Do any of your guys have any historical background to build any of that bull up with facts? "Norweigans were more brutal because they use axes" Jesus on scates!... That argument sounds like something I could get from a random interview in a kindergarden. The fact is that the viking era stretched from year 800 to 1050 and under at least a 3rd of those years, Norway were under Danish control. So how effin brutal can they be? Denmark on the other hand, controlled a big part of Europe under Knud den Store (You may know him as Canute the Great) including Norway. Parts of Sweden and England among others. Whereas Norway controlled Norway if they were lucky. Some of you may also be familiar with another Danish viking called Ragnar Lødbrøk if you have watched HBO´s vikings. He was famous for robbing Paris of a fortune in return for not sacking them... All in all, you guys need to read up on your viking history before you make claims on the matter.
I have a historical background to build on with many facts regarding the Vikings who I have studied for years, as I am a ancestor of Gorm the Old, Sweyn Forkbeard, Harald Bluetooth, Knut the Great and Valdemar the Victorious and I have the papers to prove that too.
But my family line has connection both to Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Most of the Kings were Danish and many had roots in Als and Roskilde. But in Sweden I am related to two princesses from Lund and one of my ancestors sailed west with the Norwegians who to a large degree travelled with the Danes back then.
So the argument on who was the best Vikings is kind of nonsense. For all of the Vikings were extremely fierce and it is not true the Swedes had more longivity, they just remained Swedish longer. Many Danes settled in England and Ireland and so lasted at least as long as the Swedes just under another nationality, so to say that the Swedes was more successful makes no sense. Likewise it is tough to make that argument for Norway. For there is a reason Greenland and Iceland was under Danish rule for so long, for during a long period of ancient history Denmark and Norway was the same kingdom and fought together, so did Skåne in southern Sweden who was Danish/Norwegian for a long time.
So how can you argue Norwegians, Swedes or Danes stronger than each other? They were basically made of the same blood and culture, and feared where-ever they went and all took very long journeys. There is evidence that the Swedes may have made it all the way to Azerbaijan and the Middle-East. The Norwegians and Danes both made it to the America's, though it was mostly Norwegians, but the Danes went to Rome and Paris and sacked these cities as well as London, York and most of England. So to say the Danes were inferior to the rest makes no sense. They were not superior either, they all had great success but in different ways.
The Swedes probably had the most success as a nation, eventually taking Skåne from Denmark and being strong in Scandinavia because they remained more local. The Norwegians traveled the furthers and discovered the most perhaps, but locally they were inferior to both the Danes and Swedes who ruled them throughout much of history in part because they had larger numbers and more advantageous locations.
The Danes however probably had the greatest success spreading their blood lines throughout all of Europe and the world. People of Danish ancestors came to live in both Italy, Spain, France, England, Portugal, Ireland, Holland, Iceland, Greenland and later many went to the america's too in larger numbers than the Norwegians.
So how would you measure this against each other? Local national power, vs ship building and exploration vs wide-spread blood lines of Kings all over the world?
You can't really compare this, both because they often fought and traveled together and mixed blood too, but also because for their relatively small number all 3 nations had a lot of success everywhere they went. The only reason you guys have to discount the Danes is because they integrated with the English, but the English became the largest empire ever and many there today still have Danish ancestry, so should the Danish be discounted just because the Danes started calling themselves English when they had as much Viking roots and blood as the Swedes and Norwegians?
I can show countless of evidence of why it makes no sense to divide them like this, for though we may want to do that today because of rising nationalism, it reflects a poor understanding of history in viking times where nationality was more about trust, blood, titles, resources and literal power rather nationality. There wasn't really a official Denmark, Norway or Sweden nation until much later.
Many Danes as mentioned became Christian because they were better at integrating than the Swedes and Norwegians, and with the Christian way of thinking the common spiritual connection and faith in Jesus often had greater importance than what nation you came from. And so it was not uncommon for Danes, Norwegians and Finns to travel together and be allies even if they had different national backgrounds.
Most of my Danish/Norwegian ancestors married Swedes, Germans, Russians, Dutch and Englishmen. So the division between these Scandinavian countries were not as great as you guys seems to think. That mostly came much later with the Dano-Swedish war in 1650's and later again in the 1800's, but in Viking times Danes, Swedes and Norwegians often fought together or traded together. If they had fought each other so much back then, they would never have had the power to conquer what they did. This is why when people thought of Vikings or Varengians they rarely differentiated between if it was a Norwegian, Swedish or Danish Viking. For in those times the difference between them was not all that great at all.
If you read about the history of Iceland and Greenland for example you will find that the Danes and Norwegians traveled together, this is how Greenland and Iceland became Danish though Leif Erikson was Norwegian. A bit like Christopher Columbus was Italian but sailed for Spain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland
The
history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme
Arctic conditions: currently, an
ice cap covers about 80 percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts.
The first humans are thought to have arrived in
Greenland around 2500 BC. Their descendants apparently died out and were succeeded by several other groups migrating from continental
North America. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Europeans until the 10th century, when
Icelandic Vikings settled on its southwestern coast, which seems to have been uninhabited when they arrived. The ancestors of the
InuitGreenlanders who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around 1200 AD, from northwestern Greenland. While the Inuit survived in the icy world of the
Little Ice Age, the early
Norse settlements along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving the Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time,
Denmark-Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had survived, continued to claim sovereignty over the island despite the lack of any contact between the Norse Greenlanders and their Scandinavian brethren. In 1721, aspiring to become a
colonial power, Denmark-Norway sent a missionary expedition to Greenland with the stated aim of reinstating Christianity among descendants of the Norse Greenlanders who may have reverted to
paganism. When the missionaries found no descendants of the Norse Greenlanders, they baptized the Inuit Greenlanders they found living there instead. Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area.
The
history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme
Arctic conditions: currently, an
ice cap covers about 80 percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts.
The first humans are thought to have arrived in
Greenland around 2500 BC. Their descendants apparently died out and were succeeded by several other groups migrating from continental
North America. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Europeans until the 10th century, when
Icelandic Vikings settled on its southwestern coast, which seems to have been uninhabited when they arrived. The ancestors of the
InuitGreenlanders who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around 1200 AD, from northwestern Greenland. While the Inuit survived in the icy world of the
Little Ice Age, the early
Norse settlements along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving the Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time,
Denmark-Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had survived, continued to claim sovereignty over the island despite the lack of any contact between the Norse Greenlanders and their Scandinavian brethren. In 1721, aspiring to become a
colonial power, Denmark-Norway sent a missionary expedition to Greenland with the stated aim of reinstating Christianity among descendants of the Norse Greenlanders who may have reverted to
paganism. When the missionaries found no descendants of the Norse Greenlanders, they baptized the Inuit Greenlanders they found living there instead. Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area.
The
history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme
Arctic conditions: currently, an
ice cap covers about 80 percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts.
The first humans are thought to have arrived in
Greenland around 2500 BC. Their descendants apparently died out and were succeeded by several other groups migrating from continental
North America. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Europeans until the 10th century, when
Icelandic Vikings settled on its southwestern coast, which seems to have been uninhabited when they arrived. The ancestors of the
InuitGreenlanders who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around 1200 AD, from northwestern Greenland. While the Inuit survived in the icy world of the
Little Ice Age, the early
Norse settlements along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving the Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time,
Denmark-Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had survived, continued to claim sovereignty over the island despite the lack of any contact between the Norse Greenlanders and their Scandinavian brethren. In 1721, aspiring to become a
colonial power, Denmark-Norway sent a missionary expedition to Greenland with the stated aim of reinstating Christianity among descendants of the Norse Greenlanders who may have reverted to
paganism. When the missionaries found no descendants of the Norse Greenlanders, they baptized the Inuit Greenlanders they found living there instead. Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area.
The
history of Greenland is a history of life under extreme
Arctic conditions: currently, an
ice cap covers about 80 percent of the island, restricting human activity largely to the coasts.
The first humans are thought to have arrived in
Greenland around 2500 BC. Their descendants apparently died out and were succeeded by several other groups migrating from continental
North America. There has been no evidence discovered that Greenland was known to Europeans until the 10th century, when
Icelandic Vikings settled on its southwestern coast, which seems to have been uninhabited when they arrived. The ancestors of the
InuitGreenlanders who live there today appear to have migrated there later, around 1200 AD, from northwestern Greenland. While the Inuit survived in the icy world of the
Little Ice Age, the early
Norse settlements along the southwestern coast disappeared, leaving the Inuit as the only inhabitants of the island for several centuries. During this time,
Denmark-Norway, apparently believing the Norse settlements had survived, continued to claim sovereignty over the island despite the lack of any contact between the Norse Greenlanders and their Scandinavian brethren. In 1721, aspiring to become a
colonial power, Denmark-Norway sent a missionary expedition to Greenland with the stated aim of reinstating Christianity among descendants of the Norse Greenlanders who may have reverted to
paganism. When the missionaries found no descendants of the Norse Greenlanders, they baptized the Inuit Greenlanders they found living there instead. Denmark-Norway then developed trading colonies along the coast and imposed a trade monopoly and other colonial privileges on the area.
.
