Hopefully you’ve had a fine Banned Books Week and now simply want to kick back with some mead and enjoy a stirring saga of a bunch of folks who the average 9th Century inhabitant of the British isles would like to ban.
Yes, I’m talking about the Vikings and, seeing as it’s Leif Erikson Day, that extremely well-known holiday passed into law in 1964 for which we don’t get off work, I’m sure you’ve been making plans to watch some Viking-themed entertainment.
But are you getting historically accurate entertainment? Here’s where historian William Short can help in this half-hour overview of Viking battles and battle tactics as seen in films and TV, all informed by his research including experimental archaeology.
Okay, spoiler: he doesn’t like most of the stuff because it’s either inaccurate based on historical records filmmakers could have accessed or inaccurate based on some of the aforementioned experiments. So let’s just give you a clip of Kirk Douglas dancing on oars, which I’m almost positive is not historically accurate, but IS celebratory:
Okay, now that Ernest Borgnine’s happy, let’s go ahead with the buzzkill, because if you think he’s going to stop at just the fact that Viking helmets didn’t have horns, you are sadly mistaken:
I mean, I admit it: the horns would be cool. As cool as catching a spear and throwing it back? Maybe not.