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As It Happens6:34Norway fan refuses to do Viking Row at World Cup because it’s ‘annoying’ and historically inaccurate
When Norway beat Brazil in the World Cup on Sunday, fans around the world erupted in celebration by performing the so-called Viking Row. Except, that is, for Emil Anners Lappen.
Lappen made headlines around the world last month when he sat in the stands, steadfastly refusing to join his fellow fans who, in unison, pretended to row the oars of a Viking ship to celebrate Norway’s historic victory against Senegal.
“I just found it stupid,” Lappen, a forestry manager in Bergegarda, Norway, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. “I just didn’t enjoy it.”
Lappen‘s issue with the celebratory dance is twofold. One, it’s too derivative of Iceland’s Viking Thunderclap. And, two, it’s not factually accurate.
That’s because the song that plays alongside the chant — Vikingblod by Oljeberget x Katastrofe — features the lyrics: “We’re crossing the Atlantic, we’ll row all the way.”
“The Vikings didn’t row across. They sailed across the ocean,” Lappen said. “They rowed up rivers, but they sailed the ocean.”
Historians and archaeologists weigh in
CBC reached out to several Vikings experts and they all agree Lappen is correct in his assessment.
“Rowing across the Atlantic would have been arduous indeed,” Oren Falk, a medieval historian at Cornell University in New York, said in email.
“Even someone with [Norwegian soccer player] Erling Haaland’s physique would probably not have been up for that sort of feat.'”
But the Vikings did, indeed, row.
“What we commonly call Viking ships were built to be both sailed and rowed,” Falk said. “Certainly a ship would have been rowed during delicate, close-quarters manoeuvres…. Also in battle, when one had to outmanoeuvre (or chase down, or escape) enemy vessels.”
Norway’s soccer team is going viral at the FIFA World Cup for their incredible Viking row chant. CBC Kids News contributor Natasha Manikavasager explains the history behind the viral celebration.
Ole Frøystad, the Norwegian superfan who first pitched the chant, has defended its historical accuracy.
“Before they went to battle, they brought in their sails, they took their oars out, and rode into shore before battle,” he said in a FIFA social media video.
“That’s exactly what our boys on the soccer field is doing. They’re going to battle.”
Lappen is unconvinced.
“If he wants to argue with that, that’s OK,” he said. “But that’s not what [it] says in the song.”
‘Taking it all too seriously’
Howard Williams, an archaeologist at Chester University in the U.K., also takes issue with the Viking Row.
“If they are claiming to be rowing to America, Norway didn’t exist then as a nation, and it was mainly Norsemen who were born in Iceland and settled in Greenland who reached Turtle Island, not ‘Norwegians,'” he said.
“Of course, it would be fair to say that this is taking it all too seriously and literally.”
Falk agrees.
“The Norwegian fans’ chant is meant to be evocative, morale-boosting, fun — it’s not a treatise on historical practice,” he said.
“The Icelanders’ Thunderclap or for that matter the horned-helmeted mascot of the Minnesota Vikings fall into the same category. It makes no difference whatsoever whether they’re historically ‘accurate’ or (inevitably) not.”
Norway will take on England in the FIFA Men’s World Cup quarter finals on Saturday.
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