WI: Western Roman Empire exists in the time of the Vikings

WI: Western Roman Empire exists in the time of the Vikings

The Western Empire fell in 476 and the first major Viking raid occurred in 793, so they missed each other by a few hundred years. Let’s say, for the debate, that the Western Roman Empire is still intact at the time of the Viking raids and still has its territorial integrity. Hence this means they have not pulled out of Britain yet. I know it is highly unluckily the Western Empire survives this long, but let’s just say they magically did and are in some sort of stable position. Can the Romans combat this new threat?
 

Deleted member 67076

It would depend on how the military has changed (is it still the best in the continent?), how their infrastructure (are the roads repaired allowing a quicker response and how big are the cities?) , economy (can you pay the soldiers or not?), population, and tax base is and have they been in any big wars recently and how bad was said war(s)?
 
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It would of course depend on the exact situation but i would question whether the vikings or an equivilant could exist alongside a Rome tha still prospers. A great deal of things including the presence of the Caliphate in Nothe Africa, the lack of large navy's in Europe etc allowed the Vikings to be profitable. They would likely be different in a world where Rome still exists.
 
It depends how you make the WRE survive. With a late POD, something like the ERE helping expel the Goths and Vandals, or a constitutional settlement where the Goths are absorbed into the WRE's political structure in a stable way, then the resulting WRE of the Viking era is going to resemble the OTL Carolingian Empire (which borrowed heavily from Roman culture, institutions, and economic patterns and covered most of the territory that would have been covered by a surviving WRE), so I'd expect it to fare about the same: the Vikings would raid the coasts heavily and take a bit of territory, but the big blow to the WRE would come from the ripple effects of Vikings wrecking sea trade where they could reach, and from the need to build lots of local fortifications to defend against raids. The latter makes it quite a bit for the central government to enforce its will on uncooperative local governments, and the former reduces the resources available to the central government as well as the incentive for local governments to want to cooperate. It'd expect the WRE to survive in name at least, but for the central government to be greatly weakened. A Germania/Gaul/Italia split isn't out of the question.

With an earlier POD, based on preventing the demographic and economic collapse that made the WRE unable to hold its frontiers with its own resources, I don't see things going well at all for the Vikings. I don't think the WRE would be able to conquer and hold Scandinavia, but a series of punitive expeditions up and down the coast would probably be well within their capabilities.
 
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