Who is a good guy and who is a bad guy? In the past you would think of a bad guy as the mean one who causes sadness and destruction. Today in the media it is the same thing except with a twist. The media looks at people who are the “bad guy” and tries to figure out why they are “bad”. In novels the author sometimes tries to explain how the “bad guy” got to be the way they are. It is almost as if today we are trying to justify why people are bad, but also why they are good. If you close your eyes and think about Vikings, what do you see? You picture a large man with a hat which has horns on it. You think of someone who pillages towns and kills innocent men, women, and children. You think of a bad guy. But were the Vikings really the bad guy? To answer this question figuring out why they pillaged and killed would be necessary. Also you would have to figure out who is the good guy?
Vikings are popularly known as men who would invade towns in Ireland, Britain, and other places and take as much as possible. Viking in Norse even means piracy (Abkar, Arifa). Some scholars are even feuding over whether or not the Vikings were pillagers. These scholars are saying that the Vikings were not indeed mass murderers and thieves but a good example of cultivated pilgrims, who set the standard for settlers after them. Arifa Abkar writes about this in her article titled, The Vikings: It wasn’t all raping and Pillaging, found in The Independent (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-vikings-it-wasnt-all-raping-and-pillaging-1643969.html). If word gets out that in fact the Vikings were not so vicious then they will probably be seen as the “good guys” since according to the article the Vikings actually got a long quite well with the Celts and British people. If this is so, how come the picture of the Vikings today has come to be so? Scholars view this as the fact that after the renaissance of Scandinavia, Irish story tellers portrayed the Vikings as invaders who destroyed everything in their path. It is true that some Vikings did parade over the British Isles and pillage and kill innocent people, but that’s not what goes to say for all of them. If that is truly the case then wouldn’t these Irish story tellers be the “bad guys”?
For the Vikings that did pillage you may want to know why the pillaged, to see if they are truly bad. During that time in history many civilizations would invade countries so that they could take over and gain power. With the Vikings, who pillaged, that does not seem to be the case. Vikings would just steal, and stealing is a serious taboo today, just as it was in the past. Some scholars say that the reason the Vikings left their cold and barren home in Scandinavia was because living in such harsh conditions was hurting them. They moved south the only way they knew how, on boats. As there is no clearly stated reason that the Vikings left explaining why they became such vicious marauders, scholars agree that the reason is probably the fact that they were poor and slowly losing space in their homeland. The Scandinavians were growing high in numbers but the land was not growing with them. They already knew that their southern neighbors were rich in wealth and land so they decided to leave their home and south. Many of the first vikings who left, left because as political beings were taking over in their homeland they had no power anymore. They viking leaders would take their families and leave. The first known place that the vikings attacked is called Lindisfarne, located in the British Isles. The site were they attacked was a monastery, the vikings stole the church's treasury and killed many of the monks. This is just one of the reasons that vikings are seen as bad guys. Another reason is that most of the places attacked by these vikings were small and unprotected like churches, farms, and small villages.
The Vikings seemed to gain power from weak societies. Whenever they were met with a place that had a strong fort or was protected by soldiers they would tend to go back to their jobs as traders. Using their strength they found a way to get good cash. The head of certain towns would have taxes set aside that would go to the vikings and in return the vikings would not attack them. The vikings seem to not want that much trouble and in a world were Christianity was very much in charge, when the vikings started to live with the southerners they would convert.
It seems that the Vikings cannot be classified as good or bad. They are bad because many of them took lives and stole. They are good because they eventually stopped and worked well with their peers. The vikings felt as if they had no way out to live a better life. The men wanted to have an easier life and felt that having more money and power would get them that. Even though they felt they had no way out, The Vikings are the "bad guys" because what they did was still wrong. Although they contributed a lot to present UK, they were the bad guys.
Citation: Abkar, Arifa. "The Vikings: It Wasn't All Raping and Pillaging." The Independent [London] 13 Mar. 2009. The Independent. 13 Mar. 2009. Web. 19 Mar. 2010. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-vikings-it-wasnt-all-raping-and-pillaging-1643969.html.
Rosenthal, Joel T. "Vikings." Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.
"Viking Funeral." commons wikimedia. Web. 19 Mar 2010.
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