Vikingrs - Barbarians or Civilized

Barbarians
they didnt even have a real empire or kingdom, it was just a bunch of "kings" sailing off in ships to raid, plunder, destroy, and get rich

It was only the Romans and Greeks who thought anything foreign was uncivilised and "barbarian"... but the Vikings were good warriors, nothing more - except those who settled down in France, Sicily & Southern Italy and were called norsemen or 'Norman'.

Okay, time to get serious apparently, because their seems to be a bit of prejudice against "dem vikingrs".

1) They started raiding because of a massive population boom which they could not sustain.
Their were too many Vikings and not enough land to live of. So many turned towards soldiering/mercenary and suddenly kings/warlords had a massive pool of young fit men to draw soldiers from for campaigning.
Which led to the Viking Age of the 800's with them looting places which were easy pickings and filled with a lot of valuables (abbey's, small cities, ...) and preferably close to rivers/sea's which their ships had no trouble navigating what so ever..

2) Only Norway really fits the globalized idea of the Vikings (multiple kings, fjords, ...). The Danes, for instance, were ruled by one king and has a mainly lowland countryside.

3) The Vikings weren't barbarians at all.
With advanced shipbuilding, metallurgy, wood crafting (curved Viking shields could deflect several blows) ) and an advanced code of honour they were quite more civilized then some of the Kingdoms which would later pop up.

I just totally parodied your thread, assholes.

Congratulations, you just described Medieval Europe!

Well they're barbarians by simple meaning of the term, but they were also a civilization and thus were "civilized."

They were a barbarian civilization.

There you go.

Well first things first we need a uniform definition of barbarity and civility

Barbarity-Jew
Civility-Viking
Bam!

It's not like they sacked peaceful monestaries, killing priests by the bushel, and burned the buildings to the ground for shiny things.

In other words, they were complete dicks and deserved to be wiped from the Earth as quickly as possible, but I still think they were civilized for the time.

The stuff they did isn't any worse than what others did at the time.

At least most of them had a justification or underlying belief that they were supporting doing so. The Vikings were just raiders who did nothing but kill, sack, and loot.

If anyone but the vikings did that they would be remembered throughout history as these merciless destroyers and be refered to all the time as pure evil.

Surprise! Surprise! They are.
Otherwise you wouldn't be here doing your narrow minded little rhetoric again.

Honest to God, is there any other 'civilized' culture to you except the US?!

So having some sort of "cause" to rape and loot makes the Europeans more civilized? The Vikings had a cause. It's called putting food on the table.

did you know many of them just did kind of like a "tour of duty" on a ship to plunder and get wealth and then went home and tried to live normal lives or enter politics....
Viking Politics

Barbaric in battle, Civilized in culture and life.

There's no such thing as civilized or uncivilized. Kara isn't intelligent enough to realize that the romanticized storybooks about vikings he's seen don't actually reflect an entire culture and diverse range of people spread across many different years with differing beliefs and ideologies.

Well to answer simply take a look at both the Roman society and the viking society Rome on the surface it was probably the only republic in its time however they pretty much destroyed every single one of their enemies brutally

Vikings On the surface they pillaged and plundered everywhere in Europe
however they probably traded with the Muslims and they did discover and colonize Newfoundland at least for a small time

Considering the Vikings literally believed you would go to hell if you died without a sword in your hand, I'd say they very much did have an underlying belief what they were doing was right.