Posted on 03/13/2013 10:42:29 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
It’s been more than fifty years since Kirk Douglas and his production company produced what most people still consider the best Viking movie ever made, The Vikings. Within the limits of the information available at the time, they made a good faith effort to do the thing relatively authentically. We’ve learned much in the years since, especially due to advances in archaeology, and many reenactors around the world (of whom I am among the least) work hard to re-create authentic Viking Age life. Dozens of accurate replicas of Viking ships have been built and put to sea, to the wonder and delight of many. The time would seem to be ripe for a depiction of the Viking Age that would surpass Kirk Douglas’s film in portraying of one of the most exciting and colorful eras in human history.
The History Channel’s new series, Vikings, is not it.
(Excerpt) Read more at spectator.org ...
Those who enjoy Viking culture and history would be hard pressed to find a better narrative than in the book, The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. It is truly one of the great novels of the Century, and a very good read.
Hugely popular in Sweden, it has been translated into 23 languages, and though there have been efforts to make it into a movie, they have never quite worked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Ships
Of course the Vikings knew about the British Isles in the Eighth Century. When they weren’t plundering and pillaging, they were trading. As traders, they would have known about the British Isles.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288180/
A comparison with published mtDNA lineages from European populations indicates that, whereas most founding females probably originated from Scandinavia and the British Isles.
The ancestry of the settlers is more controversial. Historical evidence suggests that not all of the settlers in Iceland originated from Scandinavia (Jones 1984). At the very least, it is believed that the settlers included a number of women and slaves from Norse settlements in the British Isles. There are numerous references in Icelandic medieval writings to the keeping of slaves, many of whom were obtained through raids on settlements in the British Isles (Jones 1984). Thus, the Icelandic founding gene pool may have received a substantial maternal contribution from the British Isles.
Wales, LOL.
Damn autocorrect! ;)
I saw a few of the commercials for this show and had no desire to watch it. Looks like a ripoff of that crappy biker show with Peggy Bundy in it.
Maybe they'll get Icelanders to act in it, and they can just speak their regular Norshish language.
Autocorrect.... yeah, that’s the ticket!
;-)
I saw the trailer for that on youtube months ago. Thought it was hilarious and prime MST3K material.
Huh?
Not the Icelanders, for authentic dialects you need to go to the Faroes Islands ~
Remember, Snorri, first European baby history knows to have been born in America had a mother who was a daughter of the Irish high king ~ CARHAL
I think all the best Viking documentaries were made by Monty Python.
Sadly, the term “squander” has replaced “plunder” in association with the Vikings.
Link? Never seen any estimate of norse ancestry that low.
The Travel channel is a joke too. I’m trying to plan a trip to Europe and at least 90% of their shows are about food.
Of course being the brilliant planner that I am I use multiple other sources.
Vikings were manly men. They did what they pleased
I got them wrong too, I thought for sure they’d beat the Steelers in SB IX.
To the English mix, one needs to add the arrival of North Africans (many of whom were probably the common ancestors of Berbers) which started roughly 200 BC, by encouragement of the Roman ruling class. Therefore, for the millions of people who claim English blood, a good share of them (particularly if they trace back to the Colechester area) have North Africans in the mix.
Colechester's origins actually date back to Ancient Carthage. A century or so after the Romans destroyed Ancient Carthage in the Third Punic War (146 BC), Julius Caesar allowed the city to be rebuilt. By 100 a.d., it had grown to a city of a half million, second only to Rome in size in the western part of the empire.
The decline begin shortly thereafter as the surrounding area begin to turn into desert. The Angles, Picts, Celts and Brits, meanwhile were a rather unruly lot and difficult to rule so the Romans actively encouraged their North African subjects to emigrate, where they founded Colechester.
The old nursery rhyme Old King Cole refers to the king of Colechester who was of North African stock. His blackness, of course, is subject to debate since even a bronze skinned Berber would look black to the fair skinned locals.
But, I digress. As you know, the various groups fought for control of the British Isles until the Normans (yet another group seeded by vikings) came out victorious in the pivotal October 14, 1066 Battle of Hastings. But that still didn't settle the matter completely as the Irish, Scots, Welsh and others will tell you.
BTW, I really enjoy your posts and added knowledge of history, even if I don't always agree. You appear to be very well read on the subject. Is it a professional specialty or just a hobby (like me)?
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