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?

Vikings in North America

Well since this blog tends to focus a lot on Dogmen you can just bet that that is where I’m going with this.
It’s not even that much of a stretch because there is almost always a viking connection to every Dogman encounter I hear about.
First you see the Native American link and when you dig a little deeper, there it is- vikings seem to have a connection to the area.
L’anse Aux Meadows was hardly the only place in North America the vikings visited. There are traces everywhere. Rune stones, some claimed to be fake, but the sheer number of them do seem to indicate something. There are rune stones and other Viking evidence all the way to the west coast and even down in the deserts of New Mexico, Arizona etc.
The thing is though, that people in the Dogman world are not unaware of the viking connection and they point to berserkers and ulfhednar as possible explanations for Dogmen.
But that doesn’t work.
Vikings came from here, where I live.
There are NO Dogmen in Sweden/ Norway /Denmark that I have heard of, and trust me, I have really looked for any reports of that kind.
If vikings came from here, then why are they only Dogmanning around in North America and in the UK now? Why not here?

Tricky questions. I think one of the answers lie across the pond.

Skraelings

When two belief systems mix they grow very powerful, for better or worse. Think Hoodoo.
When vikings came to Labrador and Newfoundland they are said to have met a Native tribe which they referred to as Skraelings. These skraelings may have been the Beothuk. There are actually people today said to be descendants of these skraelings.

A few years ago I came across a blog online (but I’ haven’t been able to find it since…).
This blog was written by people who referred to themselves as skraelings. They claimed to have been of the Beothuk tribe and that a small group of them had managed to get away when the rest of the Beothuk were possibly slaughtered at the arrival of the Europeans much later on.
The interesting part, really, is how the skraelings claimed to have formed a brotherhood with the vikings. A brotherhood that was to last always and which involved the exchange of knowledge and secrets.

Remember how I mentioned there is just about always a Native connection to Dogman sightings, and that if you dig a little more there’s also a viking tie?
Remember how I mentioned that when two belief systems mix they grow powerful?

The skraelings eventually ended up in Arizona and joined the Hopi. This is where they were when they wrote that blog.

Magic

Let’s talk skinwalkers for a bit. The Navajo witches with the ability to shape shift. The Yee Naaldlooshii. The ’ánt’įįhnii.
According to Navajo legends, the technique for skinwalking, or should we say the magic, was once learned from… the Hopi.

Vikings + Beothuk/ Skraelings = what exactly?
Equals a magic that enables shape shifting?
Viking evidence seems to be everywhere. How many other tribes did they form bonds with?
Many tribes do have the concept of skinwalkers though they may have other names for it.

The berserkers and ulfhedins were never actually described as actual bear-men or wolf-men. The names indicate that they wore the pelt of the animal and entered a trance-like state during which they were fearless and had the strength and stamina of several men. Kind of like a person on PCP, angel dust.
Could it be that the viking belief system, the viking magic which Odin is said to have taught, when combined with that of the Beothuk, grew so strong it created actual bear-men or wolf-men?
Is that why they are in North America? Because that’s where the fusion of the two schools of magic happened?

I do have a problem accepting the possibility of magic actually being a thing, but I have been forced to at least consider it.

United Kingdom

We know vikings were all over the United Kingdom. That’s a place you can really talk about viking evidence being everywhere. The UK had druids and other beliefs and cults and it’s more than possible that the vikings encountered them and formed bonds.
The Beast of Flixton, or the Flixton Werewolf was recently featured on Dogman Encounters Radio.
This beastly human-hound has been reported since at least 940 CE and it’s still alive and well it seems. It’s in an area were we know vikings have been and it showed up right at the time of the viking presence in the UK.

The Perfect Storm?

But what about the rest of Europe? The headline of this post so clearly indicate that the vikings were a definitive nuisance there, to say the least. Why then are there so few Dogman in mainland Europe?
Perhaps because Europe was were the looters went, the rogues. Perhaps the wise vikings, the schooled, the knowledgeable did not participate in these slaughterfests, possibly because they were busy trying to figure out how to explore the world.
I think when it comes to vikings it’s important to remember that the violent brutes are not the whole story.

Perhaps not all mergers of belief systems have the same effect? Perhaps the Beothuk/ Druid beliefs were like a missing piece of the viking systems puzzle, and vice versa?
The perfect storm in a way.

Clearly, this doesn’t really lead anywhere, even should it happen to be absolutely true. We still don’t really know what Dogmen are, where they come from, what they want or whether they like tacos, still, it’s kind of an intriguing idea I think.

And before I go:
don’t forget to check out the blood moon tonight!!