"líta!, Biöð!" is shouted above the thrash of the waves. With land in sight, the dragon-boat furls its wings. The boat glides up to the shore, and with a smooth crush, it stops in the sand. The mariners jump off the boat and climb the rocky hillside, guided by the black smoke swirling from a village on the tree line.
The year is 826, but it could be any year from 793 to 1066. Up and down the coast of England, Vikings raided coastal villages and monasteries. They took all the wealth and slaves they could carry to markets abroad. The range of the Vikings extended from the coasts of North Africa in the South, the wide rivers of Russia and Ukraine in the East, and Newfoundland in the far West.
The Vikings were traders expanding their markets and colonies wherever their boats and swords would allow them. Although their attacks covered a wide area of Europe, their slave raids primarily took place in England and Ireland. They would carry off men, women, and children to far away slave markets in Eastern Europe and North Africa.
England at the time was attempting to unify from seven smaller kingdoms into a larger nation. The Viking raids on the seven kingdoms had forced a feudalist system of castles as a defense. When one guesses what could have happened to England if the Viking raids had not happened, the world may be a very different place. The seven kingdoms of England could have united hundreds of years earlier than the unification under Athelstan in 927. This unification could have thwarted the Norman invasion in 1066. If the monasteries known the scientific, philosophical, and religious centers of medieval Europe had stood unscathed, who knows what progress would have been made for humankind. Most importantly, the Vikings robbed the freedom of countless people, as they sold these people into slavery. What could have been their contribution to Europe's history?
Today one wonders if the millennial descendants of England and Ireland should demand reparations from the Viking's descendants in Scandinavia. The Vikings completely disrupted the fabric of society in England and set the country back hundreds of years. They sold countless into slavery and they prospered monetarily from the suffering of others. The Scandinavian countries today have very advanced welfare states and some of the highest GDP's in the world, much higher than England or Ireland. The blood of English has undoubtedly oiled the machine of the Scandinavian economy.
But what about reparations for:
The slaves taken from the African coasts.
Compensation for Korean women enslaved by the Japanese military.
The enslavement of Christians by Muslim invaders in Eastern Europe.
The genocide of the Indigenous Peoples of North and South America.
The Japanese, German, and Italians who were place in internment camps by the US government.
The enslavement of Africans by other Africans and Arabs.
The Israelites who were enslaved by both the Egyptians and the Babylonians.
The list goes on.
I pose this scenario not to discredit the reparation movements of the world; their attempts to right the wrongs of the world are a noble pursuit. This scenario attempts to call into question many of the foundations of the reparation movement.
Should descendants of wrongdoer's be punished for the actions of their ancestors?
If so, how far back in time should that go?
What is a valid case for reparations, is one person enslaved is too many are all movements are equally valid?
What is the right form of compensation? Money, apologies, debt reduction?
Lastly, how much damage could reparations do? If the nation of Ghana had to recompensate Burkina Faso for slave raids in the 1500's, that would surely destroy the economy of Ghana. Is it morally just only to seek reparations from nations that can afford it?
