The Moors Reach England

The Danes are not going to go Muslim. They may be tempted by the riches of the Moors, but once they hear that they are not allowed to drink alcohol they will go (literally) berserk and start killing people.

The large number of virgins they get in the afterlife would interest them, though.
 
Personally, I think too much is being made of the alcohol thing. Sure, in theory, a religion that denies its adherents alcohol doesn't seem like it would become that popular. But that doesn't seem to have slowed Islam down any in OTL. Hell, Egypt was the birthplace of beer, and they didn't reject Islam because of it. If the Danes or the Saxons are swept up in a religious fervor, they'll willingly sacrifice their alcohol. And if they're the underclass in a society ruled by Arabs, and their options are to be taken in slavery or convert to Islam and be free, then they'll willingly sacrifice their alcohol for that, too. (Muslims are forbidden to keep other Muslims as slaves, regardless of race or national origin. So the one sure way to avoid slavery in a Muslim society is to convert, though if your conversion is insincere and they find out, you're in even bigger trouble.)

Some individuals may drink surreptitiously, but the society as a whole will give it up officially. If history has taught us anything, it's that religion is too powerful a force to be stopped by the distasteful nature of some of its requirements and prohibitions.

The thing is that in northern climates where the winters are very long and cold you need drinks that you can store for long periods of time that braze you and give you some extra energy to survive the climate (or at least you did back in those times). Seafaring people like the Norse even more so (you need a safe, long-lasting alternative to drinking water on your longboats, how else are you going to get all the way to Greenland?).

Simply put if Norse people went Muslim back then and tried to take the alcohol ban seriously they would start dying in large numbers, and they'd have to give up the boating. Neither are things the Norse would like to do very much.

So either an alternative interpretation of Islam unique to the north, where the drinking ban doesn't extend to mead or beer or cider, or no Islam for the Vikings.
 
The large number of virgins they get in the afterlife would interest them, though.

Well they are Danes, so I think they'd prefer a large number of kinky and filthy experienced sexual partners in the afterlife, rather than virgins.
 
The thing is that in northern climates where the winters are very long and cold you need drinks that you can store for long periods of time that braze you and give you some extra energy to survive the climate (or at least you did back in those times). Seafaring people like the Norse even more so (you need a safe, long-lasting alternative to drinking water on your longboats, how else are you going to get all the way to Greenland?).

Simply put if Norse people went Muslim back then and tried to take the alcohol ban seriously they would start dying in large numbers, and they'd have to give up the boating. Neither are things the Norse would like to do very much.

So either an alternative interpretation of Islam unique to the north, where the drinking ban doesn't extend to mead or beer or cider, or no Islam for the Vikings.

Well, the Turks and Persians, with the exception of clergy, historically drank alcohol (see several Persian classic poems of the medieval era), so not taking it seriously on a societal level is entirely possible, compounded by the fact it would be on the edge of the Islamic world.
 
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