Saturday, December 31, 2022

Um, yeah, don't be a Viking

I'm just finishing up "Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings," an excellent book about the rise and fall of the Vikings.

So imagine my surprise to see this opinion piece: "Viking virtues can help defeat woke enemies of America."

Uh, yeah, so about that.  There's been a fair amount of favorable fictionalization of the Vikings both in television and in professional sports.  And, yes, they were ahead of their time in naval technology and exploration.  But they were bad.  Any kind of atrocity you could assign to an invading military force was committed by the Vikings including - ahem - "contributing to the DNA" of England and Ireland.  For hundreds of years, they either pillaged and killed or took a sizable ransom to go away.

Fun fact to balance off this heavy post: Viking helmets did not have horns.  Just a complete myth.

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