England Beats Vikings after Rome Leaves?

Sissco

Banned
Can anyone see a possibility of England preventing the vikings from landing and conquering England after the Romans had left Britain sometime after the Romans left England in 400 or so AD? How would History hve turned out if this was the case?

Sissco
 
Well, the problem with your question is that the invaders were actually the English, who replaced the Britons, hence England ;). Vikings only came a couple of centuries later, I think.
 
Can anyone see a possibility of England preventing the vikings from landing and conquering England after the Romans had left Britain sometime after the Romans left England in 400 or so AD? How would History hve turned out if this was the case?

:eek: Must. Resist. Commenting. :mad:
 

Sissco

Banned
DO you three actually know your history?

Yes, it was Rome that unified what later became England and wales. However there were original Brits , living in Britian even before the Romans came along!

When Rome was for leaving Britain, the first wave of Viking attacks were starting to take place and the Roman Emperor pretty much said to the British people - "deal with this yourselves"! The Britis were pretty much Romanised by this point!! The Viking attacks continued to take place in Britian untill the various viking kingdoms split Britainia between then, and this includes Bloody Scotland!

The senario I'm trying to imagine is, if the inhabitants of Britainia had managed to push the vikings out of Britain, how different would History have been? Would Britain and it's Romano Brits have tried to stay in touch with the failing Roman Empire? What sort of People would the Brits have become? Would the Vikings have continued their exploration westards and still found Vineland, Greenland and Iceland?

Sissco
 
Rome left Britain sometime after the year 400. At that time there were no "Brits" as you put it in Britain. There were just Welsh.

The Island was then subjected to an invasion/migration by the german Angles and Saxons, who together became the "Brits" of today, the Anglosaxons. The natives were pushed into the area known as "Wales" today.

Ironically, "welsh" is an anglosaxon word, meaning "foreign". The Welsh name for england, lloegr or something, means "the lost lands"

The Viknings then invaded the germanic anglosaxons. The first raid is traditionally though to have happened at Lindisfarne in the 790s.

Almost 400 years after the Romans left and the Saxons invaded.
 
To try and answer the question, no, the Romanised britons of the 5th century, who were mostly of Celtic and pre-Celtic stock, could not have defeated the 'Viking' invaders. Without the help of the legions, removed from the island since the Britons refused to pay any more taxes to Rome, the islanders could not stop the 'Vikings', which legend claims were led by Hengest and Horsa.
 
DO you three actually know your history?

Yes, it was Rome that unified what later became England and wales. However there were original Brits , living in Britian even before the Romans came along!

When Rome was for leaving Britain, the first wave of Viking attacks were starting to take place and the Roman Emperor pretty much said to the British people - "deal with this yourselves"! The Britis were pretty much Romanised by this point!! The Viking attacks continued to take place in Britian untill the various viking kingdoms split Britainia between then, and this includes Bloody Scotland!

The senario I'm trying to imagine is, if the inhabitants of Britainia had managed to push the vikings out of Britain, how different would History have been? Would Britain and it's Romano Brits have tried to stay in touch with the failing Roman Empire? What sort of People would the Brits have become? Would the Vikings have continued their exploration westards and still found Vineland, Greenland and Iceland?

Sissco

It was mainly the picts the Brythons were having trouble with.
I guess you could say there were viking problems as well but they weren't THE vikings.
 

Sissco

Banned
LEEJ:

It was mainly the picts the Brythons were having trouble with.
I guess you could say there were viking problems as well but they weren't THE vikings.

Ah I get it...Its just I was taugh in school that the omans left Britian because of all the viking attacks that were starting to take place! My BAD!

sissco
 
LEEJ:

Ah I get it...Its just I was taugh in school that the omans left Britian because of all the viking attacks that were starting to take place! My BAD!

sissco

The legions were withdrawn because the Emperors felt they were needed nearer home. There were a lot of attacks by seaborne raiders but these were mostly Angles and Saxons.

You do need to be careful about your terminology- "Viking" is specifically used to refer to the Scandinavian sea raiders and is not used to refer to others of the sort- Leej is being very generous.

Also, England and Britain mean different things. Britain is generally used to refer to the island of Great Britain- the Britons were the people who lived there under the Romans. These are the chaps who were assimilated by the invading Angles, Saxons and Jutes- those who didn't get assimilated or exterminated were driven into the West to what is now called Wales or to Brittany (which is why it's called Brittany i.e. Little Britain). The lands which they lost were settled by the Angles, Saxons and Jutes and later became known as England (from the tribal name Angles). Thus, the Romans never left "England" because it didn't exist then. It was the province of Britannia.

Since you consistently seem to be on very shaky ground where accuracy is concerned I'd think twice in future before being as rude as this:

Sissco said:
DO you three actually know your history?
 
Rome left Britain sometime after the year 400. At that time there were no "Brits" as you put it in Britain. There were just Welsh.

Just to muddy the waters a bit further and engage in a little pedantry, I would point out there weren't any "Welsh" in Britain when the Romans left. There were Romanized Britons. The Romanized Britons only became "Welsh" after the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes drove them into the western mountains and took what became "England" from them.
 
You do need to be careful about your terminology- "Viking" is specifically used to refer to the Scandinavian sea raiders and is not used to refer to others of the sort- Leej is being very generous
I do wonder about that though.
Viking in Norse meant raider.
Old Germanic languages were very similar to each other, they hadn't had much of a chance to vary yet.
What would the Angles and Saxons have called raiders? I figure it could be close to viking....

But thats besides the point anyway.
 
Just to muddy the waters a bit further and engage in a little pedantry, I would point out there weren't any "Welsh" in Britain when the Romans left. There were Romanized Britons. The Romanized Britons only became "Welsh" after the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes drove them into the western mountains and took what became "England" from them.

It would perhaps have been more accurate to say "the people who later became known as the Welsh" but I thought it was close enough. I suspect the saxons still called them welsh:)
 
Leej - as you said its besides the point (but)

The word 'hergung' would be the best term for a raid itself as it means an attack or invasion mounted for the purpose of taking plunder. As a substitute for the word Vikings (ie the raiders themselves) my suggestions would be either:

1) Onrídan in Old english means to ride upon and so the raiders could be lumped under a name like Onrídas or scipsrídas, as a basic description of their acitvities is that they ride a ship to a particular place and then begin redistributing the locals wealth.
2) Liðsmann which in Old English can mean both sailor and pirate, and this could easily be adopted into the launguage of those unfortunate enough to experience such attacks
 
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ninebucks

Banned
Can anyone see a possibility of England preventing the vikings from landing and conquering England after the Romans had left Britain sometime after the Romans left England in 400 or so AD? How would History hve turned out if this was the case?

Sissco

There are all kinds of anachronisms in this post.

In my opinion, the words 'invasion' and 'conquest' are often misleading when used in a pre-modern context. A 19th, or 20th century invasion is completely incomparably to a 5th or 11th century one - its all down to population density and ultra-local economies. A modern invasion, for instance, is felt by everyone in the country, the invaders and the invadee interact frequently (because the population density is so high), and even those who don't directly interact with the invaders are effected by the disruption to civilian supply lines, (national-scale economic networks are efficient, but very vulnerable).

An ancient invasion, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. The population density is very low, (IMO, this is one of the most important things to remember when thinking about history - we are all so used to being surrounded by millions of other people, but in ancient times, there was just no-one around, cities were just fractions of what they are today and workable farmland was scarce and disconnected: people effected each other much less), and most people get all their supplies locally. An invasion isn't much of a disruption, many people wouldn't even notice.

The people on the actual frontlines, of course, would notice, but bare in mind that this is pre-nationalism. Nobody has ever been taught that they should care about what happens to people who speak the same language, why should someone in the Midlands care if a village on the east coast gets plundered? And for that matter, why should he care if a group of foreign adventurers turn up and replace his landlords - it doesn't effect him one jott, he will still have to pay the same taxes.

Campaigns of national resistance, like you describe, are anacronistic. The truth is that nationalism isn't innate, its a learnt behaviour. People who aren't taught to be nationalistic won't care when ill befalls their countrymen - unless it effects them as well.

Stopping Viking raids would require a prolonged large-scale campaign, but why should such a campaign even be attempted? Untill relatively recently, anti-piracy measures have been seen as a local concern, if a seaside town wants to avoid being raided and plundered, then it needs to sort something out on its own, it can't rely on the co-operation of any of its neighbouring communities.

And so the advantage is the invaders. And the advantage stays with the invaders untill peoples begin to co-operate.
 

Redbeard

Banned
I agree with other posters in the term Viking being limited to 8th-11th century activities, but when that is said it must be noted that at least Angles and Jutes came from arears that a few hundred years later produced Vikings - and the still used landscape/province names of Angel and Jutland, although I'm not sure if a person from Jutland today in English correctly is called a Jute or a Jutlander - I've heard both.

Regards

Steffen Redbeard
 
NineBucks, I think, is right. There simply weren't enough "Britons" at the time of the Norse invasions by the year 793 to really unify together and repel any sort of seaborne attacks. Keep in mind, as well, that many of the early "viking" raids were little more than hit and run plundering attacks on seaside towns, villages and monasteries, as seems most likely. As an ancient Briton, you never really knew where the "Nordmannorum" were going to hit. They could sail just about anywhere, and just because most of the raids were along the coasts, didn't mean that a sleepy midlands town might not wake up one morning to the sound of the church bell ringing an alarm and look over the town walls and see the drakkars sitting almost right up to their front door, with bearded men slipping on leather or chainmail and hefting their breddoxes. My point of all this is, simply, before the Norse actually started invading and later settling, there was nothing to really repel. By the time any appreciable local armed militia force was able to respond and react, the Norsemen would already be in their ships and leaving, unless they struck a fortified town directly, which would have only been done in the most dire of cases, anyway. And what Norse jarl would have to be that suicidal in the first place to attack a hornet's nest of that sort? Other than maybe Ivar, of course...It wasn't until Aelfred of Wessex started fighting the invading Danskmen in 878 that he was able to rally any sort of appreciable resistance to the Norse with the defeat of Guthrum at Edington in the early part of that year, and the victory was scored that kept Wessex English and helped to raise the more unified Fyrd. By that point, the Norse had been pillaging and settling their conquered areas for 85 years.
Though, in the long run, given the proclivity with which the ancient Britons (Britons used here to denote the Saxon people and their difference from the Welsh, with whom they had constant problems with raiding, and according to historical sources, may have been as much a problem from pillaging as the Norse in later history, and to differentiate them from the Roman and pre-Roman age Brythons) interbred with their dashingly handsome and charming conquerers, I don't think the British would have been anywhere near the same endearing people they are now, either genetically or societally. So much of what we consider to be quintessentially British is, in fact, Germanic to some degree, be it originated from Saxon or Dansk influence.
 
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Initial comments

1) England is the wrong term to use if referring to the popualtion and successor states in the Post=Roman world

2) 'Viking' is a generic term referring to pirate; indeed there is evidence to suggest that Harold Godwinson's own grandfather (a minor 'Anglo-Saxon' noble) turned viking in the chaos of Ethelred's reign. The term however is only suitable for use from the 8th Century. The last examplem of 'Viking' activity in the British Isles is considered to be the Battle of Largs (12th Century? 13th? will need to check date).

I'll deal with the other issues another time.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
DO you three actually know your history?

Yes, it was Rome that unified what later became England and wales. However there were original Brits , living in Britian even before the Romans came along!

When Rome was for leaving Britain, the first wave of Viking attacks were starting to take place and the Roman Emperor pretty much said to the British people - "deal with this yourselves"! The Britis were pretty much Romanised by this point!! The Viking attacks continued to take place in Britian untill the various viking kingdoms split Britainia between then, and this includes Bloody Scotland!

The senario I'm trying to imagine is, if the inhabitants of Britainia had managed to push the vikings out of Britain, how different would History have been? Would Britain and it's Romano Brits have tried to stay in touch with the failing Roman Empire? What sort of People would the Brits have become? Would the Vikings have continued their exploration westards and still found Vineland, Greenland and Iceland?

Sissco

Do you acctually know your history?? There was no English before the invasion of Angles, Saxons and Jutes in the 400s and 500s. There were Britons (who were Romanized), but they were a Celtic people speaking the language which Westernmost dialects evolved into Cymric (Welsh). The Angles, Saxons and Jutes brought Germanic languages to the island, and it was the Angles who brought with them the terms aenglish and Aengland.
 
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