Intro Music
Okay, here's my response to the recent game
theory video on Vikings versus knights versus
samurai people have been flooding the
living daylights out of my inbox over
this... Anyways, so let me just say right off
that I don't have a personal problem
with MatPat I simply don't know him
I watched maybe three or four of his
videos I don't know what he's like as a
person nor does it matter because
you're supposed to attack the argument
not the person and it seems to me that
he focuses more on entertainment than
education which is what I do as well.
Now if he had just talk about "vikings", "knights" and
"samurai" enough with the bunny ears for now
the way they are portrayed in For Honor
which from what I've seen is about as
historically accurate as the pirates,
vikings and  knights mod for Half-Life that would
be one thing but he basically claimed
that it was a historical analysis and
there were just too many grossly
inaccurate statements that need to be
corrected. Shad has already made a response video
to this and he talked mainly about
knights, Metatron made a response to it
he provided some information about
samurai equipment I'm gonna link both of those
videos in the description down below and
I've been planning on focusing on
Vikings I'm not a historian but I've
always had a special interest in Vikings
and there are a lot of strange
statements in that video. MatPat went on to talk
about how the Vikings were defined by
the frozen nightmare they inhabited
which I've always found really funny
on the one hand you have the image of
the stereotypical fantasy Viking who
basically runs around half-naked maybe
little patches of fur here and there but
plenty of naked skin to show off all
those impressive muscles and everything
and all-that happens supposedly in
frigid wastelands of perpetual snow and
ice.
I mean think about it all those massive
steroid pecks won't do them
any good if they turn into frostbitten
necrotic tissue.
Also there's this quote from the video
they stayed alive almost entirely by
stealing from other people so again the
stereotypical image of the icy wasteland
nothing grows all the animals are frozen
and the entire population of
Scandinavian's have to take off to get
their food elsewhere like a grocery raid
and once a week on Saturdays they just do
that I mean you could argue that
Norwegians still do that nowadays when they
cross the border to Sweden to get
cheaper food but they still buy it.
Alright let's shoot down this common
misconception not all Scandinavians in
the early Middle Ages were Vikings the
old Norse phrase "Fara I Viking"
means to go on an expedition which the
sagas usually means going on a raid or
piracy
so basically regarding all Scandinavians
as Vikings would be essentially the same
as saying: "Oh! 17th century Englishman?You
mean pirates!" In fact the majority of the
Scandinavian population were farmers
between [the years] 400 and 1200 agriculture in
those areas intensified and the food
production increased their by the
population size increase and the
resulting population pressure is very
likely one of the reasons why people
decided to go Viking so it's not:
no food leads to raids but a lot of food
leads to a lot of people leads to raids
so if anything it's kind of the opposite
by the way you will also help food
production the medieval warm period from
about [the year] 900 to 1300 now based on the data
it looks like nowadays it's still a bit
warmer than it was then but we also
broke the climate so that's not saying
too much so as far as I can tell it
seems fairly comparable it wasn't a lot
colder than if at all and of course it also
depends on which region you look at you
can make all the claims about frigid
wastelands if you look at the northern most
tip of Norway or Sweden for example but if
you look at southern Denmark for example
it's pretty mild climate really.
Now on to the topic of armour
this is where it gets really bad
so the claim is that Vikings wore the equivalent
of tissue paper either no armour at all or
very light armour as in leather or quilted
fabric now archaeologically as far as
I'm aware there is no evidence of
anything like that for the Vikings
leather armour or gambesons or
anything like that
padded armor cloth armor they may have
had that but if they did we don't know
because organic material is only
preserved under exceptional
circumstances it's quite rare
so who knows either way what we do have
evidence off is mail
so this is referred to in the old Norse
sagas as a "brynja" what we would call a
mail hauberk it's a shirt of
interlocking iron rings and this is the
same thing that eleventh century knights had
exactly the same. The idea that they wouldn't want
to be weighed down by armour.
But first off email hobart isn't all that terribly
heavy and also if you're wearing it with
a belt then the weight is
distributed between the shoulders and
the hips so it's not that big of a deal
and the problem of saltwater I mean if
everything rusted instantly and there
was nothing they could do about it they
would have had to use bone knives
and stone axes but it's not that hard
to deal with you just need to do some
maintenance so some oil or grease on the
mail and you're going to be okay
you may say yeah but this was extremely
expensive and most Vikings wouldn't have
been able to afford it
true but we're talking warrior elite here aren't we
we're comparing knights to samurai
I mean a random Joe Schmo with no money
couldn't become a knight
so why would we compare that to a random Leif
Olafson with no money
it just doesn't add up you might as well
put sheep mounted peasants with
pitchforks in the knight category and then
compare that to the samurai or whatever
so if we're talking warrior elite then
they have to be similarly equipped
or at least similar amounts of money, value
however you want to look at it you get
the point.
Another fun side note one group of
knights the Norman knights ironically
descended directly from Vikings the
famous Viking "Hrólfr" or Rollo attacked
France in the early 10th century besieged
Paris and raided towns up and down
the Seine River with his army of Danish
raiders now he was then given land by
Charles the Simple the king of France
who made him a vassal and over time
the Vikings adopted the local culture
and became Norman and then those 
Normans
who were then knights attacked England defeated
the Anglo-Saxons after the
Anglo-Saxons had defeated Norwegian
Vikings at the Battle of Stamford Bridge so
it's all interestingly coming full
circle. Then he talked about rudimentary
shields and axes... what? What is rudimentary
about Viking shields they were very
well-designed and effective fighting
tools they were also expertly crafted
some were found that were actually tapered
from the center to the edge so there's a
lot of thought that went into them and
they do the job really well now the kite
shield is larger but what I personally
like about the round shield having a
center grip it makes it pretty
versatile so you can do something that
you can't do with a strap shield for
example you can more effectively
strike with it you can redirect attacks
so an attack comes in you let it roll
over to this side and now you've created
an opening on the opposite side and can
strike that. In the game For Honor I've seen
a samurai slice a
Viking shield clean in half... Yeah good luck
with that I don't think that's going to
happen these shields were made of
sturdy wood and they were most likely
covered in either linen or leather which
makes them quite resistant to cuts so
what's much more likely to happen is that
you cut into the shield and then it
gets stuck at some point which means that
your opponent now has control over your
weapon one of the main arguments in the
video is: the samurai would win because
archery and the vikings can do
absolutely nothing about it [dramatic pause]
really now that's just one of the main
purposes that the shield is for
protecting you against arrows also there
is this neat thing the Vikings did
called a shield wall if we're talking
battlefield situation as opposed to a
one-on-one duel and i found an
interesting note by the monk Abbo of
St-Germain who wrote about the Viking
attack on Paris and said that they
advanced hard packed underneath a testudo
so he must have read about the
Roman testudo saw what the Vikings were
doing in the siege and recognised that
and said oh that's a testudo in another passage he
said painted shields held up above to
form a life preserving wall I don't find
that hard to believe that all I mean
especially in a siege there is going to
be a lot of arrows coming down at you
and we know the Vikings had a
shield-wall meaning that they had all of
their shields overlap with the person to
either side of them and it really
doesn't take a genius to figure out that
the guys behind you can raise their shields
over their heads also overlap them and
provide pretty good protection against
arrows. What you have to keep in mind is
Vikings knew what arrows were
they used bows themselves in warfare
they faced bows on the battlefield and
there's literally no reason why they
would be completely unable to deal with
them when if it was that easy then nobody
would have trouble with Viking raids
because hey just shoot a few arrows
at them and they'll flee in terror
the other thing is rudimentary axes [he says with disgust] tell
me this axe looks rudimentary and then there
is of course the famous Dane axe which
is a remarkably powerful and effective
weapon and these were not simple crude
little pieces of iron that the smiths just
hammered out in an afternoon they were
pretty well-made they had a harder edge of
higher carbon content, a softer core
and there are plenty of examples of
well-made efficient weapons of that
time also the quote: [reads passage] "if they were
particularly well off they had a seax." [end passage]
Nope if they were particularly well off they
owned a sword a seax is just a knife it's
a tool and a backup weapon
it's not the main thing Vikings had
swords and in fact really good swords.
And of course there's also get about the
famous "Ulfberht" swords which are commonly
regarded as the best blades available
before industrial times some say they
were made of crucible steel others say
they were just very high-quality
bloomery steel but either way it was
good stuff they also had pattern welded
blades and finally I want to talk
about bows because there was such a
focus on archery in the video I found an
astonishing lack of information on 11th
century Japanese bows or "yumi"s I don't know
if that's because all the good
information is in Japanese or whatever but
I found plenty of information about y'know
"kyūdō" how they're used and how they're
made and all of that but
nothing about the draw weight at all like
there's; I found out that the draw weight
a common draw weight for
modern "yumi"s is 45 pounds which isn't a
whole lot but that may just be for sports
use from what I could gather supposedly
they use comparatively heavy arrows
which carried a lot of kinetic energy
but limited the range so a later 17th
century Japanese source that mentions
archery needs to be practiced at a
distance of seven or eight "ken" which is
about 50 meters to be able to pierce
armour so that begs the question
could Viking bows potentially outshoot
them? There's this example of a Viking bow found
in Hedeby also known as "Haithabu" I've seen
several estimates of the draw weight
ranging anywhere from 80 to between
a hundred and hundred thirty pounds now
supposedly it would have an effective
range of about 200 meters so a longbow
basically not quite as powerful as some
of the later English longbows but still
a lot of power potentially so the question is
could they penetrate samurai armour I have
no idea and this is important to keep in
mind if you don't know for sure you
shouldn't just assert that yep this
could pierce through mail armor
how would you know I mean have you seen
a historically accurate reproduction of
the Japanese bow used on historically
accurate reproductions of European mail
I've never seen that I don't think
anybody's ever done that. And alternatively I
have never seen a longbow used on
Japanese armour so I'm not going to sit
here and claim that yep they could
totally penetrate the armour but they may
very well outperform them in reach and from
what I've seen it doesn't seem as if
Japanese mounted archers had armored
horses so if the Vikings could shoot at a
longer distance and take out the horses
that's certainly an advantage but again
this is pure speculation
I'm not going to say that the Vikings
are going to beat the samurai because of this.
The thing is most of the fighting in
For Honor is done on foot in a
historical scenario if you wanted to
compare them you'd have to narrow it down
a lot if you're talking an open
battle on a field
it depends on so many factors y'know
what is the terrain like exactly, who
commands the armies, what shape are they
in, what exact equipment do they have
y'know what's the weather like do they
know of each other's tactics so on and so
forth
we're talking one-on-one duels it's also
hard to say and when you think about it
the equipment is overall reasonably
similar and all three have spears and
swords
all three have helmets two out of three
have the same type of armour and shields
it really comes down to who are the
individuals how experienced are they how
skilled are they are they familiar with
how the other ones fight
personally I have no idea how 11th
century Japanese armour compares in
quality or protective value to European
mail at the time I just don't know
enough about it but regardless of armour
there are certain techniques that always
work grappling for example and the
Vikings were pretty damn good at it
there is the Viking martial arts system
that has survived until today called
"Glima" it involves strikes, kicks, chokes
throws, joint locks, and other wrestling
techniques they did that for fun as a sport
and to prepare for battle regardless of the
armour of your opponent is wearing you
can throw them to the ground you can pull
your knife or dagger out and stab it in
the gaps of the armour or in the face I mean
all of them have exposed faces they're
are ways to deal with that so it really
depends on the individual warrior's skill
y'know what they know about the others
their fitness their experience and a
portion of luck let's not forget about that
in the end this is a
popularity contest because what we all
do
when looking at these versus scenarios
is we pick our favorite and we go: "yeah! you go
kick their ass!", like, "Vikings go!" or,
"Samurai, awesome!", or, "Knights all-and-all."
we all have our biases it's the faction that you want
to win so you're gonna look at everything
that supports your opinion that they
would win and ignore the rest and
y'know downplay the other's equipment
and what not.
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