It's strange that they found this staggering when you consider how much contact there was between the northern Europe and the Ottomans. It's well documented that Northern European mercenaries traveled down through the Balkans and served in Ottoman armies. Some of them converted and rose to high ranks. I wish I could remember the name of the Ottoman Admiral that was from northern Europe but his name escapes me right now. I know there was a significant amount of trade along these routs as well.
I'm wracking my brain to remember where I read about the vikings in the Ottoman Empire, I know that I read it before the internet was a significant thing. It might have been from Ottoman Centuries, which I remember being a pretty good book on the Ottoman Empire but I'm not sure.
In Russia, it is held to be common knowledge that there has been active connection between the Scandinavians and the Byzanthium. Those were two main trade and culture partners for the Rus' of the 10th century. A prominent theory even states that a Norseman came to establish rule in Rus' at the call of the Rus' people. (Alternative theories suggest that it was a Rus' man, or that there was no Rurik at all — there's always one such theory somewhere) Seems like they went a bit further than Byzanthium, or that Muslims were in contact with the Varangians in Constantinople. Which the Eastern Roman Empire was Christian, I wonder if that meant that Muslims weren't allowed in.
I think that's mainstream journalism hyperbole. From what I've been told, those guys went everywhere they literally could and brought back whatever they could. They went as far east as Russia, as far west as North America, and they loved to bring back exotic coins, jewelery, etc. When you consider the fact that the Silk Road covered more ground and was a land trade route that existed about a thousand years before Vikings were even a culture, it doesn't strike me as surprising that Vikings got their trade boogie on as much as they did. I posted the article more because it interested me in two nuanced ways. One, due to the nature of the material, cloth artifacts that old in good, studiable condition are kind of rare. So discoveries that involve more organic materials, such as cloths, woods, foods, etc. always strikes me as extra nifty. Two, I've read that Vikings in particular were actually pretty open to other cultural ideas. More often than not people talk about language in particular and then mixing up Christian ideas with old world pagan ideas from a few different cultures, so to see mention of something other than that, even though we have other examples of Viking interaction with the middle east, is kind of cool.It's strange that they found this staggering when you consider how much contact there was between the northern Europe and the Ottomans.