Re: The Need for Debate

Andreas Johansson scripsit:

> One shouldn't make blanket statements whether the Vikings were
> destructive or not; _some_ certainly were mere destroyers, pillagers
> and killers, who civilization would have done better without; others
> were constructive, setting up cities and trade routes. And, of course,
> most Scandinavians of the period weren't Vikings at all.
The way I like to put it is "Viking is a verb [meaning a gerund, of course]
not a noun".  This is false to the grammatical facts, but true to the
historical ones: the same person might be in viking one year and a peaceful
trader the next.

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