Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
I would say the Rif is ideal for the seeds of an Norse-Berber state at least as a place where the Norse and their more assimilated descendants raid from?
Viking Morroco?
- Thread starter Shackel
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I would say the Rif is ideal for the seeds of an Norse-Berber state at least as a place where the Norse and their more assimilated descendants raid from?
Shackel
Banned
The raiding was the original idea for Vikings going there. Major port for other traveling Vikings, that draws more Vikings into the Rif? Also, what will the Viking navy do for Morocco?
Empire of islands
IMO the Vikings taking and holding a piece of North Africa is not so far-fetched. And while they couldn't replicate their northern lifestyle there, we see in Normandy that they are able to adapt to local conditions. What if a Viking/Berber hybrid culture takes root and proceeds to take some of the smaller islands of the inner med through a series of amphibious raids? Holding the Balearic Islands and pieces of Corsica/Sicily/Sardinia could provide a base to raid, even dominate, the Western Med.
Not exactly a nation here, but a decent power-base. Not too plausible, but saying it did happen, how do you think it might affect the development of Europe? I'm imagining pirate raids that slow down any kind of recovery from the Dark Ages.
IMO the Vikings taking and holding a piece of North Africa is not so far-fetched. And while they couldn't replicate their northern lifestyle there, we see in Normandy that they are able to adapt to local conditions. What if a Viking/Berber hybrid culture takes root and proceeds to take some of the smaller islands of the inner med through a series of amphibious raids? Holding the Balearic Islands and pieces of Corsica/Sicily/Sardinia could provide a base to raid, even dominate, the Western Med.
Not exactly a nation here, but a decent power-base. Not too plausible, but saying it did happen, how do you think it might affect the development of Europe? I'm imagining pirate raids that slow down any kind of recovery from the Dark Ages.
Shackel
Banned
Indeed. The most important and rich towns are now in heavy striking distance of the Vikings, and if North Africa becomes Norse Africa, I think Europe may not get out of the Dark Age, and may get overrun by Mongols in the future.
A poor, Mongol Europe would probably freeze growth.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Irreverent thought: would they wear fezzes with horns ?
I would adore the thought of Berber-Norse art depicting the pagan Norse Gods in a desert setting.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
Of course things would be possible once a foothold is established though I think it's likely a Norse held Egypt would happen during the Crusades if a Nordic power gets involved.
Seeing guys in horned helmets riding on camels would be nice with this playing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO9hUBcLqDo
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
I wouldn't say Viking. Viking-influenced is more like it though I imagined in this Norse-held Rif land that at least a local variant of the Norse language survives in some places while the rest just speak a heavily Norse-based Berber language.
Viking survival and religions will also depend on when it happens. Northern Morocco in the early 800s was ruled by the Idrisids and Idris II essentially built the state and did a lot to cement Islam as the dominant religion. Southern Morocco on the other hand was a lot more religiously mixed. Norse religions could probably find purchase in the local systems more readily there. It was only with the Almoravids that Orthodox Sunni Islam became the overwhelming religion in the south and the mountains.
I still don't think you'd see significant Norse elements, and there's a further problem. You'd have the infantry-dominated Norse meet the light-cavalry dominated Berbers and that is probably not going to end well for the Norse. It's not impossible of course, but lots of heat and highly mobile and missile cavalry... So say the Berbers (these are probably Barghawata and a few Miknasa Berbers) win, and they capture a big group of norse and make them slave soldiers whoever is in charge uses them as a higher quality infantry force than he's got and becomes dominant. So now the south is unified against the Idrisids who were getting much weaker in the late 800s and probably only survive because of the Caliphate of Cordoba backing them. So these slave-soldier Norse might help the Barghawata conquer most of Morocco. Maybe the new ruler wants to keep his supply of similar soldiers steady, and so isolates the Norse in their own communities that is a "viking slave quarter" that preserves some of their culture. In such a situation, conversion to Islam would probably be the only way to not be a slave soldier.
So there's some positives to balance the negatives.
It might be interesting to see if there's more of a mariner tradition in Morocco. That would have a lot of butterflys as until 1400 or so the lands south of the Canaries were essentially considered the edge of the world by both the Iberians AND the Arabs/Berbers because ships didn't come back. Were the viking ships strong enough to survive the African storms? And even if they were, does Morocco have enough wood to build those ships? As I was told when I suggested it a year ago for RoS, even in Spain it's more economical to build galleys than longboats. I imagine it's more the case in Morocco, though I don't know.
Does it show that I've been studying the Maghreb for over a year for my own TL?
I still don't think you'd see significant Norse elements, and there's a further problem. You'd have the infantry-dominated Norse meet the light-cavalry dominated Berbers and that is probably not going to end well for the Norse. It's not impossible of course, but lots of heat and highly mobile and missile cavalry... So say the Berbers (these are probably Barghawata and a few Miknasa Berbers) win, and they capture a big group of norse and make them slave soldiers whoever is in charge uses them as a higher quality infantry force than he's got and becomes dominant. So now the south is unified against the Idrisids who were getting much weaker in the late 800s and probably only survive because of the Caliphate of Cordoba backing them. So these slave-soldier Norse might help the Barghawata conquer most of Morocco. Maybe the new ruler wants to keep his supply of similar soldiers steady, and so isolates the Norse in their own communities that is a "viking slave quarter" that preserves some of their culture. In such a situation, conversion to Islam would probably be the only way to not be a slave soldier.
So there's some positives to balance the negatives.
For a large part of this period the Balearic Islands and Corsica (to a lesser extent Sardinia) were populated by various types of pirates. The region from Narbonne to Marseille and maybe up to Nice suffered significant depopulation in the mid-late 800s and people fled inland because of the Muslim piracy. I think you'd just be replacing one type of pirate with another.
It might be interesting to see if there's more of a mariner tradition in Morocco. That would have a lot of butterflys as until 1400 or so the lands south of the Canaries were essentially considered the edge of the world by both the Iberians AND the Arabs/Berbers because ships didn't come back. Were the viking ships strong enough to survive the African storms? And even if they were, does Morocco have enough wood to build those ships? As I was told when I suggested it a year ago for RoS, even in Spain it's more economical to build galleys than longboats. I imagine it's more the case in Morocco, though I don't know.
Does it show that I've been studying the Maghreb for over a year for my own TL?
Shackel
Banned
MNP, I am talking about the Kingdom of Nekor, a kingdom that, in 859, became the subject to a 62 ship-strong Viking force. They just left after 8 days. If they had stayed there for any reason(Including interest in Islam). I doubt the Vikings would have suddenly jumped up and try to take over North Africa, but I'm wondering if it would have affected Morocco (Muslim Norse?)
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Shackel
Banned
Actually, the kingdom had become a full subject to the Vikings after they destroyed their army. After 8 days, they moved on.
The topic is about if they KEPT Nekor.
I'm familiar with N'kor and its kingdom--it actually makes an appearance in RoS. Let's see, 62 ships at 30 a ship max (numbers from the Great Heathen Army where I am fairly sure it was 100 ships and 3000 men) is about 1900 but surely less due to various losses.
Can you link me to the sources that describe it as an occupation? That they stayed for 8 days is a strong argument that it was a raid.
Anyhow I think what I said still stands generally. They're not going to keep it without assimilating for very long and if they use it as a pirate haven nothing much changes except the religion of the pirates.
That's because Normandy is pretty fornicating similar to Denmark, only better. The Rif, not so much.
Shackel
Banned
Alright, so if, at some point in these 8 days of looting, some Vikings stayed behind,
Some reasons could be:
- They were interested in the culture(Norse-Berber?)
- Interested in Islam(Viking Caliphate?)
- One or two gets the idea of using N'kor to raid the not-so-raided Inner Mediterranean. Vikings agree. (Rena. in the 16th century?)
Or, hell, for a really interesting one, what if their ships got taken out by a storm?
Some reasons could be:
- They were interested in the culture(Norse-Berber?)
- Interested in Islam(Viking Caliphate?)
- One or two gets the idea of using N'kor to raid the not-so-raided Inner Mediterranean. Vikings agree. (Rena. in the 16th century?)
Or, hell, for a really interesting one, what if their ships got taken out by a storm?