CR and society of Vikings

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The simple answer would be that it's anywhere from CR1 to CR3, depending on how much power the king has to hold the wealthy in check. Iceland looks to me to have been a CR1 society for much of its history; a powerful king, though, might head a CR3 society.

I'd think even for a strong king, he'd have a core area that was CR3, with the fringe lands, where his power doesn't quite reach, being CR2. "The Long Ships" suggests that this was the case in Smaaland and Goeinge, the area where Red Orm settles after he is forced to leave his home farm in Skaane.

Likewise a weaker king might be CR2 in the core lands and CR1 in the border lands.

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think you can justify calling it a caste society based on their being a class of aristocrats;

Yes, that is indeed absurd. I sometimes refer to the "druidic caste" when talking about the pagan Keltic society in my Ärth setting, but that is only barely justified by the presence of four castes: a warrior nobility, a druidic class or "caste", the commoners (some of whom where also warriors of some kind), and slaves.

I'd tend to think that a genuine caste society needs to have at least a full handfull of castes to qualify.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The simple answer would be that it's anywhere from CR1 to CR3, depending on how much power the king has to hold the wealthy in check. Iceland looks to me to have been a CR1 society for much of its history; a powerful king, though, might head a CR3 society.

Uhm, I'm sure I'm missing something. But anyway here goes.

Iceland was settled in the latter half of the 9th Century AD, the traditional year every schoolchild learns in 874. The current year is 2012, that gives us about 1100 years of history. Even if we assume that the Commonwealth era was CR1 that era died in the 13th Century when a foreign King took over and at that point the CR here would've been similar to the one in the rest of that kingdom. I'm still not getting much of our history there. 874 to 1262 (the year the Norwegian King took over) is 388 years, still well under half of Iceland's history.

Unless, of course, that was meant to be 'Much of its history in the Viking era'.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Unless, of course, that was meant to be 'Much of its history in the Viking era'.

To what degree did Icelanders go viking anyway? It's not really the most convenient base for piracy or raiding.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Unless, of course, that was meant to be 'Much of its history in the Viking era'.

Exactly. Or "much of the history of independent Iceland."

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

To some extent, I think a Viking age king, especially an early period one, was mostly just the biggest bully with the strongest army, who could plunder his subjects and gave them some protection from being plundered by others. Eventually such "kings" would force their subjects into binding taxation greements, where each subject had to supply the king with a certain quantity of items every year, for instance a couple of sealskin ropes of a certain length.

That's basically Mancur Olson's "stationary bandit" theory of the origin of the state."

Bill Stoddard

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That's basically Mancur Olson's "stationary bandit" theory of the origin of the state."

Origin of the state as a concept, as opposed to origin of the Scandinavian states?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Anthony

To what degree did Icelanders go viking anyway? It's not really the most convenient base for piracy or raiding.

Genetic studies suggest that the Icelanders frequently went to Ireland to steal women.

In my Ärth setting, I've posited, based on that, that most Norse men have a fetischistic preference for Irish women, to the point where slave sellers often try to get their slaves to use fake Irish accents, so they can be sold for a higher price, but a more likely explanation is that it was specifically because Ireland was closer to Iceland than most other places.

Iceland was also eventually deforested, to the point where it was viable to sail to North America and spend an entire season there, gathering timber and furs. Granted the furs were valuable too, but good timber must have been worth quite a lot on Iceland. So if they'd sail all the way to Vinland to gather timber, it makes sense that they'd also sail to not-so-far-away places to trade for timber.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Origin of the state as a concept, as opposed to origin of the Scandinavian states?

Origin of the state as an institution, and predictive model of the behavior of the state. The difference between a state and a robber is similar to the difference between a herdsman and a hunter.

Bill Stoddard

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Origin of the state as a concept, as opposed to origin of the Scandinavian states?

Scandinavian states were different. The technical military distinction between a royal huscarl and an average member of the population was smaller then between a knight and a peasant in Central Europe. The logistics in Scandinavia would have been terrible-has there been any examples of someone using Scandinavia as a base for a sustained partisan war? And no king could hold control over infrastructure over anyone's head because there was no infrastructure. There was no way to intimidate everyone to much with a few hundred huscarls and in general a King had no way of making himself to much of a bother.

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Any time before 1800, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that any civilized society and many tribal societies will have slaves...

In their colonies, maybe. But much of Europe had more or less got rid of slavery internally some time before that. The point was only formally established in England in a court case in 1772, but a key precedent quoted there came from 1569.