Vikings and Capitalism?
Watch a 10-minute film on why modern business people like to compare themselves to their vision of the Vikings.
Our modern capitalistic ways seem a far cry from the Viking period, but there are lots of comparisons made between the two. Why do modern business people like comparing themselves to Vikings? Why are people in general so keen to appropriate Viking characteristics? - Or what they perceive to be Viking characteristics? And how much do we know about the Viking period anyway?
Film
Watch a 10-minute film where editor of nordics.info Nicola Witcombe interviews historian Richard Cole from Aarhus University in Denmark. Both English and Danish subtitles are available for this film.
Listen to a full podcast @KnowledgeOnTheNordics: Podcast: The Vikings and Capitalism
Further reading:
- Alaric Hall, Útrásarvíkingar: The Literature of the Icelandic Financial Crisis (2008-2014) (NY: Punctum, 2020).
- Caitlin Ellis, ”Remembering the Vikings: Violence, institutional memory and the instruments of history”, History Compass (2020).
- Judith Jesch, The Viking Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2015).
Links:
- Chris Shern and Henrik Jeberg, Return of the Vikings: Nordic Leadership in Times of Extreme Change (Pædagogik Forlag, 2018).
- Rosalie and Murray Wax, ‘The Vikings and the Rise of Capitalism’, American Journal of Sociology 61,1 (1955) pp. 1-10.
- Steve Strid and Claes Andréasson, The Viking Manifesto: The Scandinavian Approach to Business and Blasphemy (Marshall Cavendish Limited, 2008).
