I'm interested about the Vikings and the Viking Age, but I have to say, I'm no expert of this exact era. The video is rather nice, but I don't quite recognize some claims or statements in it:
2:12-2:17 -Swedish Vikings were different from their Norwegian and Danish cousins, largely due to geography
How exactly geography makes people different? If an ambit is targeted elsewhere due to geography, in my opinion, it still doesn't make the Vikings fundamentally different as human beings.
2:22-2:29 -Sweden has no west coast and thus faces east - and for this reason, the Swedish Vikings focused their expeditions to the east of Sweden
Well, at least in the modern time, from Gothenburg up to the Norwegian border, there's the Swedish west coast. But I'm not so sure, who controlled the area during the Viking Age. Yes, the Swedish Vikings focused to the east of Sweden, but alongside the Danes and the Norwegians, the Swedes also took part in many raids against England.
2:35-2:44 -The natives of the Baltic and Karelia called the Swedish Vikings, the Rus(sie), which in their language means rowing - a reference to the way, the Swedish Vikings would row their longboats down Russia's long rivers.
I haven't heard this etymology for the word - Rus - earlier. But what I know, there's still the area of Roslagen in Uppland and near Stockholm in the modern Sweden. Rodslag is and old Uppland word for a rowing crew of warrior oarsmen. Rospigg - a person from Roslagen, an inhabitant of Ros, the origins of the Rus' people and in Old Norse, something like Gardar.
Rurik, a Varangian chieftain of the Rus' was invited to reign in Ladoga and Novgorod. He was the founder of the Rurik Dynasty ruling more than 700 years in areas nowadays in the modern Russia and Ukraine. Veliky Novgorod is one of the oldest historic cities in Russia. The origins of the city's name are probably from Old Norse, Holmgård, Rurik's old Viking Age fortress town.
