Teenagers as Vikings

Are you traumatized by your teenager's behavior? Thinking of your teenager as a Viking may open a whole new area of consideration. Read this and send it to your friends who have teenagers!

Have we stereotyped Vikings and teenagers?

Due to current television portrayals, Vikings are often pictured as a tattoo covered, blood-thirsty barbarians. They are portrayed as having little respect for social mores and an unavoidable need for violence and sexual gratification. Based on this portrayal, many parents can see a parallel between teenagers and Vikings. There are, however, many variants in this picture both for the Viking Norseman and the teenager.

The Norse (or persons from Nordic countries) were not necessarily blood thirsty, violence seeking, social deviants. While this personality trait did exist, generally, the Norse were agrarian people. They saw the immense benefit and necessity of being successful farmers and fishermen.

Short summers were spent intensely focusing on successfully farming their plots and storing their harvest and catches for the long winters. They were also interested in constructing and maintaining their shelters against the coming brutal winters. Both humans and livestock required shelter and food during the winter and providing it was an important and consuming task. Those long winters also encouraged the Norse to be community minded. If they could expect to be house-bound for months, maintaining relationships among family, friends and neighbors took on a crucial importance.

Unlike the agrarian Norseman, the Viking teenager may use the domestic situation and it's requirements to express his sense of independence and separation from the family and society.

Maintaining a room that reflects one's personality may take on importance. Domesticity in the sense of having ones room reflect your personality becomes paramount. Some teenagers see this as an opportunity to reject neatness and show off their contempt and lack of regard for the status quo by having a ‘laissez faire’ attitude toward room maintenance. No effort is expended and the “farm” (read: room) is not maintained, or is minimally and sporadically maintained.

Having a sense of family, friends, and community is often only expressed as a response to peer pressure. Family gatherings may not meet the required level of “cool” and peer pressure encourages a rejection of being a part of the family or community group. Instead, belonging to a smaller, more select group of approved peers takes precedence. Being "in" with friends is what counts.

Pictures of the more settled members of the Norse society and the ‘good’ or ‘easy’ teenager are in stark contrast to what the stereotypical ‘Viking’ was like.

We imagine the Vikings as being adventurous and unsettled. Some Norse were truly this way. This type of Norse Viking was a thrill seeker, an adventure junky. They ventured away from the safe agrarian setting on boats and set out to see the world. Once out and about in the world, they were confronted by other more settled groups who found their aggressive and unsettled nature to be threatening.

Their presence was often viewed as hostile and confrontations ensured. Not to be thwarted, the Vikings often resorted to blood thirsty methods of subjugating places they visited. Hence their reputations grew! Conquests and territorial occupations were made.

In the same way, aggressive and adventurous teens often threaten the passive nature of parents and institutions and confrontations ensue. Not being bound by all the limits of conventional societies, methods of resisting mores and norms become outrageous on the part of the adventurous, self reliant, and aggressive teen. Unless successfully resisted or redirected, all in their path run the risk of being run over by the Viking teenager.

The Vikings seemed to live by a code of honor which allowed the winners to give ‘no quarter’ to the status quo or the settled systems of society. The teenager who capitulates to the expectations of the parent is often thought of by peers as being “whipped” or “bought off”. Rebellion and then a self-imposed set of rules is the result.

While teens may be viewed as being leaders against questionable norms that are promulgated by parents and society, they cannot be seagoing adventurers and blood thirsty conquerors. Something else must take that position. Eventually, the lure of a good night's sleep, guaranteed food and a less threatening life style will win out--at least for the Viking or teen that survives their own adventurous tendencies.

Viking teenagers rebel against the established lifestyle of the village and society. They seek adventure and dominance in the bigger world. By establishing their own society based on the values of their peers, they run roughshod over the norms and customs of society as a whole. Some find the state of rebellion sustainable. They adapt it to meet self imposed limits.

Other Viking teenagers find the constant aggressive demands of the lifestyle to be unsustainable and modify their aggression to a level of conformity that is socially acceptable. Like the Nordic forebears of past times, the benefits of a sense of adventure and exploration morph into benefits for both the adventurer and the status quo.

Just a the Vikings made a place in history with their adventurous nature and sense of rebellion against the establishment, so the Viking teenager uses an adventurous nature and a sense of rebellion to make their place in society.

We must learn from history, be it for good or for ill.