I almost spit out my water.
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Why did Vikings have 'Allah' on clothes?
- Thread starter Sunster
- Start date
I almost spit out my water.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
I didnt know vikings were religious
RustyNails
Member
Ah thanks. Might use my Vudu credit to rewatch it.
Youve never heard of Thor?
Yes. Michael Crichton wrote Eaters of the Dead, which was a fictionalized account of a real-life Muslim observer's time among the Vikings. He wrote the book based off the observers published accounts, the ones that survived that is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead
Practically every society ever in history was religious. Vikings started off as pagans.
Secularism is a relatively recent thing.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
Seems a bit more complex than you are making it seem. Also apparently this was a shittily done copy job.
PeskyToaster
Member
Norse mythology??? Thor???? Odin???????
Anyway I don't think this implies a significant conversion of vikings to islam. The easiest connection is that they raided Muslim Spain, took their nice clothes, and got buried in them because they were trophies. I wouldn't be surprised if some converted through long-term contact but the article even mentions Moorish Spain so....
Not a huge jump that it's just stolen shit.
This one?
That's missing the first letter. That's also standard Arabic script, but the article says it's in Kufic script, which is a little different.
Here is Allah written in Kufic on the flag of Iran:
Compared to the viking one, the H (on the left) is different. Otherwise it's very similar.
Here's another Allah in Kufic:
This one's H (on the left, looks like a mirrored 6) is much closer to the viking one, but the A is laid flat across the top for style. A is usually a tall vertical line, sometimes with a tail on the bottom and usually doesn't attack to the next letter (to the left). But apparently it can since it does on the Iranian flag and the viking design. That makes it indistinguishable from an L, tho. Although in the Iranian flag the A might be one of the horizontal lines. The A in Akhbar clearly is. I'm not sure.
I don't think you understand much about "academia" or academic history. It might be worth noting that the shit show with the black Roman was specifically coming from non-historians complaining about what a historian said. It's not the academy that's the problem. It's the wider public and anti-intellectualism like this post.
It's not just vikings, most people have historically borrowed and traded with other myths and religious systems. This thread is filled with awkward religious anachronism where we project back the more stable understanding of religion extant in the West, onto people who simply didn't believe that way.
Lovely Salsa
Banned
Historians generally avoid the word because of the massive loaded connotation it has among laypeople. It simply doesn't make much sense to historians who are totally aware that our narratives about the past are far less stable than laypeople believe. When you don't believe in the end all authority of the received narrative, then what would so call "revisionist history" be revising?
Sunster
Member
the question still stands, could there have been Muslim Vikings? This research points to the possibility.
I'd say that category, "Muslim Vikings", is anachronistic. That being said I have no doubt some, maybe even many, vikings took a bunch of ideas from Islam and incorporated them into their religious life.
Yeah, the only time I ever really heard it used a lot was in an introductory course about historiography in my freshman year; otherwise it was just taken for granted "Yeah, stuff changes all the time as we get more evidence. Here's some cool new coins that showed xyz instead of abc!"
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Lovely Salsa
List of trash:
FTL
Chivalry
Shovel Knight
Divinity Original Sin
Broken Age
Kentucky Route Zero
I also dislike graphic novels, bus stops, maps, reading for kids, classical music, board games, opera, art, history, and geiger counters.
The Albatross
Member
Maybe they were like alt-right Vikings, flying the flag of their enemies. I mean, imagine how confused anthropologists will be in 1500 years when they find evidence of Americans flying around flags from a country America defeated 70 years prior.
"Could the Nazis have established trade routes to Charlottesville 70-years after Hitler killed himself? Did ancient aliens bring confederate insignia from the past to the 2000s??"
Or, like today, some people who don't know a lick of Chinese or have any connection to modern day or ancient China, have some ancient Chinese tattoos that just kinda look cool and they think means "BROTHERHOOD" or something, when it probably means "Rain storm" and in 1500 years, if the preserved remains of Chad from Chapel Hill are discovered in some tobacco-water bog, it could really throw sociologists for a loop. "Was ancient Chinese more common in rural America in 2015 than we thought?!?" "Did thousands of American college students speak Greek and worship Greek symbols?!!? Why are their structures covered in Greek lettering!? WHY!?"
"Could the Nazis have established trade routes to Charlottesville 70-years after Hitler killed himself? Did ancient aliens bring confederate insignia from the past to the 2000s??"
Or, like today, some people who don't know a lick of Chinese or have any connection to modern day or ancient China, have some ancient Chinese tattoos that just kinda look cool and they think means "BROTHERHOOD" or something, when it probably means "Rain storm" and in 1500 years, if the preserved remains of Chad from Chapel Hill are discovered in some tobacco-water bog, it could really throw sociologists for a loop. "Was ancient Chinese more common in rural America in 2015 than we thought?!?" "Did thousands of American college students speak Greek and worship Greek symbols?!!? Why are their structures covered in Greek lettering!? WHY!?"
Lord Error
Insane For Sony
Why would it be mirrored? To avoid copyright (lol)? It must have crossed their mind that this could be some design accident with someone drawing a cool glyph out of memory.
That's what I'm getting at. Working out some overarching historical conclusions out of something small like that, seems kind of unwise.
FlutterPuffs
Member
I thought the same as well before reading the article.
Perhaps you should do the same too.
EDIT: Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if some vikings converted to Islam.
Not surprised if they keep being vikings, just doing it under a different belief.
Baron von Loathsome
Member
Religion dates back further than written history.
And one of the vikings wears fucking conquistador armour, which is just painfully stupid. But the movie remains awesome.
Do we know for sure they were supposed to be Neanderthals? I remember them being regular people, just part of a flesh-eating tribe/cult.
On topic...Hmm. I believe there might have been Muslim vikings, but not only does that embroidery not look at all like the arabic script, am I right in thinking that you have to use a mirror to make the comparison? Definitely seems like someone's reaching.
In the book they were Neanderthals.
JonnyDBrit
Member
This to me makes me suspect something picked up somewhere closer to home but done in an 'exotic' fashion to make it more appealing on the market. The Volga river was the pathway for a lot of trade, and once you're at the Black Sea it's not too much farther to the likes of the Abbasid Caliphate.
fabricated backlash
Member
Politics. That's what it always boils down to when someone wants to discredit us.
Valhallah. It all makes sense now.
Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit
LO THERE DO I SEE MY FATHER
In all seriousness scandinavians traded with everyone and fought in the middle east long before the crusades (Constantinople/Sicily/Burgundy/Moorish Spain) .
MistakenMobius
Member
The biggest thing will be when they will wonder if Nazi where actually Buddhist with all those swatika
ResourcefulStar
Neo Member
Why do people find the notion of medieval Scandinavians converting to Islam more mind blowing than that of ancient Greeks and Romans converting to Christianity? Religious conversions are a frequent occurrence whenever different cultures interact, particularly if there's no legal barrier preventing them.
There's nothing implausible about a Scandinavian merchant being impressed with Muslim sermons and adopting the religion during his travels. Alternatively, a merchant whose business took him to Asia Minor or the Middle East could have worshiped the Muslim God as yet another powerful god, one who rules over the Arab lands. People who come from polytheistic traditions sometimes don't really get monotheism and just borrow the bits they like, in ways they understand them.
There's nothing implausible about a Scandinavian merchant being impressed with Muslim sermons and adopting the religion during his travels. Alternatively, a merchant whose business took him to Asia Minor or the Middle East could have worshiped the Muslim God as yet another powerful god, one who rules over the Arab lands. People who come from polytheistic traditions sometimes don't really get monotheism and just borrow the bits they like, in ways they understand them.
That's missing the first letter. That's also standard Arabic script, but the article says it's in Kufic script, which is a little different.
Here is Allah written in Kufic on the flag of Iran:
Compared to the viking one, the H (on the left) is different. Otherwise it's very similar.
Here's another Allah in Kufic:
This one's H (on the left, looks like a mirrored 6) is much closer to the viking one, but the A is laid flat across the top for style. A is usually a tall vertical line, sometimes with a tail on the bottom and usually doesn't attack to the next letter (to the left). But apparently it can since it does on the Iranian flag and the viking design. That makes it indistinguishable from an L, tho. Although in the Iranian flag the A might be one of the horizontal lines. The A in Akhbar clearly is. I'm not sure.
This all has me like:
Massive Duck. C.M.
Banned
This is complete nonsense. It only spells Allah if you're desperate to see it.
And many people see Allah in the most innocent objects.
Like ice cream ...
A baby's ear ...
A cloud ...
For the rest of the world these similarities are just a coincidence.
Such pain
Given the Volga Bulgarian people converted to Islam in the 10th century, I don't know why this is so surprising. The Vikings had trade routes with the Volga Bulgarians and other peoples further south. The Scandinavian kingdoms had metric shitloads of exposure to Islam through raiding, trade and mercenary work.
What a post, but for real, that movie is friggin' good.
gutter_trash
Banned
especially 21st Century PCists who want to inject it retro-actively
I cannot parse this at all.
This is so mysterious. Looking at the examples heyf00L posted, now I feel like I could be persuaded either way. Half my brain is like "it's so obvious! Similarity!", while the other half is like "...but all the letters are wrong, and the writing is mirrored". Looking forward to more info, in any case.
Jaguar Victory
Member
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
This is complete nonsense. It only spells Allah if you're desperate to see it.
And many people see Allah in the most innocent objects.
Like ice cream ...
A baby's ear ...
A cloud ...
For the rest of the world these similarities are just a coincidence.
Random guy in the internet dismisses conclusion by a trained scientist and researcher.
Fucking lol.
Yeah, whats concerning is he seems almost in pain about what this "inconvenient" truth poses to him.
There may be something to it.
But honestly when it not only has to be rotated a certain specific way, but then after rotating it also has to be viewed in a mirror to see the script. I don't personally see that as the strongest evidence.
This is what it seems like it could be to me. Someone saw the script thought of it as a pattern and tried to copy the cool looking pattern.
But hopefully this inspires researches to look for more, better, or stronger evidence. If it's true I imagine there could be more evidence to find.
But honestly when it not only has to be rotated a certain specific way, but then after rotating it also has to be viewed in a mirror to see the script. I don't personally see that as the strongest evidence.
This is what it seems like it could be to me. Someone saw the script thought of it as a pattern and tried to copy the cool looking pattern.
But hopefully this inspires researches to look for more, better, or stronger evidence. If it's true I imagine there could be more evidence to find.
The Vikings travelled and traded/pillaged a lot, someone or some probably picked up on the pattern and copied it (hence it being backwards) or just brought funeral garbs with them to Scandinavia. Coins and items from the middle east and other parts of Europe has been found too here so it isnt something out of the ordinary.
JonnyDBrit
Member
The big thing would be finding a greater range of examples in both origin and time, and hopefully establish a proper typology. Celtic coinage is loaded with coins that have seemingly random patterns but that are actually the result of imitation of greek tetradachms over decades and centuries, with an increasing loss of the original design.
PjotrStroganov
Member
Or just traded with them.
I mean they went to all these places and they were raiding so they probably just took their shit. Especially from Muslim Spain, I'd imagine.
Yes lmao. Forgot about this movie. Great tie in =D
13th Warrior.
Yep, it's as simple as that.