Vikings, Islam and White Supremacy

What fascinates me most about the announcement that Allah and Ali, in Kufic Arabic script, might be embroidered on Viking funeral clothing is the panicked reaction to the news by white supremacists. Although the initial BBC article never made the claim that Vikings were broadly Muslim, this was the fear that gnawed at the hearts of many, in spite of their arduously constructed, widely promulgated, airtight racial lineage.

As soon as the Kufic script claim was debunked by a historian, who deplored the lack of peer reviews and then proceeded to take down textile archaeologist Annika Larsson’s research in an academically impeccable (wait for it) series of tweets, Breitbart and other news outlets rejoiced. They decried the “Islamophile” movement in Sweden and then transitioned smoothly, in the same article, to Muslim polygamy and marriage with underage girls.

The fact is that Norwegian Vikings most certainly had trade connections with Persia and the Byzantine Empire and textiles figured prominently in these exchanges. There’s a whole book about this: “Silk for the Vikings” by Marianne Vedeler. There’s also the discovery of Viking-era Arab coins minted in Baghdad and Damascus, and possibly in Persia and North Africa. This fact is mentioned in the BBC article.

In short, there was definite contact between the Vikings and various Muslim populations. Perhaps this contact went further than trade, in some instances at least. As Kumail Nanjiani said in his SNL monologue, it’s kinda stunning that “race-mixing” is still a thing in 2017, a terrifying disorienting thing for the preservers of white racial integrity. Just chill people. Mixing is good for us – that much is scientific gold. Also, this is nothing new. This is from a CNN report, from back in 2015, that talks about a silver ring with an Arabic inscription found in a Viking grave:

The finger ring found in a 9th century Swedish grave is inscribed with Arabic Kufic writing. The letters appear to read “AL_LLH, researchers say, which they interpret as meaning “for/to (the approval of) Allah.”

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