Earlier vikings

[Tyr]

Just a idea I've been thinking about.
No one is sure quite why the vikings came about when they did though it is generally put down to over population as to why they came about. Since we don't know what caused them in OTL we can't do much to make them come about earlier though what if the conditions become similar to they did in OTL except earlier- 100ishAD?
For an explanation we could even go ASB with a ISOT though thats not the point.
What I am getting at sort of is Vikings vs. Romans.

This is probally silly and too ASBish though I have to post it.

[robertp6165]

Originally Posted by Leej

Just a idea I've been thinking about.
No one is sure quite why the vikings came about when they did though it is generally put down to over population as to why they came about. Since we don't know what caused them in OTL we can't do much to make them come about earlier though what if the conditions become similar to they did in OTL except earlier- 100ishAD?
For an explanation we could even go ASB with a ISOT though thats not the point.
What I am getting at sort of is Vikings vs. Romans.

This is probally silly and too ASBish though I have to post it.

The main issue which would have prevented the emergence of the Vikings during Roman times was the fact that their shipbuilding had not yet sufficiently advanced for them to move far beyond their own shores. In particular, they did not invent THE T-SHAPED KEEL which gave the ship strength to withstand long periods in strong seas and allowed a sail to be mounted, until shortly before 700 A.D...barely a century before the first major Viking raids in OTL. If we posit a POD where the T-shaped keel is invented 500-1,000 years earlier in Scandinavia, then an earlier Viking Age not only becomes possible, but likely.

[David Howery]

how much earlier could the Vikings operate before running into Charlemagne?

[Musketeer513]

Originally Posted by robertp6165

The main issue which would have prevented the emergence of the Vikings during Roman times was the fact that their shipbuilding had not yet sufficiently advanced for them to move far beyond their own shores. In particular, they did not invent THE T-SHAPED KEEL which gave the ship strength to withstand long periods in strong seas and allowed a sail to be mounted, until shortly before 700 A.D...barely a century before the first major Viking raids in OTL. If we posit a POD where the T-shaped keel is invented 500-1,000 years earlier in Scandinavia, then an earlier Viking Age not only becomes possible, but likely.

Without the T-Shaped Keel our proto-Vikings would have been very much like there south of the Baltic kinsmen the Saxons. They may have been able to make it to Iceland, Irish monks did that with out the Viking Keel but the raiding that the Vikings were known for would have been out. All they would have been was another wandering Germanic tribe. We can even have fun imagining them in sub-Sahara Africa or Ethiopia. It's not as far-fetched as it seems. Remember the Goths crossed the Baltic and ended up in the Crimea, Sicily and the Iberian Penisula.

[DominusNovus]

Originally Posted by Leej

Just a idea I've been thinking about.
No one is sure quite why the vikings came about when they did though it is generally put down to over population as to why they came about. Since we don't know what caused them in OTL we can't do much to make them come about earlier though what if the conditions become similar to they did in OTL except earlier- 100ishAD?
For an explanation we could even go ASB with a ISOT though thats not the point.
What I am getting at sort of is Vikings vs. Romans.

This is probally silly and too ASBish though I have to post it.

Nah, not silly at all. I've got that coming up in my Roman Timeline, and we're only in the 3rd century.

Heh, I've noticed a trend about my TL. I can almost always say to check it if someone brings up an odd WI, cuz it'll probably be featured in it.

[Diamond]

Originally Posted by DominusNovus

Heh, I've noticed a trend about my TL. I can almost always say to check it if someone brings up an odd WI, cuz it'll probably be featured in it.

LOL That sounds like Faeelin's Mustafa thread. Any and every possible WI he could think of eventually migrated there...

[DuQuense]

If they go South across the Baltic all the way to the Black Sea ~300~400 Maybe they stop the Huns/Goths and Rome manages to get their act togethers again.

[Redbeard]

Actually the Vikings, or their forefathers, met the Romans. In something like 100 BC (IIRC), the Cimbrians, a tribe from Jutland (the peninsula part of Denmark), started a great exodus southwards (over land) and other Germanic tribes joined them. On the way they gave the Romans serious trouble defeating several armies sent against them. They even crossed the Alps before finally being defeated in Northern Italy (Vercellae) by the Roman commander Marius and his "modern" legions. AFAIK Marius here introduced the standard Legion organisation that was to set the trend for military organisation for milleniums.

It would not be difficult to find a PoD where Marius chokes in his pudding (or whatever a Roman would eat) before becoming a commander and suddenly we have Rome getting seriously sacked in 100 BC. What then?


Regards

Steffen Redbeard

[carlton_bach]

Shipbuilding is an issue, but so is historical perspective. The reason we hear so much about the Viking raids is that the poor, victimised Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Christians wrote so much about them. I'm fairly sure if the chronicles of the Saxons, Picts, Obodrites, Wilzi, Wends, Lombards, Aquitanians, Basques and Danes would have something to say about the Franks if we had them.

Placed into perspective, the Viking era is still impressive, but its maritime accomplishments don't look that unique any more. frex, in the 3rd and 4th century, Gothic raiders ranged through the Eastern Med and Saxon, Frankish and Jute pirates as far as Ireland and Spain. Ships of the 6th and 7th century were quite seaworthy, though not designed for long voyages, anmd we know from the Beowulf and some evidence from chronicles that going to Sweden, the Baltic or France was not unusual for an Anglo-Saxon well before the Viking era. There's a book called 'Dark Age Naval Power', I can't recall the author, that's quite enlightening, though some of its conclusions go a bit far.

There is still an argument over whether earlier ships had sails (the Nydam boat probably didn't, but that was built for inshore raiding in the Baltic where that's not such a big deal). I'd argue that they must have - every other nation of their day used them, so why on earth wouldn't the early Germans? And that carved prow with the almost abstract round head-round mouth scheme that we get shown on every second Viking book actually is dated to the 6th/7th century by many experts

No trouble, then. Vendel-culture Vikings?

[Redbeard]

Originally Posted by carlton_bach

Shipbuilding is an issue, but so is historical perspective. The reason we hear so much about the Viking raids is that the poor, victimised Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Christians wrote so much about them. I'm fairly sure if the chronicles of the Saxons, Picts, Obodrites, Wilzi, Wends, Lombards, Aquitanians, Basques and Danes would have something to say about the Franks if we had them.

Placed into perspective, the Viking era is still impressive, but its maritime accomplishments don't look that unique any more. frex, in the 3rd and 4th century, Gothic raiders ranged through the Eastern Med and Saxon, Frankish and Jute pirates as far as Ireland and Spain. Ships of the 6th and 7th century were quite seaworthy, though not designed for long voyages, anmd we know from the Beowulf and some evidence from chronicles that going to Sweden, the Baltic or France was not unusual for an Anglo-Saxon well before the Viking era. There's a book called 'Dark Age Naval Power', I can't recall the author, that's quite enlightening, though some of its conclusions go a bit far.

There is still an argument over whether earlier ships had sails (the Nydam boat probably didn't, but that was built for inshore raiding in the Baltic where that's not such a big deal). I'd argue that they must have - every other nation of their day used them, so why on earth wouldn't the early Germans? And that carved prow with the almost abstract round head-round mouth scheme that we get shown on every second Viking book actually is dated to the 6th/7th century by many experts

No trouble, then. Vendel-culture Vikings?

For a couple of summers (almost 20 years ago) I was in the crew of a reconstructed early/pre (6/7th century IIRC) Viking Age ship (Imme Sleipner) with a rigging reconstructed from pre Vinking age stone carved images. The ship was very seaworthy and would run fast with the wind from behind or side (don't know the proper expressions in English) but be very difficult to cross into the wind with, andin general needed a lot of hands. Under such conditions rowing the ship would be far more productive (24 oars). The Imme Sleipner cruises are by no mean scientific proof, but may be teken as indications of the possibility of reasonable sail rigging long before the proper Viking age. The Viking ship museum at Roskilde has since made a lot of reconstructions of proper Viking age ships and rigging (in a more scientific way) and concludes that crossing into the wind was SOP on proper Viking age ships.

BTW I agree that the availability of Frankish and Anglo-saxon written sources is an important independent factor in making the Viking raids (in)famous. But the Vikings probably were significant in developing vessels that not only were vere seaworthy enough to cross oceans, but also could be handled by a couple of men. That was significant as it allowed a merchant with a few helping hands to go anywhere with acess to water, Next the late Viking age saw the raids transformed into well organised armies of naval infantry, trained, planned and led by strong Kings (Sven Forkbeard and Canute the Great to name some of the prominent). But an important precondition for this happening at all probably was the power vacuum created by central power on the continent and on the British Isles being weakened at this time.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard

[Anthony Appleyard]

Vikings raiding Roman Britain and also the north coast of Germania and anywhere they can sail up rivers.

[Norman]

Seems to me that there really aren't that many differences between Vikings and the earlier germanic counterparts of the Romans.

Vikings merely did it without all of the Folk Wandering of the earlier Germanic Tribes, thus they were able to do it over generations, since the culture that created them was still there creating the next generation.

The issue of the Cimbrians (Cimbri) and the Teutons has me thinking. Could they have coonquered or at least held Rome to a stale mate? As I understand it, the Romans actually resulted to subtrefuge to win this war. Could it have gone the other way??