This illustration of Viking Varangian troops near Moscow is from the chronicle of Skylitzis, he was a Greek historian, dead c. 1100
A Description of the Black Vikings of Europe By Renowned European Writers – Compiled By- Invasion2012
“blá-maðr, m. A BLACK MAN, NEGRO, i.e. AN ETHIOPIAN, Al. 51, Orkn. 364 (referring to A.D. 1152), distinguished from the Saracens and Arabians; three ‘blámenn’ were sent as a present to the German emperor Frederic the Second, Fms. x. 3: in romances blámenn are mentioned as A KIND OF ‘BERSERKERS,’” q.v., Finnb. ch. 16, Kjalnes. S. ch. 15; cp. Scott’s Ivanhoe, note B. See AN ICELANDIC-ENGLISH DICTIONARY by Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson(1874)
“The Irish annalists were a lesson to all with their division of Norse invaders into White Foreigners, Norwegians(Finn-gaill), and Black Foreigners, Danes(Dubh-gaill), but it was a lesson no one heeded; nor do we know why they distinguished them by colour.” See A HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS by Gwyn Jones(1968)
“The Welsh chroniclers, for example, made no such clear distinction. The Danes coming in by way of England and the Norwegians by way of Ireland were pretty well all black: Black Gentiles(y Kenedloed Duon), Black Norsemen(y Normanyeit Duon), Black Host, Pagans, Devils and the like.”(CONT.) See A HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS by Gwyn Jones(1968)
“Prince of Maine Mor(moor) was accompanied by his father Eochaidh, and his two sons Breasal and Amlaff.” Eochaid mac Run, known in English simply as Eochaid, was king of the Picts from 878 to 889 He was a son of Run, King of Strathclyde, and his mother was the daughter of Kenneth MacAlpin (NIGER VAL DUBH)
“There are turning hither to our shore lithe keels, ring-stags [ships] with long sail-yards, many shields, shaven oars, A NOBLE SEA-LEVY, MERRY WARRIORS. Fifteen companies are coming ashore, but out in Sogn there lie seven thousand more. There lie here in the dock off Cliff-holt surf-deer [ships] SWART-BLACK and GOLD ADORNED. There is by far the most of their host.” Helge Lay, i. 197-206.” See SCANDINAVIAN BRITAIN by William Gershom Collingwood(1908)
“There was a man hight Thorvard; he married Freydis, a natural daughter of Erik the Red; he went [219] also with them, and Thorvald the son of Erik (100), and THORHALL who was called the hunter; he had long been with Erik, and served him as huntsman in summer and steward in winter; he was a large man, and strong, BLACK AND LIKE A GIANT, silent and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Erik to the worst” See SAGA OF THORFINN KARLSEFNI.
“According to Egils Saga, of the 2 famous sons of Kveldulf, Thorolf was tall and handsome like his mothers people, but Grim took after his father was black and ugly. Grim’s sons Thorolf and Egill, born out in Iceland, repeated the pattern- Thorolf was the image of his uncle, tall, handsome and sunny-natured, and many Egill was black, even uglier than his father, totuous and incalculable,…..etc. craggy head, broad nose, heavy jaw and swart visage.” See A HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS, GWYN JONES pg 86
“The evidence indicates that Blacks in ancient times came to Britian from Spain, Felix Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, West Africa, India, Persia and what is today named Denmark. These Negroes were builders, scientists, masters of ocean travel and inventors of letters, according to Higgins, they built Stonehende, Gerald Massey agrees pg 11 Book of The Beginnings.” See Ancient and Modern Britons- MacRitchie pg 2
“The Danes, then were like the ‘MOORs’ -black. Like them, too, they were Picts, as more than one eminent writer has proved. The title of’GROM’ (WOAD-STAINED) is not confined to Highland genealogies, it was the actual name of a grim old pagan Dane who ruled over Denmark,(it meant daub).” See page 121, -David MacRitchie- Ancient and Modern Britons: Volume One (Ancient & Modern Britons)
DUBH, BLACK,SWARTHY,SWARTI
“in romances blámenn are mentioned as A KIND OF ‘BERSERKERS,”
Yes, and in those same ‘romances’, “blamenn” (BLUE men, not BLACK men) fight alongside BERSERERS, TROLLS and DWARVES.
I won’t insult your intelligence by giving you the link between those last three groups, but I’ll give you a hint – myths/legends/folklore!
“nor do we know why they distinguished them by colour.”
Even an eminent Norse scholar such as Mr. Jones doesn’t know why the Irish referred to Norse invaders as WHITE and BLACK foreigners, so what twisted arrogance makes the author of this nonsense believe that it refers to sub-Saharan Africans, or peoples appearing as such?
“He was a son of Run, King of Strathclyde, and his mother was the daughter of Kenneth MacAlpin (NIGER VAL DUBH)”
“DOUGALL (Generally Mac-Dougall): Gael. dhu, black, and gall, a stranger – an expression used by the CELTIC INHABITANTS OF SCOTLAND to DENOTE A LOWLANDER, or ANY ONE NOT OF THEIR OWN RACE. It is still in use as a baptismal name” – Page 93 (“Dou- to Dow-“), “Patronymica Britannica: A Dictionary of the Family Names of the United Kingdom” by Mark Antony Lower, 1860
“There lie here in the dock off Cliff-holt surf-deer [ships] SWART-BLACK and GOLD ADORNED. There is by far the most of their host.”
I’m at a loss to see how “pitch-black, gold-decorated” ships somehow means that the Vikings were black too:
Considering that I drive a silver-coloured car, could you please help me identify which Ethnicity box to tick in the next census?
“he was a large man, and strong, BLACK AND LIKE A GIANT, silent and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Erik to the worst”
1. It’s amazing that “Afro”centrists haven’t picked this one up, but has anyone else noticed the COMPLETE LACK OF CONTEXT?
2. The Norse called dark-skinned persons BLAMENN, or BLUE-MEN, and didn’t use SVART or BLACK to describe them.
3. A person described as BLACK serves in the crew of Erik THE RED…hmmm, where have I seen those colours before in the context of northern Europeans (Hint: Look at what’s on TOP OF THE HEAD)
“According to Egils Saga, of the 2 famous sons of Kveldulf, Thorolf was tall and handsome like his mothers people, but Grim took after his father was black and ugly.”
“GRIM was then twenty-five years old, and was now bald, wherefore he was henceforth called SKALLAGRIM” – Chapter 20 (“Of Kveldulf and his Sons”), “Egil’s Saga” (“Egla”) by Snorri Sturluson (?), c.a. 1220-1240 C.E. (translation courtesy of W.C. Green, 1893)
“Then SKALLAGRIM and his wife had yet another son. He was sprinkled with water and named, and his name was EGIL. But as he grew up it was soon seen that he would be ILL-FAVOURED, like HIS FATHER, with BLACK HAIR” – Chapter 31 (“Of Kveldulf and his Sons”), “Egil’s Saga” (“Egla”) by Snorri Sturluson (?), c.a. 1220-1240 C.E. (translation courtesy of W.C. Green, 1893)
“Gerald Massey agrees pg 11 Book of The Beginnings.”
Gerlad Massey also believed that every language on Earth was traceable in some form to ancient Egyptian.
While ‘bla’ does mean blue in Older Scots and Northern Middle English, it can also be used for dark or black in Old Norse. It was also used to refer to Africans, as the following extract from the DSL (Older Scots dictionary which provides meanings for the other languages for etymylogical information) shows:
DSL – DOST Bla, Blae, a. and n. Also: blaa, blaw, blay, blea, bleaie, ble. [Northern ME. bla, blaa (midl. and southern blo, bloo), ON. blá-r (dark) blue, livid, black.]
4. Black. Bla man, a negro.
So ME. blamon, blomon, -man, ON. blámann-. In Ethiope, that is the land of bla men; Asl. MS. I. 155/27. In Ynd is … men of bla colour; Ib. 158/24. Of Cam [come] churllis and foull pepill as bla men; Ib. 309/6.
Thay were black because when ever white people steal a culture it’s because they wasn’t really those people white people only been on earth 6,000 years there no history that white people didn’t create or pervert
According to old Norse Saga Danish raiders of Irish attacked Spain the Spain and Mauritania written in the 900s about the “Mauri” . From the latter place they ‘carried off a great host of them as captives to Erin and these are the blue men of Ireland (fir goma of Erin) for Mauri is the same as black man, and Mauritanias is the same as blackness…Long indeed were these blue men in Erin.'” Jack D. Forbes, Black Africans and Native Americans (new York : Basil Blackwell, 1988),p. 68. Another transalation says “because the Moors are the same as negroes; mauretanis is the same as negro-land.”
Excuse me but this is just utter nonsense.
“Mòr” in Gaelic doesn’t mean Moor it means big or great, as simple as that. “Dubh” in Gaelic does mean black but in Scotland where many people of the same clan or family who live in the same area and have the same surname and Christian name they use their (hair) colouring or physical charactaristics or occupation or father’s or mother’s name or even nicknames to tell the difference when they address each other. I remember as a boy myself and my younger brother walked into a beer-tent full of Scottish soldiers with our father and an old army friend of his at the far end of the bar saw us and shouted, “Jimmy!”, to attract my old man’s attention. With this roar of “Jimmy” more than half of the men in the busy tent turned around thinking someone was talking to them. For this reason they use nicknames, especially ones to do with someones hair colour. Any Highlander called, for example, “Iain Dubh” or “Black John” is called so for his black hair not his black skin. “Daoine dubh”, literally black people, is now used for Africans and people of African although “gorm” or blue was also apparently used. A swarthy or tanned skinned person would be “Ciar” which is one of the Gaelic words for dark as in “ciaradh na h-oidhche”, the darkening of the night, a Gaelic way of saying dusk. “Dubh” is also, like “dearg” which means blood-red, used to add more force to a statement, usually in a negative manner. “Dearg amadan”, literally a red fool, means a complete and utter fool. “Dubh-gall” means an real, (Highlander-hating), Lowlander. Apart from perhaps soldiers in the Roman army I very much doubt there were many black Africans in the British Isles before the time of the transatlantic slave traid and the kings of and nobles of Scotland certainly weren’t black for in the the translation of the Albanic Duan, the oldest record of the ethnological traditions of Scotland, we read the first lines:
“O, all ye learned of Scotland,
Ye well-skilled host of yellow hair…”
Let the truth be told. One thing is to be proud of your roots as everyone should be another is to fabricate fables that are clearly lies. Before anyone accuses me of being racist let me just say as a Scot in exile I can say as well as listening to pipe music when I’m homesick I also listen to Bob Marley as that’s all I heard at home as a kid. My father had been a while in Jamaica with the army when the Wailers were first kicking off and he came home with a passion for reggae and Jamaican culture. I myself am a blond-haired, red-bearded, blue-eyed Jock ( and a Traveller, or “Tinker” if you like, from a people who were also deported to the Americas as slaves) and my wife is a hazel-eyed, Brazilian “mulata” and we honour and respect each others backgrounds. We have a beautiful daughter with greeny-blue eyes and silky, dark-blonde, wavy hair and tanned skin. With us there’s no racial issue and I will make sure our daughter, and other children if God gives us more, know about and are proud of their hertiage and ancestors from both sides but I won’t teach them lies, especially ones that try to make one “race” (there’s only one race but we have different ethnic groups) out to be better than another.
Santiago
While I respect your Scottish roots, it is a fact that the history of the world and the interaction of peoples and culture is only half told. Here on Rasta Livewire we tell you the half never been told.
Mohr in Gaelic means great, big, or lord. The root meaning of the word Moor in Europe means Lord, Nobility and Navigator. When you read Shakespares work on Othello you will notice that Othello is addressed as the Noble Moor. Because the Moors were long the original aborigines of southern Europe (since about 1000 BC when the Egyptian and the Phoenician Sudanic peoples began establishing colonies in Europe). The Mohrs were further supplemented by Mauritanian and Numidian Soldiers who manned the Roman forts of Briatain. Those later became the governing class of the land with the disintegration of Roman Empire because they were already the ruling nobilites and horse men (Knights) of western Europe.
The first King of Scotland was Fergus Mor. Lord Fergus or the Great Moor Fergus. He claims his descent from Phoenician part of Greek through Spain. His wife was supposedly an Egyptian Princess. You may want to check your history again and read between lines this time.
The differentiation of the colour was due to skin colour differences and not hair colour. Those who make a leap to hair colour as a basis of differentiation forget that no such pattern of speech exist in any living language or culture today. neither in America, Europe or Asia or Africa of today is anyone called “black” because of the colour of his “hair.” People of today in all speech and language use “black” in the context of describing any human being, only with reference to skin colour. So it is lame to make those kinds of over-simplification of complex historical narratives.
You even admitted to the presence of African soldiers of the Roman Army that were stationed in Britain. Well perhaps you need to spend more time researching who they were and who they later became before having the temerity to accuse persons who have devoted time to this subject as liars.
The truth is that you speak from ignorance. The glare of light sometimes hurts the eyes of those those emerging from the dark caves of half-learning. Yet, with a little time spent in light adjustment to reality occurs.
We advise you take more time to peruse the other articles in Rasta-Livewire, to see how the codes are cracked and the dots connected. You will feel the force of the revelations and you can judge for your self and for the sake of your children who I am sure you dearly love.
Jahdey
Moor comes from the Roman word Maureno, which means dark-skinned. It doesn’t refer to blacks, it refers to Berbers. Blacks were Ethiopians.
In Gwyn Jones’ book the History of the Vikings, please see page 26 second paragraph, “Yet it was the Danes, the same race as the Swedes who claimed preeminence in this respect.” See also the work “Scandza” by Roman historian Jordanes who describes the peoples of Scandinavia as a “womb of nations”. Also, he describes the Danes as the same stock as the Swedes. There has NEVER been found an ancient Negroid skeleton from Denmark, and yet the multitude of evidence proves that today’s Danes are the same Danes that existed from the beginning in Denmark.
“MacRitchie (a very well educated and wise scottish man who had done his research well – Jahdey’s edits), adds that ‘the legends and the history of the Scottish highlands are both witnesses to the existence of a purely black people there.’ Boswell and Dr. Johnson saw descendants of these black people when they visited Scotland. In his “Journey to the Hebrides, September 1, 1773, Boswell wrote of one clan, the McCraes, ’some were as black and wild in their appearance as any American savages, whatsoever.’ Martin who had visited these Western Islands eighty years before Boswell said of the people of Jura, “black of complexion ,’ of Islay, ‘generally black’. and of Arran, ‘generally brown and some of a black complexion. ”
Im swedish… Please study our history before opening your mouth and spewing this garbage. ALL the kings had pale white skin here, always has, there are numerous paintings, stories and whatnot here in sweden that was actually written/painted back then. Not now; almost 1.5 thousand years after.
Asuede
You are arguing with intelligent pale white skin people. It it them who claimed that Danish Kings were Moorish in nationality and black in complexion. Well educated pale white skin people like:
Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson(1874)
A HISTORY OF THE VIKINGS by Gwyn Jones(1968)
SCANDINAVIAN BRITAIN by William Gershom Collingwood(1908)
You Suede can barely write or spell well. I know therefore you are not worthy to untie the shoe that those authors wore. You have no standing to even begin to challenge their authority.
Jahdey
Sweden as a country has one of the best education systems in the world, and one of the highest literacy rates. The fact that this person can’t perfectly spell in English does not denote stupidity or lack of knowledge of the subject being discussed, merely the lack of fluency in English. To judge his argument as invalid on that basis is purely racist. While I agree that he is misinformed, look at your last comment; “You Suede can barely write or spell well. I know therefore you are not worthy to untie the shoe that those authors wore. You have no standing to even begin to challenge their authority.”
That is a personal attack against his capacity not with history but with language, and your own comment contains errors. He is not a fabric (suede) but a Swede, a person of Swedish origin. And “You Suede can barely write or spell well” is a syntactically incorrect sentence.
Do not push him down for not writing perfect English when you do not do so either.
There could well be a point to his argument, and in fact, there is nothing to prove that black Vikings existed in Sweden and especially not that any king of Sweden has been black. There is more to suggest that these black Vikings were in fact Danish.
When researching you do not get to choose which aspects of research to consider, and you can’t disregard one piece of information simply because it conflicts with another. That is not how research works.
Solo,
You forgot the rest of your commas. Besides writing perfect English, we must not forget our punctuation. Peace…
I came here lookng for sources of Vikings V.S Blacks in African and in Moorish Spain and I get Non-sense of Black Vikings. LOL, There are Arabaic as well as Greek, and Roman accounts that describe the Vikings and their people as tall, blond, blue eyed and pale skinned. Stop trying to steal the viking culture Its Not African, How can the Vikings be blak when their decendants the Scots, Irish, and the Danes are the Palest people on Earth and have the highest occurances of Red Hair and Blond Hair.
Oh, and Im black by the way so don’t come at me with a bunch of b.s..
Umm.. No Moor derives from the Greek word “Mavrus” which referred to people of dark or nearly black complexion. The Dutch moor referred to a very dark color, so that the color of coal was compared with that of a moor. Also it was said ‘scijnt swaert ghelike den more’, (he is as black as a moor).
The spread of the Maurus to the north can be seen in Scotland where, in 1504-05, several references to ‘More lasses’ (Moor lassies) are found. At that time a child was born, referred to as ‘Moris barne’ (a maurus born). Late in 1512-13, one finds ‘Elen More’ and Blak Elene’ used (one assumes interchangeably. By 1527 ‘Helenor, the black moir’ is referred to, while in 1567-09 there are references to ‘Nageir the More.’
(ref. Africans and Native Americans: the Languages of Race and the Evolu…. by Jack D. Forbes)
Furthermore, the name “Berber” is a derogatory term applied to those people by the Romans (i.e. from the Latin ‘barbarian’) . The “Berber” language is an Afro-Asiatic language and is similar to ancient Kemite. (ref. Brett 1981:100; Bullard 2001: 184.)
While the MODERN Berbers in the northern areas of the Mediterranean coast are fairly light skinned, the Tuaregs, a Berber group who live further south are darker in complexion. The probably ancestors of the Tuaregs were a Berber tribe that the literature of the Greco-Roman period refers to as the Garamantes (Picard and Picard 1968:92).
Snowden (1970: 112) notes that some of the classical writers called the Garamantes people ‘Ethiopians’. Likewise the Roman literatures also refers to the Berber Nasamones as a tribe of Ethiopians, other Berber tribes were also described in these terms. The Berber Asphodelodes were said to resemble Ethiopians, and the Berber Gaetulians were called ‘the Black Gaetulians’ (Melanogaetuli), indicating dark or blackish complexion (L.Thompson 1989: 62).
At the end of the 3rd century BC Hannibal led an army of Carthiginians and allies – including many Berber tribes , such as the Numidians – in an invasion of Italy (L. Thompson: 1989: 59)