skip.knox submitted a new blog post:
History for Fantasy Writers: Pirates
by E.L. Skip Knox
Everyone knows about the pirates of the Caribbean. Let's talk about other pirates. Since I'm a medieval historian, I'll stay firmly in the European world.
Before we get started, a general comment: the lines between pirate, merchant, and rebel were blurry and ever-shifting. If you had a ship, it was sort of like having a pickup truck—you could use it for any number of enterprises.
Few pirates were exclusively that. The real interest lies in the variations on our standard idea of piracy.
Who were pirates? Given the comment above, pretty much anyone with a ship and a few followers could engage in piracy at one time or another, but there were a few places notorious for the practice of robbing other ships.
Frisian Pirates
Frisians were one. They lived along the coast of northeastern Netherlands; the region is still called Friesland. The Frisians were their own people, with their own language. Their land is made up of a complex of islands and marshlands that were rarely the object of ambition from other peoples, so they rarely were under the foot of invading armies.
The Frisians were constant raiders, not all that dissimilar to the Vikings, save that they did not try to invade and conquer. They were content to loot and go home. It just so happened that they were as content to do their looting at sea as on land....
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.
History for Fantasy Writers: Pirates
by E.L. Skip Knox
Everyone knows about the pirates of the Caribbean. Let's talk about other pirates. Since I'm a medieval historian, I'll stay firmly in the European world.
Before we get started, a general comment: the lines between pirate, merchant, and rebel were blurry and ever-shifting. If you had a ship, it was sort of like having a pickup truck—you could use it for any number of enterprises.
Few pirates were exclusively that. The real interest lies in the variations on our standard idea of piracy.
Who were pirates? Given the comment above, pretty much anyone with a ship and a few followers could engage in piracy at one time or another, but there were a few places notorious for the practice of robbing other ships.
Frisian Pirates
Frisians were one. They lived along the coast of northeastern Netherlands; the region is still called Friesland. The Frisians were their own people, with their own language. Their land is made up of a complex of islands and marshlands that were rarely the object of ambition from other peoples, so they rarely were under the foot of invading armies.
The Frisians were constant raiders, not all that dissimilar to the Vikings, save that they did not try to invade and conquer. They were content to loot and go home. It just so happened that they were as content to do their looting at sea as on land....
Continue reading the Original Blog Post.