Harald Bluetooth was Danish, not Norwegian. Ostensibly the son of Gorm the Old, he is officially the king who christened the Danes. Visit Jelling in Jutland to see contemporary signs.
Is there any evidence that designations like "Danish" and "Norwegian" had an ethnic significance at this time? England, for example, had "Wessex, Essex, and Sussex," but it is difficult to imagine these differentiations being "ethnic" -- they were all Anglo-Saxons. My understanding is that these were all Norse at this time, with different names for different regions (Norway vs Denmark). My specific question has to do with the time period in which the ethnogenesis of separate Norse peoples came about. Afterall, there were Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and so on, but did they originate from different nations, or were these merely tribes? At what point is a tribe a full blown nation or ethnicity? My opinion is that it has to do with lack of mutual intelligibility of languages, although "Americans" vs "English" vs "Australians" and Canada and so on can contradict this...
Harald Bluetooth was Danish, not Norwegian. Ostensibly the son of Gorm the Old, he is officially the king who christened the Danes. Visit Jelling in Jutland to see contemporary signs.
Is there any evidence that designations like "Danish" and "Norwegian" had an ethnic significance at this time? England, for example, had "Wessex, Essex, and Sussex," but it is difficult to imagine these differentiations being "ethnic" -- they were all Anglo-Saxons. My understanding is that these were all Norse at this time, with different names for different regions (Norway vs Denmark). My specific question has to do with the time period in which the ethnogenesis of separate Norse peoples came about. Afterall, there were Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and so on, but did they originate from different nations, or were these merely tribes? At what point is a tribe a full blown nation or ethnicity? My opinion is that it has to do with lack of mutual intelligibility of languages, although "Americans" vs "English" vs "Australians" and Canada and so on can contradict this...