIT: But these could also be the death robes of Slavic or Islamic personnel that were part of some Viking trade enterprises, as translators, regional experts etc. I mean they are not necessarily garments reflective of the pagan/Christian Viking culture of the day.
Ibn Fadlan observed the "viking" Rus in southern Russia. It would be more surprising if there was a significant community of Muslim converts in the Scandinavian homeland.
Fascinating stuff.
Edit: and another guy posted a link that makes a great argument that this was fake news in the first place
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/vi...
In fact the best contemporary description of an viking burial comes from an arab trader who observed one in what is today Ukraine.
The Vikings really got around.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rurik_dynasty
2) ...but the current political climate in Sweden is such that there is a frantic search for anything and everything which can be used to 'prove' that Sweden has always been a melting pot of different cultures (which it hasn't, it used to be one of the most homogeneous mono-cultural countries in the world) so that those who decry the current efforts to make it so can be countered with those arguments. Truth or fiction does not really matter here as those who tend to proffer these 'truths' also tend to adhere to the school of thought which does not hold with 'absolute' truth, instead posing that all truth is relative and should be seen in context of 'alternative' explanations.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/vi...
That said, the idea that Vikings of this era would possess important items with Arabic lettering on them should by no means be seen as a surprising discovery. The Vikings and Arabs of this period were engaged in a truly staggering amount of travel and trade, and the southernmost parts of the Viking area overlapped with the northernmost parts of Arab expansion--particularly in places like Sicily.
For just one hint of the kind of intermixing that was going on, I would recommend skimming the "Viking Age" section of the Wikipedia page on the history of Sicily:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Sicily#Viking_Age
At least based on what's being reported in the Atlantic article, it seems pretty clear to me: The most distinctive features of the word are inferred, and they're inferred well out past a selvedge. The presumed style of calligraphy appeared 500 years after the textile was made. And people who are familiar with the script are saying that even the parts of the pattern that we have aren't compatible with the idea that it's meant to spell Allah.
I don't have the expertise to evaluate any of those lines of evidence, except perhaps the selvedge question, myself, but, if we take, for the sake of argument, that they're accurate, that is multiple very different lines of evidence that all conflict with the hypothesis. I wouldn't be surprised if that's as clear a disconfirmation as you can typically get in archaeology.
That said, it doesn't render the basic idea risible; we know there was plenty of trade and cultural exchange, and we have plenty of other examples of artifacts with Arabic writing being found at Viking sites. It's just that it seems much more likely that this particular artifact merely exhibits an abstract motif.
This is the word Allah in Kufic:
https://freeislamiccalligraphy.com/?portfolio=allah-square-k...
The line above is ornamental. Pretty close to the clothes design.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kufic
First, the style of Arabic that Larsson says she has identified—square Kufic—is not known to have been used in the 10th century; it only became common about 500 years later.
I imagine it's just like how, with the Latin script, anachronistic letterforms can be used as a line of evidence in identifying less-skillful forgeries.
Really? Well let's take a few seconds to see what Wikipedia has to offer on the subject:
"Five national minority languages are also recognized by Swedish law: Finnish, Yiddish, Meänkieli, Romani and Sami. "
Interesting approach for a "mono-culture".
"For most of its history, Sweden was a larger country than today. At its height in 1658, the Swedish Empire comprised the territories of what is Finland and Estonia as well as parts of Russia, Latvia, Germany, Denmark and Norway. Hence, Sweden's linguistic landscape has historically been very different from that of today."
And historically, even more diverse. Or is all the above wrong?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_minority_languages_of...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Empire
Forty percent of all ethnic Swedish males all share the same ancestor Ivar, who came from today’s northern Germany 3500 years ago. This tells us that Sweden didn’t have a lot of migration from the Bronze Age until modern era.
The different minorities where in total numbers compared to ethnic Swedes not that many except the Finns, but after the separation with Finland in 1809 that number decreased significantly.
In 1940 the numbers of individuals that was counted as Romani was about 8000, however many of the Romani arrived in the late 1900th century to Sweden.
Meänkieli is basically a Finnish dialect, a consequence of the separation of Sweden & Finland in 1809.
Many Yiddish speakers arrived to Sweden with the Second World War and the in the late sixties from Poland. In 1930 they where about 6000.
In 1945 it is believed that about 10 000 spoke Sami.
0.7 percent of people living in Sweden year 1900 was born abroad.
It's feasible there were Arabic scripts in relics found in viking graves but asserting they were Muslim is radically different than realizing it could have been pillaged just as easily.
As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions, given the vast trade networks. And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times? Getting triggered like this indicates the opposite of the trend you're pointing out (not that they are mutually exclusive).
Also, in Sweden today I could be in actual danger if I made this comment publicly in my own name, for whatever that's worth.
So what, it must be true because if you don't think it's true, you're a racist?
This particular article points out a specific piece that apparently spells "Allah" only when viewed in a mirror, in a style that didn't exist for another 500 years, with a spelling error.
And no, it's not problematic if it were true. It's problematic that this is being passed as real archaeology when the methodology is extremely biased.
It's hard for me to see this as a big moral loss, either. A more compelling poster child for Vikings' relationship with Islam would be the examples of Vikings converting to Islam that are documented in the historical record. The garment, even if you accept for the sake of argument that it does read Allah, could still just be a prized souvenir.
Sure, but it also requires time travel into the future to use a script that wasn't used at the time and won't be common for another 500 years, if it was to be Allah, they spelled it wrong (and got lllha), and even this is conjecture based on what they think the pattern would have been because half of that isn't even there and the band would have to be a lot wider than it is to fit that text.
These are some pretty compelling criticisms to which no good answer is given, especially the fact that the text is from the future, which gets no real answer at all except that she "does not agree" for reasons that are left unstated.
The white supremacists are idiots, but this just looks like someone trying to sell alternate history books to me.
And it would still be an irrelevant minority -- not what "vikings" in general "have" embroidered.
I don't know, ask the people "[franticly searching] for anything and everything which can be used to 'prove' that Sweden [or anywhere else] has always been a melting pot of different cultures". They're the ones implying this is relevant, and that Vikings not being influenced by Arabic culture would somehow make white supremacism less stupid.
Also, to add to what several other people have said, modern Arabic, even more so that most illegible scribbles^W^W cursive scripts, is notorious for any random collection of curves looking like a word; I think we're up to three different cases of someone catching a fish with "Allah" written on it's scales. Somehow, I doubt the situation with older Arabic writing systems is any better.
Eh, this is too close to suggesting that anyone who "got triggered" by The Mar Saba Letter is a homophobe. After all, "it would by no means be impossible" that Jesus practiced homosexuality.
> Also, in Sweden today I could be in actual danger if I made this comment publicly in my own name, for whatever that's worth.
I highly doubt that.
So why would you then be in trouble when you are just carrying water for the ruling class?
They emphatically had trade. Whether or not they did it because they knew what it said - or didn't - or didn't care - is where politics comes in.
I'm having a difficult time understanding what "mono-cultural countries" has to do with this topic.
The modern concept of "country" is often attributed to Westphalian sovereignty from the 1600s, but this article concerns the Norse era.
Norse territory wasn't a mono-culture. The Norse controlled lands on Great Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere, where the Norse were ethnic minorities.
The ethnic Norse on the Scandinavian peninsula were not a mono-culture because some were followed the Christian religion and some followed the Old Norse religion.
Nor were the genetics a mono-culture. During the Norse times, about 10% of the population were thralls, and a substantial fraction of that captured non-Norse slaves, some of whom became freedmen.
Then there were the Geats, Swedes, and Gutes.
That said, I'm fine with saying that the diversity of the Scandinavian peninsula has varied, and that in more recent history, especially after the rise of the strong centralized state, it was much closer to a mono-culture.
What the researcher Annika Larsson did was to take a piece of Viking cloth, made a cut & folded it 90 degrees & matched it together from the original cut & then read some ornaments backwards to get the word Allah. This is the equivalent of seeing Jesus' face in a toast.
That's really grasping at straws.
Not that it would be problematic if they really did find Arabic writing. Vikings traded with and had conflict with Arabs and were well known to take religious artifacts as bounty.
I would be highly surprised if Vikings have been Shia Muslims :D
(The remainder of the shahada would be more surprising.)
Likelihood some knew what it said? High. Lots of trade history, going back thousands of years. (really confirmed for King Tut, but yes, goes back a while) Likelihood aesthetics over worrying about what it said? Who really knows... with enough evidence to suggest the range between "some did care" and "as secular as a modern atheist" all being not unheard of. Likelihood of it saying what the researchers said? Middling, but there are other finds like it which are a bit more consistent...
I venture to say that 99.9% of Vikings had no idea those pretty designs in gold thread said anything at all, much less the word 'Allah'.