One of the nicer childhood memories I have of my father is watching “swashbuckler” movies on local TV together, usually on lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoons. Without too much effort, we could usually find an Errol Flynn movie – “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and “Captain Blood” remain two of my favorites to this day – and I would sprawl out on the couch watching TV while he would sit at his desk working. There wasn’t a lot of interaction between us, but it was something that I felt connected us. Sword fights, acrobatic action sequences, fake accents – I ate it all up.
When I became a father, I made sure to introduce my sons to the golden age of swashbuckling movies. We watched “The Crimson Pirate,” the entire Errol Flynn catalogue, and all of the Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation movies like “Jason and the Argonauts” and “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.” The acting was awful, the special effects rendered cheesy by Star Wars and its progeny. These movies remain a guilty pleasure; I can’t resist watching whenever I find one on TV.
In 1958, Kirk Douglas starred in a movie called “The Vikings.” You’d be hard-pressed to find a more accurate depiction of Viking life; after all, didn’t all the Vikings sound like Tony Curtis? Even Ernest Borgnine makes an appearance. Despite all its shortcomings, “The Vikings” kindled in me an intense curiosity about Viking culture and history. This translated into my insistence that my boys had an interest in constructing Viking-themed Lego sets and Playmobile toys despite the absence of any evidence to support my conclusion. Instead of watching my swashbucklers on TV, I spent winter Saturdays on the floor, thumbing through the 60 pages of instructions to assemble the Viking longship I told myself my sons really cared about. I deluded myself into believing that the hundreds of dollars I spent on the Viking Lego sets was not actually for me – it was for the boys.
My fascination with the Vikings went dormant for a while until I watched the “Vikings” series (and the sequel “Vikings Valhalla”) on Netflix. I wasn’t too sure about the historical accuracy of the show, but it definitely transported me back to that 12 year-old fanboy in me.
When I was planning my gap year, I was focusing on visiting countries I had never been to before, and that included pretty much all of Northern Europe. The more I researched, the more excited I got about actually being able to experience Norse history other than in fuzzy Technicolor.
I immediately encountered disappointment. The premiere Viking history museum is in Oslo, but it’s closed until next year for renovations. I took that in stride and looked into opportunities to explore Viking history in the remainder of Scandinavia. My research also led me to the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland – everywhere in Northern Europe seemed to provide opportunities to explore Viking history and culture. I figured I’d be seeing horned helmets and all kinds of weaponry; after all, weren’t the Vikings bloodthirsty marauders?
I spent over a month visiting Viking burial sites, museums and settlements. Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. The Minnesota Vikings logo is wholly inaccurate. Vikings didn’t wear horned helmets – they offered an enemy an opportunity to grab the horns and wrench the wearer’s neck. The horned helmet actually sprang from the imagination of Carl Emil Doepler, the costume designer for Richard Wagner’s opera, The Ring Cycle (which includes Ride of the Valkyries, immediately recognizable by any “Apocalypse Now” fan).
More substantively, I learned that, though I thought of “Viking” as describing a nationality or culture, people of the time actually viewed it as more of a job description. To go “a-viking” meant one was embarking on an overseas expedition; these expeditions included raiding, pirating, or trading. The vast majority of medieval Scandinavians lived peaceful lives on farms, tending livestock and growing barley and rye. Going “a-viking” was a young man’s game, the object of which was to garner wealth, prestige and land.
So much for swashbuckling. But they wore filthy animal pelts and had long ratty beards and hair, right? Nope. Archeologists found evidence that the Norse were actually notoriously well-groomed. Findings included bone combs, ear spoons (for removing earwax), tweezers and toothpicks. The Norse bathed at least once a week, usually on Saturday. In Scandinavian languages today, the word for Saturday actually literally translates to “washing day.” Using English chronicles written during the era, scholars determined that Norse men may have been too clean and attractive, using combed hair, frequent changes of clothes and regular baths to win over Anglo-Saxon women.
Aimless destroyers? Hardly. Most written accounts from the period come from monks whose monasteries were plundered by the Vikings, and they described their attackers as brutal, unhygienic heathens – animalistic savages sent as divine punishment who brought with them nothing but destruction. Raids were violent and destructive; I mean, these were young men trying to make a reputation. But the Norse were exceptionally sophisticated traders, explorers, and craftspeople.
The Vikings made it everywhere – North America, Russia, Constantinople, Baghdad and North Africa. Their longships were engineering marvels that could cross oceans yet also navigate shallow river systems.
Ok, so enough National Geographic. What does this all have to do with me?
When I left Northern Europe, I flew directly to Brazil where I met up with my siblings before heading out on my own to Lençoise Marenhenses. There, I trekked through bright white sand dunes punctuated by emerald green oases. The only other person I saw on the dunes for four days was my guide. Constant winds, blowing sand and strenuous uphill slogs made conversation difficult, so I journeyed mostly in solitude.
Having spent so much time with the Vikings before finding myself on those sand dunes, and perhaps as a result of the beating sun and the endless sea of whiteness, I began to understand why I was so taken by the Vikings.
Yes, the romantic visions of going a-viking occupied my thoughts. After all, I guess you could say I’ve gone a-viking over these last 10 months. I’ve gone many places that are off the beaten path, and I’ve been proud of the more challenging activities I’ve managed to make it through. I’m not marauding (at least I don’t think I am), but I am very far away from what was my day-to-day life. Am I making a name for myself? I’m not sure that I care, but it does feel good to have people comment on my energy or my sense of adventure.
Then I realized I wasn’t really thinking about Vikings.
I have largely come to terms with the difficult relationship I had with my father – it only took decades of therapy. The anger I felt towards him that ultimately led me to break off communication in the years before he died slowly gave way to forgiveness and, if not empathy, at least a realization that he was a flawed person who led a miserable life and took it out on those around him. I can’t remember a time where I felt like something was missing from my life because he wasn’t in it.
I don’t have many memories of childhood “fun” that I experienced with my father. Shared experiences were characterized by generational hierarchy. He was always the teacher and I was always the student; he had no problem putting me in my place whenever he felt I challenged him. He loved to ask me questions with answers I’d never have known (like, when I was 10 or so, how much did I think the wood paneling in my bedroom cost).
But being on my own adventures and thinking back to those swashbuckler afternoons transported me to a time when my relationship with my father was simpler (at least for me). I watched those movies knowing that they were something that he enjoyed and wanted me to experience with him. There was no competitiveness with me, no intentional distance intended to communicate his superiority over me, no lessons to be handed down to me.
The Vikings went out into the world not knowing what they would find, looking for new experiences and wealth. I went out into the sand dunes in Brazil and found something I didn’t know still existed – a memory of a time that I had a “dad.” It’s not gold or silver, but I’m going to treasure it.
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