The Widely Misunderstood
Motives of the Vikings



History has given the Vikings a very much-undeserved bad name. Vikings are depicted in books as a barbaric seagoing group of raiders, known for traveling to foreign countries and killing, raping, and enslaving the population, followed by pillaging for whatever they may want and burning the rest.  This, however, is a very inaccurate portrayal of what the Vikings came to do. The Vikings would arrive at towns and monasteries early in the morning hours.  While this act was taken as an attempt to catch and destroy the people while they were still sleeping, the reason was much more benevolent.  They arrived so early because they had much work to do, and hoped to surprise their neighbors with the wonderful help they had provided. Unfortunately, the locals would often be awakened by the sounds of work, and are always very irritable in the morning, rushing out and taking their foul moods out on the poor Vikings.  The Vikings were forced to defend themselves with the tools they had brought along: woodcutting axes, hammers, straight sickles used to harvest crops, and their hunting spears and bows which they had brought along to give their hosts a feast. As for the monasteries, the Vikings knew some of the monotheistic Christianity followed by the monks.  The monks were supposed to leave behind material wealth and instead seek spiritual rewards.  Vikings, however, had nothing against their own amassing of material wealth.  Strangely enough, the monasteries were filled with most of the riches of the land.  In order to save the monks from these terrible temptations and diversions from their faith, the Vikings would come in from time to time to collect these items. Unfortunately for the monks, however, their native kings would become upset because they can't pay their protection money, often called a tax.  Not wanting to leave the monks in such dire straits, the Vikings would take the monks with them. As far as the rape charges go, it wasn't rape at all.  The women were all perfectly willing.  The Vikings realized that the men in these countries were widely sterile, and, in order to keep up the self-esteem of these men, they would attempt to impregnate their wives and allow the men to believe that the resulting children were their own.  Of course, the process of impregnation is often quite loud, attracting the attention of the men, and, their fragile egos wounded, they would attack the poor Vikings. And then there's the whole burning thing.  You see, the Vikings were masters of agriculture, and, upon arriving, they would notice that the crops were doing quite poorly.  The reason for this, they surmised, was that the soil was improperly fertilized.  The Vikings would also notice the poor condition of the buildings.  Being masters of carpentry as well, they decided to build the people new houses and burn the old ones so that the ashes could be tilled into the soil as fertilizer.  Once again, however, the people would not listen and mistook the attempt at improvements as an attack on their homes.  Angered for no good reason, the people would attack the poor Vikings, who, once again, would be forced to defend themselves.  The Vikings were never wasteful, and therefore burned the bodies along with the houses for extra nutrients for the soil. Now, a slight problem arose.  The fertilizer was abundant, but there were no people left to tend to the land.  Knowing that if unplanted, the rains would come and wash away the rich topsoil, leaving the land barren and worthless, the Vikings were forced to settle the area for a time.  On the bright side, they were not forced to do all this work alone.  The monks who they had rescued from the monasteries not long before needed a place to stay and work to do, as they were an industrious lot.  The Vikings allowed the monks to work their fields for them, thus making the monks happy.  The Vikings, in return, would keep whatever the Monks did not absolutely need, as was the wishes of the monks. Of course, sometimes there were more monks than the Vikings could support at the time.  These monks were sent out to friends of the Vikings, who had more room for people to settle and work the lands.  So grateful were these friends to the Vikings for bringing the monks to save their precious topsoil that they would pay the Vikings for bringing them.  Some people just didn't understand the entire concept of the Vikings helping their monk friends out, though, and attached the ugly word "slavery" to the relationship. Thus you can see how a group of friendly, fun-loving traveling handymen have been grievously misrepresented in history books.  Perhaps someday, society will come to trust and love its fellow man as these lovable and industrious travelers had done so many centuries ago.  And then, these great people known as the Vikings may return to sail their beautiful ships across the oceans, again to aid mankind as a whole and bring about a new era of peace and prosperity around the world.

By Bjorn Alewulf