![]() But in all these debates over Viking brutality, what seems never to be critiqued is the use of the phrase "rape and pillage" to denote an often unspecified range of Viking war crimes. The question of Viking brutality or its absence is one that has been debated for over fifty years, led in particular by the work of Peter Sawyer (1962). More popular writing employs a similar rhetoric in an article reviewing the new British Museum Vikings exhibition, Simon Armitage (2014) writes for the Guardian: "hose simply seeking the raping and pillaging berserkers of legend may be surprised." A popular introductory textbook explains that "dominating the popular perception of the people who flowed out of Scandinavia in the Viking Age is the image of the blood-thirsty warrior bent on slaughter, rape and pillage" (Forte, Oram, and Pedersen 2005, 299). ![]() Paradoxically, the phrase has become enshrined in the rhetoric of debunking, or at least problematizing, the simplistic notion of bloodthirsty Vikings. In newspaper headlines, guidebooks, textbooks, romance novels, cartoons, and museum exhibits, "rape and pillage" acts as shorthand for any and all Viking crimes, whether real or purely fictional. The phrase "rape and pillage" has become almost synonymous with Vikings. Add pillage to rape and suddenly it has a certain air of knock-about fun. ![]()
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