Posted on 08/18/2005 3:07:15 PM PDT by blam
What a charming fellow.
"After a few days beating from some cold northern country they would have nasty salt sores and be truly pissed at the world by the time they made landfall on Britain. The monks would bear the brunt of their anger."
Yes. Sort of tough old sea dogs, real bastards. Hate to have to tangle with one of em. Probably rip my head off before I knew my head was off. heh heh heh. I am learning how to losen up at FR. I had been told in no certain terms I am to damn serious. Have a good one.
*grin*
How interesting! I was telling one of my sons recently that he could go to college and study Icelanding, if he really wanted to. (Seriously ... he was wondering if you could only learn useful stuff in college.)
Egil is muh role model...
muh mothers side is from Yorkshire... lotsa Viking blood round those parts still...
You're daft.
It's read as. "He got drunk at three and {he} killed at six."
The meaning is perfectly clear and finely cast.
Please, no horns on the helmets!!! That is completely historically inaccurate (and even defeats the purpose of the helmet, which is to deflect a blow).
The best explanation (apochryphally) of the "viking horned helmet" comes from the staging of Wagner's Ring. The costumer used various source material to develop the costumes, one of which was an old painting of vikings standing together. He mistook the blade of a spear that was hidden behind a viking to be a horn coming out of the helmet, and designed his costumes accordingly. Thus, the horned viking helmet became ingrained in popular opinion, despite absolutely no evidence for it from the vikings or their artifacts. Or so the story goes...
P.S. chain mail over a leather jerkin, a conical helmet with a piece coming down over the nose, and a broad-bladed sword or axe are pretty standard...
" Have a good night."
And you to. Hope he doesn't knock anyone of the stage. Enjoy the play. Kids are truely great!
"In Yorkshire today you can see clear evidence (faces and hair) of the Viking influence in the gene pool of the local population."
Princess Di, the actress from "Ronin" are good examples.
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That thought ran through my mind also.
'during the Scots invasion of England in 937, Egil went berserk and chased the enemy until there was no one left to kill. Only the English King's gift of two chests full of silver soothed his murderous mood"
Ah. Those were the days.
Speaking of moonbats, I ran across a guy somewhere on the net who insisted that there never had been such a thing as chain mail; that it was entirely mythical.
Yup. Complete inaccurate, no horns on the helmets.
Not quite the Elizabeth Browning poet's lifestyle....
This guy does not sound a lot different than the BTK killer who was sentenced yesterday. Apparantly had a blood lust.
So I suppose all of the contemporary pieces we have found are just... oddly-shaped metal fishing nets, perhaps? LOL! Considering that Beowulf (despite being a mythical story, it's historical value in terms of lifestyle is immense) is quite insistent on the value and efficacy of the hero's mail shirt, I'd say that guy has less legs to stand on than Monty Python's Black Knight...
That's part of the charm of the sagas, actually (not that I think BTK is charming...). While most "heroic" literature goes out of its way to make the hero's victories seem noble (a grand duel with the hero allowing the opponent to regain his weapon after being disarmed, for example), the sagas are brutally honest about the nature of violence. Often they will tell of a "hero" walking up behind his enemy and sticking an axe in his head, or ambushing an enemy and cutting his arm off before he can draw a weapon. Not flowery or idealized at all, just the gruesome reality of people killing other people...
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