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The announcement from the Vikings came at about 2 a.m. Gutless Standard Time. That means it took the team about 14 hours to cave from public pressure. "Cave" is the wrong word. Cower, run, scamper, bolt, run frantically and chickens--t might be better. In one moment, the Vikings were saying that Adrian Peterson deserved due process. In the next, he was effectively suspended. I'd have more respect for the team if it stuck by its wrongheaded stance. Instead, the Vikings basically said: We stand by Adrian Peterson and will let due process play out...ah hold on, sponsors are pulling out....

The first sponsor has backed away from its involvement with the NFL amid the chaos that has enveloped the league over the past week. On Monday night, hours after its logo appeared on the banner behind Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman as he explained the team's decision to play running back Adrian Peterson in the near future, hotel chain Radisson announced it was suspending its sponsorship with the team.

The NFL, already swamped with negative news in what has been a horrible week for the league, now has to deal with Adrian Peterson, one of its biggest stars, being indicted for injuring a child. Multiple reports, including TMZ, Fox Sports and the Fox affiliate in Houston, said Peterson was indicted on Thursday in Montgomery County for reckless or negligent injury to a child. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport said the indictment stems from Peterson disciplining his son with a switch, which is a flexible rod.

The fortress found on the Danish island of Zealand, around 30 miles south of Copenhagen, is the fifth circular fortress to be unearthed, and the first in over 60 years. “This is great news,” said Lasse Sonne, a Viking historian from the Saxo Institute at the University of Copenhagen. “Although there were Vikings in other countries, these circular fortresses are unique to Denmark. Many have given up hope that there were many of them left.” Like previously discovered ring fortresses, the Vallø Borgring is thought to date back to the late tenth century and the reign of Harald Bluetooth, the...

You know, being a fan of the Minnesota Vikings is difficult enough just based on what happens on the field. We’re 0-4 in Super Bowls. We’ve got to deal with the stomach-curdling memories of the 1999 NFC Championship Game, not to mention 41-doughnut in the same game two years later, and the bounty-hunting Saints putting out a contract on Brett Favre in 2010. But on a cultural level . . . hey, what the heck did we do? We were just sitting here minding our own business. First we got stuck with a petulant, attention-mongering punter who couldn’t and can’t...

The University of Minnesota is working with the Minnesota Vikings in an effort to keep the Washington Redskins’ name from being used in “promotional and game date materials” during the NFL teams’ Nov. 2 game at the school’s stadium in Minneapolis, according to an Aug. 1 letter from university President Eric W. Kaler to U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.).

Fifty thousand 'Vikings' landed on the shores of a small village in northern Spain on Sunday, as part of an annual festival which commemorates a Scandinavian invasion which took place a thousand years ago. On the first Sunday of August, Catoria is flooded with ‘blood-thirsty’ men and women from all across Europe. Dressed in animal skins and armed with the finest plastic weaponry, they disembark on the rugged Galician coast with the aim of capturing the Towers of the West, just as Norway’s King Olaf did a millennia ago. The ‘blood’ spilt during the simulated battles does taste distinctly like...

A massive research project, 15 years in the making, has revealed that beneath Dublin’s modern streets lies a trove of buried Viking warriors and artifacts. Archaeologists say the number of Viking warrior burials in Dublin is astounding. A project cataloguing these burials was began in 1999. Now nearing its conclusion, the project will result in the publication of an 800-page tome titled ‘Viking Graves and Grave Goods in Ireland.’ ...the National Museum of Ireland... houses a Viking exhibition, which includes a ninth century Viking skeleton with sword and spearhead, found in the War Memorial Park, Islandbridge in 1934. Between the...

according to the Icelandic sagas Every few years I re-read the Icelandic sagas in translation. This time, I kept a notepad handy and jotted down the more interesting nicknames. Here are a few of them. For those unfamiliar with the sagas, I should mention that they were regarded by the 12th- and 13th-century Icelanders for whom they were written as essentially factual works, albeit with some literary embellishments. In other words, the following names all belonged to ostensibly historical figures.

<p>Ship logs and pottery show how the geomagnetic field has changed.</p> <p>Old ship records of magnetic north have helped to unravel a record of our planet's field.</p> <p>While sailors plied the Seven Seas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, little did they know that their ships' logs would one day help scientists to reconstruct the history of the Earth's magnetic field.</p>

Your humble correspondent is a fan of the History Channel show, "Vikings." However, its historical accuracy leaves something to be desired to the extent that a week ago I posted a thread at IMDB, Things I Learned While Watching 'Vikings', which humorously mocked such inaccuracies as well as anachronisms on the show. Along with noticing that Rollo wore L.A. Ink type tattoos, I also took note of a completely unhistorical type of punishment meted out to the apostate monk Athelstan: "The Church punished apostate monks by crucifying them and doing their best to make them appear like Jesus including a...

Aussie Ragnar vs Italian Ragnar. Smiling Ragnar vs Laughing Ragnar. Athelstan spoke Norse, Old Saxon, and English while Eric spoke Norse, English, and Guttural Bronx. Floki danced on floors while Einar danced on oars. Bjorn chopped off a head while Einar chopped off a pigtail. “Vikings” ate fish while Eric ate knish. Weird Ragnar son eye from prophecy vs weird Ragnar son eye from hawk. Ragnar warned “Never hesitate” while Eric wondered “Why did he hesitate?” Anachronisms: Rollo's L.A. Ink arm vs Morgana's Maidenform bra.

A team of researchers working in Hungary has proposed that a sun compass artifact found in a convent in 1948 might have been used in conjunction with crystals to allow Vikings to guide their boats even at night. In their paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences, the team describes theories they've developed that might explain how Viking sailors were able to so accurately sail to places such as Greenland. Since the discovery of the sun compass fragment, researchers have theorized that Viking sailors used them to plot their course—at least when the...

1. Bjorn Lodbrok has a worse haircut than Kim Jong Un. 2. Beware the Duke of Earl...Haraldson. 3. In Viking vs Viking battles, those wearing plain brown hoodies are doomed to die. 4. Viking trophy wives are high maintenance. 5. Ragnar Lodbrok is a secret humanitarian. 6. Although the Vikings had extensive contacts with North German Saxons, they were unaware of the existence of England until they arrived there. 7. Eighth century Viking women had the sensibilities of 21st century feminists. 8. No-Fault Viking divorce is quick and easy. No lawyers! 9. The Church punished apostate monks by crucifying them...

<p>LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a Viking longhouse that many believe was the home of Snorri Thorfinnsson, thought to be the first European born in the New World.</p> <p>The 1,000-year-old ruins were found in a glacial valley in northern Iceland during a survey of Viking-era buildings led by archaeologists at the University of California, Los Angeles.</p>

<p>LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a Viking longhouse that many believe was the home of Snorri Thorfinnsson, thought to be the first European born in the New World.</p> <p>The 1,000-year-old ruins were found in a glacial valley in northern Iceland during a survey of Viking-era buildings led by archaeologists at the University of California, Los Angeles.</p>

Archaeologists find legendary Icelandic home By Times Wire Services A UCLA team has found the Iceland home of Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first person of European descent born in the New World. Icelandic sagas from the 13th century tell the story of how Snorri’s parents led the first Scandinavian group that attempted to settle in Vinland — on the Canadian coast — around A.D. 1000. The attempt failed, and the family moved to Iceland, but Snorri was born while they were there. The “Vinland Sagas,” which also tell the story of Leif Ericson, are the earliest recorded history of the Scandinavian...

The death of Ireland’s High King during the famous bloody battle of Clontarf almost exactly 1,000 years ago will be remembered with a special service in his burial county of Armagh next month. Brian Boru (Bóraime) may have been born in County Clare but, as the well-known theme song ‘The Boys from the County Armagh’ notes, his ashes lie in the city, at the Church of Ireland Cathedral. The legendary leader had requested to be buried in Armagh, possibly due to its religious links to St Patrick, and it is said he was brought to the city by the clergy...

Clear your calendars: Viking apocalypse scheduled for Saturday Thor, Odin, Loki all scheduled to attend epic battle hastening world's end Now's the time to cash out your life insurance policy and have a little fun, because, according to Norse mythology, the world is ending this Saturday. Sorry to be a bummer, but you should know we're about 100 days into an epic battle that will culminate with the earth falling into the sea, NPR explains. On the bright side, at least you'll have an excuse for not going to your nephew's Chuck E. Cheese's party on Sunday. For those whose...

On this stick from the 1200s found in Bergen, two men named Sigurd and Lavran have written their names both in code and with regular runes. This helped runologist Jonas Nordby to solve the Jötunvillur code. For the first time, the Jötunvillur runic code is cracked. It can help to solve the mystery of the Vikings’ secret codes. Why did the Vikings use codes when they wrote runes? Was it a secret message or other reasons that they encrypted runic texts? This, we still know little about. But runologist Jonas Nordby think he may be one step closer to the...