Why Did VIKINGS Raid Other Lands? Operational Sex Ratio in Scandinavia?
Channel: Celtic History Decoded
Date: 2023-02-12

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Why Did VIKINGS Raid Other Countries?

The Vikings raided and besieged lands from ancient Scotland to Georgia, France to Russia, but what factors caused Scandinavians to Viking? 

Various theories have been proposed to explain this, including environmental change, overpopulation and an advance in sailing technology. Others have argued that the Vikings raided to prevent the advance of Christianity against their Pagan heritage. In line with this school of thought, some argue that the Vikings raided as an act of revenge against Charlemagne, King of the Franks, who had been campaigning to force Saxons to convert to Christianity, killing many who refused to be baptized. 

Perhaps the most obvious factor was that wealth alone was clearly a motivation, in the words of scholar Janet T. Nelson, “what lured Vikings was movable wealth.” The wealth from early raids themselves, with the raid of Lindisfarne just off the coast of modern England in 793 AD, which I did visit by the way, encouraged further raids. Other scholars have argued that agricultural issues in parts of Scandinavia forced people to look for new, fertile lands. Many Vikings settled in foreign lands, the Danelaw in ancient England being just one example. 

Yet a 2017 journal article makes a very interesting argument that’s worth highlighting. The paper is titled: Male-biased operational sex ratios and the Viking phenomenon: an evolutionary anthropological perspective on Late Iron Age Scandinavian raiding.

In this paper, the authors, led by Ben Raffield, argue that the early Vikings of the 8th century were driven to raid due an imbalance in the operational sex ratio in parts of Scandinavia, which is the ratio of males to females in a society who are ready to mate at a given time. The authors propose that a combination of two practices – polygyny and concubinage – and the increase in social inequality that occurred in Scandinavia during the Late Iron Age resulted in a male-biased operational sex ratio. 

This landscape created a large pool of unmarried men motivated to engage in risky behaviours that had the potential to increase their wealth and status, and therefore their probability of entering the marriage market, according to the authors. High-status men further drove raids according to the authors, as they looking to instigate expeditions to acquire plunder and develop their reputations as war leaders. Raiding represented a mutually beneficial means of achieving social advancement and success for both high-status and low-status males.

Sources:

Male-biased operational sex ratios and the Viking phenomenon: an evolutionary anthropological perspective on Late Iron Age Scandinavian raiding - Ben Raffield, Neil Price, Mark Collard, Published by Elsevier Inc. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 38, Issue 3, May 2017, Pages 315-324 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513816303075?via%3Dihub#bb0020 

LiveScience - The Real Reason for Viking Raids: Shortage of Eligible Women? https://www.livescience.com/56786-vikings-raided-to-find-love.html 

History Extra, Why did the Vikings' violent raids begin? https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/why-did-the-vikings-violent-raids-begin/ 

History Hit - Why Did the Vikings Invade Britain? https://www.historyhit.com/why-did-the-vikings-invade-britain/ 

Viking expansion https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Viking_expansion#cite_note-:0-5

#vikings #history #viking