Black Vikings: Difference between revisions
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== Real Life ==
* There was a small group in northern Scandinavia with abnormally high melanin counts. They were wiped out. Vikings who traded down into the Mediterranean also had a term for the dark skinned folk found in North Africa: Bluemen (blue meaning dark). One such joining a group of Vikings would not have been far-fetched, and one ending up a thrall even less so. Of course, thralls often earned their freedom and the respect of the community. Reckoned to be the origin of the "Blue Men of Dublin," a 10th Century Irish-Viking warband.
* Something else to consider when it comes to this sort of thing is the fact that, at its height, the Roman Empire spanned from the southern borders of <s>Scotland</s> Caledonia to <s>Ethiopia</s> Nubia and from Hispania to Mesopotamia, and had mercantile connections with lands even further spread than that. Given that Roman soldiers were recruited from the local populace, and were sent where they were needed, it is entirely possible for a dark-skinned soldier to have been recruited in (for example) Egypt and then shipped off to Britain. Or for a citizen born in Britain to up and move to (for example), Judea.
** The "English", though culturally Anglo-Saxon, are still, according to genetic testing, Britons (they're basically indistinguishable from the Welsh), mainly because the Germanic invaders had the numbers to impose their culture, but not to displace the natives. So "the English" have actually been there since whenever the Celts crossed the Channel, in recent prehistory.
* "Black Irish" and "Black Russians" are famously attested in [[Real Life]]. However, there is some argument that they are actually [[People of Hair Color]], since it's claimed that Black Irish are either (a) descended from Moors, or (b) descended from the same stock as Basques. There ''are'' Sephardic Irish Jews, but they aren't usually identified as Black Irish.
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