Get the Boat, Sven...

The last part of the statement is usually "...we're pillaging England this afternoon." That statement is my flippant remark about the age of the Vikings, which was a European tour that lasted for a couple hundred years and included raping, pillaging, pirating and trading.. I've heard different things about who these men really were. One version is that they were often younger sons who realized that there was little for them once the oldest inherited the land. Personally, I suspect that they were just restless peasants. The Vikings also ended up in Russia (the word is a derivation of "russ" or "red" which was a description of the big guys from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, with ruddy skin and big red beards) opening a trade route when they went up the Volga in their long boats.

In 1971, a guidance counselor at Moorhead Jr. High School in Moorhead, MN started dreaming of building a Viking ship. He wanted to sail it to Norway. Robert Asp ended up designing a bona fide longboat in a Hawley, MN potato warehouse. (Part of the building had to be demolished in order for them to get it out.) In 1980, he sailed the thing on Lake Superior, but succumbed to leukemia in December that year. In 1982, his family and friends sailed the ship, the Hjemkomst (which means "homecoming" in Norwegian) six thousand odd miles to Bergen, Norway. The voyage took 72 days.

I understand completely. I really get the desire to do something big, something eccentric, the sort of thing that might make others think you've slipped out of your orbit. Three cheers for Robert Asp who remained fascinated with his heritage to the point of replicating it. After all, there is evidence of the Viking presence in Minnesota and other points in the Midwest in the form of rune stones. Archeologists and scientists have debated for years about the authenticity of the markers. Personally, I believe that Vikings, wondering what lay beyond their settlement in  Newfoundland, wended their way in from the Atlantic, across the great lakes and cruised Minnesota for awhile. Since the mosquitoes had taken the territory first, they retreated. But they left a slab of stone in the area of Alexandria engraved with runic characters. Of course they were there. Why wouldn't they have been? 

On my way south again toward Minneapolis/St. Paul for the Minnesota State Fair, I stopped by to visit the ship of my ancestors at the Hjemkomst Interpretive Center, part of the Historical & Cultural Society of Clay Clay County. It's the real deal.

The Hjemkomst is not the only large wooden structure at the center, however. Guy Paulson, inspired by the larger-than-life project of Robert Asp's, thought he'd like to try to replicate the Hopperstad Stave Church in Hopperstad, Norway. Paulson started thinking of building the church in the 1980s but didn't start seriously preparing for the project until the 1990s when he had encouragement from an area architect. The Hopperstad Stave Church replica was completed in 2001 and gifted to the city of Moorhead. When I walked in to the Hjemkomst center, I was just in time to join a docent-led tour of the church and have the photographs to prove it. 

Stave church construction is based on large, upright posts called staves that make up the load-bearing frame of the building. Some believe that they were built this way to emulate the great cathedrals being built in Bergen and elsewhere. According to materials that I purchased at the Hjemkomst center, historians estimate that about 2,000 staves churches were built across Scandinavia in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, most of them have rotted away because the staves were footed deep into the ground to support the structure. Then the Norsks figured out that building the church on a base of stone would extend its life.    

It is said that the Scandinavians encountered Christianity on their raids to other countries and sometimes took slaves who were Christian. Eventually someone got the bright idea to save the pagans from themselves and came a-vangelizin'. Personally, I'm disappointed that they didn't hold out and hang onto their own gods: Thor, Odin, Freya, Loki and the rest of the gang. Valkyries and Walhalla are especially appealing to me for some reason. Who wouldn't want to go hang with the gods drinking and feasting for eternity? Better than 75 virgins. 

J.R.R. Tolkien - or rather Peter Jackson - must have had a great appreciation for the Nordic cultures. I defy anyone to look at the country of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings movies and not draw parallels between the cultures. An appealing combination of the Mongols with their horses (the Rohirrim) and the Vikings, Rohan even had shield maidens who kicked ass. Remember who killed the Witch King of Angmar? Eowyn. A woman.  

I am somewhat comforted by the fact it took one thousand years for the Scandos to become Christian, and that Norway's kings Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf Haraldsson required conversion by sword-point. Nordic craftsman incorporated their own sensibility to stave church design, as well. The shingles look like scales. Dragon heads adorn the exterior much like gargoyles on European cathedrals. Elaborate carvings of scary snakes and dragons encompass the front door. Just like the long boats.