The New Viking Age

 One might expect a Viking revivalism to be the last thing to pop up in the New Middle Ages...after all, it petered out before the High Middle Ages even got going. But a sort of perfect storm ended up materializing. In the 20th Century, one of the coldest places on Earth became one of the most comfortable. The Nordic Countries’ standard of living was the worldwide metric. What was once the scourge of Europe was now only a scourge to those who found Ikea and Abba too tacky. They took civilization’s collapse pretty hard. Its renown health care gone. Imported goods no longer avilable. Fertilizer for crops and energy for homes made life in Scandinavia much more cozy, and the culture shock was pretty galvanzing. For many, people who could not feed their children with what the frozen ground was offering, the way of the axe, of sailing to greener pasture, was the way to go.

Interestingly, in Industrial Age Europe. Most of the Germanic countries are also the most Protestant, and the most Protestant countries the most secular. Protestantism, a movement largely helped by the printing press and revolutionary ideals, found itself a victim of decentralization and the “Easter and Christmas” habits of their casual congregations. Sometimes, the Catholic Church would come in, occupying these  empty Churches and abonened kirks. Some would become more radical and firebrand in their Christianity. And some went back in to the family attics for the Old Gods. The Norse Pantheon, had been taught to every Scandinavian child, much more than the various Saints. Odin and Thor were famed worldwide everything in everything Opera to comic books was a source of pride for the Scandinavians, and for the first few centuries, anyone who might protest this roundabout to paganism was too weak or too distant.

While the image of Vikings as Barbaric Raiders that burned villages to the ground is the most prominent in people’s imaginations, they were entrepeneurs as much as they were warriors, with vast trade networks. They also tended to sell their swords, and kingdoms like Normandy and the Kievan Rus were built by these mercenary bands. In the old Middle Ages, their voyaging led them to Greenland, where the Little Ice Age, and inability to get along with the Inuit population saw the Greenland colonies die, and the Viking Age was officially brought to a close. However, in the New Middle Ages, Greenland is no longer a cold, barren rock on the edge of the known world, but a waystation between both halves of Western civillization. “Vinland” offers the riches of Virginia, Manhattan and the Carolinas, Non-Denominational churches to pilfer, city states offering mercenary contracts, and Caribbean Islands to combine various eras of piracy. Of course, the cycle of history continues, and Scandinavia has, over the centuries, re-Christianized, especially the royal houses, but the wayfinders still exist as a nebulous fleet. Trading, colonizing, and storming the gates, like a Dutch East India company with beards and braids.