For those who like listening to audio books, this one is excellent: https://normancenturies.com/ "They were the great success story of the Middle Ages, a footloose band of individual adventurers who appeared out of nowhere to blaze across the face of Dark Age Europe. In the course of two centuries the Normans launched a series of extraordinary conquests, transforming Anglo-Saxon England into Great Britain, setting up a powerful Crusader state in Antioch, and turning Palermo into the dazzling cultural and economic capital of the western Mediterranean. Their story, however, begins rather humbly in the fierce Viking Age, when a group of Scandinavian raiders came crashing into Charlemagne's empire. Join Lars Brownworth as he follows the ferocious warrior Rollo, the first Norman, who began life as a simple raider and ended it as a great lord of the West." Another good one by Brownworth is this one: https://12byzantinerulers.com/ https://larsbrownworth.com/
What makes you say that? I give you this. For a couple centuries while Europe was in the mist of the dark ages Muslim culture flourished. Timbuktu was a great center for learning and Arabs advanced medicine, math, and other sciences. Then something happened to them....
And if you read the book, "Eaters of the Dead" by Michael Crichton, taken from his manuscript you will see many familiar scenes in History Channel, Vikings. Ibn Fadlan's manuscript is considered the earliest, authenticated manuscript regarding observations of the Vikings. Moi r > g Here the storm trooper music! Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic, regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us. Cloned they are.
possum thinks the reason... ... the Vikings were such good sailors... ... was `cause dey was ScandiNAVIans.
Pretty sure it was the Norsemen who taught the English to become excellent sailors. The best sailors in the world came from Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden Finland), England, Germany's coastal regions, the Dutch, American Yankees and Polynesians in particular those from the Sandwich Islands ( Hawaii ) who were a prize for any ship's captain having a Hawaiian part of the ship's crew. Unfortunately because of the changing demographics taking place in America today, todays American sailors are more like landlubbers on a Princess cruise ship. They can't navigate or safely maneuver a ship and keep running into other ships.
The Islamic World's insatiable appetite for blonde and red-haired slave girls to fill their harems was what fueled the Viking slave trade. Baghdad was awash in gold at that time. There was also a demand for Black eunuchs to guard the harems, the start of slavery in Africa. (The Middle East had no other need for African slaves, there were already plenty of poor people, but having an exotic Black servant was considered a status symbol and Africans were bigger in physical build than Arabs and made better guards possessing more physical strength, especially since the eunuch was going to be castrated)
So no outside powers traded for African slaves prior to the rise of Islam? You sure you want to go with that? I suspect the rest of your post is on shaky ground too, but that assertion is pure invention.
Vikings on History channel is doing a fair interpretation. Not historically accurate but fair. Look up Lagatha. She existed as did Ivar, etc. But, their events recorded in "the sagas" and History Channel's presentation do miss some issues. Likewise Rollo and founding the Normans. Timing wrong. Bjorn is speaking "Viking" with Muslims who claimed they learned it from the Kiev Rus Norse. Bjorn came into the Mediterranean from the west. Floki is sounding like a Marxist now. Or maybe a Mormon or first Christian circa 40 AD. And Iceland seemingly has no trees. What's a carpenter to do? I just looked it up. There were forests that were even slash & burn to create fields. Early Vikings had lumber in Iceland.
Never depend on the history channel for real history. It's typical Hollywood with 10% truth, the rest made up drama. Some of the main characters existed, but not in the same time period. I got tired of the supernatural BS and some other things and didn't watch this season.
There was a Ragnar Lothbrook who was play by Ernest Borgnine in the old movie with Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas. Rollo is historically misplaced but, inspired by the real Rollo. There was a Lagatha who took part on a raid on Rome. And others. And of course Ivar the Boneless. Some of the details I recognize for lines in books like Ibn Fadlan's aka Michael Crichton. Like passing the bowl of water to clean one's face & nose and on to the next. Certainly History Channel's Vikings is more historically authentic than Knightfall. Templar Knights saving Jews.