Slavery - facing where the peculiar institution began

 Before I begin I am going to point out that I have studied on my own and at University American racial history and slavery. Currently I am working my way through slave narratives from America which is very interesting and thought provoking but difficult to read. So I am aware of the history and will try my best to be sensitive towards it. I realize that my thoughts
So here are my thoughts in bullet points

-The history of Southern slavery makes my blood boil - it pulls my heart apart reading about it. It is history that needs to be faced. It breaks my heart that this could have happened and that slavery was the "benevolent institution". I have always been proud of the fact that there are no events like that in my countries history. Except, the things is that slavery began with us here in Europe. here in Scandinavia. The vikings began the "peculiar institution" many hundred years ago when they stole people, sold them to the highest bidder and they became chattels, property, something to be owned and badly treated. While the Vikings stole Caucasian people, mostly Irish and from the British Isles and this happened more than a thousand years ago and slavery stopped around the year 1000, it is history we tend to ignore over here. But that does not change the fact that it is with us that slavery began, the roots of the problem can be traced back here to the North. And in later centuries it moved to Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and other countries. Tey took up what we had started and continued it. And slavery did not disappear here in the North. The Danish held slaves in the Virgin Islands for a very long time.

So I can go on and on about how Americans need to face their history of slavery when the truth is that here in Europe we certainly have not. We refuse to deal with our history of slavery and that is not okay. We need to deal with it but I am afraid we never will. Like little children we think that if we close our eyes to the problem it'll disappear. Except it won't.

So I can say that slavery has not been in my country's history for centuries but it is with us that it began. Which is not any better.