Wednesday, March 6, 2013

VIKINGS - GIVE ME A BREAK


Vikings:

Champions of the practice of raping and pillaging.  The Olympic gold medalists for chopping down every tree they ever saw.  

Yes, they were amazing navigators and sailors.  Yes they traveled thousands of miles across open seas.  They came, they saw and they disappeared. They left a some scratches and a few artifacts of interest to students of such things, and that's all.  The Sons of Norway can whoop and holler all they want, but their storied ancestors were a scruffy  lot, not given to elevating the cultural station of those they met on the way to the mall.  Unless, that is, you think a credit card has something to do with culture.

Lately, it seems there is a renewed interest in the Viking era.  At least among TV producers.  I watched a brief segment the other night of THE VIKINGS and was amazed at the gratuitous killing and stylized grunge depicted in the piece.  Beards, hair and costume that seemed to me to have been carefully prepared before the shoot to comply with historical accuracy (excuse me, but there is not much on which to base anything in such detail)  and audience appeal, of course.  It's all about perception.  

Well, are we supposed to really believe those people looked like that?  I suppose that is the "Hollywood" effect.  Those people could make Hell seem like a "neat" weekend destination.  A reality retreat that's guaranteed to make you want to come back soon, ya hear?.

But really, it's hard to believe that it was much different for anyone around the turn of the 1st millennium AD.  You can read as much as you will, but a thousand years ago was not yesterday, and whatever was accomplished by the Vikings, or anyone else during that age, has to be judged by those standards not by the standards we would impose today.  So I didn't mean what I said?  Listen: I am ecstatic that I was not then.  

I couldn't have survived five minutes, I am sure. There I go again.  Standards change.  So, maybe I would have made it as a Viking?  It's a moot point.  Who cares?  I only know one thing for sure: I don't want any history passed on to me to be concocted by Hollywood or their kissing cousins, TV producers.  

Too bad there are no iPhone videos to reveal what those guys really looked like and what they really did.  I'm not that happy that too many such documents actually exist to reveal what we are really like to our descendants a thousand years hence.  If, that is, there is a thousand years hence.

Alas, what others now or then think of me or you, for that matter, is none of our business.  So carry on the best you can and look your best, if you can.  Neatness probably counts. ( I'll take a pass on that one. ) Try not to be so violent and warlike.  That's hard to hide from those who dig up your bones, excavate your dwellings, imagine your long boats and fast cars. 

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