Posted on 01/05/2007 11:12:24 AM PST by WesternCulture
New centre will dispel Viking myths
Who were the Vikings? For most people, thoughts of raping and pillaging probably spring to mind, as do images of busty women called Brunnhilda with blonde plaits and horned helmets.
The Vikings sailed from the Nordic countries to Britain, Ireland, North America, Russia and even Turkey. Yet for visitors to Scandinavia and locals alike, there are currently precious few opportunities to find out the truth about the extraordinary people who spread their culture over most of the known world.
This could soon change, as plans have now been unveiled to start an interactive museum in Stockholm to satisfy tourists’ hunger for the medieval Scandinavians.
“There is a big interest worldwide in the Vikings,” says Marie Nork, one of those trying to set up the Stockholm Viking Center. Quite apart from countries actually visited by Vikings, there is huge interest in both the United States and Japan.
“They are used in commercials – they’ve even been used in propaganda. During the 19th century they really became romanticized: that’s when they acquired their horns.”
The Stockholm centre, which is still in the planning stages, will look at these myths and compare them against the reality of Viking life – a reality that was more usually centred around trade and farming than the art of war.
“East-bound Vikings particularly did lots of trading, rather than fighting and pillaging,” she says.
Nork, herself an archaeologist, believes that the lack of a modern Viking centre in Stockholm has been a glaring gap in the capital’s offering to tourists.
“People are often surprised that we don’t have more on offer. Maybe we Swedes don’t quite understand what a big deal the Vikings are internationally,” she says, and compares the lack of a Viking centre with the lack of any museum about Abba, a gap which other entrepreneurs recently announced plans to fill.
Her eyes were opened, as were those of fellow Viking enthusiast Veronica Ekberg, when they were both studying archeology at York University in England. York is home to the hugely successful Jorvik Viking Centre, which Nork and Ekberg are holding up as an inspiration.
Like the Jorvik Viking Centre, in which visitors travel back in time through mock-ups of Viking York, Nork wants the new centre to be more accessible than a normal museum. The aim is to site it in central Stockholm on a 6,750 square metre site. Glass display cases will be conspicuous by their absence.
“We’re looking into how we can use virtual reality to tell the Viking story,” Nork says.
Nork and Ekberg expect the centre to attract up to 800,000 visitors a year, and bring new tourists to the Swedish capital:
“Stockholm is a natural place to site a museum like this – the city is something of a showroom for Scandinavia.
“And if you can use the Vikings to attract people to northern England, then it won’t be a problem for Stockholm,” she reasons.
The centre will also have an academic research element, including collaboration with other universities. It could even end up organizing archaeological digs, something that Jorvik already does.
Preliminary estimates suggest that getting the project off the ground will cost 230 million kronor, but those behind it believe that they will soon be able to recoup their expenses. The project has received valuable support from Stockholm University’s commercialization experts, consultants, architects, designers and figures from the Swedish culture world.
Nork says that the huge international interest in the Vikings means that the search for finance and other forms of support is being carried out abroad as well as in Sweden, with help from the Swedish consulate in Los Angeles and international Swedish women’s network Swea.
While Nork admits that the Viking centre is a long-term project – she reckons that it will take four years from securing finance to the museum opening – there is no doubt in her mind that it will happen.
“The question is not whether a Viking centre will be built, but when.”
James Savage
What about a Center for Viking Kitten Studies?
What about a Center for Viking Kitten Studies?
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We have one. It's called FreeRepublic.
Hell too, My ancestors were Viking.
We raided England and France and made off with their ladies and booty and are proud of it.
Both fought like little girls.
Well, it could be those cultural and philosophical things you mentioned that made the ancient Scandinavians so advanced and important, but I suspect it is something more basic and, indeed, genetic:
Everyone knows blonds are smarter.
That's easy. They got that way because they had to keep moving all the time to keep from freezing.
Maybe, but the Jets are going to the Super Bowl!
Next thing you know, they'll be telling me the Vikings didn't really wear horns on their helmets.
IIRC, the northmen were soundly thrashed at Stamford Brdige by Harold, his hauskarls, and the Saxon fyrd.
But then again, the Normans did Harold in at Senlac, and the Normans were descended from Vikings. So maybe I just made your point for you.
The Vikings were most definitely a fierce warlike people. In my opinion, one of the most powerful witnesses to the power of Christianity is what it did to them. It totally transformed them into some of the most decent folks you'd ever want to meet. Hats off to Christianity, else think what the world would have to endure.
One of my favorite Zep songs.
As the article stated, Sweden has been behind in figuring out what tourists want to see--Abba museum as an example. Norway is free to build its own Viking museum, they don't need permission from Sweden.
My father's parents and grandparents on both sides were from Iceland! I believe that is why three of my six kids have red hair; Eric the Red!
You mean Norway didn't build a museum for A-ha?
LOL!
Please give an example of a nation, at least in recent centuries, that "lived off other nations production capacity" by colonizing them. Generally speaking, colonization has always been a financial net loss. Individual members of the ruling nation may make out well, but the nation itself almost always extracts less in taxes than it spends on administration and defense.
"So now the pussified Swedes are trying to pussify their Viking ancestors. Everybody knows the really cool Vikings came from Norway and Denmark."
Pussified?
What would you suggest is the reason Sweden hasn't been in war for almost 200 years?
Why didn't Hitler or the Soviet Union ever think seriously of trying to invade us?
During both World Wars and the Cold War as well, Sweden had (and has still) a military production capacity of the Ruhr Area of Germany or Michigan+Illinois if not an even larger one AND the military know-how needed to put it to work. In the heyday of the Soviet Union, we could easily mobilize around 1 million men.
Heard of, as a matter of example, things like these:
http://www.kockums.se/Submarines/sodermanland.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JAS_39
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Gustav_recoilless_rifle
- If you were aware of what this equipment could do to the place where you dwell, you'd wet your pants.
Anyhow, Norway and Denmark are cool countries. Cheers to that, buddy.
"Please give an example of a nation, at least in recent centuries, that "lived off other nations production capacity" by colonizing them. Generally speaking, colonization has always been a financial net loss. Individual members of the ruling nation may make out well, but the nation itself almost always extracts less in taxes than it spends on administration and defense."
Colonies made Britain rich in the 18th and 19th century, BUT empoverished it later on. One great example of how Britain profited from the rule over India is that of India producing cheap products that was used for coloring textiles and the british selling it to the rest of the industrialized world.
To fully understand just how profitable this trade was, one needs to be aware of the fact that the Germans invested huge amounts of money in trying to find out a way to extract some kind of indigo substance (which you, in its turn, can produce every kind of color from) by using highly advanced methods of chemistry.
In the end, after having invested enourmous sums, they were successful. They managed to find a process for extracting it from coal tar.
Among other things, this scientific and technological program, the Manhattan Project of the 19th century, led to the establishment of THE most successful chemical company of today, BASF, Badische Anilin und Soda Fabrik (Baden Aniline and Soda Factory). This company today employs around 87 000 people (according to wikipedia.com).
The story above indicates why colonies are profitable, but more importantly why Western scientific research and hi-tech is even more profitable.
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