What if? The Romans had meet the Vikings?

What if the Romans won at Teutoburg Forest? and advanced to Elbe river?

They most probably won't have hold the whole of Germania : too great, too undeveloped, no easily defendable borders, too uninteresting..
Depsite regular victories against Germans after Teutobourg, they never really shown a real interest in the region. They did, in all practical matters, conquered Western Germania historically : it's making Romans stay and make it an actual roman province that is more dubious.
Control of the land between Danube and Bohemian mountains and North Sea coast is doable that said but would have interesting consequences on Migrations Ages, and probably butterfly away Viking Age.
 
Last edited:
Sooner or later Rome would send a punitive expedition up north. How effective it would be is another matter.
 
As it has been pointed out the Romans wouldn't have controlled all of Germany if they'd won at the battle of Teutoberg but it's likely the northern border of their empire would've been at the Rhine and not the Elbe which would've actually led to a shorter more defensible border.
 

Redbeard

Banned
In a World where the Roman Empire, or something similar, exists, a Viking age is unlikely. I.e. no extensive raiding and no outright expansion and settlement like under Svend Forkbeard and Canute.

An Empire simply would have been much better at defending itself and striking back, than the fragmented realms at OTL Viking age.
 
An Empire simply would have been much better at defending itself and striking back, than the fragmented realms at OTL Viking age.

Hrm. The obvious counterargument, at least to me, is the success of Germanic peoples against OTL's Roman Empire.
 
Hrm. The obvious counterargument, at least to me, is the success of Germanic peoples against OTL's Roman Empire.

There's a difference between organized raids, and actual large migrations.
Even the empire of the IIIrd century depsite knowing an huge crisis, managed to repeal germanic raids not unlike vikings raids (as Saxon piracy), while the relativly stronger Vth century Empire didn't managed to hold off entiere human groups.
 
Hrm. The obvious counterargument, at least to me, is the success of Germanic peoples against OTL's Roman Empire.

The explosion of the Scandinavian people who went a-Viking was caused by a fast increase of population due to improved climatic conditions (which is similar to what happened when the Arabs boiled out of Arabia).
As far as more conventional volkswanderung are concerned the domino effect starts much farther away from the Rhine or the Danube, and these migrations are caused by pressure of other people invading the traditional lands of a tribe.
It happened a number of times on the northern borders of the *Persian empire.
It happened to Egypt at the time of the Sea people, and to China many more times. Sometimes the agricultural empire prevails other time it fails. It is very difficult to divine a general rule.
 
The explosion of the Scandinavian people who went a-Viking was caused by a fast increase of population due to improved climatic conditions (which is similar to what happened when the Arabs boiled out of Arabia).
Actually, it's regularly disproven : there's no trace of a demographical "explosion" in Scandinavia, more clues of a situation in the continuity of previous centuries.

Migrations from Scandinavia were relativly rare, and only happened later : the first raids were only hits-and-run operations.
In fact, even later settlement were essentially just for creating winter quarters close to targets, preventing the trouble to go back to Scandinavia and were fairly limited in numbers.
Even the settlements as in Iceland or Groenland were more based on inner troubles (escaping vandetta, by exemple) than a real need for lands.

The first motivation of Vikings raids are the disruption of North Sea trade from a part, after the collapse of Frisians that dominated it, that forced Scandinavian to obtain goods from "source"; and the new impetus for trade that was Arabo-Islamic world that only increased the long range trade tendency that existed since the VIth century.

Not that other reasons couldn't have played as well : Frankish pressure (on Frisians, but as well on Jutland while it doesn't explain why first raids occured in England rather than Francia), collapse of Carolingia and economical crisis of Arabo-Islamic world, and possibly a limited need of settlement (but again, noticable settlements only happened at the end of IX century and up to the middle of X)
 
Last edited:
The Romans didn't meet the Vikings though they possibly did sail to southern Scandinavia - they were simply too early which is clear to most around here! ;)

As for reasons for the Viking raids - it was a continuation of chieftains and possibly kings to send off raids to get booty; to be distributed among the retinue/Hird.
It just escalated but remained nobility enterprises that turned into conquest.
 
outside of the ship borne raids there wouldn't be a lot of difference between the Danes/Norse/Swedes (Vikings) and the Germanic tribes the Romans were familiar with and fought against
 
I think I can come up with an easy answer: They'd hire them. This is assuming this group of Vikings is powerful enough to "meet" the Romans in the first place.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
There are theories the Romans might have met the "Vikings", since some of the Germanic soldiers in the Roman legions could have been "Scandinavian". At least that's a conclusion some Scandinavian archeologists have drawn from findings in Scandinavian warrior graves from late antiquity.
 
There are theories the Romans might have met the "Vikings", since some of the Germanic soldiers in the Roman legions could have been "Scandinavian". At least that's a conclusion some Scandinavian archeologists have drawn from findings in Scandinavian warrior graves from late antiquity.

In light of having found the entire line of development of Roman swords in graves and bog-offerings as well as Roman fine drinking ware. What else to offer Scandinavians!!! :p
 
Top