Can we think again about the assumption that any dark skinned person who made it to northern Europe was a slave?

I see this more often when I talk about the surprisingly large number of people of African descent, based off of DNA archaeology, in the Roman Empire, most of whom were immigrants and at least some were auxiliaries hired in northern Africa. They were then sent to the north by army policy and likely left offspring there.

The northern people also had, provably, silk, which means they were trading along the Silk Road. If they were doing that, they were almost certainly also trading up the Nile into the interior of Africa, most likely for spices, which would not have survived. When there is movement of goods, there is movement of people, and not always because the people were goods.

A Scandinavian trader could well have met a Black woman while trading in north Africa, and brought her home not as a slave but as a wife.

There's a group of families in western Iceland with Native American mitochondrial DNA, presumably because somebody came back from the failed colony...and whether the woman they were with was a slave or a wife we will never know. I am not saying slavery was not part of their culture. It was.

But it lacks a lot of nuance to assume that "Black skin" meant "slave" and I would say that if my ancestors had been enslaved the way Black people were in the American south I'd be pretty insulted by that assumption.

On top of that, the vast majority of people in that culture were NOT raiders. They were traders and voyagers, and yes, we know that raids happened, but that's like saying everyone in the Caribbean was a pirate during the height of piracy there.

Also, yes, they did respect women. They had fairly strict gender roles and stepping outside them could get you a lot of mockery and quite possibly cost you your marriage (it was grounds for divorce). Some women at least were trained fighters, although it's probable that like Samurai women their primary role was to defend the homestead when the men were away.

The issue I have with this article is it is perpetuating multiple stereotypes, both of the northern peoples and of Black people.

I would like to see more people do research and come to a better understanding. Again, raiding did happen (in fact, viking is a verb, but I realize that battle is thoroughly lost), but the majority of these people were farmers, and the majority of the rest were engaged in peaceful trade and exploration. An entire civilization is being named for its worst elements here.