Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "Wends: The Slavic Pirates that the Vikings Feared" video.

Trade already existed prior to the Hanseatic league. And unification isn't nearly as positive a thing as you might think. It's quite possible that we'd be better off without those events and more smaller nations.
6
@rennor3498 These cities grew at the cost of the rest of us. Hanseatic league merchants used their forces to force concessions from our monarchs. Like preferential treatment over our own local traders. With less toll on trade, putting anyone still under said toll and taxes at a distinct disadvantage. Yes, they dominated trade, but only at the cost of others trade. Bergen grew because international trade with anyone from the south was illegal north of Bergen, they could trade with what ended up becoming Russia, or they could trade with the Hanseatic league in Bergen, there where no real alternatives. As for the democracy side of things. Before the Hanseatic league beat our fleet the Norwegian leiðangr rather then a professional army where responsible for our defense. As a result our kings couldn't treat us too badly. After all, the majority of our army was common people mobilizing, not the levy of some noble or mercenaries, so what we where thinking mattered. Not so much afterwards... Countering the Hanseatic league was also the reason for the Kalmar union, the reason we spent more then 500 years under foreign rule. So don't you dare pretend that this was a good thing for us
4
@mladendjukic1061 Estonia isn't and wasn't a Slavic speaking area at all, but Finno-Ugric, just like the Finns, Hungarians and Sami. Lithuania and Latvia isn't exactly Slavic either, although Baltic is related to Slavic. The Prussians (before the Germans expanded there) are believed to be Baltic just like the Latvians and Lithuanians. Are we positive that the wends where Slavic and not Baltic?
3
You're way of with your history there mate. There's a difference between Celts and Slavs. And likewise between Slavs and Finno-Ugric peoples. Slaves used to live in a fairly small area and there where many other peoples living in all the areas current populated Slavs. No, Slavs expanded just like Germanic peoples did, often at the cost of other ethnic groups. And it was mostly opportunism, making use of the opportunities to expand that showed up, like when a tribe felt compelled to move due to war with other tribes or where starving or dealing with disease or for other reasons struggling. Everyone did that at the time. And when a stronger tribe displaced a tribe they'd go searching for new lands attacking other ones who'd then be displaced and would attack yet other ones etc... And tribes that couldn't compete well would be destroyed in this process. Celtic tribes used to fill ands from Spain to Turkey and a majority of Germany.
2
@rudolfkraffzick642 Also most of these areas had many different tribes vying for power, not just one ethnicity. What's today Germany had Germanic, Celtic and Slavic tribes all living next to each other. The celts probably where the first ones in southern Germany, and the Germanic tribes the first ones in the north. But they where all displacing each other forcing people to move and fight others displacing them in turn etc...
2
 @palamaro1603 Then don't look at language, look at archeology instead...
2
@metanoian965 Seriously, you really want to see how the tribes moved around? Loo up the channel "The Geographer" And his video about the Indo-Europeans. His data is based on DNA evidence from not just modern populations but also DNA from people who died thousands of years ago. Likewise archeology doesn't support the idea that Slavs lived everywhere either. Indeed most of central Europe was populated by Celts before they where displaced by the rest of us, Germanic and Slavic tribes both. Slavic people has been through a lot and that has lead to many modern nations with a definite authoritarian bend where historical revisionism is extremely common, and where local efforts to actually practice real history based on facts are suppressed... And even the more democratic Slavic nations have to deal with the bs influences from nations like Russia... Take anything said about history in a Slavic language source with a grain of salt. The trustworthy Slavic sources tends to also publish in English in order to get peer review from historians speaking non-slavic languages. Ps. Don't get me wrong, excessive nationalism does exist in other ethnic groups in Europe too... Brits acting as they're the saviors of Europe and behind pretty much all that's good about Europe, and it's not like we Germanic peoples are flawless either to put it mildly... But we have less fake news and psudoscientists spreading historical revisionism then the Slavic speaking world... (Less does not equal non, we have our own share of BS, but on average people are more on guard against it, possibly due to WW2 and its influence on Germanic culture also outside Germany).
2
15:32 Leiðangr, not Leiþangr. You didn't voice the ð.
1
@giansideros Exactly, some more western Slavs might also have had a positive influence on the cultures in the Slavic speaking world.
1