"The Danish Vikings were most active in Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy where they raided, conquered and settled (their earliest settlements included sites in the Danelaw, Ireland and Normandy)...."
Paris was besieged and the Loire Valley devastated during the 10th century. One group of Danes were granted permission to settle in northwestern France under the condition that they defend the place from future attacks. As a result, the region became known as "Normandy" and it was the descendants of these settlers who conquered England in 1066.
In addition, the Danes and Norwegians moved west into the Atlantic Ocean, settling on Iceland, Greenland, and the Shetland Isles. Brief Vikings expeditions to North America around 1000 did not result in any settlements and they were soon driven off by natives....
The Danes were united and officially Christianized in 965 AD by Harald Bluetooth... In retaliation for the St. Brice's Day massacre of Danes in England, the son of Harald, Sweyn Forkbeard mounted a series of wars of conquest against England. By 1014, England had completely submitted to the Danes.
Sweyn Forkbeard... in Denmark, today's "History of" country.
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Don't fuck with the Danes, they will mess you up!
Niels Bohr was a great Dane.
Don't forget who they worshiped before they became Christians...
I hear the Nazis invaded Denmark.
Anybody notice?
If you go to a chain sit-down like Chile's or TGIF and order pork ribs of some sort, you are more than likely eating ribs from a Danish pig.
The Danes are the hog farmers of Europe. Europeans, in their profound benightedness, think that pork ribs are trash meat. Americans, on the other hand, think they're delicious, and will happily pay good money for them wholesale or retail. The Danish pig farmers thus end up selling their ribs to the Americans because they can get a much better price.
Niels Bohr, that's my daughter's cat's name. The other is named Gauss. BTW, I always had thought that my great-grandfather, Christian Christian Jensen was a great Dane, as well.
edutcher said...
I hear the Nazis invaded Denmark.
Anybody notice?
Good ol' "Blut und Eisen" stole a third of their land and population (Schleswig-Holstein war)--and never gave it back.
Ha! Just ten minutes ago, I finished reading Connie Clark's "Who in the World was The Unready King? The Story of Ethelred" to the kids -- they loved it and kept asking for one more chapter until we plowed through the whole thing. Great, dramatic stuff, complete with evil mom!
One of my friends, who's not a Dane, got her PhD in Denmark. Although virtually everyone she had to deal with could speak English, she decided she wanted to learn some Danish. So she went to a bookstore and asked for a Danish grammar book. "Oh no," said the sales clerk, "we Danes don't have ANY grammar books." Well, she asked, how do you learn it in school. "We just do." She tried a couple of other places and got a similar response. She said the clerks were all adamant and a bit nasty about it.
It would seem that Danes like the idea that they can count on anyone who can speak Danish being a Dane.
Danish Grammar Books
Chicklit, I've noticed that one can buy Danish grammar books on-line, but I thought my friend's experience was odd --- and kind of funny. While actually IN Denmark, she couldn't get a handful of bookstores to admit they carried any.
Like the Czech Republic yesterday, Denmark gets ample snow.
Peter
Danes are a very stubborn people. That may come from having Bluetooth before anyone else which makes them think they are always right... and they are.
On behalf of Saxons everywhere I condemn the French speaking conquerors from Normandy. We want England back...or at least the right to run the casinos.
I think perhaps because we had to learn grammar in German classes.
(Though I never did. I do not like grammar and I do not like German.)
If you want to speak Dane just fill your mouth with marbles and say something in Norwegian.
My favorite Vikings
BTW, I think "redeless" is perfectly good English, at least Old English. It is a play on the king's name, Ethelred, the "red" part referring to the kingly duty of governing or "rede." In modern Scandinavian languages "rådløs" just means "solutionless," but in the king's nickname it also carries the connotation of "bad ruler" or "could not do anything right."
Ethelred - "noble ruler."
Finally we get to my ancestors. The kind and gentle people of the North.
& then someone drew a Mohamed cartoon and POOF....they all became Viqueens.
After their tantalizing one-off gig in 2007, Robert Plant has hinted that he's open to a Led Zeppelin reunion next year. Speaking to Australia's version of 60 Minutes, the singer deflected the notion that he's the reason for Zeppelin's dormancy. "[Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones] are Capricorns. They don't say a word. They're quite contained in their own worlds and they leave it to me," said Plant. "I'm not the bad guy . . . You need to see the Capricorns – I've got nothing to do in 2014."
Immigrant Song, Dread Zeppelin
A-ah-ahh-ah, ah-ah-ahh-ah
We come from the land of the ice and snow
from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow
The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde and sing and cry, Valhalla, I am coming
On we sweep with, with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
Ah-ah-ahh-ah, ah-ah-ahh-ah
We come from the land of the ice and snow
from the midnight sun where the hot springs FLOW
How soft your fields, so green
can whisper tales of gore, of how we calmed the tides of war
We are your overlords
On we sweep with, with threshing oar
Our only goal will be the western shore
S-so now you better stop and rebuild all your ruins
for peace and trust can winthe day despite of all you're losin'
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ahh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh
One dead Bonzo is the reason for Led Zeppelin's demise. His son, Jason, might fit the bill.
Everything that ever happened in Denmark was but a prelude to its giving us Viggo Mortensen, the man who has the singular gift of making your friend Erika ovulate spontaneously when she merely glances at a photo of him.
Mmmmmmm....
To combine Vikings and Led Zeppelin, and probably to kill some brain cells.
http://www.dennyweb.com/viking_kittens.htm
Denmark also gave us LEGO, the "Danish" pastry, and "1001 Danish Delights."
@Erika,
Everything that ever happened in Denmark was but a prelude to its giving us Viggo Mortensen.
Is Orlando Bloom just not butch enough for you? He seems to the standard heartthrob from LOTR.
The second time I saw ROTK in a theater in Bethesda, during the scene where the recuperating Frodo greets each of the members of the Fellowship as they walk in to see him, a young woman in the back of the theater let out a loud "YEEEEE-OOOOWWW" when Orlando Bloom/Legolas walked in.
Hamlet. Can't forget Hamlet.
There's something rotten in the kingdom of Denmark.
Around here we call Orlando Bloom's Legolas "Eurotrash Barbie".
Skip Gatsby, take a danish instead.
You noticed how the heart shaped donuts have a little hole with filler protruding on the side... I thought they were going for a cell phone charger look... or maybe its nothing.. the hole had to go somewhere.
"Yo, Hamlet, yo mama's a ho," he said disdanefully.
Speaking of the Old English “rede” (read), one oughtn't forget that Norwegian Viking who traveled to Constantinople, where he became chief of the Varangian Guard (personal bodyguard corps, composed largely of Vikings, of the medieval Roman Emperors); returning to Norway, he became king of that country, and then as King Harald (known as) “Hardrede” invaded England from the north almost simultaneous with William (thereafter known as “the Conqueror”)'s invasion from the south. Then-king of England Harold, by means of a bit of a tactical trick — a forced march, arriving before he was expected — was able to defeat (and kill) the other, Norwegian Harald, but was so exhausted by that battle, the subsequent forced march back down to southern England, as well as the failure to assemble his whole army before facing William, that the English Harold lost his subsequent battle with the Normans. The rest is history as they say, but I think it's safe to say that without the hard-to-read Hardrede's intervention, chances are that William (formerly known as “the Bastard”) would not have become the first Norman king of England.
Which brings us to that other great Dane (or at least Danish-descended American), science fiction and fantasy writer Poul Anderson, whose stories influenced me greatly. For just a tiny look at a long writing career, Poul wrote a trilogy of historical novels on the life of Harald Hardrede, for instance, that I thought was very interesting and enjoyable, while his fantasy (based on a Danish legend) known as “Three Hearts and Three Lions” is quite wonderful.
YH, bless your fellow moviegoer's exuberant little heart.
Orlando Bloom is a cute, slightly effeminate boy, and will be until he's middle-aged and beyond, sort of like Paul McCartney. Viggo Mortensen is unquestionably a man.
Shana-heh : )
When Southern Californian's think of Denmark, they think of Solvang.
Like Austria, they once were the metropolitan heart of a European empire, but lost the provinces through centuries of misadventure. Now, Denmark, whose kings once ruled Norway, England, Sweden, Estonia, the southern Baltic coast, Iceland, and sent reavers from Ireland and Newfoundland to Novgorod, Constantinople and Palermo is a small toothless, provincial remnant of imperial arrogance.
Scandinavian politics never made much sense to me, for a variety of reasons. The Reformation went so quickly and undramatically in Scandinavia, as if they had just been sitting around waiting for an excuse to clear out the hierarchy and the monastic orders. Why did the British crown unions work out, while the Union of Kalmar is a relic of dusty books and trivia contests?
I spent some time in Copenhagen in 2007 and have not been able to find, here in the states, anything like the delicious cheeses I found there.
Also, someone on our side of the world needs to make cheese slicers like they do.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Ostesk%C3%A6rer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
The Lord's Prayer in Anglo-Saxon ended with "and protect us from the wrath of the North Men." My ancestors were all Norwegian. I prefer to blame the Danes for the raping and pillaging.
Measure for measure, the Vikings did to the Anglo-Saxons of “England” what the latter (those earlier North Sea-faring “Vikings” four centuries before during late-Roman times) had done to the native Britons of post-Roman Britannia. Seeing that, the offspring of those native Britons, still unconquered in their mountains in Wales, may well have smiled.
Another important thing that the Danish Vikings did was to (semi) permanently divide the English-speaking Scots from the English-speaking English. The Danes accomplished this by conquering/destroying the northerly English kingdom of Northumbria, capital at the old legionary fortress of York, but which had heretofore extended all the way into what's now southeastern Scotland, including Edinburgh. The Danes failed to incorporate that northernmost bit of Northumbria into their Danelaw, which thus remained independent (though it didn't dare any longer call itself a kingdom), until it was later absorbed by the Irish colonists in charge of Scotland's Gaelic-speaking kingdom of Alba. Once inside the country, the English language (Scots dialect) slowly came to predominate in Scotland.
The thing I found funny as a tourist in the Scandinavian countries was that each tried to take credit for trolls and vikings (who were the first, best, meanest, etc).
Atavistic Viking! (song)
http://www.stuartdavis.com/albums/nomen-est-numen/lyrics/atavistic-viking
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