"You know you're a viking if...."

[TheLastWithPaganBlood]

Denmark is one of the few countries where it's OK to be fat. They share that characteristic with the English.

But speaking of written languages, Swedish has to be on the top-10 fucked-up list! There seems to be a complete absence of rules! Eg. the number of ways you can spell the silent whistle sound that only swedes can pronounce: skj, sk, sj... How is anyone going to know how to spell words with those sounds without learning it? This is where I love German. There is one way, and one way only, to spell sounds in german. If you misspell something that you can pronounce in german then you are an idiot.

 

[Knarfi]

^Thanks alot, i sometimes have no idea how to spell something in german

 

[Tyra]

Oi.... do you know how ticked off my father-in-law would be if I told him I was going to learn Swedish for the trip to Danmark? This is making for a no-win situation here.

There is a reason why we still fight 5000 or so years after we first started... LOL. Seriously, though, the first historical signs of there being people in Norway and Sweden are a collection of boats on Dansih soil, where they landed for battle. I would guess the Swedorweigans lost the battle, since the boats never went back home again with any loot. The point is, that that fight has very old roots. The only time Swdes and Danes agree on anything is when some outside source (like muslims that don't like Danish cartoons, say) attacks one of them. Then we close ranks, and the opponent runs head first inte The United Force of the Norse. Stubborness is a Scandinavian trait. So it the refusal to submit for no reason, so I wish them good luck. (It won't make any difference if I do or I don't, since they don't stand a snowball's chance in July anyhow.).

 

[Bates]

Ah well, always gotta have something to fight about, keeps people from getting bored. I'm none of the above, so I get to play mercenary (Yay!).

 

[Tyra]

Tis interested me greatly, any links where I can read up on this?

Like I said in another thread, I'm not quite awake yet, but at the top of my head like this, I think there is something about this in the story of Erik Bloodaxe whcih overlaps with Egil's saga. His wife, Gunnhild, was Swedish, but she was sent to live with two famous Finn magicianbrothers (One was named Vuoko, but I can't remember the other brother's name) in her youth, in order to learn their craft. Gunnihild had spent much time with an ambatt at her father's farm, who was a Finn. She taught her many things in terms of magic, and because Gunnhild had an aptitude for it, and because hse wanted to go, she was allowed to do so. After some time, she became such a good student that when Erik's fleet came to Finland, she was able to outwit her own teachers (who by then were wanting to engage in a sexual liasion with her, to ensure her loyaly because she by then was starting to become good enough to be dangerous to them, and they would not let her leave) and with the help of Erik's men and the magic she had learned, lure Vuoko into a trap and kill them. She was then brought to Erik, as she had foretold and planned, he fell madly in love with her (duh), and she became the queen of the land. After that, she went with him everywhere, and meddled in the outcomes of various battles etc with the magic, and she used it to defeat her and Eriks' enemies. The most famous of them would probably be Egill Skallagrimson, who raised a nidstang against her and Erik, and she tried to poison him (one of the few times she was unsuccessful in her objective).
Anyhow, there are other examples, but that's the most famous one, and I can't think of any other references right now. I'll get back to you when I do.

 

[Grundig Avkom]

A) One obeys a woman who spends most her time with a shuffle and who does not have any propblem with digging up rotting corpses.
B) HELL YES! Danish is so inferior to Norwegian and Swedish that I just can't discribe it with words.

Here is something for your first Norwegian lesson:
Dansker er feite - Danish people are fat

aye!!!!! i agree Blodorn.... the Danish are very inferior to the Norwegians...
VIKING POWER!!!!!

 

[Knarfi]

Viking Power? Vikings were also in Danmark.. right?

 

[Tyra]

Ah well, always gotta have something to fight about, keeps people from getting bored. I'm none of the above, so I get to play mercenary (Yay!).

If we didn't have someone to fight with, then we'd have to loot, raid and sack more. The rst of the woorld should be pleased us Nordic folks can always find something to quabble about. If it's Not Sweden beating Finland in some sport, then it's how Norwegians are not so smart or how the Danish walk around talking like they have a finger in their mouth at all times (I'm Swedish and blonde, so I am not smart enough to come up with an good insult to throw at an Icelander...).

 

[Blodørn]

Viking Power? Vikings were also in Danmark.. right?

Yes.. but not REAL vikings

 

[Tyra]

Knarfi, consider the source. He's NORWEGIAN. You know why don't have roofs over the loonie houses in Norway don't you?

 

[Bates]

No.... but now you have me curious.

 

[Tyra]

Cuz they can't figure out how to build a roof that covers the whole country.

 

[Blodørn]

You don't like me because I am Norwegian! If you were not the brotherP) hehe.. sister, of my idol.. I'd strung you up in a tree!

 

[Tyra]

I only take crap from Norwegians. All others die. Painfully. If that's not love, then I don't know what is.

 

[Blodørn]

hehe Good girl!

 

[Bates]

Bah, you're all just jealous because us Saxon types actually did conquer most of the world!
George Carlin - Civil War, Northern Europeans, US policy
The second bit is fucking hilarious, you should like it. The not-so-funny part is how accurate he still is, 15 years later.

 

[Tyra]

Yeah, I know Carlin is good. I also like DL Hughley, for the same reason.

 

[Pessimism]

Like I said in another thread, I'm not quite awake yet, but at the top of my head like this, I think there is something about this in the story of Erik Bloodaxe whcih overlaps with Egil's saga. His wife, Gunnhild, was Swedish, but she was sent to live with two famous Finn magicianbrothers (One was named Vuoko, but I can't remember the other brother's name) in her youth, in order to learn their craft. Gunnihild had spent much time with an ambatt at her father's farm, who was a Finn. She taught her many things in terms of magic, and because Gunnhild had an aptitude for it, and because hse wanted to go, she was allowed to do so. After some time, she became such a good student that when Erik's fleet came to Finland, she was able to outwit her own teachers (who by then were wanting to engage in a sexual liasion with her, to ensure her loyaly because she by then was starting to become good enough to be dangerous to them, and they would not let her leave) and with the help of Erik's men and the magic she had learned, lure Vuoko into a trap and kill them. She was then brought to Erik, as she had foretold and planned, he fell madly in love with her (duh), and she became the queen of the land. After that, she went with him everywhere, and meddled in the outcomes of various battles etc with the magic, and she used it to defeat her and Eriks' enemies. The most famous of them would probably be Egill Skallagrimson, who raised a nidstang against her and Erik, and she tried to poison him (one of the few times she was unsuccessful in her objective).
Anyhow, there are other examples, but that's the most famous one, and I can't think of any other references right now. I'll get back to you when I do.

Great, I hated that bitch in my translated texts (egils saga) before...

Are the Finn's universally kind of portrayed as sexual asshats or weak in the saga's? I know about powerful magic, but did others actually consider them good warriors? Are they ever mentioned as a beautiful people? Or is there just not much said about them?

 

[Grundig Avkom]

I only take crap from Norwegians. All others die. Painfully. If that's not love, then I don't know what is.

haha!!!!! thats what im talking about!!!! although most Norwegians i have met ( including myself ) are not dumb.... actually most pretty damn smart.... maybe everyone is pissed at us because we pwn those bitches at every turn

 

[Tyra]

"Great, I hated that bitch in my translated texts (egils saga) before..." Ditto. I've no warm fuzzy feelings for that woman at all. She singlehandedly sold us out in more ways than one. She and I will get into it when I die, I'm sure. Mind you, she more than likely is roasting in some Christian hell, since she sold out to them, so maybe not, after all. I am so not going anywhere Christian when I die. Hot or cold.

"Are the Finn's universally kind of portrayed as sexual asshats or weak in the saga's?" No. Their culture was different, so more often than not, they are not portrayed at all. The magicians are always portrayed as powerful and dangerous, even in later times. The ON did not always diffrentiate between the Saami and Finlanders and the "Forest Finns" (I think Pagan and I discussed that somewhere before, were you in on that discussion?) because they sound the same to a foreign ear. Obviously, they could tell the difference in terms of the Saami looking different to the Finns, but they still called both Saam, Finns and Forest Finns just Finns. This makes it difficult for us now to know which variety that are on about when they are on about them at all.

"I know about powerful magic, but did others actually consider them good warriors?" I cannot remember any being mentioned as such. The culture is so different that the two peoples don't generally overlap until later on in history. At that point, Sweden is already superior in terms of arms and such, and the Finnish population, I believe, was smaller and therefore easier to over power. The Russians and the Germans took over after us. I would think you'd have to look in some Finnish annals to find depictions of great Finnish warriors, rather than in Norse sagas. There certainly were some in WWII. Mostly though, the region has been under someone elses' rule, like Swedens, which would mean that they'd have been Great Swedish Warriors in our texts, if you see what I mean - to us they were just people who lived in our land that we'd conquered many hundreds of years ago, just Swedes like any other Swede. We did not think of them as separate from us then.

"Are they ever mentioned as a beautiful people? Or is there just not much said about them?" The Finnish women are often described as beautiful. Many women were brought back to Sweden to be married, even in the Iron Age. This comes across in the sagas, but most sagas depict Norwegian, Icelandic and Greenlandic history, rather than Swedish, and it was the Swedes that traded and married with the Finns. It still is that way. They don't move to Denmark or Norway, they move to Sweden, and they did back then too, because we are neighbours, and we imposed our language and culture on them.
The other part of the equation is that the sagas discuss mainly upper class dealings. The Finns were not necessarily thought of as the upper class, relative to the Rus, Romans and Norwegians and others that the Swedes had dealings with, and who impressed them. They had another culture that displayed status in a different way, they used a different symbolism. Those expressions maybe were not ones that the Swedes understood as powerful, and so it could be that they just weren't thought of as beautiful because they had nothing that attracted in terms of a symbolism that the Swedes shared. And, to boot, if you don't differentiate the Finns from the Saami, the Saami are a people that look very different from the Swedes. They are shorter, darker, with different shaped eyes, and probably would not have been thought of as beautiful most of the time, but curious or odd instead. Beauty, however, is in the eye of the beholder, and I personally find the Saami women quite beautiful. Their culture and religion is entirely awesome and very ancient.