The Land of the Vikings…
There is a lot more to Norway than men with beards and bloody axes but the Disney Website simply introduces Norway with the words “Welcome to the land of the Vikings!”
Whilst it suits Disney to retain the school boy image of them it actually becomes increasingly evident that Viking society was much more complex and popular conceptions of them are often in conflict with the truth that emerges from recent archaeology and modern research.
The traditional view of the Vikings as violent brutes and intrepid adventurers are part true and part fable but no one can be absolutely certain of the accurate ratio and popular representations of these men in horned helmets remain for now highly clichéd. Disney of course had a Wooden Longboat (its gone now I understand) and a shop that inevitably sold Viking helmets based on the traditional image of the plundering Norsemen.
In Florida in…
View original post 640 more words