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Misconceptions And Significance Of The Viking Age

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Vikings are well known around the world even though there exist many misconceptions about their characteristics and traditions. Especially the mythology connected to the Viking age fascinates people and has been used to create art, make money and inspire new ideas. To show what kind of impact Viking age had in recent history I will first describe the Viking age with its most important feature and follow with an overview over the Third Reich and their usage of the Viking age to strengthen their claims of their ideology. The Viking age refers to a historic period from around 800 until 1100 in Scandinavia and Northern Europe using historical events as marks in the timeline: the attack of the abbey of Lindisfarne in 753 and the battle of the Stanford Bridge 1066. The amount of sources is quite low and many pieces of information come from foreign chronicles or a later time period which leads to different interpretations. The Vikings as they are being called nowadays were mostly farmers and traders who used the long ship to trade all around Europe. They were able accumulate a great amount of wealth which consist of coins from the different areas around Europe. The sea and the long ship were not only used …show more content…

Common linguistic and geographic ties made it easy for the Nazi propaganda to establish the connection an offer and alternative for the Christian religion which were seen as threat to the National Socialism. Especially in the Nordic countries the ‘Germanic race’ gave the domestic National Socialists a common ground and a historical reason for their politics. The same reasons were used to gain volunteers for the Waffen SS and establish Hitler’s regime all over Europe. A historical link to the Viking warrior was made through posters showing a Viking warrior and a volunteer and the symbolic being used during the time (Fitzhugh and Ward, 2000 and Triggs, 2010 and Richards,

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