Did the vikings smoke weed?

[saluki]

I would guess that most of the cannabis that reached Europe would of arrived through the trade routes that have existed for centuries. If spices and silk reached Western Europe all the way from the far east then why not cannabis and its derivatives. I read that the Romans did smoke "hemp" for medicinal and recreational purposes, that is just the term that was used in the source I read.

The Hashasheen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Assassins were said to have been drugged or manipulated to become Assassins in the cult of Hassan-i Sabbah from early child hood. They would be addicted and were said to consume hashish but there isn't any evidence of them consuming hashish before or during a battle/assassination. I would agree with many in here who think that the vikings didn't smoke cannabis before a battle. Maybe afterwards but I believe fighting under the influence of cannabis would be counter-intuitive. It doesn't give you courage like a few horns of mead would or perhaps not give you courage but numb you to the potentially dire consequences that are likely to befall you in the coming engagement.

In the Arabian peninsula right now many know of captagon a drug that is consumed in pill form which is a mainly amphetamine stimulant. It gives you energy for hours and keeps you awake. It will make the most stable person more prone to violent tendencies and irritability delivering them into an almost fearless state. What ever it was the Vikings were taking before battle that would morph them into their "berserker" state I would be willing to bet it 100% wasn't cannabis.

Love this thread, I am no expert in this just sharing my thoughts so as to spur the discussion.

 

[St. Phatty]

imagine all the physical pain they lived with.

i'm sure they used alcohol to deal with some of it.

HECK YES they consumed Cannabis/ hemp.


But to smoke it, you need a pipe or a cigarette.

What did the Vikings use to smoke pot ?

or were they all into edibles ?

they would have had the resources to make good butter.


plus, what happens to the Viking Woman who brings her Viking Man some good pot ?

she gets better sex, probably.

are there any burial tombs for the head Vikings where they buried them with Viking Zigzags, for the afterlife ?

 

[troutman]

Vikings did what they wanted.

 

[Nannymouse]

The word 'hemp' was used for ALL classes of Cannabis prior to the last century. Plus, many non-cannabis plants were called 'hemp'. Many of the cannabis plants used for rope,etc did have some thc content, just as you can grow a tall variety of psychoactive cannabis today and use it to make fiber/rope.

Today, we use the word 'hemp' to mean a type of Cannabis that has no psychoactive results.

 

[MindEater]

What did the Vikings use to smoke pot ?

Their helmets duh, dual bowls loaded at all times.

PS there were no viking women they were all flaming homos. And if you think I'm being insulting it's because you're a bigot!

 

[Veggia farmer]

A Viking here mates!

Yes, one of viking graves DID containt some cannabis seeds. It was very common to put important or holy stuff together with the body in a grave. So this important women got hold of some cannabis seeds to take with her to the other side. We knew she was imortant because she had one of biggest graves from the Vikings. Cant remeber name, sofia or sonja something maybe...
It was also used in beer. It was called LOVE beer. The brewing traditions was for the women to do! It was after the christian churh we stopped using herbs and shrooms so much because they were whitches and so. Then the priest said we only could use hopes in brewing, it makes you sleepy, not so psychoactive and definatly not a psychedelic. They also said potatoes was good to grow to make moonshine, moonshine makes you a easier target to be a dumb sheep. I bet we also smoked it in pipes too. The viking museum in Oslo also contain the Sun cross on some piece of wood I think (cant remember exactly) and some other Hindu related signs. So yeah, they also were in Asia some place. I think all this together HIGHLY suggest my grand grand.... fathers also were stoners .LOL.

EDIT: I cant rember from which book so I cant remeber which years it was, but I remember it was before the tractors came into agriculture ( I have encounter lot of these old books self and from the school I went to, lots of good info in them). They talked about this Hemp/Cannabis they had grown, and they didnt want to be too long in the barn with it caused them to feel uncomfy afterwars. Hmm, stranges, BUT they also wrote that if they smoked it I resembled the effect of opium. STONED. That means we have had POT before the hippies!

 

[Veggia farmer]

The new Paul Stamets mushroom film includes Stamets talking about eating Amanita Muscaria. I'd never heard a credible account of the effects. It sounds terrible. He talks about how they cause a repetitive action loop. His example, he was holding a camera and dropped it, broke it. He kept picking it up and dropping it again. Over and over and over.

I have eaten it multiple times. So there are a reason for multiple times LOL. I have got some so called insight during at least one trip.

But a cool effect with it is together with cannabis OH LORD HAHAH! I ate 12 g of dry amanita, which was three big mushrooms. At first that time we didnt notice so much or rather impatienced, so we rolled a blunt with some marocc. Two rather small hits of blunt and I got so stoned. after the whole joint we were even more stoned I guess hehe. It was an interesting day

 

[Veggia farmer]

Try taking some Amanita mushrooms then, or dont they're a bit nuts, they would make you smash right through your enemy's or think your flying like Rudolf.. Berserkas were so named because they took Amanitas to make them such psycho killers, where we get the word berserk from..

Santa Claus is representative of Siberian Shamen, just in the wrong colour, and your presents under the tree are just like amanitas waiting for you at the base of a tree where you would find them in nature

Thats the thing people are hung upon on. Its more impossible to "berserk" on amanitas than on hashish. I know from experince.

People are very got to put one pluss one, but not 2 minus one. They ate amantis, yes, but not before battle, hehe. Thats the witch hunt talking mate

AND YES, your right about santa

 

[Roms]

...and did their ancestors too?

Several thousand years ago the hyperborean were strong and also traveler!

Protohistoric and legendary time in Europe. Probably like pionners of the antiquity trade routes with salt, gold, amber, pewter, sea shell... And with cannabis in returm from India?

Here is an interesting story about the great Ram :
https://eden-saga.com/en/ram-or-ramos-healer-brother-of-tuatha-cuchulainn.html


For the science and recently evidence :

"Cannabis is indigenous to Europe and cultivation began during the Copper or Bronze age a probabilistic synthesis of fossil pollen_studies"

https://www.researchgate.net/public...babilistic_synthesis_of_fossil_pollen_studies

 

[Montuno]

I would guess that most of the cannabis that reached Europe would of arrived through the trade routes that have existed for centuries. If spices and silk reached Western Europe all the way from the far east then why not cannabis and its derivatives. I read that the Romans did smoke "hemp" for medicinal and recreational purposes, that is just the term that was used in the source I read.

The Hashasheen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Assassins were said to have been drugged or manipulated to become Assassins in the cult of Hassan-i Sabbah from early child hood. They would be addicted and were said to consume hashish but there isn't any evidence of them consuming hashish before or during a battle/assassination. I would agree with many in here who think that the vikings didn't smoke cannabis before a battle. Maybe afterwards but I believe fighting under the influence of cannabis would be counter-intuitive. It doesn't give you courage like a few horns of mead would or perhaps not give you courage but numb you to the potentially dire consequences that are likely to befall you in the coming engagement.

In the Arabian peninsula right now many know of captagon a drug that is consumed in pill form which is a mainly amphetamine stimulant. It gives you energy for hours and keeps you awake. It will make the most stable person more prone to violent tendencies and irritability delivering them into an almost fearless state. What ever it was the Vikings were taking before battle that would morph them into their "berserker" state I would be willing to bet it 100% wasn't cannabis.

Love this thread, I am no expert in this just sharing my thoughts so as to spur the discussion.

Even before the Islamic "sect" of "assassins", and closer to the vikinga:
Cannabis smoking pipe, found in Cordoba, Spain, from the time of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba:

Museum: Archaeological and Ethnological Museum of Cordoba

Inventory: CE005997

Generic Classification: Ceramic

Object/Document: Pipe

Material/Support Reddish white clay

Mold technique : Baking

Decoration: Incisa

Dimensions : Height = 2.50 cm; Minimum thickness = 0.40 cm; Length = 4 cm

Description:
Smoking pipe with a flat base, presenting two well differentiated parts: the first one presents a diagonal cut, at its end there is a circular hole where the cane would be placed to smoke. The second part is shaped like the bow of a ship, and is the bowl where the hashish, which is larger than the side hole, is placed. All the decoration is based on lines: in the part corresponding to the mouthpiece, on its sides appear concentric triangles, in the part corresponding to the bowl, we see a series of parallel lines.

Dating: 901=1100 After Christ.

Cultural Context/Style: Middle Ages Al-Andalus. Caliph

Use/function Smoking instrument

Place of Origin: Espejo(Campiña Baja (comarca), Córdoba)

Reasonable Classification: This piece gives us evidence that the habit of smoking hashish, a narcotic based on Indian hemp, was common. It is not known with certainty when it was introduced in Al-Andalus but its use was maintained later in the Nazarite era and also in the Christian era.
The examples preserved make it clear that there were pre-established forms made in moulds, in this case the piece is practically the same only the decoration varies from one piece that is in the Alhambra Museum with inventory number: 4673. All of them present a series of analogies due to their use: they consist of two parts, one where the grass would be placed to smoke the bowl and a mouthpiece with a truncated cone that serves as a shot to the bowl. It seems that they are pieces made in series, they present the same analogies: small format, with zoomorphic, geometric, anthropomorphic, geometric forms, etc.

Type of collection: Stable collection

Bibliography: MARINETTO, P.. Play and Recreation' in Living in Al-Andalus. Exhibition of Ceramics (S.IX-XV). 1993. Almeriense Institute of Studies Almediterranea
Exhibition of Hispano-Muslim Ceramics held in the Patio de las Luces of the Diputación Provincial de Almería 19 February-31 March.
Graphic Art Workshops
Granada-Almería,1993.

VV.AA. El Zoco. Economic life and traditional arts in Al-Andalus and Morocco. 1995. P. 141, fig. 102; The Andalusian legacy
Lunwerg Editores, S.A.
Barcelona-Madrid, 1995.

Comments: Not available for temporary exhibition according to current regulations

 

[tobedetermined]

Marijuana and hashish smoking pipe, found in Cordoba, Spain, from the time of the Umayyad Caliphate of Cordoba [snip]
Dating: 901=1100 After Christ.

Good find, Montuno. That means hashish was being smoked much earlier than thought. And it adds another overlap. The Vikings raided Spain in 844, pillaging Sevilla & threatening Cordoba until the caliphate gathered an army to drive them off. They raided Iberia again several more times – although mainly the Christian north.

Btw . . . my Y-DNA & ancestral geography say that I am probably a Viking remnant & I smoke a lot of weed . . . does that help the research at all?

 

[Montuno]

Good find, Montuno. That means hashish was being smoked much earlier than thought. And it adds another overlap. The Vikings raided Spain in 844, pillaging Sevilla & threatening Cordoba until the caliphate gathered an army to drive them off. They raided Iberia again several more times – although mainly the Christian north

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikings_in_Iberia

https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vikingos_en_la_península_ibérica


Right.
The first Viking incursion you cite was actually during the time of the Emirate and its fourth emir Abd-al-Rhaman (aka Abderraman) II.
Later there would also be incursions during the time of the Caliphate, and of its second caliph, al-Hakam (aka Alhaken) II .

But there were also peaceful diplomatic and commercial contacts. From one of the Wikipedia articles:

"Aside from Viking raids in the Islamic Mediterranean, it has been imaged that there were also sustained diplomatic relations between the Vikings and the Islamic world.[11][12][13] However, the key evidence, a thirteenth-century account by Ibn Di?ya, in which an Arab diplomat Al-Ghaz?l ("the gazelle") is dispatched to a pagan court during the reign of Abd-ar-Ra?man II (Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba), has been shown neither clearly to refer to Vikings nor probably even to have happened.[14] It is accepted, however, that in the tenth century the Jewish Spanish-Arabic merchant Ibrahim ibn Yakub Al-Tartushi travelled to the Scandinavian trading town of Hedeby in Schleswig.[15] "

 

[Montuno]

Btw . . . my Y-DNA & ancestral geography say that I am probably a Viking remnant & I smoke a lot of weed . . . does that help the research at all?

Heh heh... Everything could be...

What is historically proven is that in my area cannabis was grown on a large scale during the time of the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba, and that at least since the subsequent Caliphate, this cannabis was smoked (in beautiful pipes that I can show you if you are interested; in the shape of a boat, a lion, etc...); and it is also true that "your ancestors" Vikings "visited" mine both in the Emiral and Caliphal times...
...Who knows... Perhaps one of my ancestors was the first to teach yours to smoke good grass from the Guadalquivir Valley, he...


Pd:
Photos of anothers beautiful pipes, somewhat later than the previous one I showed you; these others belongs to the time and area of the Hispano-Muslim Nazarite Sultanate of Granada (1238 - 1492); (Exhibited to the public in the "cannabis pipes" section of Room 7 of the Alhambra Museum (Granada, Spain)):

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

 

[Roms]

Vibes Montuno gracias for those pieces of history, mix between the Celtic and North African culture i guess.

For those little sibsi pipes i think that they was much more used to smoke the kiff than hasch, like the Berbers nowadays i mean..? They probably used something bigger like the Hindu chilum or water pipe for the hasch ? Bigger artefacts like that in the museum you know?

Btw before the zero age my ancestors Armorican, Veneti, used to trade with Iberia, as far as Grece, Anatolia and North Africa. Thalassokrate proto Celtic vibes.

 

[Montuno]

Vibes Montuno gracias for those pieces of history, mix between the Celtic and North African culture i guess.

For those little sibsi pipes i think that they was much more used to smoke the kiff than hasch, like the Berbers nowadays i mean..? They probably used something bigger like the Hindu chilum or water pipe for the hasch ? Bigger artefacts like that in the museum you know?

Btw before the zero age my ancestors Armorican, Veneti, used to trade with Iberia, as far as Grece, Anatolia and North Africa. Thalassokrate proto Celtic vibes.

Celtic culture had the greatest impact in Northern Iberia. I see in these pipes more a mixture of native elements (Tartessian, Iberian) with Greco-Roman and Eastern elements (Syria, Iraq)... But I am not an expert in art, of course.

As for your question: I don't know if there are also bigger pipes. I leave you a link to an article of the "Patronato del Museo de La Alhambra", in case it is useful for you..:

https://www.alhambra-patronato.es/pipas-nazari

.

 

[therevverend]

I've been looking at the early Spanish accounts of discovering pipes and tobacco. It's clear the Spanish had no idea what a pipe was. They called them 'muskets'. If pipes were invented in Spain for hashish smoking the Spanish would be familiar with them. Here's a link to 'the first image of a man smoking a pipe'. All pre-smoking Arab accounts of ingesting hashish use the verb 'to eat'. The verb for smoking is 'to drink' which was not used until after pipes were introduced from the New World.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tobacco#/media/File:Chute_tobacco.JPG

I'd imagine if the Spanish had invented pipes, there'd be older images then this one? I reached out to the museum you mention, they still haven't gotten back to me. I doubt they will since I doubt they've tested these pipes. It's clear they made a mistake, the pipes look like ones made after contact with the New World. The other pre-Columbian Old World pipes are very different, actually water pipes.

The Vikings may have encountered pipes in the New World because the Inuit used them. As far as I know they didn't leave any records about it or bring any pipes back to the Old World. Once again I think if pipes had been invented and used by Europeans instead of Native Americans there'd be a clear history of pipe use in the Old World. They'd be found across Europe and Asia. Or certainly across the Arab world in hashish-using regions. Yet all the Arab accounts either refer to eating hashish or burning it as incense. I notice their pipe collection is dated 13-15th century and 15th-16th century. I believe their dating is wrong and all the pipes are from the 16th century onward. I'd be surprised if all the Old World pipes were found by this one guy, in one place, in Spain. I think Native Americans deserve credit here, not the Spanish. I'll send the museum another note and see what happens. My guess is they'll quietly take their page down.

 

[therevverend]

Here's a link to a piece about the history of clay smoking pipes in England. Notice the similarity between the early European pieces and the Spanish pieces.

https://www.dawnmist.org/gallery.htm

It's likely the Spanish pipes were made in the century after the Europeans discovered tobacco and brought it back to Europe. Here's a picture of 17th century clay pipes from Venice.

They're very similar to the Spanish collection and seem to be made in a similar fashion. I'm not trolling, I'd love to see evidence of hash pipes or hookahs before Columbus. Here's a link to the wikipedia page about the history of smoking. A lot of good information there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smoking

What is historically proven is that in my area cannabis was grown on a large scale during the time of the Umayyad Emirate of Cordoba,

Can you give me a link to your source? Very curious about European drug cannabis production before the hippies.

mixture of native elements (Tartessian, Iberian) with Greco-Roman and Eastern elements (Syria, Iraq)

Looks Renaissance style to my untrained eye..

 

[saluki]

I've been looking at the early Spanish accounts of discovering pipes and tobacco. It's clear the Spanish had no idea what a pipe was. They called them 'muskets'. If pipes were invented in Spain for hashish smoking the Spanish would be familiar with them. Here's a link to 'the first image of a man smoking a pipe'. All pre-smoking Arab accounts of ingesting hashish use the verb 'to eat'. The verb for smoking is 'to drink' which was not used until after pipes were introduced from the New World.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tobacco#/media/File:Chute_tobacco.JPG

I'd imagine if the Spanish had invented pipes, there'd be older images then this one? I reached out to the museum you mention, they still haven't gotten back to me. I doubt they will since I doubt they've tested these pipes. It's clear they made a mistake, the pipes look like ones made after contact with the New World. The other pre-Columbian Old World pipes are very different, actually water pipes.

The Vikings may have encountered pipes in the New World because the Inuit used them. As far as I know they didn't leave any records about it or bring any pipes back to the Old World. Once again I think if pipes had been invented and used by Europeans instead of Native Americans there'd be a clear history of pipe use in the Old World. They'd be found across Europe and Asia. Or certainly across the Arab world in hashish-using regions. Yet all the Arab accounts either refer to eating hashish or burning it as incense. I notice their pipe collection is dated 13-15th century and 15th-16th century. I believe their dating is wrong and all the pipes are from the 16th century onward. I'd be surprised if all the Old World pipes were found by this one guy, in one place, in Spain. I think Native Americans deserve credit here, not the Spanish. I'll send the museum another note and see what happens. My guess is they'll quietly take their page down.

Not sure about pipes but from my reading even before the Arab accounts of smoking hashish, the romans used to smoke "hemp". They would burn it and inhale the smoke using straws. Straws were actually quite common all around the world even before Christ.

 

[Montuno]

Therevverend:

You are probably right, and some of the best archaeologists and Islamists in the West confuse a multitude of Hispano-Islamic looking pieces taken from Hispano-Islamic archeological sites with Renaissance Christian art.

As for low bibliography documenting the cultivation and recreational use of cannabis in al-Andalus, I already put you examples of several authors, both medieval and contemporary, in another thread where you discussed the same, but you ignored it.

Cheers.

 

[Montuno]

Not sure about pipes but from my reading even before the Arab accounts of smoking hashish, the romans used to smoke "hemp". They would burn it and inhale the smoke using straws. Straws were actually quite common all around the world even before Christ.

Example of a Roman pipe (I - II century A.C.):