N/S Redskins likely to change name..What would be a good one? (Update: Redskins to announce name change)
Our history isn't being erased. The problem is that the sharing and understanding of our history has been grossly incomplete and heavily manipulated to tell a very specific narrative, intentionally at the expense of the very people who were abused and systemically marginalized throughout that history. What we are witnessing is a reckoning of that shameful, deliberate practice.
If you met a black Army colonel, would you expect a very different reaction if you referred to him by his rank or as a Blackskin? That's the difference in the false equivalency made between Vikings and Redskins. Vikings and the military can both be associated with events that might offend some people, but neither carries the same negative connotation that a racially contrived word does.
If you really knew or were knowledgable about 20% of the events, practices, treatment of native peoples of the European countries, kingdoms the old Norse, primarily Danish and Norwegian Viking raiders killed, raped, murdered, performed gruesome blood eagle executions on king's, nobles, priests, and commoners alike for 300 years during the Viking Age, you might have a different perspective on why some people, including historians, cultural anthropologists have made negative views towards old Norse Scandinavian Vikings. True, they were explorers, traders, colonists, helped established cities, towns and trading ports like Edinburgh, Glascow in Scotland, Eire, Dublin, Belfast, Carrie, Cork in Ireland. They also dealt in human slavery trafficking among captured Christian slaves in Ireland, Scotland, and northern England, and also among their distant ethnic cousins the Rus Tribe in modern-day Russia. The Vikings also practiced human sacrifices before and during the Viking Age in Uppsala in modern Sweden every 9 years and in other conquered territories, along with 9 similar animals of all other species. It wasn't as extreme or constant or done on a massive, near-industrial scale like the Aztecs and the Mayans on top of their pyramid temples but it was extreme for it's time.
There's also the matter that the Viking Age ended around the end of the 11th century and a great deal of negative connotations, events, rituals they performed or were associated with have been forgotten, lost, or decontextualized or many of old Norse ideals, attitudes and imagery were purposely distorted, repackaged by British, German and Scandinavian romantics and late 19th century nationalists, Social Darwinists and then by racial ideologues and totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany (the SS runic insignia was inspired or derived by Himmler's distorted view of Nordic runic symbols, also weddings in the Nazi period involved the giving of salt and bread to newlyweds after exchanging vows in churches based on accounts from old Norse rituals) these catastrophes cant be blamed on medieval Vikings while European colonialization and treatment of Native Americans and African slaves and their descendants are complex, very difficult moral/ethical injustices where trying to rectify.
But, honestly Dave, if you really did know what the Vikings were accused of doing 1,000-1,100 years ago and how some still depict them as brutal, bloodthirsty, violent pagans who raped, killed, murdered with impunity, or as stupid, inept simple-minded savages, you might see why a lot of Scandinavians or Americans of Scandinavian descent might take offense with how popular culture depicts their ancestors today.