Back in the Medieval era you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who wasn’t, although in terms of scale Mongols and Vikings were pretty far reaching in their brand of violence.
I would argue there’s still a difference between “callous because medieval life sucks” and Viking “plundering as the core value”. Viking is a profession after all, not an ethnicity.
Mongols are a bit different case, as I would argue the idea of Mongols that exists in popular culture is pretty far off, and fits better to earlier steppe cultures - Cumans, Pechenegs, etc. By the time Mongols rolled into what is now Russia, the Golden Horde was an empire. With massive production capabilities, logistics, the works.
That said, I agree that the level of everyday violence and cruelty of those periods is severely underestimated
I feel the opposite. Neither was cool, both were quite violent
Back in the Medieval era you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who wasn’t, although in terms of scale Mongols and Vikings were pretty far reaching in their brand of violence.
I would argue there’s still a difference between “callous because medieval life sucks” and Viking “plundering as the core value”. Viking is a profession after all, not an ethnicity.
Mongols are a bit different case, as I would argue the idea of Mongols that exists in popular culture is pretty far off, and fits better to earlier steppe cultures - Cumans, Pechenegs, etc. By the time Mongols rolled into what is now Russia, the Golden Horde was an empire. With massive production capabilities, logistics, the works.
That said, I agree that the level of everyday violence and cruelty of those periods is severely underestimated