Vinland Saga - Ch. 212 - Thousand Year Voyage Part 21

[kirik]

The prophet really foresaw hundred years ahead and had no choice but to die trying.

Maybe he foresaw the unnecessary Bison killings that pretty much ended their nomadic lifestyle too.

 

[Theozilla]

The prophet really foresaw hundred years ahead and had no choice but to die trying.

Maybe he foresaw the unnecessary Bison killings that pretty much ended their nomadic lifestyle too.

I don’t believe the Mi'kmaq/Lnu lived in areas with bison, you're thinking of other indigenous american tribes who were reliant on bison.

 

[Seasicksheep]

I don’t believe the Mi'kmaq/Lnu lived in areas with bison, you're thinking of other indigenous american tribes who were reliant on bison.

That would be correct, they were/are in Canada

 

[Ahab19]

Man, every time I come back to this series I fucking despise what it became. It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t think anyone feels any sympathy for the natives at all in any way shape or form and it’s really weird because you should but you don’t.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy because they’re acting like the greedy Nords at the start of the series who can’t help but kill and ravage and assume they are heroes? Because it clearly isn’t working and they just come off as fucking monsters. Going for and woman and Children in the boats, wow… only can be seen as monsters

The moral of the story is war is bad, crazy I know.

 

[Fugutron]

Man, every time I come back to this series I fucking despise what it became. It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t think anyone feels any sympathy for the natives at all in any way shape or form and it’s really weird because you should but you don’t.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy because they’re acting like the greedy Nords at the start of the series who can’t help but kill and ravage and assume they are heroes? Because it clearly isn’t working and they just come off as fucking monsters. Going for and woman and Children in the boats, wow… only can be seen as monsters

I felt it lost the plot already with that peacenik nonsense and NTR plot

 

[brainman]

The moral of the story is war is bad, crazy I know.

That's a bit reductive, and not the whole moral. We're currently looking at a "war", where neither side is explicitly wrong about wanting to fight. The Lnu are ignorant, and respond with excessive force, but also they're dealing with alien invaders who brought disease to their homeland. The Nords are invaders by definition, but we know their story and intentions, and we know what their choices look like - fight here and now to defend the home they built, or leave quietly, try again somewhere else, and risk having the same thing happen. There is no good choice, and there is no right side.

I'd say the moral is not so much "war bad" as it is "can violence ever be justified?". Because in a way, you can't blame Canute either, who makes liberal use of violence, but as a means to an arguably noble end. So the question is whether there are good reasons to go to war, where you should be fighting, even if doing so is an ugly thing.

 

[Doomroar]

It was good news for all the smaller tribes the mesoamerican empires were oppressing.

Not really, the smaller tribes also got raped and pillaged, plus the plague didn't care if the tribe was big or not, and the Spainards where a thousand times more filthy than the vikings they carried diseases like it was about to go out of fashion

 

[Kushikime]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[divrawat2001]

You can read all chapters at link removed

 

[Konrad2]

Thanks for the scanlation.

 

[Jackist]

I feel like your missing a lot. It's not exactly the natives as a whole but the war chiefs. Plus the attack on the boats make sense, why would they let the nords potential bring an actual army. They also didn't specifically know it was just women and children on that boat. No one here are heroes, the Nords mishandled the situation due to petty bullshit and the native warchiefs want the nord weapons and valuables. It's not as black and white as heroes and monsters.

I mean, it wasn't the Nords as a whole but their War Chiefs who rallied the men. But my point is more the way the manga is depicting them as mirrors of the Nords. The whole scene is almost a mirror of Torphin's night attack on his first Village. The man running into the Burning House for the loot felt almost identical and intentional. The quips of "We can't let all that material get away." putting innocent lives over literal material objects makes you feel as icky as you did when Torphin did it. I didn't feel sympathy for that group despite really really liking a ton of those characters, you understood they were were bad people who were dealt a bad hand to end up there, but you would never weep over them after stealing away lives for their own happiness. I just hold the Natives to the same standard.

 

[Jackist]

You're very ignorant about world history.
This is normal and reasonable conduct for the pre-modern world. They have reason to believe that the nords are spreading a deadly plague to them , the nords have extremely valuable technology that if they don't get their hands on then the other tribes that are usually competitors will get their hands on then they'll be at risk from those rival tribe. Making war on the nords similar to how they'd make war on other hostile american tribes makes perfect sense and is hardly gratuitous or monstrous. You wouldn't just let nords sail away with their valuable technology to potentially regroup either, they could get reinforcements later so you're just risking your wellbeing by letting them sail away. You don't have time to analyse the population on board a long boat from inside a canoe much lower to the water when you decide to capture the boat anyway.

It's like you expect 10th century people to behave like 20th century liberals.

We aren't playing Crusader Kings here, just because my Spymaster has a 99% to kill the 10 year old Child King with a ton of resources and well it was the 10th century and if we don't kill these children and stop the bloodline, other tribes might get power over us, plus we have to kill them in case they spread sickness to us right?

When I play CK3, you bet your ass I'm culling every child possible like Anakin with the younglings, and usually my own family members (in fact mostly family members). And if they are a different religion than me, I can raid their cities and burn and murder everyone with impunity and have 0 moral issues from my people! I will kill whole families and kidnap their daughters and lock them in a cell for literal years and force them to marry and give me children, then adapt to their culture for Valuable Technology like getting catapults or metal swords early (my literal Countess Daurama strat)

And I can justify every action, and morally it's justified by the stipulations of the religion I have which lets me murder certain people with impunity, morally fine to my culture in CK3 of course. See where I'm going with this?

 

[kirik]

That's a bit reductive, and not the whole moral. We're currently looking at a "war", where neither side is explicitly wrong about wanting to fight. The Lnu are ignorant, and respond with excessive force, but also they're dealing with alien invaders who brought disease to their homeland. The Nords are invaders by definition, but we know their story and intentions, and we know what their choices look like - fight here and now to defend the home they built, or leave quietly, try again somewhere else, and risk having the same thing happen. There is no good choice, and there is no right side.

I'd say the moral is not so much "war bad" as it is "can violence ever be justified?". Because in a way, you can't blame Canute either, who makes liberal use of violence, but as a means to an arguably noble end. So the question is whether there are good reasons to go to war, where you should be fighting, even if doing so is an ugly thing.

When push come to shove, violence can always be justified with self preservation just like what Japan did after the Isolationism Breach and seeing their neighbour getting picked apart and that was pretty much the writing on the wall for Imperial Japan too hence their rally for Pan Asianism while extracting resources in the name of said self preservation too.

 

[NotSomeone]

If you think about it, wouldn't that be the right play? If you kill a group horrifically violently enough, the rest of the group leaves you alone. This is why Vlad the Impaler impaled: it scared the hell out of the Turks and they left him alone. If the Nords were horrifically violent every roughly 80 years, they could keep the Lnu too scared to make war.

Thats building on fear while mantaining zero respect, it does not work.
I'd argue Thorfinn is way too lax right now, and his ideals of pacifism are wrong no matter how much the manga seems to argue otherwise.

"Well if no one wanted war then everyone would be happy" really? No fucking shit, if my grandma had wheels she would've been a wheelbarrow. The problem is that war exists and Thorfinn is not trying to stop war from existing, he's trying to sideline it while putting people he loves and that trust him at risk, he's being selfish and stupid.

I'd argue the Nords really did show the Lnu kindness and understanding, but they did not show the Lnu that the Nords are capable of holding their own. For the Lnu's more warmonger types, the Nords are peaceful little animals holding a lot of gold without weapons or means for defending it.

 

[MidnightTide]

Man, every time I come back to this series I fucking despise what it became. It’s so stupid. It’s so fucking stupid. I don’t think anyone feels any sympathy for the natives at all in any way shape or form and it’s really weird because you should but you don’t.

Are we supposed to feel sympathy because they’re acting like the greedy Nords at the start of the series who can’t help but kill and ravage and assume they are heroes? Because it clearly isn’t working and they just come off as fucking monsters. Going for and woman and Children in the boats, wow… only can be seen as monsters

It's war and for all the romanticism many like to portray the indigenous, they are no different then anyone else. Tribes regularly would enslave and genocide others for their land and materials.

 

[Theozilla]

I just hold the Natives to the same standard.

While this may have not been your intention, you've come off as framing them as being somehow worse/unsympathetic for engaging in the same practices we saw Norse societies do in the previous arcs.

The problem is that war exists and Thorfinn is not trying to stop war from existing, he's trying to sideline it while putting people he loves and that trust him at risk, he's being selfish and stupid.

What?! Thorfinn has most certainly been trying to stop war from existing, he hasn't been trying to sideline it, he's been trying to prevent it from occurring, he was constantly trying to find the "first resort", seeking means of deescalation, and trying to avoid bloodshed from occurring, everything he did was to reduce the risk to his loved ones and those who trust him. The ones engaging in the more militaristic and aggressive behaviors and actions are what contributed to the escalation and worsening of relations not Thorfinn.

It's war and for all the romanticism many like to portray the indigenous, they are no different then anyone else. Tribes regularly would enslave and genocide others for their land and materials.

Yeah, and because they are no different than anyone else, the indigenous peoples of the Americas certainly didn't deserve to be colonized, conquered, oppressed, have their populations decimated by disease, be stripped of their sovereignty and self-determination, and/or expelled from their homes/land by Europeans.

 

[Gem-Bug]

That would be correct, they were/are in Canada

First Nations peoples out west in what are now the Canadian prairie provinces hunted Bison for thousands of years. Bison just aren't here in the Atlantic region.

 

[huntercheco]

Disease, the one true equalizer

 

[Troop57]

When the culture you had was about killing your own, you kinda are ok with changing it with something else even if it's still bad.

Because Europe wasn't like this at all.
People forget Europeans still had human sacrifices at that time, they just called them public executions.

 

[danbellucci]

We aren't playing Crusader Kings here, just because my Spymaster has a 99% to kill the 10 year old Child King with a ton of resources and well it was the 10th century and if we don't kill these children and stop the bloodline, other tribes might get power over us, plus we have to kill them in case they spread sickness to us right?

When I play CK3, you bet your ass I'm culling every child possible like Anakin with the younglings, and usually my own family members (in fact mostly family members). And if they are a different religion than me, I can raid their cities and burn and murder everyone with impunity and have 0 moral issues from my people! I will kill whole families and kidnap their daughters and lock them in a cell for literal years and force them to marry and give me children, then adapt to their culture for Valuable Technology like getting catapults or metal swords early (my literal Countess Daurama strat)

And I can justify every action, and morally it's justified by the stipulations of the religion I have which lets me murder certain people with impunity, morally fine to my culture in CK3 of course. See where I'm going with this?

I don't play video games but it sounds like you're insinuating that what I'm saying is that committing any action no matter how gratuitous is ok so long as it doesn't harm your interests , but the actions of the Americans aren't gratuitous like your examples. They're literally just attacking a severe threat.
Your initial claim was that they're monstrous but their actions are very normal and reasonable for pre-modern nations/peoples So your attempts to paint them like the marquis de sade or something fall flat.