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Comment by walnutclosefarm | Hacker News Reader

I think one reads this as a symptom of academic history - if you are an historian of a thoroughly studied period or aspect of history, then the only things you have to offer, as an academic, are either tuckpointing an established narrative wall with new tidbits of fact or interpretation, or trying to push the narrative wall over so you can tell a different story. The first won't get you much attention, so the second become highly appealing - doubly so, if you can attach your effort to a highly popular narrative, or, as in this case, word or phrase.

In other words, he needed top publish something, and saying "what you think you know about the word "viking" is all wrong," makes a good headline for what is otherwise an absolutely ordinary review of well known history.

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This quote is slightly amusing as the result could be the opposite of what the author intends:

Calling such people ‘Vikings’ would be like calling 18th century British, French or Dutch naval officers ‘pirates’ simply because they wore vaguely similar hats and sailed vaguely similar ships to Blackbeard.

Much of the activity of the European navies at the time (and in prior centuries) is best classified as 'piracy' or 'privateering'. Most of the European colonial enterprise (capturing slaves in Africa, shipping them to plantations in the New World, shipping the resulting raw materials to Europe, etc.) was basically piratical in nature, and the various involved interests were just as happy to prey upon one another as upon the native populations, for example the English vs. the Spanish:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/piracyandprivateering.htm

> "Roanoke, with its lush vegetation, virgin forests and bountiful harvests from the sea, was indeed "Raleigh's Eden." But it was also ideally suited as a base from which the English could prey upon Spanish treasure ships as they lumbered their way north from the Caribbean to catch the homeward flowing currents of the Gulf Stream just off the coast of the Outer Banks. After leaving Ralph Lane's 1585 military colony on Roanoke, Sir Richard Grenville captured a fortune in Spanish booty on the return trip to England, which no doubt pleased the investors. That same year, the English Crown officially sanctioned the harrassment and disruption of Spanish shipping."

Even better when you can write an article that essentially says : “what you think you know about the word "viking" is racist”

Is that a common use of the term "tuckpointing" in academia?

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