A VIKING OF A DIFFERENT COLOR 1

BOOK REVIEW: True Myth: Black Vikings of The Middle Ages by Nashid Al-Amin

There are many who will refuse to regard this book seriously because it does not adhere to what they have been told all their lives by accepted views or because it was written—as one reenactor complained, by a communist Muslim. However, it is to a great extent a stagnation of inquiry and a blind acceptance of the conventional and a rejection of any new idea.

It is not merely the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the Klansmen who will hate this book. So will anyone who hates to have their stereotypes challenged. They would be as disgusted and antagonistic if you said that George Washington didn’t admit to chopping down a cherry tree, that Abraham Lincoln did not free every slave with his Emancipation Proclamation or that Christopher Columbus was not the first white man to set foot on America and not the first man in Europe to proclaim that the earth was round

Let’s face it. Even folk who do not follow Nazi thought thinks that the Norsemen of the Viking Age were all blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans. Look at the stereotypical graphic portrayals in popular literature, popular illustrations and film! Now that popular concept must be right. After all, just look at their presentations of fine horned helmets!

When I ordered this book, I thought it would deal with slaves and others from Africa but it deals with that almost not at all. Let’s forget for a moment that the Norse were probably of many different races, introduced by slavery and more. They traveled everywhere, interbred with the local population and, if accounts written before the modern racist age are not ignored, cared little about skin color except as a descriptive. I have long believed that there were white Vikings, black Vikings and—going by meetings in Russia and Asia—probably yellow Vikings, just as there were heathen, Christian and probably Jewish Vikings (made trade easier). This was predominant in my mind when I picked up this book…

Whoa. Reassessment time!

It is Al-Amin’s theory that Northern Europe was settled by a black race—which is supported by illustrations and by descriptions—and that the black races were still in dominance in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. In my opinion, but not Al-Amin’s, the theory is still inadequately supported. He backs up that assertion by notes that the black infidels, by the original meaning of Den and by other matters that are generally ignored or interpreted in a different manner that has nothing to do with skin coloring but also with literary and graphic sources. His theory is frustratingly both very thought-provoking and highly jingoistic.

The title and theme of the book seems to often take a back seat to Al-Amin’s Afrocentric—at least antiEurocentric—views. As such many Aryan traditionalists will discard the book immediately and not consider his many cogent—if radical and revisionist—observations. And to be fair, there are some very convincing points for rejecting the book.

Next week, I will deal with several points for rejecting the book and, by extension, its thesis.