Islamic Vikings - How ASB?

I don't see what makes Islam harder to take?
Presumably the tighter contacts Scandinavia had with Christian Europe (for one thing, it was easier for the people in Bremen to send missionaries to Mälaren than it would be for Cordoba to send missionaries to Viken).
 
4. Islam has ALOT of proscriptions that would make the Vikings stare in shock and horror, most botably the no alcohol and no pork stuff, which is a big deal breaker for Northern Europeans in general.
To be fair the alcohol part was fairly ignored in Central Asia, where alcohol played a big part in their lives. By extension, the Mughals also drank a lot of alcohol until Aurangzeb, so it's proven that it can be ignored.
 
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ingemann

Banned
I don't see what makes Islam harder to take?

You mean beside little access to Scandinavia and little benefit in converting for the Norse. While Christianity had significant access to Scandinavia, a existing Christian minority and significant benefit to converting to it. Beside those thing you're completely right. Except if forget things like the whole halal food thing (going to be a real success among people, who didn't waste anything from slaugthered animals), the moon calendar and the prayer at weird times of the day (there was a reason the Volga Bulgar adopted 4 prayers a day rather than five).
So yeah not hard at all, of course if they do convert, it will be to Islam In Name Only, they will cut the prayers to 3-4 daily, shift to a solar calendar, change the Ramadan (likely to something similar to Christian fasting), drop halal food and likely create a permanent priesthood.
 
To be fair the alcohol part was fairly ignored in Central Asia, where alcohol played a big part in their lives. By extension, the Mughals also drank a lot of alcohol under Aurangzeb, so it's proven that it can be ignored.

Anything can be ignored, but no one is going to deliberately convert to a religion that has ridiculous-seeming commandments without good reason - and there's no political one here, unlike Central Asia.
 
You mean beside little access to Scandinavia and little benefit in converting for the Norse. While Christianity had significant access to Scandinavia, a existing Christian minority and significant benefit to converting to it.

Obviously this wouldn't work if the Norse woke up went day and said "So Allahu Akbar!" But if there was an Islamic state in Western Europe?I could see some converting.

Beside those thing you're completely right. Except if forget things like the whole halal food thing (going to be a real success among people, who didn't waste anything from slaughtered animals),

I'm not sure the Norse lacked food taboos, given some of the questions about what was being eaten (or not being eaten) in Greenland.
 
I'm not sure the Norse lacked food taboos, given some of the questions about what was being eaten (or not being eaten) in Greenland.

I really think the idea that the Greenlander Norse didn't eat fish is deeply ASB.

Anyway, for Islamic Vikings, I don't think contact is a problem. You could get Islamic people to Scandinavia, you could even get a king like Harald Hardråde converting while young. Have a realm going Islamic for the duration of a reign. But I don't think it'll last. You'd have pressure against it from both the christians and the pagans. With none of the commercial advantages of christianity.

You'd need an earlier POD for this. A more heavily Islamic east, Russia going Islamic, then Sweden. Dominoes falling from the east to the north.

If this goes through, Christian Europe is going to find its strategic position much weaker.
 
I'm not sure the Norse lacked food taboos, given some of the questions about what was being eaten (or not being eaten) in Greenland.

The Greenlander Norse eat fish.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=247x29833

1) The Norse in Greenland didn't eat fish?

One Greenland archeologist (Jette Arneborg) whom Diamond quoted literally found that laughable, when she was interviewed later. The've got the fish hooks & the sinkers. Diamond points out that there are relatively few fishbones found at Norse Greenland sites, and cites the Hunting, Fishing, & Animal Husbandry at the Farm Beneath the Sands study (Inge Enghoff-I had to send to the U of Alaska to get it), ignoring the fact that the study itself points out that that's because 1) Fish bones are small (duh!), 2) Fish bones are highly perishable (duh!), and 3) The archeologists only started to use excruitiatingly thorough screening techniques part of the way through the excavation. Also despite the fact that one place Diamond went to had been named by the Norse "Salmon Stream." Besides, the theory that the Greenlandic Norse didn't eat fish: Does that even pass the smell test (so to speak)?
 

ingemann

Banned
Obviously this wouldn't work if the Norse woke up went day and said "So Allahu Akbar!" But if there was an Islamic state in Western Europe?I could see some converting.

Why the Rus wasn't fundamental difference from the Scandinavian Norse outside less fish in their diet and a less developed class system, they had Muslims neighbours and they didn't convert. In fact outside Indonesia we didn't see agricultural people convert to Islam outside conquest. In Russia we saw the herders convert, but farmers didn't. Of course we could see individual converts still (we likely saw both in Russia and Scandinavia), but it would have little greater effect, just as the Christian community in Scandinavia had little effect on further conversion (all the Scandinavia converted to external missionaries).



I'm not sure the Norse lacked food taboos, given some of the questions about what was being eaten (or not being eaten) in Greenland.

People below you post have answered this.
 
Anything can be ignored, but no one is going to deliberately convert to a religion that has ridiculous-seeming commandments without good reason - and there's no political one here, unlike Central Asia.
Perhaps as a way to unify them into something more or less centralised. They're obviously not going to be by the book Muslims.

The dhimmi system would also allow them to exploit missionaries and such as scribes, administrators, etc. no?
 

ingemann

Banned
Perhaps as a way to unify them into something more or less centralised. They're obviously not going to be by the book Muslims.

The dhimmi system would also allow them to exploit missionaries and such as scribes, administrators, etc. no?

Really hard to set such a structure up in a pagan country, the Ottomans and Arabs was able to set the system up in old Christian country with lot of monks and Christian institution. Scandinavia lack that, and even the Christian neighbour areas, didn't have a real surplus of these at this point.
 
Really hard to set such a structure up in a pagan country, the Ottomans and Arabs was able to set the system up in old Christian country with lot of monks and Christian institution. Scandinavia lack that, and even the Christian neighbour areas, didn't have a real surplus of these at this point.
But with Islam they could establish themselves as above the power of any Christians in Scandinavia, and thus, even if missionaries arrive, politically they have much less power. For sure it's improbable, but I don't think Muslim Vikings are impossible.
 

ingemann

Banned
But with Islam they could establish themselves as above the power of any Christians in Scandinavia, and thus, even if missionaries arrive, politically they have much less power. For sure it's improbable, but I don't think Muslim Vikings are impossible.

Impossible no, so incredible unlikely that it could just as well be impossible yes.
 
If the Vikings are going to convert Islam without completely altering the geopolitical arrangement of medieval Eurasia, the only way they would get converted is via Russia, likely through the Volga trade route. However the fact that the conversion comes via Russia means any Viking/Varangian conversion to Islam is extremely unlikely. Why?

Constantinople.

The Vikings are there to trade with that city; that's the money maker in these parts. Converting to Islam alienates their by far and away biggest customers. And if that's not enough, consider it from Constantinople's perspective. They are now literally surrounded by Muslims on all sides save the northwest, and they will respond, not with direct intervention, but they will bribe every single steppe tribe to come and land on Muslim Varangia with both feet. And at this point the Pechenegs are doing very nicely.
 
Perhaps as a way to unify them into something more or less centralised. They're obviously not going to be by the book Muslims.

The dhimmi system would also allow them to exploit missionaries and such as scribes, administrators, etc. no?

But why Islam? Why not Christianity?

And missionaries and such are hardly going to accept being "exploited" as royal agents - established clergy within the kingdom, sure, but that's not the same thing.


Basileus444: I'm not sure they'd be that upset at Muslim neighbors - but it certainly wouldn't be taken well, and Constantinople's pleasure is worth something.
 
Definate ASB - aside from the limitations of Islam of the era, Islam would conflict with dozens of assets of Norse Culture - this is the same reason the Rus didn't convert, because things like no pork or beer and all the private rituals would interfere with being able to live well in Nothern Europe.

And remember - Christianity only succeeded out of practical concerns, not peity. The Norse and Scandinavians have never been one to care much for religion - there is a reason protestantism took off so well there, and why Athiesm is the rule of thumb there now. So honestly, the only way I could see Islam in Scandinavia is if Islam had overrun Christian Europe.
 

Delvestius

Banned
There are indeed records of Islamic Rus, as noted by the Abbasid emissary Ahmed ibn Fadlan, though he does mention how some respected the dietary constraints of Islam more so than others.
 
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