{"id":8634,"date":"2017-06-15T10:54:01","date_gmt":"2017-06-15T16:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8634"},"modified":"2025-11-29T20:44:46","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T03:44:46","slug":"viking-hoodoo-who-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8634","title":{"rendered":"Viking Hoodoo \u2014 Who Knew?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who knew the old Norse were into runic candle magic? Not me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All right, you should not judge a museum exhibit by what is in the gift shop. It’s just that the designers of the Vikings: Beyond the Legend<\/em> traveling exhibit,<\/a> chiefly from the Swedish History Museum<\/a>, if I understand correctly, took great pains to lay waste to “the one-dimensional stereotype of bearded barbarians with horned helmets.” And then you see for sale something that I am pretty sure is non-historical.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the exhibit explains multiple times that Norse fighters did not wear horned helmets<\/em> but that those originated with a 19th-century opera costumer’s designs for Wagner’s Ring cycle<\/a>.((If you stop to think about it, horns make poor tactical sense. If an opponent’s downward blow struck the projecting horn, it might knock off your helmet, if you had no chin strap. If you had a chin strap, then it would give you a neck-crunching twist \u2014 bad news either way. Better to have the blow slide off.))<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show is in Denver now, but apparently, like Cirque du Soleil, it has multiple versions on the road, one being now in Salt Lake City.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n

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A Norse reenactor prepares to demonstrate how to spin woolen thread with a weighted spindle. I bet the original home lighting was never so good.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

And since I am unlikely to visit Scandinavia soon, I will accept well-crafted replica ships rather than the real thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exploration and settlement is rather down-played in favor of life in the homelands, since the focus is not so much on “going viking” but on trying to get by as Iron Age farmers and fisherfolk, raising little cows and sheep (by our standards) and chickens the size of “Cornish game hens<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is definitely a Norse Paganism 101 component with interactive exhibits about the Aesir and Vanir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See Vikings: Beyond the Legend<\/em> <\/a>if you can. And pick up a T-shirt and some candles.<\/p>\n\n\n

  1. What does the Lore say about about magic candles? Too bad. Syncretism for the win. \u21a9\ufe0e<\/a><\/li><\/ol>
    1. If it were truly like Cirque du Soleil, one exhibit would have a permanent home in Las Vegas. Instead of runic hoodoo candles, Valkyrie showgirls! [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Who knew the old Norse were into runic candle magic? Not me. All right, you should not judge a museum exhibit by what is in the gift shop. It’s just that the designers of the Vikings: Beyond the Legend traveling exhibit, chiefly from the Swedish History Museum, if I understand correctly, took great pains to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[{\"content\":\"What does the Lore say about about magic candles? Too bad. Syncretism for the win.\",\"id\":\"9c638a69-c6db-4081-8faf-b4a2cda846e2\"}]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[100,134],"class_list":["post-8634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-history","tag-norse"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2fg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":615,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=615","url_meta":{"origin":8634,"position":0},"title":"Vinland 2Part 1Fake or not,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Vinland 2Part 1Fake or not, the Kensington Runestone was fervently defended by one Hjalmar Rued Holand, a local historian. His promotion resulted in a 1940 Smithsonian exhibition and later the creation of a museum in Alexandria, Minnesota.Nevertheless, expert opinion remained generally skeptical. The 1967 Newfoundland discovery seemed to obviate any\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8334,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8334","url_meta":{"origin":8634,"position":1},"title":"Jared Diamond Was Wrong\u2014The Greenland Norse Adapted","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A new article in the journal Science refutes Jared Diamond's claim that the 400-year-old Norse colony in Greenland failed because its habitants failed to adapt to the land. Diamond's thesis in his book\u00a0Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed was that the Norse made bad ecological decisions. 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According\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.vikingaheimar.is\/resources\/images\/template\/img2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5295,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5295","url_meta":{"origin":8634,"position":3},"title":"Archaeologists Find Secret to Norse Sunstone?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"This might be one of those \"But we already knew that!\" deals, but French archaeologists think that they have an actual example in hand of a \"sunstone,\" said to be used by the Norse to navigate in cloudy weather. This one, however, comes from a Tudor-era shipwreck. 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