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.