> And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times?

So what, it must be true because if you don't think it's true, you're a racist?

This particular article points out a specific piece that apparently spells "Allah" only when viewed in a mirror, in a style that didn't exist for another 500 years, with a spelling error.

And no, it's not problematic if it were true. It's problematic that this is being passed as real archaeology when the methodology is extremely biased.

Don't forget that you have to assume they were using some sort of special Tardis textile that's bigger on the inside. That, to me, is the most compelling criticism. Everything else is arguably circumstantial, but it's kind of hard to look past a hypothesis apparently resting on a physical impossibility.

It's hard for me to see this as a big moral loss, either. A more compelling poster child for Vikings' relationship with Islam would be the examples of Vikings converting to Islam that are documented in the historical record. The garment, even if you accept for the sake of argument that it does read Allah, could still just be a prized souvenir.

> And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times?

I don't know, ask the people "[franticly searching] for anything and everything which can be used to 'prove' that Sweden [or anywhere else] has always been a melting pot of different cultures". They're the ones implying this is relevant, and that Vikings not being influenced by Arabic culture would somehow make white supremacism less stupid.

Also, to add to what several other people have said, modern Arabic, even more so that most illegible scribbles^W^W cursive scripts, is notorious for any random collection of curves looking like a word; I think we're up to three different cases of someone catching a fish with "Allah" written on it's scales. Somehow, I doubt the situation with older Arabic writing systems is any better.

> As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions

Sure, but it also requires time travel into the future to use a script that wasn't used at the time and won't be common for another 500 years, if it was to be Allah, they spelled it wrong (and got lllha), and even this is conjecture based on what they think the pattern would have been because half of that isn't even there and the band would have to be a lot wider than it is to fit that text.

These are some pretty compelling criticisms to which no good answer is given, especially the fact that the text is from the future, which gets no real answer at all except that she "does not agree" for reasons that are left unstated.

The white supremacists are idiots, but this just looks like someone trying to sell alternate history books to me.

> As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions, given the vast trade networks. And even so, how in the world does 1000-year old interactions threaten your world view of Swedish cultural/racial purity and its relevance in modern times? Getting triggered like this indicates the opposite of the trend you're pointing out (not that they are mutually exclusive).

Eh, this is too close to suggesting that anyone who "got triggered" by The Mar Saba Letter is a homophobe. After all, "it would by no means be impossible" that Jesus practiced homosexuality.

> Also, in Sweden today I could be in actual danger if I made this comment publicly in my own name, for whatever that's worth.

I highly doubt that.

The ruling class has always used history as weapon against the people. This has been true thru all of mankind’s history to this day, this piece included.

So why would you then be in trouble when you are just carrying water for the ruling class?

The larger the population, the more unique social events there are, allowing the potential to overfit on any narrative you can conjure up. Today I just saw a headline about one marine who walked out on Trump's SOTU. How many marines attended proudly?

>As a sibling comment pointed out, it would by no means be impossible for Arabic cultural items to have found their way into Viking possessions, given the vast trade networks

And it would still be an irrelevant minority -- not what "vikings" in general "have" embroidered.