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24 May 2009 Someone recently posted on the
Internet a podcast about a “forgotten campaign” the
Vikings conducted in Chechnya during the eleventh
century. There were mentions of a runic chronicle
inscribed by the warrior Aki, of a leader named Sordzh,
and many other details, including Viking burial
grounds that had allegedly been discovered in
Chechnya. The horde that set off for the North
Caucasus was said to have numbered some 15,000
warriors. According to the podcast's author, they were
all cut down by the brave ancestors of the Chechens
and the Ingush.
Of course, no references to an Aki clan, a leader
named Sordzh or a forgotten campaign are to be found
in the scholarly literature, and the whole story looks
like a tasteless hoax. Traces of an event of that
magnitude would have remained in the historical
sources, and in folk memory.
However, if something of the kind did take place – and
we are entitled to that hypothesis, for the Vikings'
energy knew no bounds, and they reached North America
– it might have been because they believed that the
Caucasus was the site of the city of Asgard, the city
of the gods, and because Odin had commanded them to
make an expedition to his sacred land. It would not
have been an army of 15,000 men, of course, but some
kind of migration might have taken place, and is
indeed possible and even likely. And the fact of their
disappearance in the Caucasus would have been quite
logical. They were assimilated.
The Vikings did not aim to conquer the Chechens. They
became Chechens. Just as they became Russians in Rus,
and Frenchmen in France. For history contains no
evidence of any large-scale battles or bloody war in
the North Caucasus between the local tribes and the
Viking horde.
This feature of the Viking campaigns has received
little attention in traditional historiography. In the
European chronicles the Norsemen are presented as mere
savages and ruthless terminators. From those writings
one has the impression that the reason for the success
of the Vikings. who conquered almost half of the
inhabited world, lay solely in their fighting prowess
and limitless cruelty. But that is not the case.
History knows many examples of infinite cruelty, but
for the terminators themselves such episodes have
always ended in tears.
The main reason for the geopolitical dominance of the
Vikings in the early Middle Ages is thought to have
resided in their willingness to assimilate, in their
openness to new influences and in a certain
paradoxical respect for the culture of the peoples
they had subjugated.
History, of course, teaches nothing. But it is
possible to draw conclusions: a successful military
conquest is never built on the crushing and
annihilation of another culture, but always, in one
way or another, on an acceptance of it and an
inclusion of it within one’s own.
The Russians proved to be the most adept followers of
the Vikings in the history of warfare. When the Tatars
conquered Rus, they did not become Russians. Instead,
every Russian became a little bit of a Tatar. And the
Horde passed into oblivion, while Russia remained.
Having destroyed Napoleon’s armies, the Russians went
to Paris and came back thoroughly Frenchified. They
even tried to organize an imitation of the French
Revolution in St. Petersburg, though it didn’t work
out, of course.
And although the French were defeated, they didn’t
become Russians, either. The only souvenir left behind
by the Ulans and the Cossacks was the French word
“bistro” – the Russian soldiers could not understand
why the waiters in the restaurants served them so
slowly, with European dignity. Seeing them as a
foreign counterpart of their “servitors” at home, they
shouted “quickly, quickly!” Special fast-food outlets
were created specially for the Russians, and were
called bistros, for the French language does not have
the letter “?”. And later came the McDonalds, for
which we
ourselves are to blame.
Having crushed the German war machine in World War II,
the peoples of the Soviet Union once again wandered
across Europe. But this time the influence of German
culture went no further than an aesthetic admiration
for the black uniforms of the SS officers. And that
war was Russia’s last victory.
One can make a joke of it: the swiftest and surest way
for Russia finally and forever to defeat Chechnya
would be to adopt Sharia law in place of the Russian
Constitution and the Chechen Adats in place of the
Civil Code, and to introduce Chechen as the official
language throughout the country.
But if we are more serious, we can see that now –
right now, alas – just as they were centuries and
millennia ago, in addition to everything else, wars
are a special means of inter-ethnic communication and
cultural contact. They are the quickest and most
effective way in which the elements of another culture
can enter people’s consciousness and lives.
And the final historic victory goes not to those who
kill more people of another nation and have the
heavier cannon, but to those who make the best use of
the opportunity for contact between different
civilizations, and who carry out a cultural synthesis.
EsinIslam.Com
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