In early May, the white supremacist Jeremy Christian--accused of killing two men Friday in Portland, Ore.--posted on Facebook, "Hail Vinland!!! Hail Victory!!!" "Victory" makes sense. Bigots feel empowered these days. But why "Vinland?" Why was this accused attacker talking about the short-lived Viking settlement in North America?
It turns out that white supremacy has gone fully medieval.
As the current contests over Confederate monuments exemplifies, Americans are accustomed to contested narratives about race and history fixating on the American South. Some of the nation's most dangerous terrorists, though, are looking much, much farther north. Vinland was the name that a group of 10th-century Vikings, led by Leif Erikson, gave to a grapevine-rich island off what we believe is the coast of North America. For white supremacists, the concept of Vinland asserts a historical claim over North America. They use the myth of Vinland to position themselves as righteous defenders in the wars of race and religion they believe are coming.
The colonization of Vinland was pretty much a disaster, but it did happen. There's archaeological evidence for a Viking presence in North America. Two surviving sagas recount the voyages. Erikson found an island, named it Vinland and went home with timber. Later expeditions failed, though a few survivors made it home to tell the tale. So much for Vinland.
Stories of the Vikings, both in Scandinavia and in North America, have long contained the potential to feed inventions of an imaginary racist past. European racists have long wanted to believe in a pure white, hermetically sealed Middle Ages. Today, anti-refugee protesters in Europe dress up as Vikings and Crusaders. North American hate groups invoke the Norse god Odin and Vinland.
But even the Vikings of Europe did not exist in pure white racial isolation. The Vikings, or rather the conglomeration of Scandinavian peoples we've come to call Vikings, conquered and colonized where they found weak powers in the disorganized west of Europe. To the east, they also tapped into rich multicultural trading networks--fighting when useful, but delighted to engage in economic and cultural exchange with great powers of Eurasia. That included the Jews of Khazaria, Christians dedicated to both Rome and Constantinople, and Muslims of every sect and ethnicity.
In fact, the whole notion of a pure white medieval Europe, so important to white supremacists today, is false. The fixation on skin color is largely a modern phenomenon, alien to a Europe dependent on a Mediterranean world composed of people with varying shades of brown skin. It's not that medievals lacked prejudice or hate, but our hang-ups and divisions were not theirs.
History has never just been the past. As a historian, I study the way that groups have always tried to assert control over their story, seeking to mold legend, myth and reality into a useful narrative about identity and destiny. Stories like this have power, and we'd be foolish to ignore the threat.
As we mourn the martyrs in Portland, care for the wounded and support the women who were initially targeted, we shouldn't ignore the danger that racist appropriation of the medieval past presents. American white supremacists want to make Vinland great again. We must inoculate ourselves against this hate by telling a better story, one that recognizes the many errors of our past, but also lays out a vision for a more inclusive future.
Editorial on 06/02/2017