Start Of Economic Activities By Vikings

Start of economic activities by Vikings

Introduction

Viking is the name given to the members of the Nordic peoples originating in Scandinavia, famous for their incursions in Europe. In 793, what is known as Vikinga began, when a group of Nordics assaulted the Lindisfarne monastery in English lands. From here the incursions and crosses between Vikings and Christians increased significantly until 1066, the year in which the Viking era ends with the death of King Harald Hardrathi in the battle of Stamford Bridge. During those three centuries, the life of the northern peoples change dramatically in cultural, economic, social and political fields.

Developing

International trade, in Scandinavia, one of the main basic activities, in addition to agriculture, was trade that, thanks to the explorer eagerness of this culture, managed to expand it throughout Europe and part of Asia. These were the international merchants of their time. In Istanbul they acquired silk and spices in exchange for slaves bought in Russia; In the Baltic, Ambar and in Greenland, skins. They founded cities-market such as Birka, Ribe, Hedeeby, Skiringsal, in Ireland they founded Dublin and in England they were responsible for the flowering of York. In times when the routes were closed or trade was difficult for other peoples due to wars and other factors.

The Scandinavians kept their route between Byzantium and the West through kyiv. Vikingas tombs often contain, even in Scandinavia, Arab silver, Anglo -Saxon coins and other products of a very extensive trade.

We also know that the different rulers of England and other parts of Europe paid the Vikings to leave them alone and not fight against them. Or they also hired them to fight for them in their wars, Western ideas. Together with commercial expansion, ideas from Western Europe began to arrive in Scandinavia. Among them, the idea of ​​coining a currency and the idea of ​​a monarchy.

The northern peoples did not possess a currency, they took into account the value of the metals. For this reason, they used to invade England, since it was very rich in silver. As soon as the Scandinavians settled in England they began to coined their own currency. It is likely that this was due not only to economic reasons but also political and cultural. Like many "barbarian invaders," the Vikings considered that their colonized ones were superior. Coin currency was associated with medieval Christian monarchies and the fact that the Vikings did so at the height of those "more civilized" cultures. 

This coincided with the unification of the small kingdoms that we know today as Denmark, Sweden and Norway. These changes are reflected in the adoption of the habit of coining currency in the three kingdoms, Svein Forkbeard of Denmark, Olaf Tryggasson of Norway and Olof Tribute, king of Sweden, all of them coined coins with their names and titles. The religion. Initially, the Vikings were polytheistic. They believed in a large number of gods related to the forces of nature who were offered sacrifices and offerings for their good will. They worshiped two kinds of gods, Aesir and Vanir.

In Asgard, the home of the gods, the Aesir inhabited. They all made up the assembly where Odin was the most noble God and the most important. Among these we can highlight gods such as Thor, Loki, Heimdall, Tyr, among others on the other hand, also recognized the power of the gods of the sea, wind, forests and forces of nature. These gods are called Vanir, lived in Vanaheim and ruled their domains to their desire. Here are some gods like Freyja or Frey. At the beginning of the Viking era, almost all the Scandinavians were pagan, but they knew Christianity for their assaults.

So that when they settled in places like Normandy, Ireland or England they accepted it without problems. The conversion of Scandinavia took place by the Anglo -Saxon missionaries, so that Christianity was established as such throughout Scandinavia. The incursions into the Frankish kingdoms and the British Isles from the ninth century meant greater contact with Christianity. Although it seems that the Vikings maintained their beliefs during periods of incursions, they must have felt enough pressure to become if they wanted to maintain peaceful and commercial relations with the Christian cultures of their surroundings. 

It is possible that this can be interpreted the Wedmore Treaty signed in England in 878, in which the Viking leader Guthrum agreed to be baptized by King Alfred in exchange for being recognized king of East Anglia, where he reigned as Athelstan. It is believed that this occurred so since Christians had no trade with pagans. Although it does not seem that in England a total conversion of all Scandinavian merchants had been demanded, the custom of "primsigning" ("First signing" in English) was introduced, an intermediate step towards baptism or the acceptance of Christianity. 

It was often considered enough to allow commercial transactions. The greatest pressure occurred when the Vikings raiders settled alongside Christian neighbors. Often, they married Anglo -Saxon women and the children of these mixed couples would grow, in partially Christian homes. The successive marriages and the influence of the Church completed the conversion process. The peoples of America and the conquest. Since in 1492 Cristóbal Colon arrived at the coast of America, the period of colonization and conquest of both the territory and the native peoples of the new continent began.

To the success of the conquest of America, the war superiority of the Spaniards, to epidemic diseases and the European conviction of their cultural superiority was attributed. This allowed the colonizers to develop a great ability to adapt and the ability to carry out the greatest atrocities without any problem. The indigenous population was diminished in a significant way. Killed by their colonizers, killed by the diseases brought from Europe to which they did not possess natural defenses, by the psychological damage generated by the inhuman treatment by Europeans, forced labor, transfers, the occupation of their territories and slavery.

As for religion, Catholicism was imposed in Latin America. These Jesuit missions were populated with indigenous people organized and administered by the Jesuit priests in the New World as part of their civilizing and evangelizing work. The main objective of religious missions was to create a society with the benefits and qualities of European Christian society. These missions were founded by the Jesuits throughout colonial America. To achieve their goal, the Jesuits developed the contact and attraction of the indigenous people. 

They soon learned their languages, and from there they would meet in villages in which thousands of people lived. They were in a long measure self-sufficient, they had complete administrative, economic and cultural infrastructure that worked in a community regime, where the natives were educated in the Christian faith. After an unrelated start marked by failed attempts in the mid -seventeenth century the missionary model was already well established and generalized in most America, but they had to continue facing the opposition of some sectors of the Church that did not coincide.

Along with the rest of the colonizing population for those who were not worth the effort to Christianize the indigenous population. The missionary system sought to introduce Christianity and a Europeanized way of life, integrating, however, several of the cultural values ​​of the Indians themselves, and was based on the respect of the person and their group traditions, where they did not enter into conflict direct with the basic concepts of new faith and justice. All these changes introduced by the conquest produced a deculture or loss of cultural characteristics of the native peoples.

According to Tzvetan Todorov, something that favored and facilitated the conquest was the religious vision they had, in this case, the Aztecs about the Spaniards. Through the interpretation of the divine messages, the Aztecs reached two contradictory perceptions about the Spaniards: or are lower because they are foreigners, or are superior for being gods. In the long run, both perceptions turned out to be equally paralyzing and inhibited indigenous resistance. The Aztecs assumed that if the Spaniards were lower it was not worth killing them. In the opposite case, that is, if they were superior, there was simply not to oppose divine superiority.

Also adding, that the Aztecs had a cyclical vision of time, that is, that in their calendar there was always a moment of catastrophe to which later preceded a new beginning, thus adding, another reason why the indigenous people did not oppose great resistance to foreign colonizers. The European look. Until, now we have analyzed both the peoples of Scandinavia and the peoples of America. But we lack a crucial element for the development of this present work, the European look. Vikings: Since their first foray into the monastery of Lindisfarne, the northern men were automatically labeled as pagan savages. 

Its existence and the stories told about them caused terror in the rest of the English territory. Such was the fear that, as we have mentioned above, some kingdoms even paid them to leave them alone. Little by little, the Viking terror was expanding through Europe, reaching other kingdoms such as the Franco where more than once assaulted taking advantage of the instability of this same. The great war qualities of Scandinavian men created great respect from the rest of Europe. In many cases they were even hired as a kind of private army by some kingdoms to resolve conflicts.

conclusion

Peoples of America: different from the case of the Vikings was the case of the peoples of America. The arrival of Europeans brought an almost complete destruction of the indigenous culture of these native peoples. Europeans had no consideration against the natives. From the first moment they were considered superior to them, they did not consider them as people but as animals that deserved any treatment. This allowed them to commit all kinds of atrocities with them without any moral immutation. An example is Columbus’s thought about this.

He thought that the different of the indigenous was synonymous with absence, in the New World there was nothing, but that everything was about to be founded: new names, new religious beliefs, new customs. And that is precisely the mission that Columbus discovers for himself: the assimilation of the natives and the creation and expansion of a new world assimilated to Europe. Without a doubt, the European vision was very different from the Vikings than in relation to the American peoples. Some were afraid and others were considered lower animals.