/u/spermwhalejail's posts in /r/askhistorians
Did Germanic kings like Pepin the Short expect their male ancestors to divide the kingdom up among their siblings generation after generation until they all controlled areas the size of parking lots?
458 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
How plausible is the theory that Snorri re-wrote Loki into a Lucifer-like enemy of the gods in order to keep the Norse stories alive in a Christian culture, but Loki was more of a positive trickster in the original mythology?
270 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
I heard many of Britain's moors are forest-cleared remnants of Iron Age farmland. Why didn't all this land become cultivated again in the Middle Ages, and what made this widespread Iron Age cultivation of Britain stop in the first place?
239 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
How did the British of ~1000 AD view the inhabitants of Britain from ~0 AD? To what extent did they identify with them?
137 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
126 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
Did the Aztec have any conception of the peoples in central or northern America today? If so, what did they think about them?
125 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
How credible is Strabo's account of the Vaccaei's communal agriculture? This Iberian tribe allegedly redistributed all crops. If accurate, what kept it from failing like some other forms of modern State-instituted communal agriculture?
76 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
Did the Antiquity Norse see themselves as superior to non-Scandinavian Germanic tribes like the Saxons, [proto-]Goths and Suebi, much as the Greeks or Romans viewed "barbarians"? Or did they view them like a Greek would a Greek of another city-state?
59 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list
Did the conception of Midgard in Norse Mythology include distant lands, such as hot deserts, populated by ethnicties very different from that of the Germanic people?
53 upvotes
Mark as read: Add to a list