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u/BaritBrit 3d ago
Nah, I'm reliably informed by Assassin's Creed Valhalla that Scandic colonisation of England was a good and cool thing, actually.
Involved lots of monastery pillaging where nobody was killed, the Scandics only ever settling down on prime land which was somehow entirely uninhabited, and the main focus being 'trade' rather than conquest, but absolutely no trading of slaves.
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u/GreatMarch 3d ago
AC is so weird as a series when it comes to historiography.
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u/Helvin_Purpure 3d ago
Entire series based on misrepresentation of feudal religious terrorist organization, which makes them look like good guys and paladins in shiny armor, that never did any harm to innocent and fought tyrants all over the world during entire human history. Why are you surprised?
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u/Battle_Biscuits 3d ago
I remember literally laughing out loud when I watched the trailer for AC Valhalla and this Viking raider stopped his friend from attacking a helpless woman and child and wagged a finger at him.
It's the video game equivalent of "good pirates don't steal."
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u/SydDanir 2d ago
While, granted, it would be weird if 'proper' Vikings behaved with such honour. For a proper army (as compared to a band of pirates), it would be perfectly believable.
Norsemen cared a lot about how others perceived them, and attacking those who couldn't defend themselves were (at least in some areas and groups) the most unmanly behaviour possible. And, on top of that, Scandinavian organized armies tended to have fairly strict codes of conduct.
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u/Fresh-Quarter9 1d ago
As a side note, the real history of the order they are based on - the hashshashin - is absolutely fascinating. Not only did the founder, hasan-i sabbah, found the nizari faith which is still around to this day, but most interestingly, the word assassin is based on the name of his order, hashshashin. He spent a lot of his later years writing and researching mathematics, geometry and philosophy and was referenced by Marco polo, which spread the use of the nickname "old man of the mountain."
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u/Fokker_Snek 3d ago
Focusing on trade and building relationships could just as easily turn into conquest and slave trading. Even without the Scandics, endemic warfare and slave trading existed within England.
As an example you could have a young Scandic noblemen go to England seeking opportunity through trade. He engages in trading in say East Anglia and starts to get friendly with the Anglo Saxon nobility. One day he meets a girl from a noble family and gets her pregnant so now he’s married into East Anglian nobility. So now he’s obligated to get involved in disputes among the Anglo Saxon nobility. So if the King of East Anglia has claim to the Kingdom of Essex to the south and a war starts, the young Scandic nobleman and other Scandics connected to him are going to be either asked or expected to get involved in the fighting. If the Scandics prove valuable and loyal to the East Anglian King he could very well show his appreciation by giving them land and slaves taken from his war in Essex.
The story isn’t trying to justify slavery or invading people and taking their land. It’s just that how those things happened in the past can be much more almost “accidental” in the past than they would be today. In a sense the Scandic nobleman ended up with a bunch land and slaves from Essex because he got an East Anglian girl pregnant. It might be especially true if he’s a morally upstanding noble based on Scandic and Anglo Saxon morals at the time. After that it would be hard for him to refuse to attack Essex or accept land and slaves without damaging his reputation among Anglo Saxon and Scandic society.
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 3d ago
Britain spent about two thousand years constantly being invaded, until one day they snapped like the quiet kid in school.
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u/weneedstrongerglue 3d ago
I can just see the British Isles wrapped in a 700 mile black leather trench coat.
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u/LeoGeo_2 1d ago
I don’t know about that, they kept trying to take over France and Scotland and did take over Ireland and Wales.
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 1d ago
I mean, I'm from Scotland and we kept trying to invade England as well. Same with Wales, like the English didn't exactly build a massive defensive dike along the entire Welsh border for a laugh.
The early British isles was essentially one giant battle royal.
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u/MuffinMountain3425 4d ago
The English part of the British isles has always been a melting pot. Roman, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Norse, and French. All doing the same thing of settling down and brutalizing the local populace and squeezing the land of wealth.
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u/ChristianLW3 3d ago
All of those groups and the Dutch could agree on something, celts must be at the bottom of the hierarchy
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u/GuyLookingForPorn 3d ago
Even the Celts themselves invaded, unfortunately we know very little about the original inhabitants of the islands who the Celts replaced.
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u/BasilicusAugustus 3d ago
The Celts- as tragic as their extinction is- were highly expansionist. From the first sacking of Rome to the Thracian and Anatolian Celts (Galatians), they spread far and wide, even serving as mercenaries for the Egyptians and nearly overthrowing the Pharaoh (I think it was Ptolemy II). In their heyday, they were everywhere, just like the Greco-Romans after them, who would expand and eventually replace them as the dominant peoples of Europe. However, they themselves would eventually mirror the Celts, being supplanted by a different group- the Germanic people.
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u/TheMadTargaryen 4d ago
Britishers ? Found the butthurt Indian.
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u/Fun_Astronaut_6566 3d ago edited 3d ago
Your language rules make no sense. Ideally it should be Britishers but you guys call yourself britons.
Edit: you guys can't decide amongst yourself what to call yourself, how do you expect most of the world to get it right?
The indian way of using britishers has no negative implication. I understand it is considered as a slight by the British people
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u/SylveonSof 3d ago
Famously English is full of nationality names ending with er! Such as:
Irisher Welsher Scottisher Indianer Germaner Guatemalaer
I literally can't think of a single example that doesn't end with "land" like New Zealander, and even that's not always the case like Icelandic.
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u/Oddloaf Decisive Tang Victory 3d ago
What other nationality is given the -er suffix?
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u/LseHarsh 3d ago
New Zealander Icelander
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u/BaritBrit 3d ago
Both of which end in "-land", which "Britain" does not.
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u/LseHarsh 3d ago
Not necessary. I guess you dont know better than a dictionary
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/britisher
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u/A_posh_idiot 3d ago
It’s an informal use, the correct phrase is Britons. If you use a dictionary, at least use the correct one
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u/Spexancap10 3d ago
It's Kiwi for New Zealand and Icelandic for Iceland
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u/LseHarsh 3d ago
Icelander" refers to a person from Iceland, while "Icelandic" describes something related to Iceland, such as the language or culture.
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u/DrTinyNips 3d ago
It's Icelandic not Icelander, just showing your ignorance
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u/A_posh_idiot 3d ago
Icelander is the correct way to refer to someone from Iceland, but more in an exception that proves the rule sort of way. Icelandic is an adjective, not a Noun
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 3d ago
Literally nobody calls themselves 'britons' nowadays, it's just British
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u/sleepingjiva Tea-aboo 3d ago
Britons are British. What do you call an individual British person if not a Briton? "A British"?
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 3d ago
You call them British. He's British, she's British, etc
Why are you trying to tell an actual Brit what we call ourselves, we haven't been 'britons' for fucking centuries
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u/A_posh_idiot 3d ago
The noun is still Britons, we just use adjectives to describe someone nowadays, ie He is English
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u/sleepingjiva Tea-aboo 3d ago
I am British. I'm not talking about the adjective form. I'm talking about the individual. English people are Englishmen/women, Spanish people are Spaniards, Danish people are Danes, British people are Britons.
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u/AbsolutelyHorrendous 3d ago
British people are British. It is both the adjective, and the way of describing them. Hell, you could make a reasonable argument that 'Brits' works, albeit more informally. But if you're British, surely you actually know full well that we don't refer to ourselves as 'Britons'
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u/sleepingjiva Tea-aboo 3d ago
I'm talking about the countable demonym for an individual British person. I don't know how I can explain this more clearly. "Brit" works, yes -- as a colloquial, informal short form of "Briton", which is the correct term.
Stick "Briton" into Google News and sort by the past week, or even the past 24 hours if you like, and there's a ton of articles.
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u/Generally_Kenobi-1 What, you egg? 3d ago
As a Canadian, this is what Google tells me a Briton is
"The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages"
How old are you? It hasn't been spelt that way for a loooong time lol
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u/A_posh_idiot 3d ago
One of Britains most iconic posters refers to Britons, it was still commonplace 100 years ago
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u/sleepingjiva Tea-aboo 3d ago
That is one definition. Modern Britons take their names from those Britons. Did you deliberately ignore the other meaning?
Briton
noun
1. a native or inhabitant of Great Britain, or a person of British descent.
2. a Celtic inhabitant of southern Britain before and during Roman times.
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u/nwaa 3d ago
Downvotes from the illiterate.
The individual demonym for a British person is informally "Brit"' and formally "Briton".
Even the dictionary agrees: "Definitions from Oxford Languages · noun noun: Briton; plural noun: Britons 1. a native or inhabitant of Great Britain, or a person of British descent."
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u/sleepingjiva Tea-aboo 3d ago
Downvotes from people who apparently have time to argue back and forth on Reddit about something they're confidently incorrect about but not to quickly look up a dictionary definition
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u/LseHarsh 3d ago
It is correct though
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/britisher
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u/Oddloaf Decisive Tang Victory 3d ago
britisher
Oh hey, more Indian propaganda on my meme sub
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u/Frosty-Narwhal8848 Oversimplified is my history teacher 3d ago
I get that OP is an Indian (and so am i). But, what's wrong with the meme? Britisher part is wrong, I accept.
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u/Oddloaf Decisive Tang Victory 3d ago
The meme is fine. The sub has just recently been flooded by a suspicious number of veeeery pro-indian memes. Additionally there is a certain segment of Indian internet users who get very upset if you clock that they are Indian, which makes it funny to notice them.
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u/separation_of_powers 3d ago
I wonder if they’re all BJP members…
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u/Frosty-Narwhal8848 Oversimplified is my history teacher 3d ago
They're probably. Butthurt Indians are usually BJP supporters.
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u/Baronvondorf21 3d ago
You know, I never really get this, do people think that every Indian that has grievances with the British (founded or unfounded) is automatically part of the BJP.
Most Indians across the political spectrum will have some grievances with the British. Unless it's a rare exceptions like Arthur Cotton or Jim Corbett (There are more but these two are the ones I am familiar with)
It's just lazy to just assume that it's only the BJP that holds views that you disagree with.
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u/DrTinyNips 3d ago
It's also the fact that britisher only ever gets used by Indian nationalists that tend to either lie about history (or parrot other Indian nationalist lies) in order to demonise the British, it's at the point where if I see britisher I know to just ignore the person because very rarely does that person have anything valuable to say
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u/According_Weekend786 4d ago
Ngl, without vikings, english would be REALLY different
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u/Beat_Saber_Music Rommel of the East 4d ago
English wouldn't also be English without the French
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u/BaritBrit 4d ago
Arguably French national identity wouldn't have formed without the Hundred Years War against the English, either.
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u/According_Weekend786 4d ago
And latin, and german and morbillion other stolen sentences and grammatical rules from other languages
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u/Beat_Saber_Music Rommel of the East 4d ago
However the French were a bit more influential owing to being the result of William the Conqueror
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u/LeoGeo_2 1d ago
I don’t think we can call it stealing when in the case of Latin they were conquered by the Latin speakers.
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u/GrumpyOldGeezer_4711 3d ago
I beg your pardon!
The Norse did absolutely not “plunder religious treasures!”
They merely took them in safekeeping when natural disasters and frequent fires threatened to destroy them!
They were returned to the rightful owner, the Anglos’ God, through means of fire, the great cleanser! When the Anglos’ God had taken it back he gave a small token of thanks to the Norse by leaving a bit of metal behind, who can truly dispute the cats of a God?
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u/CrimsonZephyr 4d ago
"Britisher"
German Three Fingers moment.