Week 9 Blog: Where are the Dark Ages

I have always thought of medieval Europe as what was referred to as the dark ages. The first part of this weeks reading really changed my mind about this. To think that these people actually underwent an intellectual Renaissance was a bit of a paradigm shift for me. I was taken back that this relatively new religion (Christianity) was already undergoing such refining acts. The people took the "rules" for ritcheous living and realized that nobody was going to go to heaven--so they changed the rules. Thinking about how the justice system was based on theological views makes sense to me, but I can also see why the people thought that this was a bad thing--it was too tough. I was also surprised to see such an interest in academics. These motivations for learning were not things that I thought the people of this time period had. Maybe I am wrong in thinking that this was the Dark Ages at all. Can anyone speculate for me?

Wikipedia Article Analysis #2

Based on some interest that I had during the readings for this week, I chose to search “Viking” for this assignment. I was a little disappointed to find that we don’t really know very much about the Vikings. The article was however, enlightening to some degree. Beginning with a brief definition of Viking, the article quickly delves into the subject of etymology. The main point of this section is that Viking originates from a verb—to go viking. It wasn’t until much later that people referred to the Norse as Vikings. The next major section’s theme is “the Viking Age.” Within the time period of 790 to 1066 the Viking Age represents the Norse’s mobility by sea to the surrounding areas. The article then goes on the explain that much of what we know about the Vikings comes from very biased Christian writings, and also from archeological findings such as rune stones. The last part of the article is focused on dismissing common misconceptions about the Vikings—such as their horned hats and that they were unclean.

Listed Criteria:
1.) The article is 6,293 words long.
2.) The exact search term was “Viking.” The article title is “Viking.”
3.) Two main disambiguation entries appear: “Viking Age” and “Varangian.”
4.) The Discussion link seems to be full of suggested corrections and areas of the article that need to be improved—mostly places that require more citations.
5.) The history page has been quite active. There are over 500 changes made to the original article. The first change occurred on October 13, 2003. The last change was made on October 12, 2008.
6.) There are six external links provided.
7.) There are five references.
8.) Under further reading there is nothing listed.

The article was good is some senses and lacked information in others. For reasons of being good, the article did have a lot of information and helped to dispel many of the Viking misconceptions. In the light of being bad, I felt that the article didn’t really teach anything about who the Vikings really were—culturally. This, as it turns out, was simply a result of this knowledge not really existing.

Week 8 Blog: Vikings

Reading about the vikings was interesting to me becuase I had never really given them much thought. The only thing that I new about the vikings was basically how they are portrayed in cartoons and film--none of which is even hardly accurate as it turns out. The vikings were much like pirates, only they pillaged the land rather than ships--though they probably did this too. I wonder how they thought this was ethical. Maybe they didn't really think about ethics, or maybe in some way they felt justified. I'll be researching this more as I have chosen to write up my Wikipedia analysis on the subject. It seemed like an entire culture based on thievery. I can understand why many people didn't really fight them back, they couldn't. But it was bizarre to think that, in some situations at least, they vikings actually stayed and lived in the villages with the people they had just pillaged. That would be hard for me to tolerate--even if there was nothing I could do. How maniacal they were to so methodologically terrorize the countries. They optimized how to squeeze every penny from the towns, for example they didn't kill or destroy villages completely--that way they could come back later and do it again. This was especially true with monasteries. One last thing that was hard for me to wrap my mind around was the small ships that they sailed on. How uncomfortable it must have been to bare the sea in such a cramped, uncovered space.

Week 7 Blog: The Popes take Authority

I enjoyed reading about how the Popes try to take the power from the rulers. Based on how interpretation of Christ's words is so open to any translation, it makes sense that everyone thought differently about who had the real power. The idea that popes could create and depose of emporers was quite a leap from what the Bishops of Rome were supposed to do. It makes sense though, with the rise in interest of Christianity, it seems appropriate that their religous leaders would also be the secular powers. The power struggles that ensued between religion and state were more detrimental than those that we see today--in that these struggles were to determine who had leadership. Currently the debate is based on whether or not religion should anything at all to do with rule.

Week 6 Blog: Hermits

It was exciting to read about the hermits and how they developed into what we might consider monks. And also how their lifestyles developed into the system of monasteries. As these people sought out the baroness of the desert, they believed that they were living a more primordial existence. By living this "existence" hermits thought that they could deduce life to more of what God expected. It also gave them the ability to clearly see what it was that God intended. Moving away from the hustle of civilization to see the "truth" can be compared to how astronomers use their telescopes in areas where there is no light pollution. To these monks, civilization polluted the pondering of what life is. This distancing of one from the pollution of civilization seems to be somethings that even many intellectuals have sought out--take Thoreau for example, with his seclusion to Walden Pond. For Thoreau, it was impossible to see the simplicity of nature in a civilized world. Even Jesus supposedly went into the desert to ponder and pray.