@mactonite @lovelymiss @6gorillianbarsofjewsoap @EvilSandmich @TrevorGoodchild @VaxxSabbath @lks It had taxes from year one. Without taxes money even money without usury coalesces into the hands of the few. Read War Cycles, Peace Cycles by Richard Hoskins. The entire book is on the evils of usury but even that book says taxes are necessary. Norse society had slaves called thralls and freemen as far back as the melting of the ice caps. Your entire premise is false and your worldview of harmony through being left alone doesn't work in the natural world. Hierarchy works, in the end it's the only thing that works. Libertarianism can exist for very short stints of time in highly homogenized areas but will always always fall to a monarchy with power. The keyword is power, you either have it or you are a slave to it. There is no middle ground. There are a lot of things to like about the Norse ways, I could give you lots of examples where I would base a new society in the ashes of this rotten one upon it, but the ideal that they all just left each other alone on their farmsteads is myopic at best and outright lying at worst. The Norse fought over land and resources and trod the earth under their mighty shoes to secure it from all peoples. They were traders, raiders and wise, but they were warriors and hierarchal to the extreme.