Claim: The Crusades were a "Release Valve" for an Excess of Nobles and Knights, and Integrating the Vikings into Christianity
Europe's attempt to integrate the Vikings wasn't going well.
4:06
When you think about religious fanaticism from a European perspective, the Crusades is kind of the hallmark of that is where we you have state power and religion marrying together to create a force that then tries to conquer other parts of the world. Where does that idea come from? Where the does the driving force for the Crusades begin?
I think there’s a couple of things going on during the Crusades. Uh maybe more than a couple of things. One of them is the unfortunately um the the Vikings have become Christian and Europe is trying to figure out a way to integrate them in and it’s not going well.
Right. Cuz these are guys these guys are fighters. They’re they’re fighters. They’re fighters and they’re merchants and they’re and they’re fishermen and they’re dairy farmers and they’re trying to figure out how to integrate them and they won’t and they don’t want to live in a cold environment anymore. The problem is there’s still all this energy from their pagan raiding days and Europe is trying to figure out a way to dispense with some of that.
And one way to do that is to simply get a bunch of people to go to on the crusades. They don’t all have to be Normans. They don’t all have to be Vikings, but you you want some obviously, but it’s just to it’s like a pressure valve. You need to release it because there’s too many nobles. There’s too many knights. There’s too many warriors. So that’s one of the tensions going on. Another one is there was sort of a geographical envy.
QUESTIONS:
Have historians explored how states have adopted public policy to deal with an influx of immigration (such as the Vikings)?
Are there other examples of wars or quests been undertaken to provide an outlet for excess men of fighting age?
In what other contexts has the “release value” concept been used?