A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine

…is Latin and means “From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord”.
It was allegedly a litany of despair, a prayer said by every medieval church and monastery at the time of the viking raids.
This particular prayer has not been verified in exactly those words in any 9th century texts though, however an antiphony for churches dedicated to St. Vaast or St. Medard comes pretty close:

Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna.

This means “Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realms”.

Vikings

Vikings. Known for brute force.
Vikings. How did they, in merely 300 years, manage to make such an impression on the world that a thousand years later we still talk about them?

Brute force alone does not make you successful for 300 years.
Vikings were also skilled, clever. They navigated across the sea all the way to America, they also went east, to Constantinople and many other places.
I would assume that in certain ways times have changed very little. A thousand years ago attention was surely given to the wrong-doers, as it is now. Vikings were travelers, explorers and merchants, but some were rogues and caused a heck of a lot of havoc and mayhem wherever they went. Naturally these rogue vikings were the ones people remembered.

But for vikings to have accomplished all that they did in their relatively short time, things other than brute force must have been utilized.
What things?

What we don’t see

So many creatures are reported by so many different individuals of the human population, but most sightings seem to be of something resembling a Bigfoot, a Dogman etc.
This post is not going to talk about what we see though. It’s time to talk about what we don’t see.

We have a tendency in this field to connect the modern cryptozoological sightings to ancient mythological creatures.
In the world of Dogman you often hear of the ancient Egyptian god Anubis being mentioned as some sort of reminder that these creatures have been around for a long time.
That’s all good and well, there might be a connection there.
Sometimes though I feel I must take on the role of the devil’s advocate in order to get to the core of a matter.
That core in this case is what we don’t see.
If Anubis was a Dogman, what happened to whatever races the other ancient Egyptian gods belonged to?
What happened to the race of Horus? Where are all the Hawkmen? (Not counting the ones in Flash Gordon…)
Where is the race of Sobek, the Crocodilemen?
Where are the descendants of Thoth, the Ibis Storkmen?
If we go to other mythologies we might ask why so few sightings of harpies are reported today.
Were are all the sirens? Where are the minotaurs?
Not to mention the Unicorns.

My point is this, that if we should consider some mythological beings, mustn’t we consider all?