It’s October 9th, which means it’s Leif Erikson Day here in the United States, which you’ll be forgiven for not knowing exists, unless you, say, grew up in a household full of history buffs with Scandinavian heritage. Then, you bite your thumb, sir, at Columbus Day. It’s a Viking thing. But is it, really? Enter Cat Jarman to give us all some much needed Viking Support:
Given my name and the fact that I’m a cinemaniac, it should come as no surprise that I enjoy seeing Vikings on the big screen. I mean, all seven or nine of my regular readers know I like to post about Vikings. And my brother and I have a particular love of the Rohirrim from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (whose film versions aforementioned readers may recall are always somewhere in my list of 50…
So, for the past few years, there’s been a particular cartoon that’s made the rounds on social media which friends invariably send to me. I mean, besides being an avid reader, several members of my family are or have been librarians and are all in favor of libraries. And, let’s be honest, in this scenario, I would totally do this: some of my Viking brethren forget to pillage before they burn. Sure you may have…
I fell down a YouTube rabbit hole earlier this year, going through the various “experts in [X] talk about the treatment of [X] in movies.” When I saw this one, I knew it had to be this year’s Leif Erikson Day post. (Because of course I have to have a Leif Erikson post. Have you seen my name?).
I really should come up with a symbol/repeatable post that I put up when things get busy, like the prolific writer and de facto pop culture historian Mark Evanier does with his Cream of Mushroom Soup posts. And perhaps it should be Viking-themed. But while I mull that over… and work on both a script and some audio editing, here’s a darn fine Danish PSA. And no, Vikings didn’t wear helmets with horns. It could…
I stumbled across this longer article from BBC Scotland going into the impact of the Vikings last year, well after Leif Erikson Day and thought, “Why not use it for later?” And so I scheduled it for far in the future, much as my Norwegian ancestors put up blog posts and salt cod for later use.
Because I posted a number of videos by CGP Grey last week and because you want to know more about Skanda-hoovians (You know you do) Enjoy!
Being proud of our Norwegian heritage and an above-average amateur historian, our dad made sure we knew from an early age that real Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets. But why do so many people think so? An article in Vox gets to the root cause. Dang costume designers. Growing up, we didn’t have a wealth of Viking drama, so it was inevitable that the family would seek out what they could. That inevitably led to that…