Decapitated bodies found in Dorset burial pit were executed Vikings - mirror.co.uk

**Woodsheal** · 18th March 10, 02:18 PM

I always thought "Viking" should be presented with a a small "v", representing an activity or "avocation", i.e. some Northmen were vikings the same way that some Englishmen were pirates. Heading out "in viking" represented a raiding expedition carried on by only a minority of the so-called "Vikings." Calling an entire culture "Vikings" is like calling one "Soldiers," or "Dairy Farmers"....

**NewGuise** · 18th March 10, 02:55 PM

Originally Posted by Woodsheal

I always thought "Viking" should be presented with a a small "v", representing an activity or "avocation.

Yep. Until it disappeared from use in Middle English it was often used as a verb; writers in the C19 revived the term as a capitalized noun (and so apparently a proper noun) with a romanticized image.

**tulloch** · 18th March 10, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by Woodsheal

I always thought "Viking" should be presented with a a small "v", representing an activity or "avocation", i.e. some Northmen were vikings the same way that some Englishmen were pirates. Heading out "in viking" represented a raiding expedition carried on by only a minority of the so-called "Vikings." Calling an entire culture "Vikings" is like calling one "Soldiers," or "Dairy Farmers"....

I understand that my ancestors may have been immigrants from the North to Scotland. Lots of the Islands and Highlands have Norse blood. I have read that Ross comes from one of the Norse languages and that any location with the suffix "shire" in it is of Norse origin. The world they inhabited and the pressures that led them to travel are very interesting. There is Norse, Danish, Pictish, Gallic blood all through the land and culture of the Highlands. Whether they came as marauders or as farmers and traders their story must be an interesting one.

Thomas de Tulloch, I think Bishop of Ross, actually worked a little magic getting Orkney returned to Scotland from Denmark in the fifteenth century.

**Lallans** · 19th March 10, 06:05 AM

Vikings, when used as a proper noun, should surely be capitalized? In Canadian grade school history books the V word was carefully banned (strangely, since this was 'way before PC and of course eliminating the 'Vikings' and substituting something apparently nonsensical that we had never heard of meant that all of us sixth grader boys immediately lost interest)... Anyway, in our texts they were called Northmen- but not 'northmen'.

**Galician** · 19th March 10, 06:32 AM

Well, Northmen would be historically correctly, as a derivative of Norsemen (both being proper adjectival forms). I was taught that this would be the origin of the term Norman, hence the region of France called Normandy, which was settled by them.

**Lachlan09** · 21st March 10, 05:14 AM

Personally, I think they were Dorsetian locals who unwisely laughed at a group of kilted Glaswegian lads on their way back from a Glesga Ferr holiday in *Newquay, Cornwall.

*Newquay was popular with young Glaswegian lads, because of the railway line access, the exotic qualities of local beer and cider and the popular Glasgow advertising campaign "Newquay For Nookie !".

My brother and I, driving to the Cornish Riviera from the Edinburgh side, formed our own 1976 holiday slogan which we put on a disc on his MGB GT's windscreen (a green apple with two bites out of it) and the motto "Scrumpy Pumpy '76"

**Lachlan09** · 21st March 10, 06:47 AM

In the end though, we got a late invite to go to stay with a lady-friend of his and her friends in North Wales, so we went there instead.

I couldn’t be bothered changing the motto to "Barley Wine Pumpy ‘76" , so we kept the original one. Not surprisingly, they didn’t understand it in North Wales and thought it a bit weird and silly.