My first encounter with what I now consider the archetypal Northern man was on a trip to the cinema with my family when I was about 5 years old. The stars were Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. The film was The Vikings of course and the story although ficticious depicted invasion by Viking long boats on the shores of Britain.
The story was fulled with gore, sword weilding hunks and helpless Anglo-Saxon inhabitants. The musical score embedded itself in my musical heritage and drifts into my thoughts whenever I thik about Vikings. They were Ragnar, Einar, Erik and Sven. Scarred and strong, clad in leather and metal, they were the stuff of a young girl's dreams. That prototype wouldn't be surpassed until Russell Crowe stole my heart as he hit the big screen as Gladiator Maximus. Life would never be the same again. If you happen to know him. please give him my number.
History lessons told us that the Vikings were seafaring warriors who came here to pillage our land but that is not really true. They were mainly traders, skilled metal workers and farmers, They came here to settle, possibly even to escape the colder climes of the far north and many intergarated with existing communies.
It was well known that when trading with other nations, they often embrased the religion of that place, sometimes producing amulets depicting both Thor's hammer and the christian cross. Eventually some who settled in Britain abandoned the tradional Viking funeral, set adrit at sea on a burning vessel, in favour of burial in a churchyard. The initial attack on Lindisfarne however was a massacre. The Monastery was destroyed and all monks living on the island were massacred. Seems to have been a clash of paganism and christianity.
Northern man in a nutshell.
Raping and pillaging,strapping invaders,
sailed in on longboats
blowing their horns.
Leather and metal
falcons and flagons
forging fine jewels
from silver and gold.
Pagan they came here
hearing the stories
of a god more forgiving
than those of their own
slowly ebracing
Christian community
wedding the Saxon
farming and fathering
sewing the seeds
of ancestoral thrones
here, in the soil
of an alien land.
Thanks for reading. Adele
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