ACADEMICS GATHERING for a three-day conference on Vikings starting today at the University of Cambridge will celebrate the gentle side of the invaders: the town planners, shipbuilders, farmers, coin-minters and stonecarvers who were forever swapping songs, stories or advice on a better way to rig a mainsail with their Gaelic neighbours.
“The rehabilitation of the Vikings is nothing new to academics, but it is surprising how enduring the myths are,” conference organiser Máire Ní Mhaonaigh said. “Of course, initially there were extremely destructive raids, but over the four centuries covered by our conference they became completely integrated, even identifying themselves as the Gall-Gael, the Irish Scandinavians.”
Occasional fearsome evidence from excavations supports the traditional view, including skulls split in two by battleaxes.
However, the conference will suggest that, within 100 years of the ninth-century raids, the Vikings were beginning to settle and integrate, and by the 12th and 13th centuries they were almost indistinguishable from the locals except for evidence preserved in names and DNA.
In 2007 the Danish culture minister, Brian Mikkelsen, joined the vogue for belated political apologies by saying sorry to the people of Ireland for any slight excesses that might have been committed by his ancestors.
On the evidence of the conference, it may now be time for the people of Britain and Ireland, not forgetting generations of cartoonists, to apologise to the Vikings. – ( Guardianservice)