This post first appeared on Today in Alternate History.
25 September, 1066 - Supremacy of Vikings assured at Stamford Bridge
By the time that
the incomparable Norseman Harald Hardrada was born it appeared that the
age of the Vikings was drawing to a close. Their once-feared sea
raiding parties were increasingly met with organised resistance and
fortifications as
Christianity spread and centralised authorities developed across the
continent of Europe.
But their shock troops simply needed
to find the right weapon in order to defeat organised troops led by a
monarch. Necessity is the mother of invention, and a game-changing technology eventually arrived in the nick of time during
the middle of the eleventh century. A priest of Loki had been
experimenting with a flash powder effect, and his student conceived of
using it for military purposes. The result would be a "grenade," an
explosive weapon of gunpowder in a clay pot that could thrown by hand on a rope. The tight control exercised by the priesthood would
ensure
the Viking monopoly lasted for half a century.
This powerful
weapon transformed the invasion of 1066, creating even more awe than the
Viking destruction of the monastery on Lindesfarne. After the proud English king's boast of only giving Harald Hardrada land for a grave, he himself was buried
six feet under at Stamford Bridge. Thereafter followed the Viking
Conquest of Britain, including the use of grenades to defeat
the invading Normans as they came ashore at Hastings. Fifty years later,
Sigurd I Magnusson would carry the grenades back to Byzantium where
Greek fire had been placed in stone and ceramic jars seven centuries
earlier. This weapon would later be used to devastating effect in the First
Crusade as Scandinavia stood at the helm of continental Europe.
Addendum by Allen W. McDonnell:
Roman
Catholics had already learnt the secret of gunpowder by the time that
Sigurd the Crusader entered Constantinople during 1107; however, they had
to wait their chance until the arrival of the
Bubonic plague. Armed with Arquebusies and light artillery, Papal forces
reconquered the Viking lands in its wake. The pandemic triggered the start of a new
era of enlightenment; not culturally inclined, the Viking had only
accumulated knowledge about the limited subjects of nature and
geography.
But the collapse of Viking authority was not to
overshadow the sea-raiders' tremendous success in protecting Europe from
the invasion of the Mongols. This achievement was due not only to the
use of gunpowder, but the bold decision to train every man to fight the
Mongols and not just the nobility.
Thus the Papal Forces were
fortunate to be able to occupy a continent largely free of external
invaders. From his Vatican in the city of Prague, the Pope was able to
expand Roman Catholicism from Moscow to Montreal and Narvik to Sicily
during the long period of expansion, 1350-1800. However, the continent
of Europe entered the nineteenth century without steam technology, with
engines still to be invented. Armies built and maintained a few dozen
weapons each with no standardized designs. The continent stood on the
edge of a new industrial revolution.
Certainly new advancement
was needed by Papal Forces, for technology constraints had brought them
to a pivotal moment much like their predecessors, the Vikings during the
mid-eleventh century. Undefeated Islam still controlled Spain/Portugal
and after taking the Byzantine Empire the border between Catholic and
Islam lie in Greece. Prague's armies struggled to hold back Muslim armies from entering the Balkan states. Further east, Roman Catholic
control ranged from the Ural mountains across northern Europe. But the
real threat was from the Protestant reformation that was taking place
across the Atlantic ocean in North America. This is where Prague's
influence was greatly weakened by distance and events appeared to be
moving in a totally new direction...
Author's Note: in OTL the Battle of Stamford Bridge was the end of the last major Viking incursion into Europe.
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