Barbarians
So I’m reading this historical novel (The Lords of the North, by Bernard Cornwell), set in England in the time of Alfred the Great, and it occurs to me that this is basically a Western, with the Christian Saxons as the settlers and the pagan Danes as the Indians. No, wait, the Saxons are already there, and the Danes are trying to take their land, so the Saxons must be the Indians and the Danes must be the settlers. Although… the Saxons took the land away from the Romans, who took it away from the Britons, who took it away from the people who built Stonehenge.
Not to defend my barbarian ancestors, but fighting for land makes a certain kind of sense. I wonder what they would think of modern wars, like the one in Afghanistan. They understood blood feuds, which is how it started. The Taliban wouldn’t give up Osama bin Laden, so we brought them down. The Saxons and Danes would understand that. But staying there for 7 years, not following bin Laden into Pakistan, not plundering the cities, not seizing the land and farming it… incomprehensible.