It's such a wonderful day, the birds are singing, it's slightly raining, earth smells are in the air, let me just check the comment section- oh sweet f**k! . . . Anyway, next episode "Were there Viking Ninjas?". Just kidding. I wish you all a wonderful day. Thank you for your time, support and friendship. And to the ladies, I wish, and I hope, that all the good things that you receive on this International Women's Day may be extended to the rest of the year and more years to come, and always out of the good of people's hearts and not just because a day "demands it". Be well and take care of yourselves. Cheers!
If anyone wants to watch anything about the Vikings that's historical ..there are two suggestions that I have are 1) the History channel's Barbqrians series pt 1 & 2) The Great Courses lectures series called Vikings
Thank you dear friend. I am like always very thankful for the video....hope that there will come more of your knowledge, so it was a nice slap on the hand of movie images, even the series are very great and powerful to watch but it is like you always say "for entertainment". So back to gold old, reading books and doing the researches folks 😄. Wish your female community a great day 🌷
You should be persecuted for making such biased video, trying to force "multiculturalism" where there wasn't. Can't expect respect for norse traditions from a guy that thinks gay people were accepted in old norse civilizations, but thinking black people were normal around GERMANIC tribes is just beyond stupid. You disgust me.
I think the presence of these types of characters are less from a demand from the black community to see ourselves interjected in settings that we don’t necessarily fit in and more because of a corporate desire to come across as inclusive. What we really would love to see and benefit from is our own stories and historical figures portrayed in media the only movie that I’m aware of that takes place in historical west Africa is woman king which is a relatively new movie
But we do fit in because we were there. We were taught that the vikings culture was a white culture that's a lie. Old history books and now dna evidence say the culture was black people. Hollywood knows the truth and has decided to start putting in black characters, and white people are upset. Ignorant black people are also a problem by agreeing with racist white people whom main agenda is to keep white supremacist lies going.
I'd think that too if Netflix and other entertainment groups stopped hiring black people who genuinely think everything in Europe was actually sacred stolen mysticism from Africa
I find it's actually crazy that when I search up was there black vikings there's so many articles trying to push the idea black vikings as a very plausible scenario despite them lacking so much evidence.
@@xenos975 Those writings werent about people of African descent. It was referring to those who werent blonde and faired skin. Rather those with black hair and a darker complexion.
I have a problem with it because people believe these TV shows are historically accurate. Even the people making these shows are pushing it as historically accurate.
But it gets people asking questions and then, hopefully, they discover nuances and find out things they didn't even realise they didn't know. When we think we know everything - that will be a very grim day. So, maybe it's not such a terrible idea to keep taking artistic licence - even with things supposedly long since laid down as facts. It knocks us out of our complacency and demands attention - and attention may be actually needed.
@@batintheattic7293sure let’s make adolf hitler become a decent black man when nobody is watching and promote it as historically accurate. Literally how they put black people in for white roles. You know why they will never do that? Because it’s an evil role with an agenda. Why Achilles? Because he’s a badass warrior hero with a love interest
@@angeladay2196 Technically a job title sure but now also used to refer to all northman of the age, even by modern Scandinavians. Y'all need to get over this semantic hangup
@@johannbieler88 among the many many other pieces of miss information from games, movies and tv shows. Some people just don't care about the true history and argue for what they want to be true.
Arith, I'm Portuguese too and i'm completely lost with what you meant with "not being alright to address people by colour" in here as opposed to in English speaking countries. From i I understand, in English media the subject is far more controversial than in here, and using the wrong words or making the wrong implications, even if accidentally can get you in trouble. Which is definitely not the case here. Discussing these matters only becomes controversial in very specific environments, with "very online" people, especially younger or politicaly enganded people, who are more immersed in Anglophone media than in actually Portuguese media.
OF COURSE MAN, THIS GUY A DISINFORMATION AGENT, HE IS TALKING BULLSHIT TO CONFUSE PEOPLE...TO PUT THE IDEA ON THE COLECTIVE MIND THAT "RACE IS A SOCIAL O CULTURAL CONSTRUCT"...WICH IS OF COURSE NOT TRUE...RACE IS BIOLOGY, THERE ARE DIFFERENT RACES IN THE WORLD AND IN THOSE RACES THER ARE DIFFERENT SUBRACES, OR PHENOTYPES....PERIOD...by the way i am spanish and i know and have worked with many portuguese, i consider you brothers, and i KNOW there is no problem in our society to call BLACK people black, and WHITE people white....i even worked with black people and it was the same, if i was talking to them about someone else i said , yes, you friend that is also black, was here the other day asking for you...or whatever...we are not fking hipocrites
@@carlossantos2954 That is quite an unhinged rant right there. Race is indeed a social construct, but so is money, religion, age, height even or pretty much anything if you really think about it. Science is in on itself a social construct. Take for example the concept of visual colour itself. They don't really exist, they are our brains intrepreting energy at specific wave lenghts. We intrepret Blue and Red, but the wavelenght is on a spectrum, there is always going to be an "in between" that could be blue or red depending on who you ask, or most commonly people will say "purple" because you can really make up an infinite amount of colours. Does this mean colours are social constructs? Yes. Are they also scientific concepts? Yes. There are definitely genetic and biological differences and similarities between certain human populations and others, and we definitely can form groups based on such proximities, but this cathegorization is necessarily always going to be a subjective convention, and thus, a social construct.
@@darkprince56 We can measure height and age. But how old is "old" or how tall is "tall" is subjective. Likewise, we can also measure ancestry and the entire genome of any individual. But the definition of what constitues a race and who belongs and who doesnt, is completely subjective. Nearly everything in life can be argued to be social construct, while simultaneosly also being a concrete, real concept, which can be measurable and explained by analytic data. Anyone who is trying to frame something as solely "biological" or "constucted" most likely has an ideological agenda behind it.
As a black man, If it is a historical movie or a timepiece I feel that it should accurately represent the period of time and the society of people that lived in a society as close as possible. Past that It doesn’t matter as long as the actors are good. I don’t watch many movies as it is but if I were to watch something historical and it was actors that didn’t represent the time they are trying to recreate and the actors aren’t good then I most likely would just avoid the movie.
And an inclusion could be made with proven historical events, such as the Vikings with Mongolian ancestry, but since it is not in fashion they are going to look for people with a sub-Saharan appearance, and if it is a better woman and replacing a man who is known to be looking native to the area, but hey it's netflix, next step vikings with pirate ships and horns helmet
@@johannbieler88There is no evidence of "Vikings with Mongolian ancestry". "Mongolian Vikings", "Black Vikings", "a Black Viking chieftain" and "Vikings were diverse because they traveled a lot" - these are common claims which completely lack any evidence. If by "Black" chieftain they're referring to Geirmundr "heljarskinn" (literally "hellskin") Hjörsson mentioned in the Landnámabók (the first version of which is thought to have been written in the 12th century) and the Sturlunga saga (a collection written in the 12th and 13th centuries): he was supposedly the son of a Norwegian Viking originating from the kingdom of Hordaland named Hjör Hálfarson who traveled to an area referred to as Bjarmeland in Northwest Siberia (see picture below) to hunt for walruses. Bergsveinn Birgisson, a modern-day Icelandic author with a doctorate in Norse philology (University of Iceland/Oslo/Bergen) has written a book where he argues that Geirmundr's mother was a Siberian princess from a Uralic tribe around "Bjarmeland", explaining Geirmundr's and his brother's dark(er) features and the "heljarskinn" nickname. Even if true, and even though Geirmundr has been given the popular label "The Black Viking" (after the book title), half Siberian-Asiatic hardly corresponds with Sub-Saharan African. Not to mention that this is a single case. On the contrary, the misconception is rather that because Vikings (the small subset of Norsemen who traded & raided overseas) traveled so much, they were automatically distinctly ethnically/genetically diverse. If we actually look at the research, quite the opposite seems to be the case; they were one of the most homogenous groups in the world. The only significant admixture originates from neighboring peoples who were genetically very similar, i.e. British to the west and Baltic to the east (that's what we'd expect as all populations have at least some amount of admixture with their direct neighbors, sometimes significant and sometimes negligible; you can imagine it as a gradient that usually doesn't give a fuck about non-natural borders). This 2020 paper on Viking Age DNA from Margaryan et al ('Population genomics of the Viking world' www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8) is a perfect example of the type of study that tends to cause a temporary surge in headlines about how super diverse Vikings were. What this research shows is that there has been ongoing selection pressure for lighter pigmentation in Scandinavia, not only over the Bronze age, but even in the last 1k years. That doesn't mean Vikings were all swarthy; it just indicates that a larger portion of them had dark hair than modern Scandinavians do (so there was more phenotypical variation in terms of pigmentation), i.e. light hair as an adaptation has never been as "successful" as in modern Scandinavians. It also shows that Vikings mixed with locals as they expanded, which is something historians already assumed based on what the sagas and other historical sources indicate. What it does not show though is that Vikings or Norse people were genetically diverse, let alone a multiracial society. In short, it's just another example of forced diversity to please the woke crowd. I've never even seen any evidence of Africans voluntarily traveling to Scandinavia during the Viking Age, or Black (as in Sub-Saharan African) Vikings. While Vikings never sailed to "Black" Africa, it does seem probable they saw some Black Africans during the few expeditions off the coast of Northern Africa, and I speculate it is possible that in those instances, some of them took a small number of Black slaves with them. Though if true, this likely would have been rare. A number of Frankish, Norman, Arab, Scandinavian and Irish sources mention that in 859-862, the Viking war leader Hásteinn (possibly an illegitimate son of Ragnarr Sigurðrsson) jointly led an expedition of 62 warships with his foster-son (and potential half-brother) Bjǫrn "Járnsíða" Ragnarsson to extensively raid parts of Frankia and Spain, as well as move down into the Mediterranean. After fighting the Saracen navy of Al-Andalus at Gibraltar, they stopped off in North Africa before sailing home via Ireland. They are said to have bought some slaves there who the Old Norse sources refer to as "blámenn" - literally "blue men". It has recently become more popular to interpret these blámenn slaves as Sub-Saharan Africans, but though they would have looked swarthy to the Vikings, they are thought to have most likely been Soussians or Tuaregs (Amazigh = Berber peoples). More importantly, they ended up being sold in Ireland, not Scandinavia. That said, again, I do speculate the muslim African slave trade could easily have brought Sub-Saharans into North-Africa and potentially Iberia / the isles of the Mediterranean, but like I said, there are, as far as I know, no documents from the Viking Age which mention Black Africans. Only later Medieval texts contain some accounts of other meetings with "blue men", though they're still quite rare and vague. In some cases, blámenn are actually described as Black, but I have yet to find a text where a blámaðr either plays a significant role in the narrative or is described as a Viking. The most generous closing date for the Viking age is 1080 or so, and the aforementioned accounts of blue men are found in the Heimskringla saga's story of King Sigurðr Jórsalafari's crusade in 1110 and the Orkneyinga saga's tale of Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson's crusade in 1151. Except for a song of praise of Haraldr Sigurðarson's activities in service of the emperor between 1034 and 1045. All of these occurrences were written down much later though, in the 13th century, and we're dealing with highly Christian people in all of these cases - literal crusaders (in the first two examples) and someone in service of the Byzantines. In no case do they occur in the context of Viking raids. So basically, they are only featured in rather fantastical sagas (of which there is clear doubt about the historicity of many of the claims) and are never given any important roles. They tend to play the role of fierce foreign warriors and aren't really tied to any concrete notion of ethnicity; they are more like Tolkien's Orcs in that sense. Later Medieval Scandinavians were certainly familiar with the concept of Black Africans and a few might even have seen some, but for the majority of people, Black Africans was mostly still a literary, almost fantastical notion. Some non-Scandinavian people did live in Northern Europe during the Viking Age, but they were most likely slaves or servants (e.g. the Iranian woman from the Oseberg ship). The only real exception is the Sámi and the Finns (Uralic peoples) which are at several occasions described as cohabiting relatively peacefully with, though separate from, the Norsemen. They inhabited the northern and southern edges of Scandinavia respectively. So in conclusion, depicting Vikings as Sub-Saharan is most likely a politically motivated choice based on misconceptions as a result of historical/scientific illiteracy at best and deliberate blackwashing at worst.
@@ingwiafraujaz3126 amazing respond, well I never claim vikings were black or sub-saharian somewhere, to me that is stupidity, same claim vikings were very diverse, IN THE CASE of try put diversity in a show should be mongoloid, in the Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns, (wich also can do a anthropological read about how was not common the dark features, cause they are consider ugly and been "bully" by their looking), we atleast have some kind of record of darker features among that time in scandinavia, but still should not be common, but is posibility created a connection remember the zone of eastern europe alredy had some mongolian admixture close to the years of 780, They were nomads and traveled long before they united and became an empire. and ofc after, and vikings alredy raid those zones, so in a fantasy scenery could made be exist a viking with mongolian ancestry, This does not mean that it happened, my point is that Netflix is hypocritical about being able to do a good inclusion, but they would want a black woman replacing a white Scandinavian man, blm bullshit fashion, that was my point! Thank you for the respond very good made!
@@johannbieler88 Thank you, I see your point now and I can't agree more. If they absolutely HAVE to insert phenotypical /racial diversity in a show, even if it's fantasy and not based on archaeological finds or genetic research, then do something plausible or semi-realistic, like Uralic/Siberian or Hunnic or Mongolian features. You're right. Thanks for the elucidation!
@ingwiafraujaz3126 Wow, you wrote all of that for a lie. Wow. So why are white historians writing books saying the vikings culture was black. Orgins of the Anglo-Saxon race Chapter 7 called our Darker Forefathers will tell you the Danes, Celts, Picts, Saxons, were black people. Early Man in Britain by W Boyd Dawkins will tell you the Etruscans, Welsh, Scots, and Iberians were all black people. These books have now been validated by DNA evidence. The DNA evidence says the vikings were indigenous people. We know that black people are indigenous to Europe. Cheddar Man, Grimaldi man, and Whitehawk women. White people were peasants and sex slaves. The book Ancient and modern Britons by David MacRitchie pg 47 is good to read. An article on the Nature website called Population genomics of the viking world you can find online will tell you the vikings Scandinavian dna is vastly different from modern-day Scandinavian I wonder why 🤔. Here some facts that most white people choose to ignore. There was a Danish king called Gorm, the old. Gorm means blue, black, or dark skin. Still to this day in Gaelic, Irish the word duine gorm" means a black man.Gorm had a son named Harald Gormsson. Harald had the nickname Blaatand, which means Bluetooth, is a deliberate mistranslation. His nickname had nothing to do with a Bluetooth. Blaa is the modern Danish word for blue, but once meant dark skinned. Tan once meant great man, and has been confused with tand the modern Danish word for tooth. So Harald Gormsson nickname really is great dark skin man. Cnute the Great is Harald grandson. The surname Nutt derived from the name Cnute. The surname Nutt means brown skin.
It's insanity. Portraying zulu warriors with northern Europeans would rightly make us all cringe. In the earlier days of Hollywood people did it, like in the genghis khan movie, but it was more out of necessity
I watch a black guy from the USA who critiques the "inclusion" movement as a bad thing. He puts it down to black people can be whatever they want to be, so why take something white and make it black because then you are teaching black kids that they should strive to do white things instead of being their own person. He advocates for giving black culture and people a place that is their own and that all kids can admire. I don't like the idea of adding the wrong characters to anything because it takes away from that character and the set it is in. Just for instance - the LOTR series has a black female dwarf queen ... now what bothered me wasn't that she was black or even a woman, it was that she was portrayed incorrectly - should have been a very manly looking woman, in male dwarf clothes with a beard and called a king - because that is the character JRR Tolkien described. Why do I raise this? Because it's more accurate to the story. Vikings is set in a specific era and context so a decent amount of accuracy should be used ... however, saying that, there are a lot of minor inaccuracies anyway and it's a forced plot within historical context ...
Blacks in LOTR is incorrect and wring, Tolkien did not write any black characters. Same wjth the little mermaid - that is a white character. blacks accepfing these roles shoukd be ashamed of themselves and embarassed, instead they have this false sense of entitlement to these white only roles. This is not doing them any favours in the world.
@@mysterymachine6858 Tolkien didn't write dwarves as a race. He never described their skin tone at all. You can use whatever creative license you want.
@@mysterymachine6858for 1 thing mermaids are non existent. The most High GOD created "so called" blacks aka Israelites to be above all people (Deuteronomy 7:6). We be the salt of this earth.
The use of white and black in America is generally a descriptor used to identify the culture a person belongs to, it's based on stereotypes. How someone perceives that culture will change how they interact with someone - prejudice. It is also used as a divider amongst the common people to keep us fighting each other because we are "different" culturally but what is American culture? Who are the people perpetuating this?
So what do you do when white historians are writing books saying the vikings culture, kings and queens of Europe were black people? Hollywood knows the truth and decided to incorporate a few blacks in documentaries, and white get upset because they were taught lies like everyone else. White people can't believe they were the peasant, and serfs
It doesn't have to be a divider. If people had more interest in their own culture America wouldn't be as lost as it is. Unfortunately in politics they do use it as a tool to divide. I wouldn't want America to be all one mix of people that can be easily manipulated.
The term black and white are social construct status. The term black means nonexistent or dead under the color of law black codes (Civility Mortuus) and has no legal standing and is actually a derogatory term. Black is a color not a race ethnicity nor nationality. Rev 7:9,10 🙏🏾💜💐😀
J’admire la façon dont vous abordez les sujets les plus controversés, Surtout dans le contexte actuel et connaissant la société qui est si souvent cruelle et impitoyable envers ses égaux. Merci 🌷
What I find most intriguing is the willingness to "appropriate" a culture when it doesn't include "bipocs" and the outrage that follows when a "bipoc" culture is "appropriated." Why is there an accepted double standard? Why is it to question this double standard deemed "racist?"
It is known they want to destroy anything European,for no other reason other than destroying the culture and control the dominant continent of the previous centuries.
@man frombritain thats why it's in quotes. I dont use the term because I think it is condusive to actual racism; the people who claim to be against racism perpetuate racism/prejudice when they refer to Americans as "bipocs"
As always you really hit the nail on the head with this video. Thank you for supplying resources and paving the way into further discussions about BIPOC individuals within the current Viking trend. I'm a Viking age reenactor, and one of the most common questions I get asked is if there were really "black" Vikings, and now I have some great resources to answer that!
@mobilusinmobili8321 Ok, the book Origin of the Anglo-Saxon race by Thomas William Shore chapter 7 called Our Darker Forefathers will tell you the Danes, Celts, Picts, and others were black its online. Early Man in Britain by W Boyd Dawkins will tell you the Etruscans, Welsh, Scots, Iberians, and others were black people. Im not saying it. These are white historians. The dna evidence say they are black.
My issue is not the skin color per se but the reason. The changes are not made to tell a different story, or to change up the setting to make it stand out or feel fresh and new. There is rarely an artistic reason behind it. The role of fictional media as just fictional and not needing to be historically authentic is to me a dangerous idea, because the vast amount of people do not know history and only know what they’ve seen from ancient aliens and ‘historical film’. The same people not knowing about history except what’s in popular media are or will also be the ones deciding educational curriculums, and deciding broad long lasting cultural and political policies. If there’s one thing about people it’s that most people do not do the research, so it is a slippery slope. I compare it to Japanese media and how they love to change up the Sengoku warlords, constantly reinterpreting them in new, diverse, and silly ways. While still being respectful and accurate to the people it’s trying to portray.
But it is because it's real and wanting to make us all just people is why culture is lost in the first place. We are all different, it should be valued, not fought over.
I answered it with you. Of course there were no black Vikings. There were not black people in Scandinavia at those times. I think black people themselves call themselves black and us white. So I don't think it's a problem.
Nah culture. Ancient Africans described ppl by their culture. These people were warriors these ppl were animal hearders these ppl were etc. Africa already had a bigger biodiversity. Greeks studied in whats now called Memphis but the nile river cilvizations didnt use enough skin color to note. The cilvizations also moved out into the Levant for trade with forigners. They mixed to become the domiant group. Black white didnt exist 1000s of years ago regarding how africans saw it. But one of the Chinese dysansties did seperate high melianited Asians and Africans from their paler skin. Tang royals were racist. The southeast Asians were savvages to them then they copied Arabs zanji Then theres the steppes people who 1000s of years ago like africans didnt take physical features into much account but unlike africans they were also populated Europe
I adhere to a conspiracy theory which sees Europe as a much more ethnically diverse place than orginally thought, a result of the Roman empire existing for about a thousand years, until the Dark Ages led to purges based on the new kingdoms barbarian rulers' preference for non-Roman culturally based people linked specifically only to the former Roman provinces' agricultural production. So their could be people with different levels of blackness who were hitting up the raiding scene, in my perspective.
Good topic! And timely and appropriate. Some want to ignore and whitewash these things, some continue to be racist. In a time when "race" issues have gone bizarre, such as a black female viking jarl who who was actually a white male....it's just gotten weird.
It kind of makes me laugh when people counter with, “were there white Zulus?” Because, when cultures interact and trade and even have neutral relations with each other, people might be “adopted” into different cultures, or assimilate if they immigrated or were traded (ie slavery). So, while likely extremely rare, there could’ve been black Africans in a Viking clan or white Europeans in a Zulu tribe. I agree that we shouldn’t race swap historical figures or make a black Viking clan instead of showcasing and representing a black African tribe/culture but this is a much more nuanced issue than people realize.
Arith, this is exactly how I feel about assuming someone's race or ethnicity by skin color. I see skin color, but do not assume to know someone's cultural identity. This is one of my favorite videos from you. Thank you!!
"Black Vikings", "a Black Viking chieftain" and "Vikings were diverse because they traveled a lot" - these are common claims which completely lack any evidence. If by "Black" chieftain they're referring to Geirmundr "heljarskinn" (literally "hellskin") Hjörsson mentioned in the Landnámabók (the first version of which is thought to have been written in the 12th century) and the Sturlunga saga (a collection written in the 12th and 13th centuries): he was supposedly the son of a Norwegian Viking originating from the kingdom of Hordaland named Hjör Hálfarson who traveled to an area referred to as Bjarmeland in Northwest Siberia (see picture below) to hunt for walruses. Bergsveinn Birgisson, a modern-day Icelandic author with a doctorate in Norse philology (University of Iceland/Oslo/Bergen) has written a book where he argues that Geirmundr's mother was a Siberian princess from a Uralic tribe around "Bjarmeland", explaining Geirmundr's and his brother's dark(er) features and the "heljarskinn" nickname. Even if true, and even though Geirmundr has been given the popular label "The Black Viking" (after the book title), half Siberian-Asiatic hardly corresponds with Sub-Saharan African. Not to mention that this is a single case. On the contrary, the misconception is rather that because Vikings (the small subset of Norsemen who traded & raided overseas) traveled so much, they were automatically distinctly ethnically/genetically diverse. If we actually look at the research, quite the opposite seems to be the case; they were one of the most homogenous groups in the world. The only significant admixture originates from neighboring peoples who were genetically very similar, i.e. British to the west and Baltic to the east (that's what we'd expect as all populations have at least some amount of admixture with their direct neighbors, sometimes significant and sometimes negligible; you can imagine it as a gradient that usually doesn't give a fuck about non-natural borders). This 2020 paper on Viking Age DNA from Margaryan et al ('Population genomics of the Viking world' www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8) is a perfect example of the type of study that tends to cause a temporary surge in headlines about how super diverse Vikings were. What this research shows is that there has been ongoing selection pressure for lighter pigmentation in Scandinavia, not only over the Bronze age, but even in the last 1k years. That doesn't mean Vikings were all swarthy; it just indicates that a larger portion of them had dark hair than modern Scandinavians do (so there was more phenotypical variation in terms of pigmentation), i.e. light hair as an adaptation has never been as "successful" as in modern Scandinavians. It also shows that Vikings mixed with locals as they expanded, which is something historians already assumed based on what the sagas and other historical sources indicate. What it does not show though is that Vikings or Norse people were genetically diverse, let alone a multiracial society. In short, it's just another example of forced diversity to please the woke crowd. I've never even seen any evidence of Africans voluntarily traveling to Scandinavia during the Viking Age, or Black (as in Sub-Saharan African) Vikings. While Vikings never sailed to "Black" Africa, it does seem probable they saw some Black Africans during the few expeditions off the coast of Northern Africa, and I speculate it is possible that in those instances, some of them took a small number of Black slaves with them. Though if true, this likely would have been rare. A number of Frankish, Norman, Arab, Scandinavian and Irish sources mention that in 859-862, the Viking war leader Hásteinn (possibly an illegitimate son of Ragnarr Sigurðrsson) jointly led an expedition of 62 warships with his foster-son (and potential half-brother) Bjǫrn "Járnsíða" Ragnarsson to extensively raid parts of Frankia and Spain, as well as move down into the Mediterranean. After fighting the Saracen navy of Al-Andalus at Gibraltar, they stopped off in North Africa before sailing home via Ireland. They are said to have bought some slaves there who the Old Norse sources refer to as "blámenn" - literally "blue men". It has recently become more popular to interpret these blámenn slaves as Sub-Saharan Africans, but though they would have looked swarthy to the Vikings, they are thought to have most likely been Soussians or Tuaregs (Amazigh = Berber peoples). More importantly, they ended up being sold in Ireland, not Scandinavia. That said, again, I do speculate the muslim African slave trade could easily have brought Sub-Saharans into North-Africa and potentially Iberia / the isles of the Mediterranean, but like I said, there are, as far as I know, no documents from the Viking Age which mention Black Africans. Only later Medieval texts contain some accounts of other meetings with "blue men", though they're still quite rare and vague. In some cases, blámenn are actually described as Black, but I have yet to find a text where a blámaðr either plays a significant role in the narrative or is described as a Viking. The most generous closing date for the Viking age is 1080 or so, and the aforementioned accounts of blue men are found in the Heimskringla saga's story of King Sigurðr Jórsalafari's crusade in 1110 and the Orkneyinga saga's tale of Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson's crusade in 1151. Except for a song of praise of Haraldr Sigurðarson's activities in service of the emperor between 1034 and 1045. All of these occurrences were written down much later though, in the 13th century, and we're dealing with highly Christian people in all of these cases - literal crusaders (in the first two examples) and someone in service of the Byzantines. In no case do they occur in the context of Viking raids. So basically, they are only featured in rather fantastical sagas (of which there is clear doubt about the historicity of many of the claims) and are never given any important roles. They tend to play the role of fierce foreign warriors and aren't really tied to any concrete notion of ethnicity; they are more like Tolkien's Orcs in that sense. Later Medieval Scandinavians were certainly familiar with the concept of Black Africans and a few might even have seen some, but for the majority of people, Black Africans was mostly still a literary, almost fantastical notion. Some non-Scandinavian people did live in Northern Europe during the Viking Age, but they were most likely slaves or servants (e.g. the Iranian woman from the Oseberg ship). The only real exception is the Sámi and the Finns (Uralic peoples) which are at several occasions described as cohabiting relatively peacefully with, though separate from, the Norsemen. They inhabited the northern and southern edges of Scandinavia respectively. So in conclusion, depicting Vikings as Sub-Saharan is most likely a politically motivated choice based on misconceptions as a result of historical/scientific illiteracy at best and deliberate blackwashing at worst.
I kind of heard that the word "blue man" is more of a literary device in the sagas and that most likely it has nothing to do with reality, because we do not have any historical evidence that there were black people in ancient Scandinavia
@ingwiafraujaz3126 Man you’re reading g way too much into this, they’re obviously not interested in historical accuracy. They’re just pushing a bs view of inclusion instead of just writing historical fact. And I find it interesting that the ones pushing this are interested in every single culture but their own. I have never seen an accurate representation in a movie or a tv series of African Queen Sheba. One of Solomon’s wives, or mistress, not one, a history buff like would’ve noticed already, instead they’re interested in everybody elses, to them The Greeks the Romans, The Asians even Vikings were black, its pretty ridiculous, and I’m a fiction writer (of fact too) they gotta do better whoever is pushing this agenda has to stop, this is why I don’t watch these shows, they’re ridiculous and totally inaccurate. I think black people have a great history, but they don’t talk about it, they seem to be interested in history that is not their own. Whenever I see those blonde wigs they have in game of thrones or the house of the dragon and all these shows is incredibly cringing, I’m not a racist, I’ve always tried to help black people, but in terms of history, it’s gotta be accurate, but they’ve made up their minds already, is my story where I portray them accurately.
I think what makes people angry about it, is the (maybe subconcious) fear that their (Western/European) culture gets swept away on a woke wave. I don't think that the vast majority has any Problems with Actors of african decent beeing depicted as Heros or as Main cast. But it has to be either pure Fantasy or, if based partially on History, make some sense geographicly. On top of that people like it when their expectations get met. And when talking about Vikings people expect Scandinavians. So if Showmakers want a diverse Cast their are tons of scenarios of History wich would provide a perfect ground for that. Instead of choosing one of those, they choose the opposit. If it is wise or more decent to use our Empathie, we than also should emphasis with those people that are rejecting a Show like this and try to understand their point of view.
Thank you so much for your work, and especially for your introduction to this video. You bring sanity to a hard subject. Our family is mixed race and sometimes living here in the U.S. with these constructs does become difficult. A bit of understanding and a show of disagreement from outside the confines of English speakers helps in oh-so-many ways.
Got my DNA and found myself to be 97% Norwegian 3%Sami and I thank you for your videos it's very interesting. I am third generation American. I am a Kivley and it's my understanding I still have relatives in the town of Kivley! Thanks again
You're WAYYY too PC on this for me. Seeing someone miscast by race in a time period show, destroys the experience. Just like a white leader in Africa would.
Another exceptional vid as always, Arith. A gentle touch even when educating sheep on problematic topics in this day and age. Keep bringing your wisdom and save history before it's lost to cartoons.
I have no bipoc friends and at 63, I probably never will. I live in a small rural farm community and do not go to large urban areas. Actually, I avoid them because I fear getting attacked by urban dwellers.
Greetings! Thank you for your contribution to this discussion. I think it's an important one, especially in a time when people are moving towards reconnecting with their spiritual heritage! (BE WARNED: US MEDIA PERSPECTIVE HERE) It's seems like a cash grab by major media companies to shoehorn black people into non-black roles. I think they capitalize off of the outrage it creates, because nowadays you can make money off of that. There is not much capital in the entertainment industry for black people to tell our historical narrative in media, especially of pre-colonial history. Hollywood producers love putting a lot of money into slavery movies though. Something that is concerning is the perversion of the word "woke" from an adjective to a noun. News outlets have effectively created an ambiguous enemy and scapegoat for which to blame any shifts in culture on. I think it's worth distinguishing between the opinions chronically online people, the voices of 0.1 percent of people are not representative of the whole (the vocal minority fallacy). All that to say that it is a disservice to everyone when historical movies/shows are warped by money interests. After all, who wouldn't want their history portrayed in an accurate and dignified manner?
Race and the words used to describe them may be a cultural construct but so is language itself as well as many other things. Race is simply a more broad description than ethnicity which has meaning because multiple ethnicities fit into a race. It's simple taxonomy. We use labels for everything because we use language for everything. If it exists there are words and categories to describe them.
@@watch-Dominion-2018 In theory this is a great reminder for people who get lost in race. But I guess it could be a waste of time because those people are either not intelligent enough to understand or their mind is set and they like the path they are on.
@8:40 sure in the sense that there is diversity in phenotypical expression resulting in different shades of color hair, eyes, and skin (but only within a small spectrum), but let's be honest and clear the genetic research shows there was maternal and paternal haplogroups that dominated and they were what we expected to find, northern Europeans. The more east and north you go, the more researchers find Eurasian haplogroups. For the most part, these were genetically homogeneous communities with vibrant indigenous cultures. They weren't modern style multiracial liberal societies, to the dismay of academics who now are majority left leaning, not right wing racists.
Vikings I could imagine carried a multitude of skin hues or complexions. I have Viking paternal blood through my French forefathers (980 CE - 1040 CE) and today my skin complexion is dark brown hue. Many people would call me an African American or black; BUT, no I'm Viking descendant of the diaspora.
Good you handled this question so well. There is a more tedious debate on the Roman Empire in a similar way. The Roman Empire had a lot of ethnic diversity and mobility via the army, but the evidence for sub-Saharan Africans in the army is sadly very rare.
I tend to follow the belief that there could have been black "vikings". It isn't like we've found the remains of everybody that ever lived in Scandinavia. If anything, it's safer to say that there has been no recorded evidence of black "vikings". That doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any.
No, my loyalty is with my kinship only. And I owe everything to my ancestors who fought and survived the dark winter's of the most harshest climates on earth, whose strength and perseverance blessed me with my very own existence of today. I have great pride and only respect for my ancestors. And I salute them! For they were and still are the smallest minority of all races of mankind on earth. But still, they conquered the entire world.
Yes, all racial, ethnic, and cultural groups have achievements and in the modern view, atrocities in their histories. And yet only Europeans are generalized into a mega group, ignoring the indigenous diversity, and assigned generational guilt. Only we are expected to denounce our ancestors, histories, and cultures. This modern genocidal virtue isn't applied to the various African nations for their endless crimes against humanity. So celebrate, embrace, and teach the next generation your heritage. The cultural contributions of both christian and pagan Europeans are beautiful and numerous.
@@BaltimoresBerzerker doesnt matter. scandinavians, the norse. the oldest europeans will be gone soon thanks to immigration we are literally being culturally choked and fucked from behind oncea again. first it was the christians. and now its the muslims. are we gonna fight back this time or am i gonna have to be ashamed of my people just accepting their fate to? hmm? im not afraid of war if it means im honoring my ancestors lands and home and what they build and what they underwent and overcame. if you aint ready to fight when it counts i dont give a fuck about your words talking about embracing anything. its not even about race. its about us being literally raped daily by a specific religious group of people who live here with zero intention of adapting to our culture or ways. im tired of watching scandinavian fathers bury their daughters after being raped. blackmailed and then killed by some fucking islamic cunt. if you aint with me your against me and i consider you a traitor who only talk the talk but dont walk it and will be treated as an enemy. im from denmark. i grew up in the ghettos. i know what its like, if you dont wanna believe me just go look and denmark and swedens official statistics on muslims here. if you wanna save our people go join nordfront. nordfront will also reveal to you why germanics are shit on. why it has everything to do with hitler and ww2 and how hitlers massacring in the name of a germanic kingdom for the germanic people made it so we can never ever again want such a thing even if its ideal without all the massacre. but who knows. the way things look we will keep being raped. killed. and outpopulated or we will have to massacre like hitler once did. it cant also be fucking right that the only pro germanic movement that ever was was by fucking nazis. we need a new one. a serious one like nordfront who will look deeply at hitlers story in order to prevent it again. the way muslims treat native scandinavians and the governments not caring because they too have muslim influence will just repeat history and recreate another hitler from the oppression of a people who has had enough
@@magnipettersson4432 I'm not 100% certain of what you're saying, but indeed, we have many grave threats facing Germanic and quite frankly all indigenous European traditions and cultures.
You handled that very well Arith. In English speaking societies, even governments define people by colour. The USA does it, and this is how the British government does it, I quote: "Asian or Asian British; Includes any Asian background, for example, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani or other East or South Asian. Black, African, Black British or Caribbean Includes any Black background. Mixed or multiple ethnic groups; Asian and White; Black African and White; Black Caribbean and White; another Mixed background. White; Includes any White background - British, English, Northern Irish, Scottish, or Welsh; Irish; Irish Traveller or Gypsy; another White background. Another ethnic group Includes any other ethnic group, for example, Arab." So whether I wish to see myself as White, or be seen as such, I am named as such by my country. For myself I only have a choice to define myself as 'British, English...or Welsh' or 'prefer not to say'. You would be categorised by my government as 'another White background'. It'd be interesting to see how the Portuguese Government 'categorises' people for its database purposes. This may or may not hint at whether or not its colonial past has an impact on the classifications it adopts; my government's classifications I s'pose inevitably are a function of that past. It may argue that there are all these ethnic peoples in the UK as a result of the British Empire and we are in fact categorising them by country. We may reply 'Yes, but why do you feel the need to categorise them like that?' They may say for 'research purposes'. And so on!
Obviously not. You didn't need to make a 22-minute to answer that. Plus the Norse and Danes did not come into contact with black people they likely had no clue such people existed and visa versa. No historical evidence exists for that. If they had foreign slaves they would have been other Germanics, Slavics, and Celtics, and possibly some Al Andalusian Amazigh and Arabs thats about it. No black viking existed, and no black.slave existed in the region of the Norse and Dane.
There was actually a black samurai named yasuke in the 16th century I believe, why doesn't hollywood make films about him instead. The only way a black person would exist in viking society was as a thrall.
Native English speaker here. Referring to people with colors feels weird because it is weird. It's normalized where I live but it's indeed weird af! Because, ws you said, we normalize systems of untruth. Thanks for your honest and tactful approach but shit is weird here!!
A lot of people don't like real history they do that face and say history is boring but will argue the toss over dark skinned people having parts in a Shakespearean play 🤣
The Logic: "Just because there is no proof, scientifically speaking, concerning alien landings on earth at some point in history, doesn't mean we shouldn't put little green men in roles of Vikings in movies. This should guarantee immersion and artistic quality of experience and inclusion of... oh whatever...." Oh let's start naming Somali pirates Vikings, that'll make more sense xD Best Regards Sir
I really liked this one, I also think it's important to create a clear distinction between what is entertainment and what is education. only comment would be on the final considerations on if this causes harm; I'd say it does cause harm but only because of the frequency at which groups try to "reframe" history to suit their own political worldviews. of course this doesn't cause harm to individuals but even when a historical drama is clearly entertainment the depictions in that entertainment will paint a picture in peoples imagination of what history looked like. this picture can then be used to create a false context for modern political change. this is of course a problem because that context is not based on reality. further this can then lead to a "educational" depiction of history being inaccurate; a real example of this is a BBC teach animation called the story of Britain (ua-cam.com/video/WjuYhBPwaQs/v-deo.html) which is expressly educational but has inaccurate depictions without addressing those inaccuracies. there was another one on the Celts that had similar problems with it's depictions also by BBC teach but I couldn't find the video. short version: on the whole no, inaccurate historical depictions don't cause harm but when something that is inaccurate is portrayed as accurate then yes that does cause harm.
@@tommyjohnson6410 Well, for one thing, there wasn't one 'Viking' culture lol. The Norse were different than the Swedes and the Danes. They were related but different and as someone who is descended from Vikings (by that I mean men who went a Viking and settled in the Scottish Isles) I find it rather distasteful you're trying to steal my cultural/ancestral heritage and trying to pass it off as your own. I thought cultural appropriation was bad? Or is it only 'bad' when a White person does it? As a side note, if someone wanted to appreciate 'Viking' culture today, I'm all for it as a Germanic Pagan, but to claim its Black is laughable and easy to disprove. If you're referring to the Irish habit of referring to different Vikings as 'Dark' and 'Fair' foreigners, Dark in this context does not mean Black skinned. It means Black haired (the same goes for when someone is called The Black. Not skin, its talking about their hair colour).
@matthewgordonpettipas6773 Stop it and do some research. There are books by white historians saying the Danes, Celts, Picts, and Saxons were black people. Look up online Orgins of the Anglo-Saxon race. by Thomas William Shore chapter 7 called Our Darker Forefathers. White supremacists change history, so it was you that stole our history. Early Man in Britain by W Boyd Dawkins will tell you the brown skin was all over Europe. Look up online vikings, dna. It telling you the vikings were not white with blonde hair blue eyes. White were the peasant and serfs. All the kings and queens of Europe was black up until the 1800s
From the latest studies Vikings where black Mongolians. 70% Asian and 30% black Germanic tribes and carrying the gene of blue eyes. Viking just mean Pirates so yes anyone can join was there whites yes was there sub saharan African's yes. Was the viking dark skinned yes. The people that currently living in the area only got 10% related to the vikings. The viking image we think of today is from the Nazis from world war 2 trying to recreate the Aryan race theories. And that's why today because of the people that currently live there today we assume that it is correct.
This reminds me of a question I've had, but never remember to dig into when I have the opportunity. Michael Crichton's 13th Warrior (and Crichton was in no way an expert), was told from by a Muslim man, a fairly well educated and a dignitary, I want to say Saudi peninsula but don't recall, in.... Norway? I haven't read it in like 20 years. Any way, while the story is all fiction, I always found it weird that they would care about such a remote area... So I'm curious, do you know of any significant trade or interaction between the two areas?
@@AathielVaDaath The Muslim is (or is based on) Ibn Fadlan. A Muslim scholar that travelt into the land of the Rus and wrote down what he witnessd while beeing among the Northmen.
@@highroller6244 Thanks! Like I said, it's been a while since I have read it. While I generally enjoy Chrichton, up to Timeline, that book just never did it for me so I haven't revisited it.
Great video Arith, I agree I think it’s stupid to label yourself by skin color. So many people are so obsessed with skin color’s it’s pathetic. I’d like to point out that skin color, ethnicity, cultures and religion isn’t a race. Keep up the good work.
Surely no other topic brings out the racists like flies to 💩 in the comment section quite like this one. Look at all the little duckers waving their tiny arms in the air so excited to tell on themselves .
The only reason i get annoyed by the OVER-representation is they're using these shows and platform to effectively indoctrinate ppl and/or tell a false slice of history that isn't true, but yes I'm aware the show vikings is practically historical fantasy which doesn't bother me but still you can see their egregious and overt attempts, that's what annoys me
that's why I only get annoyed about documentaries. If you get annoyed about fiction depicting wrongly ethnicities, and think is indoctrination, then you have to admit that hollywood indoctrinated everyone for ages, by showing white guys as arabs, jesus as a blue eyed white dude and essentially creating the "white savior" trope.
Basic human decency is woke. Woke only has negative connotations to those who value being asleep. Is not unlike Plato's cave. Those who wake up from the illusion are attacked & disparaged.
Everyone instinctively stereotypes people. It's normal. But you have to be able to step back and be objective and understand that everyone is an individual. That, too, is normal. And there are definitely differences in the racial types of human. It's just a fact. I think we've done ourselves a huge disservice as humans by not taking a mature, dignified study of the different types of humans. Think of the lives it could save or even just improve quality of life. The differences aren't great, but they're real. No race, for lack of a better word, would prove inferior or superior. We're all here because we all survived. Besides, equality should have nothing to do with race. It's a question of humanity.
I would say that you are wrong. Yes, those are fiction, but the reason they are doing this is because they do want us to believe that in reality, not only fiction, those characters exist.
I think it's a question of authenticity. Even in outright fantasy, making a world feel authentic requires evoking verismilitude - the feeling that things are true in a particular time and place. The Starbucks cup in GoT was obviously a minor mistake, but if every character started drinking from Starbucks cups, then it ruins the verismilitude and makes the setting less believable. Likewise, if I saw a Qing Dynasty pagoda in medieval Norway, it wouldn't be believable. Obviously the Vikings series is not meant to be historically _accurate_ , but it ought to be a spiritually _authentic_ portrayal of medieval Scandinavia. The reason this matters so much is because there are many political radicals who believe that the descendants of colonial Europeans (including themselves) should be punished for the actions of their ancestors. They are actively trying to rewrite history, bury culture, crush spirits and destroy Europe. And I say this as a very mixed-race American with an outgroup preference. I find the world's cultures beautiful, and I want to see their art and aesthetics represented authentically in media. If someone is black and wants to be a Norse pagan today? Then skål, and welcome to the flock! But if someone is just resentful and trying to colonize culture, then that's not healthy for anyone involved.
Addendum: Verismilitude depends on the setting as well. If the story takes place in some kind of wild magic spacetime vortex that's blended chunks of the world together, then a pagoda next door to a temple and down the street from a cathedral, then by all means, that will actively assist in establishing your setting. How To Train Your Dragon clearly takes place in fantasy medieval Scandinavia with western dragons. If they suddenly had eastern dragons, that would be weird. But if some eastern foreigners rode into town on lung dragons, that'd be cool as hell.
This is an admirable way to dissect this topic using factual history and the reality behind integrating ethnic people's into fantasy shows and movies for inclusion.
I'd like to know why it's different to list people by race than it is to list dogs by race/breed. Not being "mean", but there is a difference in human types, and it can't be offensive to name them. We can't see if a 'white' is English, French, Swiss, etc., but we they're pale skinned or dark skinned. We naturally describe people as we descern them, differentiating one from the other. I'm much more upset over a female Haakon Jarl, coloured at that. Or all the historically verified truths being distorted in "Vikings". Since everybody seems to want to be offended by everything, I'm seriously fed up with all this pussyfooting around facts at every turn.
Ask yourself these questions: 1) Can a white woman give birth to a black child? 2) Can a black woman give birth to a white child? If your answer for both questions was not the same, then some part of you realizes racial terms such as "white" and "black" aren't actually about European or African ancestry. These terms did not emerge due to a need to categorize different categories of humans like dog breeds... We already have hundreds of words which accomplish this such as "Brit", "Nigerian", "German", "Serbian", "Croat", "Turk", "Kazakh", etc. The reason why racial terms like "white" or "black" exist is purely political. Now... If your answer for the initial two questions was the same, ask yourself: "Is that how most people would respond?"
@@Sergio-nb4hj Like I said, I cannot see a person's nationality. I can see skintone. Yes, a white woman can have a brown child, if the father is black. And vice versa. That doesn't change my point. There are white people in Africa. Black in Europe. But ... Do YOU see their nationality? THAT was my main question. If you want to split hairs and go off on a tangent, that's on you.
It's such a wonderful day, the birds are singing, it's slightly raining, earth smells are in the air, let me just check the comment section- oh sweet f**k! . . . Anyway, next episode "Were there Viking Ninjas?". Just kidding. I wish you all a wonderful day. Thank you for your time, support and friendship. And to the ladies, I wish, and I hope, that all the good things that you receive on this International Women's Day may be extended to the rest of the year and more years to come, and always out of the good of people's hearts and not just because a day "demands it". Be well and take care of yourselves. Cheers!
Thank you so much ✊✌🏽❤️
If anyone wants to watch anything about the Vikings that's historical ..there are two suggestions that I have are
1) the History channel's Barbqrians series pt 1
&
2) The Great Courses lectures series called Vikings
Thank you dear friend. I am like always very thankful for the video....hope that there will come more of your knowledge, so it was a nice slap on the hand of movie images, even the series are very great and powerful to watch but it is like you always say "for entertainment". So back to gold old, reading books and doing the researches folks 😄. Wish your female community a great day 🌷
You should be persecuted for making such biased video, trying to force "multiculturalism" where there wasn't. Can't expect respect for norse traditions from a guy that thinks gay people were accepted in old norse civilizations, but thinking black people were normal around GERMANIC tribes is just beyond stupid. You disgust me.
@@AnneSpring05 Thank you :)
I think the presence of these types of characters are less from a demand from the black community to see ourselves interjected in settings that we don’t necessarily fit in and more because of a corporate desire to come across as inclusive. What we really would love to see and benefit from is our own stories and historical figures portrayed in media the only movie that I’m aware of that takes place in historical west Africa is woman king which is a relatively new movie
Exactly
But we do fit in because we were there. We were taught that the vikings culture was a white culture that's a lie. Old history books and now dna evidence say the culture was black people. Hollywood knows the truth and has decided to start putting in black characters, and white people are upset. Ignorant black people are also a problem by agreeing with racist white people whom main agenda is to keep white supremacist lies going.
I'd think that too if Netflix and other entertainment groups stopped hiring black people who genuinely think everything in Europe was actually sacred stolen mysticism from Africa
"inclusivity" for its own sake is nonsense. What's next? Left handed lispers in wheelchairs with special needs leading the charge at Normandy?
There is a South African TV series from 1986 called "Shaka Zulu" if you interested.
I find it's actually crazy that when I search up was there black vikings there's so many articles trying to push the idea black vikings as a very plausible scenario despite them lacking so much evidence.
There were black vikings. Anglo Saxon historians wrote about them in detail
@@xenos975 no there was not. This is a baseless claim no credible historians believe this. Go spread your racist beliefs elsewhere
@@xenos975 Those writings werent about people of African descent. It was referring to those who werent blonde and faired skin. Rather those with black hair and a darker complexion.
@@xenos975 aaand back to school and learn how to actually research and understand historical writings
@@LunaticReasonso you do know you can't have dark skin without having black blood...
I have a problem with it because people believe these TV shows are historically accurate. Even the people making these shows are pushing it as historically accurate.
But it gets people asking questions and then, hopefully, they discover nuances and find out things they didn't even realise they didn't know. When we think we know everything - that will be a very grim day. So, maybe it's not such a terrible idea to keep taking artistic licence - even with things supposedly long since laid down as facts. It knocks us out of our complacency and demands attention - and attention may be actually needed.
@@batintheattic7293sure let’s make adolf hitler become a decent black man when nobody is watching and promote it as historically accurate. Literally how they put black people in for white roles. You know why they will never do that? Because it’s an evil role with an agenda. Why Achilles? Because he’s a badass warrior hero with a love interest
Great video. The distinction between fictional entertainment and historical documentary is key here, as you note.
Yes. If you are talking about the Minnesota Vikings football team
Or French football league aka the African league 😢
@@poisonivy9820stf u
I snorted 😂😂😂😂😂
Were there white Zulus?
Zulu's are a cultural people...
Vikings was a job title.
Nordic germans were a cultural people.
See the difference.
@@angeladay2196
Nice mental gymnastics bud
@@angeladay2196 Technically a job title sure but now also used to refer to all northman of the age, even by modern Scandinavians. Y'all need to get over this semantic hangup
@@angeladay2196were there white Impi's?
@Isaac Chirgwin great re-wording further defining the essence of the question.
sadly some folks don't want facts. they want to live in a fantasy world.
like belive in black sub-saharian vikings?
@@johannbieler88 among the many many other pieces of miss information from games, movies and tv shows. Some people just don't care about the true history and argue for what they want to be true.
“True history” is an oxymoron.
@@bellpine333 History has evidence. You can go with the evidence or you can play make believe.
As long as that fantasy world doesn't include people with a different skin tone to themselves.
Arith, I'm Portuguese too and i'm completely lost with what you meant with "not being alright to address people by colour" in here as opposed to in English speaking countries. From i I understand, in English media the subject is far more controversial than in here, and using the wrong words or making the wrong implications, even if accidentally can get you in trouble. Which is definitely not the case here.
Discussing these matters only becomes controversial in very specific environments, with "very online" people, especially younger or politicaly enganded people, who are more immersed in Anglophone media than in actually Portuguese media.
OF COURSE MAN, THIS GUY A DISINFORMATION AGENT, HE IS TALKING BULLSHIT TO CONFUSE PEOPLE...TO PUT THE IDEA ON THE COLECTIVE MIND THAT "RACE IS A SOCIAL O CULTURAL CONSTRUCT"...WICH IS OF COURSE NOT TRUE...RACE IS BIOLOGY, THERE ARE DIFFERENT RACES IN THE WORLD AND IN THOSE RACES THER ARE DIFFERENT SUBRACES, OR PHENOTYPES....PERIOD...by the way i am spanish and i know and have worked with many portuguese, i consider you brothers, and i KNOW there is no problem in our society to call BLACK people black, and WHITE people white....i even worked with black people and it was the same, if i was talking to them about someone else i said , yes, you friend that is also black, was here the other day asking for you...or whatever...we are not fking hipocrites
@@carlossantos2954
That is quite an unhinged rant right there.
Race is indeed a social construct, but so is money, religion, age, height even or pretty much anything if you really think about it. Science is in on itself a social construct.
Take for example the concept of visual colour itself. They don't really exist, they are our brains intrepreting energy at specific wave lenghts. We intrepret Blue and Red, but the wavelenght is on a spectrum, there is always going to be an "in between" that could be blue or red depending on who you ask, or most commonly people will say "purple" because you can really make up an infinite amount of colours. Does this mean colours are social constructs? Yes. Are they also scientific concepts? Yes.
There are definitely genetic and biological differences and similarities between certain human populations and others, and we definitely can form groups based on such proximities, but this cathegorization is necessarily always going to be a subjective convention, and thus, a social construct.
Os americanos são obcecados pela raça, e acham que tudo é preto e branco. Não têm nuance nenhuma quando abordam a temática.
@@FaithfulOfBrigantiaBut we can measure height and we do age, it’s not a product of our imaginations
@@darkprince56
We can measure height and age.
But how old is "old" or how tall is "tall" is subjective.
Likewise, we can also measure ancestry and the entire genome of any individual.
But the definition of what constitues a race and who belongs and who doesnt, is completely subjective.
Nearly everything in life can be argued to be social construct, while simultaneosly also being a concrete, real concept, which can be measurable and explained by analytic data.
Anyone who is trying to frame something as solely "biological" or "constucted" most likely has an ideological agenda behind it.
As a black man, If it is a historical movie or a timepiece I feel that it should accurately represent the period of time and the society of people that lived in a society as close as possible. Past that It doesn’t matter as long as the actors are good. I don’t watch many movies as it is but if I were to watch something historical and it was actors that didn’t represent the time they are trying to recreate and the actors aren’t good then I most likely would just avoid the movie.
And an inclusion could be made with proven historical events, such as the Vikings with Mongolian ancestry, but since it is not in fashion they are going to look for people with a sub-Saharan appearance, and if it is a better woman and replacing a man who is known to be looking native to the area, but hey it's netflix, next step vikings with pirate ships and horns helmet
@@johannbieler88There is no evidence of "Vikings with Mongolian ancestry".
"Mongolian Vikings", "Black Vikings", "a Black Viking chieftain" and "Vikings were diverse because they traveled a lot" - these are common claims which completely lack any evidence.
If by "Black" chieftain they're referring to Geirmundr "heljarskinn" (literally "hellskin") Hjörsson mentioned in the Landnámabók (the first version of which is thought to have been written in the 12th century) and the Sturlunga saga (a collection written in the 12th and 13th centuries): he was supposedly the son of a Norwegian Viking originating from the kingdom of Hordaland named Hjör Hálfarson who traveled to an area referred to as Bjarmeland in Northwest Siberia (see picture below) to hunt for walruses. Bergsveinn Birgisson, a modern-day Icelandic author with a doctorate in Norse philology (University of Iceland/Oslo/Bergen) has written a book where he argues that Geirmundr's mother was a Siberian princess from a Uralic tribe around "Bjarmeland", explaining Geirmundr's and his brother's dark(er) features and the "heljarskinn" nickname. Even if true, and even though Geirmundr has been given the popular label "The Black Viking" (after the book title), half Siberian-Asiatic hardly corresponds with Sub-Saharan African. Not to mention that this is a single case.
On the contrary, the misconception is rather that because Vikings (the small subset of Norsemen who traded & raided overseas) traveled so much, they were automatically distinctly ethnically/genetically diverse. If we actually look at the research, quite the opposite seems to be the case; they were one of the most homogenous groups in the world. The only significant admixture originates from neighboring peoples who were genetically very similar, i.e. British to the west and Baltic to the east (that's what we'd expect as all populations have at least some amount of admixture with their direct neighbors, sometimes significant and sometimes negligible; you can imagine it as a gradient that usually doesn't give a fuck about non-natural borders).
This 2020 paper on Viking Age DNA from Margaryan et al ('Population genomics of the Viking world' www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8) is a perfect example of the type of study that tends to cause a temporary surge in headlines about how super diverse Vikings were. What this research shows is that there has been ongoing selection pressure for lighter pigmentation in Scandinavia, not only over the Bronze age, but even in the last 1k years. That doesn't mean Vikings were all swarthy; it just indicates that a larger portion of them had dark hair than modern Scandinavians do (so there was more phenotypical variation in terms of pigmentation), i.e. light hair as an adaptation has never been as "successful" as in modern Scandinavians. It also shows that Vikings mixed with locals as they expanded, which is something historians already assumed based on what the sagas and other historical sources indicate. What it does not show though is that Vikings or Norse people were genetically diverse, let alone a multiracial society.
In short, it's just another example of forced diversity to please the woke crowd.
I've never even seen any evidence of Africans voluntarily traveling to Scandinavia during the Viking Age, or Black (as in Sub-Saharan African) Vikings. While Vikings never sailed to "Black" Africa, it does seem probable they saw some Black Africans during the few expeditions off the coast of Northern Africa, and I speculate it is possible that in those instances, some of them took a small number of Black slaves with them. Though if true, this likely would have been rare.
A number of Frankish, Norman, Arab, Scandinavian and Irish sources mention that in 859-862, the Viking war leader Hásteinn (possibly an illegitimate son of Ragnarr Sigurðrsson) jointly led an expedition of 62 warships with his foster-son (and potential half-brother) Bjǫrn "Járnsíða" Ragnarsson to extensively raid parts of Frankia and Spain, as well as move down into the Mediterranean. After fighting the Saracen navy of Al-Andalus at Gibraltar, they stopped off in North Africa before sailing home via Ireland. They are said to have bought some slaves there who the Old Norse sources refer to as "blámenn" - literally "blue men". It has recently become more popular to interpret these blámenn slaves as Sub-Saharan Africans, but though they would have looked swarthy to the Vikings, they are thought to have most likely been Soussians or Tuaregs (Amazigh = Berber peoples). More importantly, they ended up being sold in Ireland, not Scandinavia. That said, again, I do speculate the muslim African slave trade could easily have brought Sub-Saharans into North-Africa and potentially Iberia / the isles of the Mediterranean, but like I said, there are, as far as I know, no documents from the Viking Age which mention Black Africans.
Only later Medieval texts contain some accounts of other meetings with "blue men", though they're still quite rare and vague. In some cases, blámenn are actually described as Black, but I have yet to find a text where a blámaðr either plays a significant role in the narrative or is described as a Viking. The most generous closing date for the Viking age is 1080 or so, and the aforementioned accounts of blue men are found in the Heimskringla saga's story of King Sigurðr Jórsalafari's crusade in 1110 and the Orkneyinga saga's tale of Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson's crusade in 1151. Except for a song of praise of Haraldr Sigurðarson's activities in service of the emperor between 1034 and 1045. All of these occurrences were written down much later though, in the 13th century, and we're dealing with highly Christian people in all of these cases - literal crusaders (in the first two examples) and someone in service of the Byzantines. In no case do they occur in the context of Viking raids. So basically, they are only featured in rather fantastical sagas (of which there is clear doubt about the historicity of many of the claims) and are never given any important roles. They tend to play the role of fierce foreign warriors and aren't really tied to any concrete notion of ethnicity; they are more like Tolkien's Orcs in that sense.
Later Medieval Scandinavians were certainly familiar with the concept of Black Africans and a few might even have seen some, but for the majority of people, Black Africans was mostly still a literary, almost fantastical notion. Some non-Scandinavian people did live in Northern Europe during the Viking Age, but they were most likely slaves or servants (e.g. the Iranian woman from the Oseberg ship). The only real exception is the Sámi and the Finns (Uralic peoples) which are at several occasions described as cohabiting relatively peacefully with, though separate from, the Norsemen. They inhabited the northern and southern edges of Scandinavia respectively.
So in conclusion, depicting Vikings as Sub-Saharan is most likely a politically motivated choice based on misconceptions as a result of historical/scientific illiteracy at best and deliberate blackwashing at worst.
@@ingwiafraujaz3126 amazing respond, well I never claim vikings were black or sub-saharian somewhere, to me that is stupidity, same claim vikings were very diverse, IN THE CASE of try put diversity in a show should be mongoloid, in the Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns, (wich also can do a anthropological read about how was not common the dark features, cause they are consider ugly and been "bully" by their looking), we atleast have some kind of record of darker features among that time in scandinavia, but still should not be common, but is posibility created a connection remember the zone of eastern europe alredy had some mongolian admixture close to the years of 780, They were nomads and traveled long before they united and became an empire. and ofc after, and vikings alredy raid those zones, so in a fantasy scenery could made be exist a viking with mongolian ancestry, This does not mean that it happened, my point is that Netflix is hypocritical about being able to do a good inclusion, but they would want a black woman replacing a white Scandinavian man, blm bullshit fashion, that was my point! Thank you for the respond very good made!
@@johannbieler88 Thank you, I see your point now and I can't agree more. If they absolutely HAVE to insert phenotypical /racial diversity in a show, even if it's fantasy and not based on archaeological finds or genetic research, then do something plausible or semi-realistic, like Uralic/Siberian or Hunnic or Mongolian features. You're right. Thanks for the elucidation!
@ingwiafraujaz3126 Wow, you wrote all of that for a lie. Wow. So why are white historians writing books saying the vikings culture was black. Orgins of the Anglo-Saxon race Chapter 7 called our Darker Forefathers will tell you the Danes, Celts, Picts, Saxons, were black people. Early Man in Britain by W Boyd Dawkins will tell you the Etruscans, Welsh, Scots, and Iberians were all black people. These books have now been validated by DNA evidence. The DNA evidence says the vikings were indigenous people. We know that black people are indigenous to Europe. Cheddar Man, Grimaldi man, and Whitehawk women. White people were peasants and sex slaves. The book Ancient and modern Britons by David MacRitchie pg 47 is good to read. An article on the Nature website called Population genomics of the viking world you can find online will tell you the vikings Scandinavian dna is vastly different from modern-day Scandinavian I wonder why 🤔. Here some facts that most white people choose to ignore. There was a Danish king called Gorm, the old. Gorm means blue, black, or dark skin. Still to this day in Gaelic, Irish the word duine gorm" means a black man.Gorm had a son named Harald Gormsson. Harald had the nickname Blaatand, which means Bluetooth, is a deliberate mistranslation. His nickname had nothing to do with a Bluetooth. Blaa is the modern Danish word for blue, but once meant dark skinned. Tan once meant great man, and has been confused with tand the modern Danish word for tooth. So Harald Gormsson nickname really is great dark skin man. Cnute the Great is Harald grandson. The surname Nutt derived from the name Cnute. The surname Nutt means brown skin.
Rewriting reality is stupid.
Great to hear you! Thanks 🌷
It's insanity. Portraying zulu warriors with northern Europeans would rightly make us all cringe.
In the earlier days of Hollywood people did it, like in the genghis khan movie, but it was more out of necessity
It was out of racism, not necessity. They didn’t want to allow non-white actors and when they did it was for caricaturised roles
@@balkanwitch5747 i agree that i'd cringe and yes hollywood was extremly racist idk about that " necessity" stuff lmao
I watch a black guy from the USA who critiques the "inclusion" movement as a bad thing. He puts it down to black people can be whatever they want to be, so why take something white and make it black because then you are teaching black kids that they should strive to do white things instead of being their own person. He advocates for giving black culture and people a place that is their own and that all kids can admire.
I don't like the idea of adding the wrong characters to anything because it takes away from that character and the set it is in.
Just for instance - the LOTR series has a black female dwarf queen ... now what bothered me wasn't that she was black or even a woman, it was that she was portrayed incorrectly - should have been a very manly looking woman, in male dwarf clothes with a beard and called a king - because that is the character JRR Tolkien described. Why do I raise this? Because it's more accurate to the story.
Vikings is set in a specific era and context so a decent amount of accuracy should be used ... however, saying that, there are a lot of minor inaccuracies anyway and it's a forced plot within historical context ...
That's because we were taught lies by white supremacist. The viking culture was indeed black people and white historians are writing books about it
Blacks in LOTR is incorrect and wring, Tolkien did not write any black characters. Same wjth the little mermaid - that is a white character. blacks accepfing these roles shoukd be ashamed of themselves and embarassed, instead they have this false sense of entitlement to these white only roles. This is not doing them any favours in the world.
@@mysterymachine6858 Tolkien didn't write dwarves as a race. He never described their skin tone at all. You can use whatever creative license you want.
@@mysterymachine6858for 1 thing mermaids are non existent. The most High GOD created "so called" blacks aka Israelites to be above all people (Deuteronomy 7:6). We be the salt of this earth.
The use of white and black in America is generally a descriptor used to identify the culture a person belongs to, it's based on stereotypes. How someone perceives that culture will change how they interact with someone - prejudice. It is also used as a divider amongst the common people to keep us fighting each other because we are "different" culturally but what is American culture? Who are the people perpetuating this?
So what do you do when white historians are writing books saying the vikings culture, kings and queens of Europe were black people? Hollywood knows the truth and decided to incorporate a few blacks in documentaries, and white get upset because they were taught lies like everyone else. White people can't believe they were the peasant, and serfs
It doesn't have to be a divider. If people had more interest in their own culture America wouldn't be as lost as it is. Unfortunately in politics they do use it as a tool to divide. I wouldn't want America to be all one mix of people that can be easily manipulated.
The term black and white are social construct status. The term black means nonexistent or dead under the color of law black codes (Civility Mortuus) and has no legal standing and is actually a derogatory term. Black is a color not a race ethnicity nor nationality.
Rev 7:9,10
🙏🏾💜💐😀
J’admire la façon dont vous abordez les sujets les plus controversés, Surtout dans le contexte actuel et connaissant la société qui est si souvent cruelle et impitoyable envers ses égaux. Merci 🌷
... mais un peu triste que A H met la foi en l'histoire officielle...
ua-cam.com/video/tQdz61k0Txs/v-deo.html
22 minutes to answer something everybody knows by common sense
What I find most intriguing is the willingness to "appropriate" a culture when it doesn't include "bipocs" and the outrage that follows when a "bipoc" culture is "appropriated."
Why is there an accepted double standard? Why is it to question this double standard deemed "racist?"
It is known they want to destroy anything European,for no other reason other than destroying the culture and control the dominant continent of the previous centuries.
Bipoc is the wrong term - it's only used in America because indigenous in Europe means white people.
@man frombritain thats why it's in quotes. I dont use the term because I think it is condusive to actual racism; the people who claim to be against racism perpetuate racism/prejudice when they refer to Americans as "bipocs"
So you don't think that black people are indigenous to Europe? You don't think blacks was a major part of the viking culture?
@@tommyjohnson6410 what is viking culture.
I enjoyed listening to this video and especially the disclaimer section very much. Your words make so much sense!!!
As always you really hit the nail on the head with this video. Thank you for supplying resources and paving the way into further discussions about BIPOC individuals within the current Viking trend. I'm a Viking age reenactor, and one of the most common questions I get asked is if there were really "black" Vikings, and now I have some great resources to answer that!
They never existed, so shut the hell up with your buzzwords you profligate.
Factually, there were none
They were black my friend. He telling lies i got the receipts
@@tommyjohnson6410
Nope, youre wrong. Just more Afro Centrist BS
@mobilusinmobili8321 Ok, the book Origin of the Anglo-Saxon race by Thomas William Shore chapter 7 called Our Darker Forefathers will tell you the Danes, Celts, Picts, and others were black its online. Early Man in Britain by W Boyd Dawkins will tell you the Etruscans, Welsh, Scots, Iberians, and others were black people. Im not saying it. These are white historians. The dna evidence say they are black.
So well & kindly spoken!
My issue is not the skin color per se but the reason. The changes are not made to tell a different story, or to change up the setting to make it stand out or feel fresh and new. There is rarely an artistic reason behind it.
The role of fictional media as just fictional and not needing to be historically authentic is to me a dangerous idea, because the vast amount of people do not know history and only know what they’ve seen from ancient aliens and ‘historical film’. The same people not knowing about history except what’s in popular media are or will also be the ones deciding educational curriculums, and deciding broad long lasting cultural and political policies. If there’s one thing about people it’s that most people do not do the research, so it is a slippery slope.
I compare it to Japanese media and how they love to change up the Sengoku warlords, constantly reinterpreting them in new, diverse, and silly ways. While still being respectful and accurate to the people it’s trying to portray.
As an American, I agree 100% - calling people by their color is fucking weird and I wish it wasn't a thing.
But it is because it's real and wanting to make us all just people is why culture is lost in the first place. We are all different, it should be valued, not fought over.
Short answer? No.
Long answer? No.
Skal 🍻
I answered it with you. Of course there were no black Vikings. There were not black people in Scandinavia at those times. I think black people themselves call themselves black and us white. So I don't think it's a problem.
No you call us black and yourselves white
@@chocolatesugar4434 🤡
@@chocolatesugar4434 no... Blacks called themselves blacks because the alternative was offensive to blacks... Or are you ignoring history?
Nah culture. Ancient Africans described ppl by their culture. These people were warriors these ppl were animal hearders these ppl were etc. Africa already had a bigger biodiversity. Greeks studied in whats now called Memphis but the nile river cilvizations didnt use enough skin color to note. The cilvizations also moved out into the Levant for trade with forigners. They mixed to become the domiant group. Black white didnt exist 1000s of years ago regarding how africans saw it. But one of the Chinese dysansties did seperate high melianited Asians and Africans from their paler skin. Tang royals were racist. The southeast Asians were savvages to them then they copied Arabs zanji
Then theres the steppes people who 1000s of years ago like africans didnt take physical features into much account but unlike africans they were also populated Europe
@@chocolatesugar4434 nahhh you do! 🤣
I adhere to a conspiracy theory which sees Europe as a much more ethnically diverse place than orginally thought, a result of the Roman empire existing for about a thousand years, until the Dark Ages led to purges based on the new kingdoms barbarian rulers' preference for non-Roman culturally based people linked specifically only to the former Roman provinces' agricultural production. So their could be people with different levels of blackness who were hitting up the raiding scene, in my perspective.
simply focking rude -----Thankyou Arith! you made my day again and more than that Thankyou for being you Arith!
You're in Portugal? :D
(you're a great addition!)
I am portuguese :D well, Portuguese-Danish, but I was born in Portugal :D
@@ArithHärger EVEN BETTER 🤜🤛
@@texugo44the Portuguese are the worst offenders of Jews aka moors in expelling, murdering and enslaving them.
Good topic! And timely and appropriate. Some want to ignore and whitewash these things, some continue to be racist. In a time when "race" issues have gone bizarre, such as a black female viking jarl who who was actually a white male....it's just gotten weird.
You know how it is. Blacks gotta be on every show, movie, and play these days
Until they get to the point of "We Wuz Hebrews", then there is pushback.
@@thoughtcriminal-k5li wonder why they got so upset about that......hmmmm
It kind of makes me laugh when people counter with, “were there white Zulus?” Because, when cultures interact and trade and even have neutral relations with each other, people might be “adopted” into different cultures, or assimilate if they immigrated or were traded (ie slavery).
So, while likely extremely rare, there could’ve been black Africans in a Viking clan or white Europeans in a Zulu tribe. I agree that we shouldn’t race swap historical figures or make a black Viking clan instead of showcasing and representing a black African tribe/culture but this is a much more nuanced issue than people realize.
Thank you, it’s very simple, like I can definitely wrap my head around 2 or 6 people being of a different race when accounting these things.
Arith, this is exactly how I feel about assuming someone's race or ethnicity by skin color. I see skin color, but do not assume to know someone's cultural identity. This is one of my favorite videos from you. Thank you!!
🌕 I enjoy listening to your input like a lost traveler encountering an oasis🌌 You are such a treasure🐺
"Black Vikings", "a Black Viking chieftain" and "Vikings were diverse because they traveled a lot" - these are common claims which completely lack any evidence.
If by "Black" chieftain they're referring to Geirmundr "heljarskinn" (literally "hellskin") Hjörsson mentioned in the Landnámabók (the first version of which is thought to have been written in the 12th century) and the Sturlunga saga (a collection written in the 12th and 13th centuries): he was supposedly the son of a Norwegian Viking originating from the kingdom of Hordaland named Hjör Hálfarson who traveled to an area referred to as Bjarmeland in Northwest Siberia (see picture below) to hunt for walruses. Bergsveinn Birgisson, a modern-day Icelandic author with a doctorate in Norse philology (University of Iceland/Oslo/Bergen) has written a book where he argues that Geirmundr's mother was a Siberian princess from a Uralic tribe around "Bjarmeland", explaining Geirmundr's and his brother's dark(er) features and the "heljarskinn" nickname. Even if true, and even though Geirmundr has been given the popular label "The Black Viking" (after the book title), half Siberian-Asiatic hardly corresponds with Sub-Saharan African. Not to mention that this is a single case.
On the contrary, the misconception is rather that because Vikings (the small subset of Norsemen who traded & raided overseas) traveled so much, they were automatically distinctly ethnically/genetically diverse. If we actually look at the research, quite the opposite seems to be the case; they were one of the most homogenous groups in the world. The only significant admixture originates from neighboring peoples who were genetically very similar, i.e. British to the west and Baltic to the east (that's what we'd expect as all populations have at least some amount of admixture with their direct neighbors, sometimes significant and sometimes negligible; you can imagine it as a gradient that usually doesn't give a fuck about non-natural borders).
This 2020 paper on Viking Age DNA from Margaryan et al ('Population genomics of the Viking world' www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2688-8) is a perfect example of the type of study that tends to cause a temporary surge in headlines about how super diverse Vikings were. What this research shows is that there has been ongoing selection pressure for lighter pigmentation in Scandinavia, not only over the Bronze age, but even in the last 1k years. That doesn't mean Vikings were all swarthy; it just indicates that a larger portion of them had dark hair than modern Scandinavians do (so there was more phenotypical variation in terms of pigmentation), i.e. light hair as an adaptation has never been as "successful" as in modern Scandinavians. It also shows that Vikings mixed with locals as they expanded, which is something historians already assumed based on what the sagas and other historical sources indicate. What it does not show though is that Vikings or Norse people were genetically diverse, let alone a multiracial society.
In short, it's just another example of forced diversity to please the woke crowd.
I've never even seen any evidence of Africans voluntarily traveling to Scandinavia during the Viking Age, or Black (as in Sub-Saharan African) Vikings. While Vikings never sailed to "Black" Africa, it does seem probable they saw some Black Africans during the few expeditions off the coast of Northern Africa, and I speculate it is possible that in those instances, some of them took a small number of Black slaves with them. Though if true, this likely would have been rare.
A number of Frankish, Norman, Arab, Scandinavian and Irish sources mention that in 859-862, the Viking war leader Hásteinn (possibly an illegitimate son of Ragnarr Sigurðrsson) jointly led an expedition of 62 warships with his foster-son (and potential half-brother) Bjǫrn "Járnsíða" Ragnarsson to extensively raid parts of Frankia and Spain, as well as move down into the Mediterranean. After fighting the Saracen navy of Al-Andalus at Gibraltar, they stopped off in North Africa before sailing home via Ireland. They are said to have bought some slaves there who the Old Norse sources refer to as "blámenn" - literally "blue men". It has recently become more popular to interpret these blámenn slaves as Sub-Saharan Africans, but though they would have looked swarthy to the Vikings, they are thought to have most likely been Soussians or Tuaregs (Amazigh = Berber peoples). More importantly, they ended up being sold in Ireland, not Scandinavia. That said, again, I do speculate the muslim African slave trade could easily have brought Sub-Saharans into North-Africa and potentially Iberia / the isles of the Mediterranean, but like I said, there are, as far as I know, no documents from the Viking Age which mention Black Africans.
Only later Medieval texts contain some accounts of other meetings with "blue men", though they're still quite rare and vague. In some cases, blámenn are actually described as Black, but I have yet to find a text where a blámaðr either plays a significant role in the narrative or is described as a Viking. The most generous closing date for the Viking age is 1080 or so, and the aforementioned accounts of blue men are found in the Heimskringla saga's story of King Sigurðr Jórsalafari's crusade in 1110 and the Orkneyinga saga's tale of Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson's crusade in 1151. Except for a song of praise of Haraldr Sigurðarson's activities in service of the emperor between 1034 and 1045. All of these occurrences were written down much later though, in the 13th century, and we're dealing with highly Christian people in all of these cases - literal crusaders (in the first two examples) and someone in service of the Byzantines. In no case do they occur in the context of Viking raids. So basically, they are only featured in rather fantastical sagas (of which there is clear doubt about the historicity of many of the claims) and are never given any important roles. They tend to play the role of fierce foreign warriors and aren't really tied to any concrete notion of ethnicity; they are more like Tolkien's Orcs in that sense.
Later Medieval Scandinavians were certainly familiar with the concept of Black Africans and a few might even have seen some, but for the majority of people, Black Africans was mostly still a literary, almost fantastical notion. Some non-Scandinavian people did live in Northern Europe during the Viking Age, but they were most likely slaves or servants (e.g. the Iranian woman from the Oseberg ship). The only real exception is the Sámi and the Finns (Uralic peoples) which are at several occasions described as cohabiting relatively peacefully with, though separate from, the Norsemen. They inhabited the northern and southern edges of Scandinavia respectively.
So in conclusion, depicting Vikings as Sub-Saharan is most likely a politically motivated choice based on misconceptions as a result of historical/scientific illiteracy at best and deliberate blackwashing at worst.
I kind of heard that the word "blue man" is more of a literary device in the sagas and that most likely it has nothing to do with reality, because we do not have any historical evidence that there were black people in ancient Scandinavia
@@justperson7551 Good point. And indeed we don't.
@ingwiafraujaz3126
Man you’re reading g way too much into this, they’re obviously not interested in historical accuracy. They’re just pushing a bs view of inclusion instead of just writing historical fact. And I find it interesting that the ones pushing this are interested in every single culture but their own. I have never seen an accurate representation in a movie or a tv series of African Queen Sheba. One of Solomon’s wives, or mistress, not one, a history buff like would’ve noticed already, instead they’re interested in everybody elses, to them The Greeks the Romans, The Asians even Vikings were black, its pretty ridiculous, and I’m a fiction writer (of fact too) they gotta do better whoever is pushing this agenda has to stop, this is why I don’t watch these shows, they’re ridiculous and totally inaccurate. I think black people have a great history, but they don’t talk about it, they seem to be interested in history that is not their own. Whenever I see those blonde wigs they have in game of thrones or the house of the dragon and all these shows is incredibly cringing, I’m not a racist, I’ve always tried to help black people, but in terms of history, it’s gotta be accurate, but they’ve made up their minds already, is my story where I portray them accurately.
@@ingwiafraujaz3126 thank you. I “rest my case”. There’s soup for you.
How 'bout black Shoguns? China Emperors? Rus Tsars? Black Germanic tribes?
beautifully said my friend. peace and vitality to you and yours.
I think what makes people angry about it, is the (maybe subconcious) fear that their (Western/European) culture gets swept away on a woke wave. I don't think that the vast majority has any Problems with Actors of african decent beeing depicted as Heros or as Main cast. But it has to be either pure Fantasy or, if based partially on History, make some sense geographicly. On top of that people like it when their expectations get met. And when talking about Vikings people expect Scandinavians.
So if Showmakers want a diverse Cast their are tons of scenarios of History wich would provide a perfect ground for that. Instead of choosing one of those, they choose the opposit.
If it is wise or more decent to use our Empathie, we than also should emphasis with those people that are rejecting a Show like this and try to understand their point of view.
Why would anyone want to change the history?
Thank you so much for your work, and especially for your introduction to this video. You bring sanity to a hard subject. Our family is mixed race and sometimes living here in the U.S. with these constructs does become difficult. A bit of understanding and a show of disagreement from outside the confines of English speakers helps in oh-so-many ways.
No.
22 minutes saved.
Next...
Good speech as I've always loved a lot.
Boom boom boom as always my dear friend… miss you so much
Probably one of the best videos covering this topic on the internet
Got my DNA and found myself to be 97% Norwegian 3%Sami and I thank you for your videos it's very interesting. I am third generation American. I am a Kivley and it's my understanding I still have relatives in the town of Kivley! Thanks again
Predominantly Icelandic and German and 12% Northwestern and Sub Saharan African.
DNA kits that u buy online for 50$ are a scam and complete bullshit.
Yep, "so called" black men left a lot of seed up in norway before the inquisition expelled, enslaved or murdered us out of the land.
I admire your honest explanation. Canada 🇨🇦
Thank you :)
You're WAYYY too PC on this for me. Seeing someone miscast by race in a time period show, destroys the experience. Just like a white leader in Africa would.
Another exceptional vid as always, Arith. A gentle touch even when educating sheep on problematic topics in this day and age. Keep bringing your wisdom and save history before it's lost to cartoons.
Thank you Arith.....always straightforward!
Awesomely Detailed and said
Universal mantra goes like this... I am the light, I am the love, I am the truth, I am.........
Congratulations Mr. Arith, highly important, current and like his appanage, pedagogical and of an admirable human sense!
ua-cam.com/video/tQdz61k0Txs/v-deo.html
Thank you thank you thank you!! The love you have for humanity really shines through this response.
Sneaky bastard with a shiv? Can you please elaborate on that?
I have no bipoc friends and at 63, I probably never will. I live in a small rural farm community and do not go to large urban areas. Actually, I avoid them because I fear getting attacked by urban dwellers.
Greetings! Thank you for your contribution to this discussion. I think it's an important one, especially in a time when people are moving towards reconnecting with their spiritual heritage!
(BE WARNED: US MEDIA PERSPECTIVE HERE) It's seems like a cash grab by major media companies to shoehorn black people into non-black roles. I think they capitalize off of the outrage it creates, because nowadays you can make money off of that. There is not much capital in the entertainment industry for black people to tell our historical narrative in media, especially of pre-colonial history. Hollywood producers love putting a lot of money into slavery movies though. Something that is concerning is the perversion of the word "woke" from an adjective to a noun. News outlets have effectively created an ambiguous enemy and scapegoat for which to blame any shifts in culture on. I think it's worth distinguishing between the opinions chronically online people, the voices of 0.1 percent of people are not representative of the whole (the vocal minority fallacy). All that to say that it is a disservice to everyone when historical movies/shows are warped by money interests. After all, who wouldn't want their history portrayed in an accurate and dignified manner?
ua-cam.com/video/tQdz61k0Txs/v-deo.html
Race and the words used to describe them may be a cultural construct but so is language itself as well as many other things. Race is simply a more broad description than ethnicity which has meaning because multiple ethnicities fit into a race. It's simple taxonomy. We use labels for everything because we use language for everything. If it exists there are words and categories to describe them.
wow, such wisdom 😲
@@watch-Dominion-2018 In theory this is a great reminder for people who get lost in race. But I guess it could be a waste of time because those people are either not intelligent enough to understand or their mind is set and they like the path they are on.
In a word no.
Thank you so much for this! I’ve been trying to tell people for decades, we’re all just human beings.
@8:40 sure in the sense that there is diversity in phenotypical expression resulting in different shades of color hair, eyes, and skin (but only within a small spectrum), but let's be honest and clear the genetic research shows there was maternal and paternal haplogroups that dominated and they were what we expected to find, northern Europeans. The more east and north you go, the more researchers find Eurasian haplogroups. For the most part, these were genetically homogeneous communities with vibrant indigenous cultures. They weren't modern style multiracial liberal societies, to the dismay of academics who now are majority left leaning, not right wing racists.
ua-cam.com/video/tQdz61k0Txs/v-deo.html
Vikings I could imagine carried a multitude of skin hues or complexions. I have Viking paternal blood through my French forefathers (980 CE - 1040 CE) and today my skin complexion is dark brown hue. Many people would call me an African American or black; BUT, no I'm Viking descendant of the diaspora.
Good you handled this question so well. There is a more tedious debate on the Roman Empire in a similar way. The Roman Empire had a lot of ethnic diversity and mobility via the army, but the evidence for sub-Saharan Africans in the army is sadly very rare.
I tend to follow the belief that there could have been black "vikings". It isn't like we've found the remains of everybody that ever lived in Scandinavia. If anything, it's safer to say that there has been no recorded evidence of black "vikings". That doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any.
True, but I think its safe to say that most weren't Black and it wasn't an everyday thing like some people want to make it sound like.
Very well said sir
Of course you would say No. its hard to disregard what you have been taught all of your life.
No, my loyalty is with my kinship only. And I owe everything to my ancestors who fought and survived the dark winter's of the most harshest climates on earth, whose strength and perseverance blessed me with my very own existence of today. I have great pride and only respect for my ancestors. And I salute them! For they were and still are the smallest minority of all races of mankind on earth. But still, they conquered the entire world.
Yes Yes!
Yes, all racial, ethnic, and cultural groups have achievements and in the modern view, atrocities in their histories. And yet only Europeans are generalized into a mega group, ignoring the indigenous diversity, and assigned generational guilt. Only we are expected to denounce our ancestors, histories, and cultures. This modern genocidal virtue isn't applied to the various African nations for their endless crimes against humanity. So celebrate, embrace, and teach the next generation your heritage. The cultural contributions of both christian and pagan Europeans are beautiful and numerous.
@@BaltimoresBerzerker doesnt matter. scandinavians, the norse. the oldest europeans will be gone soon thanks to immigration we are literally being culturally choked and fucked from behind oncea again.
first it was the christians. and now its the muslims.
are we gonna fight back this time or am i gonna have to be ashamed of my people just accepting their fate to? hmm? im not afraid of war if it means im honoring my ancestors lands and home and what they build and what they underwent and overcame.
if you aint ready to fight when it counts i dont give a fuck about your words talking about embracing anything.
its not even about race. its about us being literally raped daily by a specific religious group of people who live here with zero intention of adapting to our culture or ways.
im tired of watching scandinavian fathers bury their daughters after being raped. blackmailed and then killed by some fucking islamic cunt.
if you aint with me your against me and i consider you a traitor who only talk the talk but dont walk it and will be treated as an enemy. im from denmark. i grew up in the ghettos. i know what its like, if you dont wanna believe me just go look and denmark and swedens official statistics on muslims here. if you wanna save our people go join nordfront. nordfront will also reveal to you why germanics are shit on. why it has everything to do with hitler and ww2 and how hitlers massacring in the name of a germanic kingdom for the germanic people made it so we can never ever again want such a thing even if its ideal without all the massacre.
but who knows. the way things look we will keep being raped. killed. and outpopulated or we will have to massacre like hitler once did.
it cant also be fucking right that the only pro germanic movement that ever was was by fucking nazis. we need a new one. a serious one like nordfront who will look deeply at hitlers story in order to prevent it again. the way muslims treat native scandinavians and the governments not caring because they too have muslim influence will just repeat history and recreate another hitler from the oppression of a people who has had enough
@@BaltimoresBerzerker fuck this series and its representation we have much bigger threats to germanic culture and the germanic people
@@magnipettersson4432 I'm not 100% certain of what you're saying, but indeed, we have many grave threats facing Germanic and quite frankly all indigenous European traditions and cultures.
I have 7% Scandinavian/Finland ancestry.this is the only European dna i have can you explain how i got it ? And my surname is Hackworth 4th.
You handled that very well Arith. In English speaking societies, even governments define people by colour. The USA does it, and this is how the British government does it, I quote:
"Asian or Asian British; Includes any Asian background, for example, Bangladeshi, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani or other East or South Asian.
Black, African, Black British or Caribbean Includes any Black background.
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups; Asian and White; Black African and White; Black Caribbean and White; another Mixed background.
White; Includes any White background - British, English, Northern Irish, Scottish, or Welsh;
Irish; Irish Traveller or Gypsy; another White background.
Another ethnic group Includes any other ethnic group, for example, Arab."
So whether I wish to see myself as White, or be seen as such, I am named as such by my country. For myself I only have a choice to define myself as 'British, English...or Welsh' or 'prefer not to say'.
You would be categorised by my government as 'another White background'. It'd be interesting to see how the Portuguese Government 'categorises' people for its database purposes. This may or may not hint at whether or not its colonial past has an impact on the classifications it adopts; my government's classifications I s'pose inevitably are a function of that past. It may argue that there are all these ethnic peoples in the UK as a result of the British Empire and we are in fact categorising them by country. We may reply 'Yes, but why do you feel the need to categorise them like that?' They may say for 'research purposes'. And so on!
ua-cam.com/video/tQdz61k0Txs/v-deo.html
Obviously not. You didn't need to make a 22-minute to answer that. Plus the Norse and Danes did not come into contact with black people they likely had no clue such people existed and visa versa. No historical evidence exists for that. If they had foreign slaves they would have been other Germanics, Slavics, and Celtics, and possibly some Al Andalusian Amazigh and Arabs thats about it. No black viking existed, and no black.slave existed in the region of the Norse and Dane.
There was actually a black samurai named yasuke in the 16th century I believe, why doesn't hollywood make films about him instead. The only way a black person would exist in viking society was as a thrall.
Yes, Yasuke was brought to Japan by the Portuguese as a slave, possibly originally from Mozambique.
It's all woke nonsense. I stopped watching TV years ago.
Every problem today can be tracked to greed.........
Thanks!
Thank you :) be well! :D
Arith, Did Vikings recognize Privateers or did they treat everyone as pirates?.
My absolute favorite video!
That is good to know hehe, thank you.
Native English speaker here. Referring to people with colors feels weird because it is weird. It's normalized where I live but it's indeed weird af! Because, ws you said, we normalize systems of untruth. Thanks for your honest and tactful approach but shit is weird here!!
A lot of people don't like real history they do that face and say history is boring but will argue the toss over dark skinned people having parts in a Shakespearean play 🤣
@Black Lesbian Poet who knows 🙃
The Logic: "Just because there is no proof, scientifically speaking, concerning alien landings on earth at some point in history, doesn't mean we shouldn't put little green men in roles of Vikings in movies. This should guarantee immersion and artistic quality of experience and inclusion of... oh whatever...." Oh let's start naming Somali pirates Vikings, that'll make more sense xD Best Regards Sir
There were no white Zulu's, there were no Mexican samurais and there were no black Vikings.
I really liked this one, I also think it's important to create a clear distinction between what is entertainment and what is education. only comment would be on the final considerations on if this causes harm; I'd say it does cause harm but only because of the frequency at which groups try to "reframe" history to suit their own political worldviews. of course this doesn't cause harm to individuals but even when a historical drama is clearly entertainment the depictions in that entertainment will paint a picture in peoples imagination of what history looked like. this picture can then be used to create a false context for modern political change. this is of course a problem because that context is not based on reality. further this can then lead to a "educational" depiction of history being inaccurate; a real example of this is a BBC teach animation called the story of Britain (ua-cam.com/video/WjuYhBPwaQs/v-deo.html) which is expressly educational but has inaccurate depictions without addressing those inaccuracies. there was another one on the Celts that had similar problems with it's depictions also by BBC teach but I couldn't find the video.
short version: on the whole no, inaccurate historical depictions don't cause harm but when something that is inaccurate is portrayed as accurate then yes that does cause harm.
The vikings culture was black it's the truth
jog on yer peanut, zulus was white dutch boers with charcoal war paint on their faces thats why aficans get mixed up..its the truth...
ua-cam.com/video/tQdz61k0Txs/v-deo.html
@@tommyjohnson6410 Well, for one thing, there wasn't one 'Viking' culture lol. The Norse were different than the Swedes and the Danes. They were related but different and as someone who is descended from Vikings (by that I mean men who went a Viking and settled in the Scottish Isles) I find it rather distasteful you're trying to steal my cultural/ancestral heritage and trying to pass it off as your own.
I thought cultural appropriation was bad? Or is it only 'bad' when a White person does it?
As a side note, if someone wanted to appreciate 'Viking' culture today, I'm all for it as a Germanic Pagan, but to claim its Black is laughable and easy to disprove.
If you're referring to the Irish habit of referring to different Vikings as 'Dark' and 'Fair' foreigners, Dark in this context does not mean Black skinned. It means Black haired (the same goes for when someone is called The Black. Not skin, its talking about their hair colour).
@matthewgordonpettipas6773 Stop it and do some research. There are books by white historians saying the Danes, Celts, Picts, and Saxons were black people. Look up online Orgins of the Anglo-Saxon race. by Thomas William Shore chapter 7 called Our Darker Forefathers. White supremacists change history, so it was you that stole our history. Early Man in Britain by W Boyd Dawkins will tell you the brown skin was all over Europe. Look up online vikings, dna. It telling you the vikings were not white with blonde hair blue eyes. White were the peasant and serfs. All the kings and queens of Europe was black up until the 1800s
As ridiculous as asking "were there European Zulus?" Although I understand why you took the subject on.
From the latest studies Vikings where black Mongolians. 70% Asian and 30% black Germanic tribes and carrying the gene of blue eyes. Viking just mean Pirates so yes anyone can join was there whites yes was there sub saharan African's yes. Was the viking dark skinned yes. The people that currently living in the area only got 10% related to the vikings. The viking image we think of today is from the Nazis from world war 2 trying to recreate the Aryan race theories. And that's why today because of the people that currently live there today we assume that it is correct.
btw, we Scandinavians have known about our Norse and Viking heritage, long before any Nazis co-opted it. Read a book, dude.
This reminds me of a question I've had, but never remember to dig into when I have the opportunity. Michael Crichton's 13th Warrior (and Crichton was in no way an expert), was told from by a Muslim man, a fairly well educated and a dignitary, I want to say Saudi peninsula but don't recall, in.... Norway? I haven't read it in like 20 years. Any way, while the story is all fiction, I always found it weird that they would care about such a remote area... So I'm curious, do you know of any significant trade or interaction between the two areas?
@Black Lesbian Poet So I was wrong, but the Scandinavian peninsula is still close enough for Putin to justify invasion
@@AathielVaDaath The Muslim is (or is based on) Ibn Fadlan. A Muslim scholar that travelt into the land of the Rus and wrote down what he witnessd while beeing among the Northmen.
@@highroller6244 Thanks! Like I said, it's been a while since I have read it. While I generally enjoy Chrichton, up to Timeline, that book just never did it for me so I haven't revisited it.
@Black Lesbian Poet what??
@Black Lesbian Poet wuz they kangz and shiet too?
Great video Arith, I agree I think it’s stupid to label yourself by skin color. So many people are so obsessed with skin color’s it’s pathetic. I’d like to point out that skin color, ethnicity, cultures and religion isn’t a race. Keep up the good work.
Nope.
Surely no other topic brings out the racists like flies to 💩 in the comment section quite like this one. Look at all the little duckers waving their tiny arms in the air so excited to tell on themselves .
I agree with you Arith. We all bleed the same color. Life effects is all and we could navigate it better together if people saw past skin color.
Not the point though is it
The only reason i get annoyed by the OVER-representation is they're using these shows and platform to effectively indoctrinate ppl and/or tell a false slice of history that isn't true, but yes I'm aware the show vikings is practically historical fantasy which doesn't bother me but still you can see their egregious and overt attempts, that's what annoys me
that's why I only get annoyed about documentaries. If you get annoyed about fiction depicting wrongly ethnicities, and think is indoctrination, then you have to admit that hollywood indoctrinated everyone for ages, by showing white guys as arabs, jesus as a blue eyed white dude and essentially creating the "white savior" trope.
Spoken like another thud who has privilege, and done no research on the matter.
Basic human decency is woke.
Woke only has negative connotations to those who value being asleep.
Is not unlike Plato's cave. Those who wake up from the illusion are attacked & disparaged.
Thank you for the video! Yeah it's really weird saying "black and white people"!
Why?
@@OriginalFallofMind it was a year ago, I'd have to rewatch the whole video to remember why I said that xp
Everyone instinctively stereotypes people. It's normal. But you have to be able to step back and be objective and understand that everyone is an individual. That, too, is normal. And there are definitely differences in the racial types of human. It's just a fact. I think we've done ourselves a huge disservice as humans by not taking a mature, dignified study of the different types of humans. Think of the lives it could save or even just improve quality of life. The differences aren't great, but they're real. No race, for lack of a better word, would prove inferior or superior. We're all here because we all survived. Besides, equality should have nothing to do with race. It's a question of humanity.
Only reason time is kept track of here... The interest..... Keep track of the interest you owe..........
the vikings series should have been on the sci-fi channel , cringe all day long😕
Danites were moors
No
I would say that you are wrong. Yes, those are fiction, but the reason they are doing this is because they do want us to believe that in reality, not only fiction, those characters exist.
Assassin's Creed Vahalla is crap too. I can't comment on why I don't like it, because Google/UA-cam will suspend me and delete my comment.
I think it's a question of authenticity. Even in outright fantasy, making a world feel authentic requires evoking verismilitude - the feeling that things are true in a particular time and place. The Starbucks cup in GoT was obviously a minor mistake, but if every character started drinking from Starbucks cups, then it ruins the verismilitude and makes the setting less believable. Likewise, if I saw a Qing Dynasty pagoda in medieval Norway, it wouldn't be believable. Obviously the Vikings series is not meant to be historically _accurate_ , but it ought to be a spiritually _authentic_ portrayal of medieval Scandinavia.
The reason this matters so much is because there are many political radicals who believe that the descendants of colonial Europeans (including themselves) should be punished for the actions of their ancestors. They are actively trying to rewrite history, bury culture, crush spirits and destroy Europe. And I say this as a very mixed-race American with an outgroup preference. I find the world's cultures beautiful, and I want to see their art and aesthetics represented authentically in media.
If someone is black and wants to be a Norse pagan today? Then skål, and welcome to the flock! But if someone is just resentful and trying to colonize culture, then that's not healthy for anyone involved.
Addendum: Verismilitude depends on the setting as well. If the story takes place in some kind of wild magic spacetime vortex that's blended chunks of the world together, then a pagoda next door to a temple and down the street from a cathedral, then by all means, that will actively assist in establishing your setting.
How To Train Your Dragon clearly takes place in fantasy medieval Scandinavia with western dragons. If they suddenly had eastern dragons, that would be weird. But if some eastern foreigners rode into town on lung dragons, that'd be cool as hell.
We've been slaves for 25 thousand years........
This is an admirable way to dissect this topic using factual history and the reality behind integrating ethnic people's into fantasy shows and movies for inclusion.
Shut the hell up, nigga
It’s not a fantasy show like game of thrones though they base the show on reality and fill in the blanks
How do you know that?
Google says yes. Weird. It even lost names of who.
I'd like to know why it's different to list people by race than it is to list dogs by race/breed. Not being "mean", but there is a difference in human types, and it can't be offensive to name them.
We can't see if a 'white' is English, French, Swiss, etc., but we they're pale skinned or dark skinned. We naturally describe people as we descern them, differentiating one from the other.
I'm much more upset over a female Haakon Jarl, coloured at that. Or all the historically verified truths being distorted in "Vikings".
Since everybody seems to want to be offended by everything, I'm seriously fed up with all this pussyfooting around facts at every turn.
Ask yourself these questions:
1) Can a white woman give birth to a black child?
2) Can a black woman give birth to a white child?
If your answer for both questions was not the same, then some part of you realizes racial terms such as "white" and "black" aren't actually about European or African ancestry.
These terms did not emerge due to a need to categorize different categories of humans like dog breeds... We already have hundreds of words which accomplish this such as "Brit", "Nigerian", "German", "Serbian", "Croat", "Turk", "Kazakh", etc. The reason why racial terms like "white" or "black" exist is purely political.
Now... If your answer for the initial two questions was the same, ask yourself: "Is that how most people would respond?"
@@Sergio-nb4hj Like I said, I cannot see a person's nationality. I can see skintone.
Yes, a white woman can have a brown child, if the father is black. And vice versa. That doesn't change my point.
There are white people in Africa. Black in Europe. But ...
Do YOU see their nationality?
THAT was my main question.
If you want to split hairs and go off on a tangent, that's on you.