I was going to make a post about Viking movies – the good, the bad and the ugly (most of them are in the latter category, unfortunately) – when I came over this amazing run-through of every Viking movie ever made. Check out the list and read all the comments. They were very thorough!
Here is my favorite Viking movie. It isn`t long, but it`s incredibly cute!
I really shouldn`t be doing a count-down of the best Scandianvian actors because I`m bound to forget someone important or I may include someone who made a bummer movie I haven`t seen. But then I really want to show off all the handsome talented actors we have here in Scandinavia – so here goes:
1, The Skarsgård men (Sweden)
They have to share the first place or they would have taken up WAY too much room in this Top 10 🙂 . 
The Skarsgård family is an incredibly talented family. Stellan Skarsgård has been one of the leading Scandinavian actors ever since Den enfaldige mördaren which had us all amazed back in the early 80s. He has his international fame from movies like Breaking the Waves, Good Will Hunting, Pirates of the Caribbean and Mamma Mia but he still makes a lot of Scandinavian movies where he really shows his talent.
Alexander Skarsgård is also an amazing actor. He is best known for his role as Eric Northman in True Blood but I must admit that I dislike that series with a vengeance. I loved him in Generation Kill and also enjoy his comedy talent – which he, apart from a few minutes in the movie Zoolander, has only showed in Swedish movies.
Gustaf Skarsgård is quite a different kind of actor from his father and big brother. He`s the kind of actor who sort of sneaks up on you and amazes you without you realizing what has happened. I loved him in the Swedish comedy Patrick 1,5 and, though I didn`t like the movie much, in the Norwegian Kon-Tiki. I`m very much looking forward to his Viking series.
Bill Skarsgård is an up-and-coming actor and I haven`t seen any movies with him apart from the Arn series where several Skarsgård brothers, and Stellan, acted. But I`m looking forward to seeing him in the near future.
There is also Valter Skarsgård, who is only 18, and may or may not choose the same path as his older brothers. He is involved in a movie and it`s going to be interesting to see how he does in the future.
I must confess to a youth as a stamp collector (yes, I did spend hours in the dark closet, trying to find out if a stamp was florescent or not) and when the Oseberg Viking ship project (I`ve written about them in an earlier blog post) started posting pictures of stamps with the Oseberg ship on them on their Facebook page, I just had to repost those pictures – and add some of my own:
I`ll start out with Canada – a country that shares some of our Viking history, as I wrote about in my previous blog post. I`m not sure how old this stamp is but it`s beautiful with the Oseberg ship and the old map.
AiramLebasic (*hugs*) sent me this very interesting article from National Geographic about how they`ve found a Viking settlement on Baffin Island.
It`s around 50 years since they discovered the first proof that Icelandic sagas about the exploits of Leif Eriksson were correct:
In the 1960s two Norwegian researchers, Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad, discovered and excavated the Viking base camp at L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland—the first confirmed Viking outpost in the Americas. Dated to between 989 and 1020, the camp boasted three Viking halls, as well as an assortment of huts for weaving, ironworking, and ship repair.
Now they`ve found a second settlement. And what`s more – they`ve also discovered what they believe to have been contact and possible trade between the Vikings and the people who already lived there. I find that incredibly interesting. I think I`ve already mentioned in an earlier blog post how they`ve found traces of Native-American DNA, dating back to the Viking age, in Icelandic people of today (I even wrote an Eric Northman fanfiction about it 🙂 ), and now we may learn more about this contact. Read a National Geographic article about the Native-American DNA found on Iceland.
I`m incredibly fascinated by this. What was this contact? According to the sagas, which were written a long time after Leif Eriksson crossed the Atlantic, there was hostility between the Vikings and the Native-Americans. Apparently the Vikings found the Native-Americans “ugly” and called them “skrællinger”, which means weak and cowardly. I find that very strange given that the Vikings traded with and married into the local people wherever else they went.
It seems to me that the Vikings can`t have found the Native-Americans that bad looking if they brought at least one woman back with them to Iceland – and had children with her. I may be naive and romantic but I would love it if the archaeologists now find that the Vikings and the Native-Americans actually did trade with one another and that at least one blue-eyed Viking fancied that dark-haired local girl enough to bring her home with him (voluntarily on her part, I hope). Yeah, I am being both naive and romantic…
What did you bring home with you from Vinland, Leif?
I`s not just one word – it`s both a noun and a verb. In Norway it`s koselig (noun) and kose (verb), in Denmark hyggelig (noun) and hygge (verb) and I believe the Swedish words for it is mysigt (noun) and mys (verb).
So what is koselig/hyggelig/mysigt? What is that word that can`t be translated and which isn`t even the same word in the three Scandinavian countries? What is that word that defines us so much but which we can`t bring with us when we go abroad? We only pine for it when we`re somewhere else.
Some people would translate it into cosy, but that`s just wrong. A bed can be cosy but it doesn`t explain what koselig/hyggelig/mysigt is. So I`ll try with a picture:
This family here is using that one Scandinavian word you can`t really translate. When the autumn and winter gets darker (it`s pretty dark here already) and it`s cold outside, you make a fire in the fireplace, light up a lot of candles, make something hot to drink and possibly some cake or some waffles and then you just enjoy yourself. With your family and/or your friends.
You know immediately when you are having this cozy time. You can come into your friends` livingroom and you will immediate say…
“neimen, så koselig” (Norwegian)
“Nej, hvor hyggeligt” (Danish)
“Näh, hva mysigt” (my rotten version of Swedish)
… which basically means that you think looks cozy. It`s ingrained in us – we seek this atmosphere of kos/hygge/mysigt, especially in the winter. You don`t quarrel or discuss politics. It`s a time for just enjoying yourself in the company of other people.
A way to survive winter
I`m sure a lot of you have wondered how we Scandinavians survive our dark and cold winters. Why aren`t we sinking into deep depression from October till April? I`m fairly sure it`s because of the kos/hygge/mys. We seek each other`s company and we create our little warm heaven where we enjoy ourselves. That way winter is absolutely tolerable!
So if you want to feel a little Scandinavian tonight, close your curtains (you don`t want the sun to ruin everything), make some gløgg (cocoa or coffee will do – red wine too), invite friends/family and light as many candles you can – the fireplace too if you have one. Talk about nice topics only and feel the calmness enter your body.
Nice, right?
FFFbone posted a link to this amazing list of 10 creatures in Scandinavian Folklore at the Random-Fandom . These are all creatures that are ingrained in our culture – especially the Norwegian culture which seems to have taken these creatures much more to heart than, for instance, the modern Danish culture. If my son spends too much time in the bathroom (it happens 😉 ), I ask him if “do-draugen” has taken him. “Do” is the Norwegian word for toilet ( “loo” is a better translation if one is splitting hairs).
10 Creatuers in Scandinavian Folklore by Rebecca Winther-Sørensen
Read the list here
The Scandinavian Folklore consists of a huge variety of creatures, good or evil, which have frightened people for centuries. They were often meant to scare children, but even today they are essential and important to the modern northern society. In the 1890s, something changed in the way common Scandinavians saw themselves and their culture. They looked back in time to rediscover their old myths and legends; folklore which had been forgotten because of the coming of Christianity. It was a time when people feared nature, because we were becoming more industrialized. The forests, the mountains, and the sea – it all seemed strange, dark and magic, and because of that, we are now left with evil spirits and monsters who used to represent our own way of seeing nature.
10
Huldra
Huldra (or called Tallemaja in Swedish) is a troll-like woman living in the woods. She is fair and beautiful, but wild and has a long cow-tail which she hides behind her back upon meeting a human. It is said that Adam and Eve had many children, and that one day, when Eve was giving her children a bath, God came to visit. Eve had not finished bathing all of her children, and so hid those who were still dirty. God asked: “Are there not more children?” and when Eve said no, God said: “Then let all that is hidden, remain hidden,” and the hidden children became De Underjordiske (the ones living underground), lost souls who live under the surface of the earth, calling for someone to be with them, usually human passersby. Huldra was one of them, but she somehow remained above the ground. She is a flirtatious, young girl who is neither good nor evil.
Public transportation is very important here in Scandinavia. A lot of Scandinavians take the bus, tram, subway, train or boat to work every day. Watching this Danish commercial makes one look forward to taking the bus tomorrow morning :-).
I mentioned in an earlier post that I would write about myths about the Vikings. One of the biggest myths is that the Vikings were dirty and unwashed. Everything is relative, of course, and compared to people of today who shower every day and use tons of beauty products, they may seem rather poorly groomed.
But compared to their contemporaries – not to mention people who lived a couple of hundred years later when washing was considered life threatening – the Vikings were very cleanly. Archaeologists have found a large number of tweezers, combs, nail cleaners, ear cleaners and tooth picks.
There are also reports to support idea of the clean Vikings, like this one from John of Wallingford:
Apparently the incoming Danes “…caused much trouble to the natives of the land; for they were wont, after the fashion of their country, to comb their hair every day, to bathe every Saturday, to change their garments often, and set off their persons by many frivolous devices. In this matter they laid siege to the virtue of the married woman, and persuaded the daughters even of the noble to be their concubines“.
Long in the front, short in the back
Paintings show Vikings with well combed hair and beards. Like today, men in the Viking age had a number of different hair styles and one style that might seem particularly strange today was the one where they had long hair only in the front of the head and short hair in the back – a reversed mullet, so to speak. Women usually had long hair, often pulled up in a knot braided with colorful pieces of cloth. Some sources suggest that brunettes would bleach their hair and that some men dyed their beards red.
Slaves usually had very short hair or even shaved heads.
Read more about Viking grooming
I love the Danish cartoonists Mikael Wulff and Anders Morgenthaler who draw cartoons under the pen name WuMo. More often than not they are way out of line but I suppose that`s one of the things I love about them. They`ve made quite a few cartoons about Vikings and I used one a couple of days ago. Here are some more:
I felt the need for something lighter. A song, perhaps. I found this song pretty cute – about the letter Æ, Ø and Å and how size matters, even when it comes to the alphabet 🙂
And I`ll add a comic:
