Good morning, it’s overcast here and a bit dreary but I’m busy with my Halloween décor and in a lovely mood

 

FIRST MY OUTLANER/FRASER MANIA MUST BE CATERED TO:

 

AT A dinner meeting the other day one of the participants who was hardly taller than me (5’4″) stated that the Viking myth is so untrue and that the average Viking raider was basically his height.  As usual I perceive that much of our legends are not exactly (ha) near the truth….so I decided I’d see if we could find some Viking truths and dispel some legends:

THE MEN THEMSELVES

The Vikings, or “Vikingr” in Old Norse, is the collective term used to describe the Scandinavian explorers, traders and warriors who raided, traded, explored and settled across large parts of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from around the eight to the mid-eleventh centuries.  http://www.visitdenmark.com/denmark/culture/vikings-facts-and-myths    So there were more than one category for this group of men that formed colonies all over Europe.  In fact according to Neil Oliver (historian/Coast) These men settled in Britain, Iceland and Greenland and transformed themselves from illiterate pagans into Christian farmers, statesmen and kings–all in less than 200 years!

 

HORNED HELMETS

 

 

From sports mascot (above for Minnesota football team) to movie images we have been taught to equate the Viking with a horned helmet.  In fact from my reading on the subject I found that the helmet is a 19th century addition and was based on Wager operas which included the horned helmet as a costume addition.    If you really think of it, the horns would have been very impractical in battle both in getting caught on items and allowing the foe to have something to clasp onto which doesn’t seem like it would be a great idea in hand to had combat.

 

 

REAL VIKING HELMET

 

THE VIKINGS WERE VISCIOUS SAVAGE THAT DESTROYED ALL

“The 793 raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne on the northeast coast of England was the first Viking attack that was written about… Alcuin, a great educator in Charlemagne’s court, was a particularly influential person who wrote about it…(and) spread the word that the Vikings were bloody and violent. In fact, they were violent, but no more than anyone else at the time. Compared to Charlemagne’s armies, the Vikings were amateurs. The Vikings were actually just looking for better places to live and preferred not to kill or be killed for it.  ”    Yale’s Anders Winroth, foremost authority on Vikings.

 

VIKINGS USED A “SUNSTONE”  TO NAVIGATE BEFORE THE COMPASS

This one may well be true:  A crystal found in the wreck of a British ship that sunk off the island of Alderney in 1592 could have been used as a sunstone, they say, according to the BBC.   The crystal, an oblong shape about the size of a pack of cigarettes, was found near the navigational equipment. And it’s an Icelandic spar, the type of crystal scientists say the Vikings used, because it can diffract light into two distinct rays. Scientists tested a similar crystal and found it was indeed possible to determine the direction of the sun by finding the point where the rays converge, even after the sun has set.  While this ship was long after the Vikings, it is felt that it was used to back up the compass and was similar if not the same as he Vikings used to navigate.  http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/03/07/vikings-sunstone-crystal-myth/1970277/

 

SOME REAL VIKING (HA) ITEMS THAT MIGHT ENRICH YOUR LIFE