By Robert Wernick
The Vikings considered themselves because the final warriors. yet this one-dimensional picture belies huge complexity. They have been, actually, as a lot retailers as marauders. one of the commodities they offered used to be person who introduced them the best revenue of all - greater than amber, silver, or pelts. That commodity used to be people. Few humans comprehend that in their days of dominance, the Vikings have been slavers to the realm. the following, during this short-form e-book, is their little-told tale.
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Additional info for The Vikings: From Marauders to Slavers
Sample text
Under a tenth-century Norwegian law, every landed family was required to send a certain number of men to fight for the king when called, and the law suggested how many slaves might be necessary to keep the farm running in their absence. A medium-sized farm, one of perhaps a dozen cows and two horses, advised the law, might require three slaves, while the estate of a lord would need thirty or more to operate efficiently. In England, if one man killed another man’s slave, he was required to pay the owner the equivalent value in cows: eight.
As for the ship’s cables, which were made from the tough yet supple skin of whales and other sea mammals, they were without a doubt the strongest and most durable rigging in the world. Both the Vikings and the Sami people fashioned them by cutting a single spiral strip out of the animal’s hide from the shoulder to the tail - and it was reported that the resulting cables or ropes were so strong that they could not be pulled apart in a tug of war between sixty men. How successful Ottar and the other Viking hunters were as whalers is a matter of conjecture.
A sequel to the story of Olaf’s liberation from slavery demonstrates the equivocal relationship that existed between a master and even the most trusted of his thralls. In 995, after a career that had brought him fame and fortune as a Viking raider, Olaf returned to his homeland to lay claim to the throne that had been wrested from his father. The usurper, Earl Hakon Sigurdarsson, was swiftly forced into flight, accompanied by his slave Kark. They had been born on the same day, these two, and had gone through life together, Kark sleeping at the foot of his master’s bed in peacetime and carrying his arms into war.