Differences between Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Vikings

today is an interesting video for you all we are speaking about the differences and the Danish Swedish and Norwegian Vikings because there are uh some key differences in the types of Stories We read about these peoples in the Viking age and this is going to give us an idea of how the culture of these people was a bit different even though the mainstream refers to them all as a bunch of barbaric Savage people and it's a little bit true we are all one people but we are like three very different brothers so also you're gonna see that we have not really changed that much over a thousand years so super cool topic I'm gonna be a little bit biased of course so if you are Swedish or Danish be ready to get made fun of a bit but that's okay you guys are strong enough to handle it I'm gonna make fun of Norwegians too but our feelings get hurt a lot easier we're a little sensitive so we have to go soft on the Norwegians so they don't get offended uh just for all the non-scandinavians listening in we all make fun of each other always and have a friendly rivalry but deep down we love each other even though we don't admit it just like real brothers so anyway first speaking about Denmark you pastry eating potato stuck in your throat mumbling sons of and gift anyway the Danes actually they were the best Vikings I have to admit they were the ones that rated the most at least on the largest scale and more importantly they were the ones that settled the most and the most significant places not only did they settle but they absolutely took over wherever they went uh the main places being England and France of course and they set up a fuel Kingdom there uh we have the Dane law in England of course which was entirely under Danish control but later on in time uh all of England was under Danish rule for a certain time then of course we have Normandy the Danish Vikings were raiding the out of France pretty much and the French got so tired of it that they uh gave northern France area to the Vikings and this is the story of it you know that you all know then about 200 years later these Normans invaded and took over England again so England really got screwed there twice during the Viking age and also about 500 years before in the migration period all Danish Vikings or Danish genetics kind of invading England so the Welsh and the Scots and Irish they have almost all Celtic DNA but if you're English there's probably very little uh Celtic DNA in there and if you're really English it's probably mostly Danish DNA if we go back far enough in time so Denmark is also home to uh the most legendary heroes of the Viking age such as king knut who was a king of all England for a certain time we have Sven forkbeard of course who led the fight against christianization and defeated his treacherous father Hideout Bluetooth which you all probably know of course and then you all know the legendary dragon and his sons and if you want to read about the Danish Vikings the best ancient sources are guests and also some foreign sources like uh some French annulls on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or beads history of the English people those are all the primary sources um with no kind of modern modern historian interpretations which I like a lot so you know that it's getting straight from the source so yeah biggest legends from the Viking age almost all of them were Danes and this was all Happening by the way at the same time Denmark was trying to defend itself from heavy attack from the Christian Roman Empire from Emperors such as Charlemagne a little bit but more so later on in the Viking age uh Otto the first and second of Germany they also had to defend themselves from the damn Norwegians who didn't give a they just raided everybody uh so the Danish people by far have the hardest job of all Scandinavians and they left the biggest mark on the world so Denmark really has the most impressive accomplishments by far but this also LED Denmark to christianizing and integrating with the rest of the world a lot sooner than the rest of Scandinavia because Denmark settled in places like England and France and large numbers and the people there integrated very quickly within one or two generations and although the Danish genetics spread like wildfire there a ton of people still to this day have uh Danish genetics in northern France and England area of course um but the religion and culture of the Danes faded pretty quickly uh in these places where they settled and there's relatively little trace of Scandinavian influence there compare that to places where Norwegians uh for example settled Scotland Isle of Man uh Iceland's Pharaoh Islands these places the north religion and culture lasted for much longer and you even see traces of this today there still 1 000 years later so of course the picture picture of the Danes as the oldest and strongest and most responsible brother out of the three Viking countries and he's just trying to get us two younger brothers Norway and Sweden to get with the times he would be Denmark would be the rich successful older brother saying please would you come on would you little bastards just grow up and get your lives together come on the rest of the world is Christian as civilization order and peace and their societies are held together and you little you guys just want to keep getting drunk and fighting that in the woods come on please you guys are embarrassing me in front of my friends it's anyway Norway and Sweden were like ah no up yours loser why would we want to be nerds like you so that brings us to Norway the problem child uh think of Norway in the Viking age as the youngest brother that's just a little bastard and likes to cause trouble so before the Viking age Norway was a very wild place that we don't know too much about we read a lot of stories about Denmark and Sweden before the Viking age but Norway was not even really recognized as a common area yet they knew the land mass was Norway but it was not really unified under anything really it was many many small tribes and kingdoms all fighting each other we don't know exactly how many but it's probably countless little small tribes separated by rough landscape and dense forests a very diverse very segregated this is probably how we all lived before the famous Germanic tribes uh living almost a thousand years before the Viking age in Roman times but civilization and Central rule came to these other areas like Germany Denmark and Sweden but in Norway at the start of the Viking age uh uh we were again just a bunch of wild bastards living in small tribes in the woods probably closer to a hunter-gather society than an agricultural one based on some archaeological evidence of course we had farming but to much lesser degree than in Sweden and Denmark then that all came to an end in the Viking age uh first it was our first king who came around to unify the country this is hot out fairhair that you all know and this is really the most significant event in the history of Norway that has shaped us for a thousand years to come because there was a clear split we were a wild and Untamed people for thousands of years and then a king comes in and puts everyone under unified Rule now it's important to say here anyone who has read some of the sagas Harold their hair was not that bad of a guy he he was only a bad guy to the people who didn't listen to him if he kissed his ass and brought him gifts and offered to fight on his side hotold was great to you uh he would give you Freedom he would give you land he would make sure you were all taken care of but if you stood up to King hudld in any way or disagreed with him on things he would try to kill you if he could but at the very least he would make your life very miserable with laws and restrictions and you know especially if you uh kind of got into little quarrels with any of his friends so uh how to ruled actually a very long time more than 70 years that's almost half the Viking age right there and his sons were not much better than him after that and they were they were all very oppressive too so the result is anyone with any balls in the Viking age left Norway sells in Iceland Scotland Ireland Greenland and many other places anyone who really valued freedom in the Viking age left Norway this is exactly what's happening today at Norway's hoop and I'll get into that uh in a minute so what else can we say about the Norwegian Vikings these were explorers and Raiders primarily the Danes were the settlers and Invaders so they came in a lot larger forces rated big places like Paris and York things like that they settled in much larger numbers Norwegian Vikings they were in smaller raiding parties and they rated everywhere they really didn't give a they would raid in the next town over they would raid their neighbors if they wanted to and these raised by Norwegians and icelanders you're not gonna read about in most the mainstream history books and Chronicles like you would about the larger Danish raids but if you read some of the lesser-known sagas and Norwegians rated much much more and really terrorized a lot a lot more of the smaller Villages and towns even though a lot of these they were non-violent altercations a lot of them and definitely not the pillage and rape and burn stories you hear in the mainstream uh the best sources to read about the Norwegian Vikings is for sure any of the Icelandic sagas and also most of this later sagas in heims getting about the Norwegian kings but yeah again the Danes uh they're the big responsible older brother Norwegians is the young wild brother uh the reasons for these raids are very complicated and they're due for many many different reasons that I will go into in another video and the Scandinavians raided long long before the Viking age but to speak about the main difference at this time the Danes had a major uh population growth at the time and they were they simply needed more food and space for their people to live in and that's why they settled in much larger numbers and also they were settling in areas uh that that were under constant attack from from the natives there so they needed to settle in larger numbers and Normandy and England uh for security pretty much Norway they didn't have as big of a population and resource problem but a freedom problem like I mentioned earlier that's the reason that they left the country in smaller bands and they settled mostly in uninhabited areas where they could be free then we get to the most uh the second most significant event in Norwegian history uh the worst best of a king we ever had in the north now he makes heiled Fair hair look like Santa Claus olav did not only force people to submit to his every rule he tortured and killed anyone who didn't accept Christianity absolute horror stories and Norway did not like that at all but Olaf was able to bribe and convert many of the greedy treacherous noblemen at the time with help of the Roman Emperor Otto too uh so Norwegians and even the Danes together could not win a war against the Roman Empire even though they never got invaded but they had so much help with the Norwegian King resources and everything like that it was impossible to win but then something happened instead of fighting against ourselves like we have done since the beginning of time the Scandinavians came together the Danes led by Sven the forkbeard who I mentioned earlier came together with the Norwegians led by Eric Hawkins even the sweets the swedes finally got off their asses the swedes got off their asses led by their King who loves good kidney and we all three came together and had the greatest battle we have ever had in the Scandinavia uh called The Battle of smolder where all the pagans in Scandinavia met Olaf trigvason and his forces at sea and they absolutely destroyed him uh King ulav had the support and finance of the Roman Empire and still they did not even stand a chance against the United Scandinavia um no army ever stands a chance against the United Scandinavia in their own home uh which is why they tried to divide us and use our own treacherous rulers to keep us down again just like they're doing today so one more thing about this battle that that will give us an idea of the differences between these countries uh uh is a few quotes I'll share with you here when ulav knew that he was surrounded by armies from Denmark Norway and Sweden and here we go the Danes this is what king will love said these forest goats will not overcome us the Danes have the courage of goats we will not fear that Force because Danes have never carried off a victory if they fought on ships and that's kind of true the Danes were great warriors they won a lot of battles but anytime it was a naval battle at Sea uh they lost even in Paris um so they were not good sea Fighters then the Olaf sees the swedes and he says oh the sweets they will have an easier and more pleasant time licking their sacrificial Bulls than boarding the long serpent in the face of our weapons and succeeding and clearing our ships I expect that we will not need to fear those horse eaters but then King Olaf sees the Norwegian sailing in with his men and he says Ah and he then realizes that they are in for a hard battle because they are Norwegians like us so here we go King oolav vastly outnumbered yelling salts at the inside in the Danes and swedes and not threatened at all but when he sees the Norwegian he tells his men no forget about the swedes get the Norwegians don't worry about the Danes get the Norwegians so there you have it the Danish were the oldest brother and most mature and adapted to the new world uh the Norwegians were the youngest brother that was uh the wild child and everyone was really scared of and the swedes they were the middle child that just like to sit on their asses and party and find their spirituality just like a bunch of hippies just like Swedish people today I'm bullied Swedish people too much but I'm kidding um I'm gonna tell you why though this was a great thing and really the swedes are in fact the most important out of all of us and it's because they played the most valuable role in the preservation of our religion and culture so the swedes and the Viking age we don't find much information about their deeds in the sources um we have dozens of sagas really thousands of pages that document the actions of Norwegian and danish Vikings but not a whole lot about the swedes of course the swedes did things they weren't just sitting on their asses for 200 years it's just that we don't have a lot of written sources in the Viking age about what the swedes did however before the Viking age Sweden was the top Sweden was the top dog really pretty much every major battle event hero Legend it was in Sweden there were some in Denmark but mostly taking place in Sweden are with Swedish Heroes um also forget that during the migration period the swedes played the the biggest role influencing all of Europe pretty much the Goths that migrated in massive numbers all the way through the East and southern Europe they were originally from Sweden so pre-viking AIDS the swedes were number one and fighting technology Society everything we have a few written sources that confirm this uh heims and Beowulf are probably the two most famous ones but also uh archaeological evidence um Sweden seems to be much more advanced than Denmark and far more advanced than Norway with weapons agriculture technology all of those things but uh Sweden kind of started to slow down in the Viking age from all the sagas and other Chronicles they seem to be a more peaceful uh civilized and religious people during this time and also they didn't really settle or explore um in a lot of places like the Danes or Norwegians did of course Swedish people explored and settled we know that they went East and to Eastern Europe and settled we just don't have many records of it so yes they seem to be largely peaceful people with more focus on spirituality than anything else as I mentioned earlier King ulav has said this as well and a couple of other sources such as Adam abbremen with his description of ipsala and also even fodnan writing about the roost Vikings who were in the East who we think were Swedish so the swedes were definitely the ones who kept uh the strongest tradition of pagan worship and uh and practice much more than the Norwegians and Danes the Norwegians and Danes kind of let their native spirituality go but Sweden definitely kept that tradition going strong also in archeology we find clues about this most of these little statuettes and Rune stones and Graves that were able to learn a lot from they're found in Sweden also we find lots of evidence of travel and trade with the east in Sweden such as this Buddha statue and the railing a statuette which wasn't probably inspired by Eastern spirituality so it's very possible that the swedes traveled to the East and brought some of this more Eastern type of spirituality home with them and kind of uh calmed down from all the fighting and raiding but also and the fact that Sweden remained Pagan uh quite a lot longer than Denmark and Norway even then there is a lot of evidence that paganism continued a lot longer unofficially in Sweden than anywhere else and this is the reason why I'm so happy the swedes were like this in the Viking age because most of the existing sources and evidence that we have about pagan like actual Pagan practice comes from Sweden the the myths and things like that come from Iceland but everything we know about the actual practice of Sweden comes up the sorry practice of paganism comes from Sweden and thanks to this we have records of how we can practice uh uh accurately today so from archaeological finds burials runestones written sources like Adam of Bremen and even fablum law codes folk tales these are all mostly from Sweden and really also very important that we forget is that grimoires or Smock to Beckett as they're called these books document different magic practices and folk traditions we find them starting in the 1500s but most of these practices are much much older and can be dated back to Pagan time so for us the practice and religion of the Vikings we honestly owe about 90 of our thanks to Sweden the Danes and Norwegians were too busy fighting and settling to make a good documentation of their religious practice but swedes we're much more spiritual and we find traces of this evidence uh today that we can use to reconstruct our religion so my final thoughts on all of this Denmark was the oldest most responsible brother he was rich successful loved and integrated in society and the modern you know norms for the time and this older brother tried to get their younger brothers to organize grow up and get with the times Norway was the youngest child just a wild bastard that did whatever the hell they wanted pretty much and just caused problems for everyone else but Norway went through some rough times um when the world was trying to tame them maybe when the brother was like 10 years old he got sent to military school to get him to behave and it kind of tamed him and it kind of calmed him down a bit and this is what the unified Kingdom in Norway did they made Norway a little bit more structured and civilized but this younger brother still grew up to be a wild badass even though you know there was some oppressive times in Norway then we have Sweden Sweden was the middle child this was the brother that was really the best out of all three when he was younger he was Best in Class best in sports everybody loved him and work and and he had the most friends everything else uh just like Sweden was number one in everything before the Viking age but as Sweden this Middle Brother got older he just kind of got tired of all that he got tired of being the top dog and he started searching for more meaning in life uh this brother went traveling around the world to experience things and learn maybe he became a monk for a few years don't know but then he comes back home and he really tried to live a spiritual peaceful life in comparison to the other two brothers but he was always there looking out for his two brothers when they needed it and Sweden was ready to fight when it was necessary so that is kind of the the main differences that pop out uh at us between the three countries in the Viking age but there are many many more differences but these are just what you will notice um most of when you read the old sources so all of those sources again are in the links below and um hope you enjoyed this video and it gives you a bit of things to go on so that's all for today

Channel: Norse Magic and Beliefs

Views: 4,414,135

Keywords: viking, vikings, different, differences, denmark, norway, sweden, danish, swedish, norwegian, location, raids, battles, settlement, ragnar, lothbrok, last kingdom, floki, norse, mythology, change, settled, scandinavia, history, rival

Id: 73Xb4STUupI

Length: 22min 37sec (1357 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021