On Vikings and Sapmi

Why I use the term "Viking"
Elisabeth Wheatley | 27 Oct. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnMXV6ebTmU

1:28 By scholars and historians ... presumably English, Scottish, French and derived ones.

A Dane or Norwegian arriving into the Danelaw, raiding Iona or bargaining about Normandy would be a Viking. If he hadn't been a Viking, he would have stayed at home and English, Scottish, Irish (sorry, Brian Borumha!) and French people wouldn't have heard of him. Or Poles, if he was a Joms-Viking (a very peculiar twist on the Viking profession).

Also, when arriving into Iceland or Greenland or Vinland, they were by definition Vikings, since sea farers. But among them, they would keep up professional distinctions between being a "gothi" (local lord) or "going into Viking" (which pretty much presumes you were son of someone still living as gothi or younger brother of his heir, or serving this kind of person).

I saw a comment from "Lord Norden" to the effect of "We do often call ourselves vikings still, especially if we wanna be boastful," ... or in lessons of PE. As I hated PE, this may help to explain my distaste with the wider usage

1:37 Victorians. "I knew it" (except I actually didn't, but I totally believe you).

They were both very Anglo-Centric (so not very concerned with a gothi staying on Iceland or a jarl somewhere in Norway staying at home) and very much into PE. You may have read a book by CSL "Surprised by Joy" on how he hated a certain school founded by 25 January 1865, which was well into the Victorian era and thusly overpriorised PE. He especially hated the privileges of boys excelling at PE.

2:14 North Germanic tribes didn't migrate into Scandinavia after the decline of the Roman Empire.

Some who split off as East or even West Germanic tribes (Goths, Burgundians, but also Lombards) left Scandinavia around the Birth of Christ and then arrived to put pressure on the Roman Empire as it declined.

Sami ... the Pitted Ware culture was not Sami. The Komsa culture may or may not have involved ancestors of the Sami.

It is possible that the Norwegian coastline and Sweden inland from that was all Sami. But South Sweden and Denmark weren't.

There were times when Vikings (or likeminded, if not so ship born) went North to conquer Sami land, they are the so called Helsings.

The archaeological area of Slate Knives (with reindeer decorations) is generally thought to involve part of the Sami ancestry, though not necessarily the part that made them speak a Finno-Ugric language. The South limit of Slate Knives is in Wermland and Dalecarlia, but archaeologists tend to think they came there by trade.

So, probably from Wermland and Dalecarlia, certainly from South of there, you have ancestors of Scandinavians. Well before Rome.

The Slate Knife culture is in carbon dated 3300 to 2000 BC, which I'd recalibrate to times of Abraham into the Soujourn of Egypt.

2:24 By carbon dated 3300 BC, Scandinavia is divided into ancestors of Sami in the North and ancestors of Scandinavians in the South. The linguistic influence leading to Germanic or Finno-Ugric language probably come from later migrants in both cases, but in neither case totally displacing the indigenous people.