Was there anything the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of medieval England could've done to deny the viking invasions?
Was there anything the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of medieval England could've done to deny the viking invasions?
Was there anything the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of medieval England could've done to deny the viking invasions?
Have their own longships somehow? Invent the crucible 200 years early? Or the cementation process 700 years early. Perhaps form a nation state 1000 years early?
So you're saying they were always doomed.
I honestly think they were. The vikings had better weaponry and better sailing technology that allowed lightning raids. How are you supposed to counter that without the kind of societal unity or technological advancement that didn't exist at that time?
>better weapons
no the equipment used by the Anglo-Saxons and """vikings""" was essentially the same
>better sailing
basically this, the longboat is extremely manoeuvrable capable of crossing seas, navigating rivers and theres even cases of them being picked up and carried to another place.
Theres a difference between raids and invasions but a lot comes down to 2 issues:
1) it was a very fractured place, the 7 kingdoms were more worried about each other than a few raids here and there.
2) the lack of a standing army meant the kingdoms couldnt react quick enough.
As for the larger invasion it played on the political divisions between Wessex, Mercia, Nyrthumbria and East Anglia. They all hated each other more than they hated the vikings.
Alfred pretty much solved the issue with the Burghal system which was the death nail. The rest of Jorvik fell within a century.
Its also worth remembering the vikings werent total aliens they were essentially cousins of the Anglo-Saxons. Their traditional belief was Woden (Odinism) and spoke similar languages and traded often. Many of them heavily intermingled in northern and eastern England.
You do what the Eastern Europeans did after the Mongols invaded. Spread out your population into little protected conclaves and harass the invaders.
>You do what the Eastern Europeans did after the Mongols invaded.
Mongols had free reign there
>Spread out your population into little protected conclaves and harass the invaders.
This is how to lose to Mongols
"Doomed" isn't really correct, as the ultimate result of the Viking invasion was the England we know today. Same with the French invasion. If anything, it was the Vikings and Normans that were doomed.
Would you date an English girl?
depends on the girl (tits)
Crucibles don't seem that hard to invent. Why didn't they have any?
He means crucible steel and no it wouldn't have helped at all.A blast furnace to produce large amounts of steel would have been far more useful.
Crucible? you mean crucible steel, amirite?
>Or the cementation process 700 years early
Cementation process has been used since antiquity. The only difference is that they started using it on an industrial scale in the 18th century.
>on an industrial scale in the 18th century.
uh, the romans used concrete/cement on a pretty industrial scale, they built an entire city out of the stuff as well as shit like this
>form a nation state
That would have made things worse. Small territories with local militias are far better at responding to raiding tactics.
Why is this thread full of such confidently stated wrong answers? The thing that did permanently stop viking incursions was the formation of a powerful English nation-state.
>powerful English nation-state
If that's your esoteric way of saying "baronial feudalism", then sure.
Roll Northumbria roll me boys
Roll Northumbria roll
Aye
Give me wine.
How so? Which English nation-state was this? The one that got conquered by Sweyn, then Cnut? Wessex did indeed weather the storm and proceeded to conquered England, but viking invasions never stopped. Are you just playing with words here, saying that Viking invasions stopped because they turned into Danish invasions?
In that sense, it was actually the formation of a powerful Scandinavian nation-state that stopped viking invasions. It turns out centralized powers don't like the idea of rogue armies running about. They also make an easy target for France to attack until they agree to police their population and stop them raiding everywhere.
No dumbfuck, the modern kingdom of England formed from the Normans.
So why isn't I called norland
Because William totally had a very real claim on the English throne, honest guise.
Pope said it was legit. No one bothered to ask because he was busy counting his charitable donation(not bribe) money.
because there already was a normandy
Is that where normies come from
The Normans had viking lineage but by 1066 they were practically full-on froo froo Frenchy-Franks. Now if Harald Hardrada had won out, THEN you could say modern English royalty was fostered by a real viking.
You tried to cover all possible bases but the stupidity was even worse than you imagined.
lmao.
Paying them off worked well. It kept them coming back so much that they essentially took over part of the island, and then for a while even ruled most of the island. Paying your enemies and tolerating them is a fantastic long term strategy. Wait, no, not fantastic... Retarded. Retarded is the word I was thinking of. The Danegeld was retarded.
do you have any better ideas?
Scorched earth would have been better. Instead of paying them, make them pay for every second on every inch of your soil. If you're going to gather money, gather it for defense. Any defense. Paying them is inviting them to stay, keep them coming back for more. If it was to buy time it clearly didn't work.
This worked for the towelheads ruling Spain. It would also later work for the infant US when fighting towelhead pirates.
>Scorched earth would have been better. Instead of paying them, make them pay for every second on every inch of your soil. If you're going to gather money, gather it for defense. Any defense. Paying them is inviting them to stay, keep them coming back for more. If it was to buy time it clearly didn't work
They probably didn't have much choice.
Perhaps a more centralized government would have prevented invasion.
>Perhaps a more centralized government would have prevented invasion.
Didn't work for the Franks.
I think the main problem is just the general lack of a standing army. Back in the day assembling an army would take MONTHS all while the enemy is already at the gates.
Yes between the larger realms you'd know when the neighbor started assembling his troops so you could do the same. But there would be no prior warning when vikings started to form their raid parties and build their ships.
Realms that had something akin to a standing army saw far fewer damage done by Norse raiders than those that didn't. Contrary to belief, Vikings DIDN'T like to fight. They generally only picked targets that they could be confident in wouldn't be able to fight back. What worked in their favor was their extreme mobility due to their longboats. Sail past a defended village? Quickly sail a bit further upstream to the river, maybe the village after that is undefended. The defender likely can't send their men to it faster than you can sail. Sending defenders on a wild goose-chase was very much part of their strategy.
OG Navy Seals. They're good at moving in quick and fast, but they suck if they get bogged down. Like what marines traditionally were. If they had to raid they could, but getting to long engagements was not their strong suit.
It did work.Rollo got his ass kicked at Chartres.
Imagine trying to talk your lesser nobles into burning down their feifs.
This is medieval england here, not 19th century Russia.
Right?
>hmmm yeah we've heard your offer and we're declining boss
that was an order not an offer
>yeah well we're kinda working for the Danes now, good luck you got this king
Meanwhile, in real life and outside the bizarre fantasy of random /k/ posters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth#9th_century_CE
This is a single example anon, if this solution were so obvious why wasnt it done by every kingdom in england?
After all, why does it matter if you lose your crops to the enemy or by your own hand?
But to answer your question, it's not a long term solution. You can't do it every year. And you have to know where the enemy is and where they're going.
>go scorched earth once
>never do it again
hmm, wonder why.
You can't fit a seige engine in a longboat. Obvious answer would seem to be fortification
When the alternative was them raiding your land and killing you it probably seemed like the best idea.
It's basically what the Romans did with the foederati, hell the Saxons WERE foederati. The wheel turns.
Turn them Christian.
>Turn them Christian.
That didn't work either. Canute was a Christian.
nagger that didn't work lmao. You know the Normans were originally Vikings right?
Canute was a Christian as well. All the most successful vikings were Christians.
>nagger that didn't work lmao
It did.
>Canute was a Christian.
>All the most successful vikings were Christians.
Exactly.
By the time they were invading in numbers larger than raids, the norse were already christian
That's not even close to true.
Bros, we need to bring back the Þ.
>Bros, we need to bring back the Þ.
May as well, it's a distinct consonant that demands its own letter instead of using the shitty hackjob of "th"
Maintain the Anglo-Roman cavalry elite.
What was that
It was the Anglo-Roman cavalry elite.
late antiquity rome had standing army cavalry units near the border that were supposed to act as a small rapid response force. specifically to counter smaller raids by barbarian warbands.
why would they stand if they had horses?
Dad FFS get the fuck off the computer and help mom clean the basement
Roman calvary was almost always a fucking joke though.
Then why were rofl stomping everyone they met?
Because their cavalry was most often foreign auxilia; celts, numidians and germans who were excellent horsemen.
>Roman cavalry
>elite
Pick one, Rome could not into horses
>Rome could not into horses
This retarded meme again?
Spend less money on the church; spend more money on riverine defenceworks like stone fortresses with spanning chains to deny river access.
Ultimately though they were successful at deterring smaller Viking raids for a while. They just ranged further south into France and the Med until all targets were too tough at which point the warbands started coordinating more closely and you get shit like the great heathen army kicking down your door which very few proto-states in Europe could have stood against at the time.
Build early warning watch towers/beacon system.
Oops, doesn't work in fragmented states.
This combined with putting more effort into fortifying everything might actually have worked. Lighting raids suck when you have to settle in for a siege to get anything out of them.
wessex > mercia >>>>>>>>> northumbria
Fuck you I love my bog
Seething at Northumbrian chads.
>wessex > mercia >>>>>>>>> northumbria
Oh noes! Now I have to hate you
No.
Their guerilla tactics, warrior religion, combat experience, pioneer skills, light ships that could be transported over land and ruthlessness made this impossible.
Even if a messenger informed the lord that a raid happened, the Vikings were long gone before the soldiers arrived and even if they built a chain of beacons, the Vikings would have quickly adapted and sabotaged the system.
One would need a centralized state with standing army and fortified cities to do anything whatsoever and that wouldn't solve the problem unless you abandoned all settlements that didn't have walls and a garrison.
Establish a standing army earlier.
Establish coastal outposts so that you can respond to raids as fast as possible.
Make sure that the line of succession is clear, and that only Englishmen are considered eligible.
It sure would be a shame if the king's buddy got shipwrecked and accidentally swore over the bones of a saint that he would relinquish the throne to a Frenchy.
>It sure would be a shame if the king's buddy got shipwrecked and accidentally swore over the bones of a saint that he would relinquish the throne to a Frenchy.
Yeah that'd suck.
tbf, William wasn't just some random French asshole that showed up, he was a member of England's royal family through a distant cousin or something. It's just that his claim to the throne was, at best, sketchy as all fuck and hence why it had to be decided at Hastings because even at the time everyone knew it was sketchy.
This thread is full of Danefags.
The vikings persistently got BTFO on a variety of scales as the states they raided got organized. The end of the Viking Age was Harold catching them after a March from the south of England and beating them in a straight fight in which the Vikings had a superior defensive position.
>vikings lost!
>Noooo do not look up who the Normans were don't do it please seriously they just lost ok?!
If the Normans count as Vikings then so do the Anglo-Saxons, so it's just Vikings getting BTFO by other Vikings.
Normans were not Vikings LOL
>the northmen were not vikings they weren't!
yeah I'm sure they were just Norse speaking finns who got lost
>yeah I'm sure they were just Norse speaking finns who got lost
They simply weren't Vikings lol.
>simply weren't vikings
How are Scandinavians who went aviking not vikings? Please explain.
>uh because they were successful and it proves me wrong
yeah that's because you're wrong retard, not because they weren't vikings.
>Scandinavians
The Normans were Normans.
Yes, they were. Literally the French word for Scandinavians.
Retard.
Northmen. Nordic people are just Northmen. I don't think people realize this. Most of the people in Northern Europe are descended at least partially from the Northmen.
>Their name means north so they were vikings
They simply weren't vikings.
>bro just because they were northmen warriors who made a voyage doesn't mean they're vikings
uh no actually it does.
Behold, a viking!
Normans were not viking. They loosely associated themselves with viking ancestry but were far detached from that in every way.
So like White Americans. Lots of English ancestry, but not 100%.
Most people don't know that there were enough Anglo-Saxons in the Normans when they settled Normandy that there are still places there now with English names.
by that logic in the later decades and centuries, the warring factions on the british isles were Vikings vs Vikings vs Vikings.
The Danelaw was a thing and so was king Cnut the Great. The Anglo-Saxons ultimately won but it was a really tough fight.
retard
It wasn't really a battle at the end, the Danes just got assimilated. Cnut's sons died without heirs and it passed to an English cousin.
>in which the Vikings had a superior defensive position
...and got caught with their pants down in, having left all the armor in the fucking boats.
The vikings lost.
Stormshadow miss
Retarded spammer picking the wrong thread or bot?
Doesn’t make the stormshadow unmiss
Nothing, the subversive nature of Anglo-Saxon culture will just do what they did previously and assimilate the Vikings overtime. Just look at language. The Scandinavian kings tried to restructure the language of their subjects but the most that their scribes could do was influence some of the old English dialects to follow different paragraph conventions and some loan words which were then thrown out of the window when the Normans came with them overhauling the old English alphabet. But even this overhaul still did not fundamentally transform the way that old English formulated and was distinct from the mainland of Normandy. No matter what happens, subjugating the Anglo-Saxon opens up their retainers to their influence. They are some of the most successful ethnicity of people to assimilate from the ground up rather than the top down, its why when they wore the big wigs as an empire they could not fully comprehend how assimilate cultures from the top down. The Vikings should have never invaded, they should have quarantined the island forever more and wrote it into legend as the land of Hel made manifest.
retard-tier post.
>just look at the language
Look at it indeed. Old Norse and Old English are mutually intelligible. Every single root word is exactly the same. They are more like two dialects than separate languages.
>loanwords
as above, there is really no such thing as a loanword from Norse to English. Some words that had fallen out of common use in English were brought back, that's about it.
>The Scandinavian kings tried to restructure the language
That's utterly retarded.
>Old norse and old english was intelligible
No it was not. There was 4 primary sub sects of old english with varying degrees of germanic semblance or latin/gaelic structuring. So old english as an umbrella was not like a different dialect despite roots words as there were a lot of foreign words thanks to latin and old gaelic.
>The Scandinavian kings tried to restructure the language
>That's utterly retarded
It is not, as stated previously old english varied dramatically on county and the Scandinavians tried to restructure old english to be closer to old norse as a result.
>No it was not.
Yes it was.
>latin/gaelic
Had zero influence on old english.
>Scandinavians tried to restructure old english
There was zero concerted effort by the Scandinavians to restructure English.
English:
Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum,
þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon.
Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum,
monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah,
egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð
feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad,
weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah,
oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra
ofer hronrade hyran scolde,
gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning.
Norse:
Hvat vér Geir-Dana in ára dogum
þjóð-konunga þrym frágu
sem þeir aðalingarnir eljan fromdu.
Oft Skjoldr Skáfingr skaða herjum
mangum mágðum mjoð-setla dró,
hræddi jarla, síðan þá áðr varð
fár-skapt fundinn: Hit þess hjalpa beið,
óx undir skýum, verð-veroldum þreif
þar til þat hinu hvergi þeirra umb-sitjara
of hval-reiðinni heyra skyldi,
út-gift gjalda: þat vas góðr konungr!
Norse had zero difficulty communicating with the Anglo-Saxons. You'll have a harder time talking to some modern Scots as a speaker of American English.
This anon is being confidently wrong on the internet.
Wrong.
You forgot the germanic and english vowel and consonant shifts. English would be more similar to German and Dutch had those shifts not occurred. So many words fell out of use and were replaced by French or Latin words. They stopped being used and never evolved, so that's why a lot of German words seem strange to us because we lost the word that came from the shared root.
>You forgot the germanic and english vowel and consonant shifts.
No, I didn't forget it. I think you're confused about something. We're talking about Old English and Old Norse. You're like 500 years off.
>So many words fell out of use and were replaced by French or Latin words.
Yes, that's a thing for modern and middle English. Not Old English.
Not fight amongst themselves for 300 years, maybe?
But it was cool
cooperation for a navy patrolling the waters, watchmen all over the coast and at river mouths, messenger system, bolster local garrisons, train and arm militias, present unified front to major landings and after decisively defeating them go visit them were they live and full extermination of everything moving
they probably didnt have the agricultural output to dedicate so many men to non farming roles. starvation was probably a bigger problem than occasional raids.
They could have started building these earlier.
Wherever there were burhs, the danelaw ended.
Strategically, they were in a tough spot. Raids are hard to deal with as the advantage goes to the raider. As successful raids begat even more and larger raids, this culminated in an large army that was intended to and capable of conquest. The early raids were especially lucrative as they were completely unprepared to handle the threat and without foresight there's little they could had done to stop the ball rolling. However, it's not all bad news. First of all they spent truly massive amounts on Danegeld, money that could had been used on the defence of the realm if only it was spent beforehand instead of being used on strengthening their enemies. Prevention is better than the cure. Of course Danegeld was useful for buying time so that you can shore up defences and transition into the above, but it could never be a viable long term strategy. Secondly they could had done what actually was done in reality. Fortifications, as says. Early Anglo-Saxon Britain was amazingly unfortified, but with a network of fortifications working together you instantly hinder the damage from any raid, even if you can't stop it totally. In those days even the simplest of fortifications provided a huge obstacle, Both the Saxon and Viking armies were comically incapable of siege warfare, and raiders weren't interested in siege warfare anyway. Lastly, massive mobilisation of the population. In times of peace most surplus gets wasted into buying luxuries. It was estimated that in the time of Alfred the Great almost all spare resources went into the military, a massive strain that could only have happened because they were facing an existential threat and would had lead to an immediate rebellion and overthrow if attempted at any other time.
Of course the trick is how to do all this without being backed into a corner in the first place. Wessex survived by the skin of their teeth, but ensured there could be no repeat by doing the above.
>Give the literal, proven, historically correct answer
>/k/ spackers keep talking about retard shit
I don't expect any replies because that's how PrepHole works. Correct answers tend not to get replies. There is nothing more to say. Neither do absolutely retarded takes. That's just how it works.
Burg
Not that kind of burg.
>Burg
>Burgh
>Borg
>Beorg
What is happening now
>Borg
Borg vs. Vikings?
Beorgas are mountains.
I see.
Similarly, wicingas are Vikings, and mearas are horses.
Linguistic stretch, separation, and confluence
Burh
Burg
Burgh
Borg
Beorg
Beorga
Wow, rude!
So then why is it called a hamburger?
Comes from the Burgh of Ham
Hambeorg
Fatso
>vikings got fucked by strong fortifications
>mongols got fucked by strong fortifications
seems like if you want to defeat raiders, all you need are strong fortifications and good roads.
>mongols got fucked by strong fortifications
if you split your troops the mongols will win
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_the_Khwarazmian_Empire
you are heaven on earth?
They could die with their boots on
"Brothers at arms," said Alfred,
"On this side lies the foe;
Are slavery and starvation flowers,
That you should pluck them so?
"For whether is it better
To be prodded with Danish poles,
Having hewn a chamber in a ditch,
And hounded like a howling witch,
Or smoked to death in holes?
"Or that before the red cock crow
All we, a thousand strong,
Go down the dark road to God's house,
Singing a Wessex song?
"To sweat a slave to a race of slaves,
To drink up infamy?
No, brothers, by your leave, I think
Death is a better ale to drink,
And by all the stars of Christ that sink,
The Danes shall drink with me.
>classic poems of western man
Through the long infant hours like days
He built one tower in vain—
Piled up small stones to make a town,
And evermore the stones fell down,
And he piled them up again.
And crimson kings on battle-towers,
And saints on Gothic spires,
And hermits on their peaks of snow,
And heroes on their pyres,
And patriots riding royally,
That rush the rocking town,
Stretch hands, and hunger and aspire,
Seeking to mount where high and higher,
The child whom Time can never tire,
Sings over White Horse Down.
And this was the might of Alfred,
At the ending of the way;
That of such smiters, wise or wild,
He was least distant from the child,
Piling the stones all day.
For Eldred fought like a frank hunter
That killeth and goeth home;
And Mark had fought because all arms
Rang like the name of Rome.
And Colan fought with a double mind,
Moody and madly gay;
But Alfred fought as gravely
As a good child at play.
He saw wheels break and work run back
And all things as they were;
And his heart was orbed like victory
And simple like despair.
Therefore is Mark forgotten,
That was wise with his tongue and brave;
And the cairn over Colan crumbled,
And the cross on Eldred's grave.
Their great souls went on a wind away,
And they have not tale or tomb;
And Alfred born in Wantage
Rules England till the doom.
Because in the forest of all fears
Like a strange fresh gust from sea,
Struck him that ancient innocence
That is more than mastery.
And as a child whose bricks fall down
Re-piles them o'er and o'er,
Came ruin and the rain that burns,
Returning as a wheel returns,
And crouching in the furze and ferns
He began his life once more.
He's a good fucking writer. damn shame nobody seems able to look past the politocs and he's being memory holed. There would be no Middle Earth and no LOTR without him, few people seem to understand exactly how important he was
>Northmen
The Northmen came about our land
A Christless chivalry:
Who knew not of the arch or pen,
Great, beautiful half-witted men
From the sunrise and the sea.
Misshapen ships stood on the deep
Full of strange gold and fire,
And hairy men, as huge as sin
With horned heads, came wading in
Through the long, low sea-mire.
Our towns were shaken of tall kings
With scarlet beards like blood:
The world turned empty where they trod,
They took the kindly cross of God
And cut it up for wood.
Abandon small villages and towns to close to shore. Make them have to come further inland to raid anything substantial. Defeat them in sustained land warfare. Take the fight to them and defeat them on water as well.
Millitia training and fortifications. The Vikings were strategically mobile due to their longships but didn't know much about siegecraft. Force them into a siege and they'll take losses. Think of it like a hedgehog defense. Either they pull back quickly or you run them over with your larger army.
You could also pay them in land. Scandinavia is cold and not particularly fertile. Offer them some good, fertile land and they'll be happy. This is basically how a lot of famous vikings settled down. Rollo the Walker, for example, was given what is now Normandy and the place is still named after its NORth MAN rulers.
Preemptive invasion of Netherlands/Denmark. Coastal patrols with ships that could overtake their little shitty wave gliders and ram them with impunity.
Great War on Vikings.
Never forget Lindesfarne.
This is unironically one of the things that led to the end of the Viking age. Initially, nobody knew where the Vikings were coming from simply because nobody had the ships to follow them back.
That sounds scary. Big angry men speaking weird words coming from God knows where to murder you
Yeah, and then they raped the daughters and wives. Imagine your wife being claimed and raped and there's nothing you can do about it as she gets filled over and over again. Pumped and pumped as she cries for them to stop
>didnt know where they came from
they did but Scandinavia was literally a collection of villages and farmsteads that all can easily fuck off until you go.
>random language
Anglo-Saxon english and old Norse are linguistically similar. They may have needed some translation but theres enough you could follow a conversation
>muh rape
this was a much bigger case in scotland and Ireland. In fact lowland scotland had been so thoroughly raped by englishmen and scandis they are genetically distinct from highlanders. In the scottish islands its almost entirely norse.
>They may have needed some translation
In Icelandic sagas it is flat out stated that their people and the Anglo-Saxons had no trouble communicating as their languages were the same. Today we wouldn't consider that to be the case, but in those days there was no such thing as a codified and uniformly spoken language. The differences between Old English and Old Norse were quite minor and you could easily converse with either.
They do stem from the same Germanic origins, and the Jutes, Anglos and Saxons migrated from the region where the language that would become Old Norse developed.
Nice milk onions.
Let's reproduce
How can this be the case when there was supposedly difficulty for people of Wessex to communicate with those speaking Northumbrian?
Accents can be a bugger even speaking the same language, just go to the UK sometime
>Accents can be a bugger even speaking the same language,
Interesting
>just go to the UK sometime
I've been meaning to, but I'm a broke NEET. Did you want to sponsor my trip?
>I've been meaning to, but I'm a broke NEET. Did you want to sponsor my trip?
Do you have a purty mouth?
Ye ah
They knew WHERE they were coming from, just not anything specific. Scandinavia was so sparsely populated that you wouldn't find more than a couple villages if you didn't know where to look.
Option 1: Hire them to go fuck up France or Ireland
Option 2: Gorrilla Warfare and give up on fielding large conventional forces. Harass them from shore, to city, and back to shore.
Option 3: Invade them, the English probably would have been better at it minus the whole, sub par navy issue.
>Hire them to go fuck up France or Ireland
you don't need to hire them to do that, they did it in real life and occupied parts of both. They'd then come back to totally conquer England and still rule it to this day. Maybe not the best strategy.
>Gorrilla Warfare and give up on fielding large conventional forces
Good luck with that. Guerilla warfare literally only works if the enemy is unable or unwilling to exterminate you. Ancient and medieval peoples didn't really have the same hangups about that. In reality the exact opposite is what worked at fighting the vikings, systemic building of roads and fortified towns along with the expansion of more professional troops organized under the king is what actually happened and succeeded at repelling the vikings.
>Invade them
yeah good luck with that, see the problem is they're already occupying your little shit island and the littler shitter island next to it. So who are you gonna fucking invade? Oh boy we're gonna go and conquer Denmark, Sweden, and Norway all in one go, maybe Russia+Ukraine while we're at it since those are also under the rule of Norse kings, after we've pushed all the vikings of Ireland, Scotland, and England. England does not have the manpower to do this. They barely succeeded in reclaiming their own territory.
Fuck it even say you come up with the manpower for the massive standing army you'd need to wage war all across Europe to stamp out the Norsemen. How the fuck are you going to pay them? They don't have anything to loot, that's why they're here raiding you.
>How the fuck are you going to pay them?
Hot blonde chicks and, uhh.. lush, fertile Norwegian farmland? And hey, free longboats! (please don't use them to sail back here and raid us we used all our money sending you)
>you don't need to hire them to do that, they did it in real life and occupied parts of both. They'd then come back to totally conquer England and still rule it to this day. Maybe not the best strategy.
Buying yourself a few decades to secure your own territory is worth it.
>Good luck with that. Guerilla warfare literally only works if the enemy is unable or unwilling to exterminate you. Ancient and medieval peoples didn't really have the same hangups about that. In reality the exact opposite is what worked at fighting the vikings, systemic building of roads and fortified towns along with the expansion of more professional troops organized under the king is what actually happened and succeeded at repelling the vikings.
Guerilla Warfare is what saved about, oh, half of The British Isles from Rome. It would have been a repeat in this scenario, due to terrain and weather. Southern Britain and about half their East coast would have been fucked. Scotland and Northern England would have been able to hold out and eventually "win"
>yeah good luck with that, see the problem is they're already occupying your little shit island and the littler shitter island next to it. So who are you gonna fucking invade? Oh boy we're gonna go and conquer Denmark, Sweden, and Norway all in one go, maybe Russia+Ukraine while we're at it since those are also under the rule of Norse kings, after we've pushed all the vikings of Ireland, Scotland, and England. England does not have the manpower to do this. They barely succeeded in reclaiming their own territory.
Imagine not having the balls to counter raid Denmark and eventually play an uno reverse card.
>Guerilla Warfare is what saved about, oh, half of The British Isles from Rome.
No it didn't. Romans conquered literally all of it that they wanted. The thing that 'saved' them was being a barren wasteland the Romans saw less than zero value in. The Britons tried guerilla warfare. It did not work, because again, guerilla warfare NEVER works when you're facing a foe that is willing and able to entirely exterminate you. It's not some magic "I win button" just because it has worked for the last ~70 years now that wholesale extermination and subjugation is off the table. The same was not true for the Britons. When they rose up the Romans brutally put down their revolt, enslaved and subjugated them.
>Imagine not having the balls to counter raid Denmark and eventually play an uno reverse card.
Raid them for what? Again, they're here raiding you because there's nothing of value back home. Congratulation you got the tribe's one unfucked goat. Your men are going to kill you now and probably become vikings themselves.
>herpity derpity derp
Guerilla warfare saved half of Britain, and caused a lot of it to remain free for a lot longer than it should have. The Caledonians and Picts made it to the fall of Rome. It was not that Rome did not want their territory, it was that they couldn't take it. The same can be said for several other parts of the world Rome eyeballed and fucked off away from once they realized they couldn't throw enough bodies at the problem to make it go away.
>Raid them for what? Again, they're here raiding you because there's nothing of value back home. Congratulation you got the tribe's one unfucked goat. Your men are going to kill you now and probably become vikings themselves.
Do...do...do you think they were poor? Do you really think Scandinavia was poor? No. The thing that spurred Vikings to go out and raid was they were the literal "got nothin' goin' for me" types. And the main driving factor was a lack of females. They originally started raiding to get war brides.
Or if you can't fathom that, where do you think they sent all YOUR shit back to? On top of that, if they are so poor...why the fuck wouldn't you go burn down everything they held dear. They obviously couldn't afford castles and heavy fortifications near their own coasts.
>Scandinavia not poor
Wasnt it?
Yeah there were plenty of second sons ready to blow their inheritance on a raiding quest but their crews?
I was under the impression that poor scandi farmers would viking once harvest season was finished.
England was a poor backwater shithole.
Scandinavia looked at England and thought "wow, these guys are rich as fuck". It was absolutely destitute compared to the entire rest of the continent. People weren't leaving and settling in barren wastelands like Iceland and Greenland because they had a choice.
England wasn't a poor backwater shithole until centuries of invading Germankcs ruined it. Under Roman occupation it was fairly wealthy, although not as much so as the core provinces of the Empire.
One driver for England's wealth was the increasing sequestration of wealth of the Anglo-Roman elite, compared to the continental Romans.
Anglo-Saxon england wasnt poor you fucking brainlet. it ran rhe entire european wool trade and was by standards of the time fairly wealthy. It was just sparsely populated with maybe 1-2million people in the whole country. Sweden at the time had a total population of like 300k people similar for Norway and Denmark.
>Guerilla warfare saved half of Britain
No, it didn't.
>caused a lot of it to remain free for a lot longer than it should have
The briton's revolt lasted one year.
>The Caledonians and Picts made it to the fall of Rome
fantastic, so did the Bedouin. That's what living somewhere nobody else wants will get you. Nothing north of the Antonine wall was worth anything to Rome.
>other parts of the world Rome eyeballed and fucked off away from once they realized they couldn't throw enough bodies at the problem to make it go away.
Yes, the good parts of the middle east that they kept fighting with Persians over. Not wastelands with zero value like northern Scotland, where you can't farm for shit and there are zero resources of value.
>Do you really think Scandinavia was poor
Yes in every measurable way they were a poor backwater with nothing of value. By every metric they were poor. That's why leaving to go halfway across their entire known world to Constantinople was such a huge problem that the very first recorded law in Sweden banned those who left to become Varangians from receiving inheritance. Wealthy countries don't have problems where the entire population is leaving.
And it's not like this poverty ended either. In the 1800s millions of Scandinavians left to emigrate to the US. When a tenth of your population is leaving every decade for a century, that kinda signals that you are not a wealthy country. It's also not like this was a new trend. ALL the Germanics came from Scandinavia originally and pushed into Europe's mainland.
>And the main driving factor was a lack of females. They originally started raiding to get war brides.
Oh right of course, Scandinavians are the one people on all of earth who do not give birth to women so they have to raid to acquire them. Wait no, that's fantasy anime goblins, close but they're actually not the same thing.
You're a complete and total idiot.
>Oh right of course, Scandinavians are the one people on all of earth who do not give birth to women so they have to raid to acquire them. Wait no, that's fantasy anime goblins, close but they're actually not the same thing.
back then marriage was a privilege and you were only allowed to marry a woman if you had property and thus a way to sustain a family. so when fertile land is scarce in scandinavia it means that scandi men sooner or later run out of the possibility to acquire property because all the fertile land in scandi already has an owner which is a problem because without property they dont get to marry a woman. so they basically have no choice but to abduct women from elsewhere or go abroad in general and settle else where.
>They barely succeeded in reclaiming their own territory.
they were fighting other English people
the
The various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms could have united to allow for greater coordination on defense.
viking armies were quickly other anglo saxons.
The vikings lost in the end. Seriously, nobody is defending vikingnaggers.
Horse archers
They could've not put like 1/3 of their population into peaceful monastic pursuits and built fortifications instead of monasteries. Turtling up and shooting shit dipped arrows at invaders while you slowly retreat into defense in depth fortifications is hard to fuck up.
Quit fighting each other
Anglo Saxon kingdoms were little shitty earldoms, without political unity they were always going to be vulnerable to raids and immigrants. The viking threat was the catalyst for England to emerge as a political entity though.
The vikings are extinct, so the Anglo-Saxons won in the end.
>norse
>extinct
Yeah they got bred out by African
Kys
Despite the memes, Sweden remains whiter than the US and UK, and still less cucked than the latter, which really says something about the absolute state of bongs. Sweden is bar far the worst in this regard out of all the Nordics.
if only the Saxons built strong stone forts instead of wooden forts, then Cnut wouldn't been able to conquer the Saxons and instead would've turn tail and run.
Stone expensive
burn down the forests
no wood, no boats