A Norwegian soccer fan is on the attack against Norway’s “Viking row” soccer celebration because he says it’s just plain “factually incorrect.”
Norway fans have taken to performing the “Viking row” whenever their national team does something auspicious on the field. And it is just like it sounds. Fans imitate rowing a boat, presumably like the Vikings did in their ancient conquests of Europe.
But Norway’s own Cliff Claven, football fan Emil Anners Lappen, has started a row of another kind and refuses to join his fellow World Cup fans in the celebration. It’s ahistorical and stupid, he told Sky News this week.
“The Vikings sailed across the Atlantic; they didn’t row,” Lappen exclaimed.
“In a song that they released together with the rowing, they said ‘We’re gonna row across the Atlantic,’ and that’s why I’ve been so annoyed about it,” the history-minded fan continued.
“The Vikings rowed up rivers and things like that, but across the Atlantic they sailed,” he insisted.
When asked if he was missing the whole point and that the fan celebration was about fun and to show that Norwegian fans are all in the same boat, not historical accuracy, Lappen continued to resist the pull of the row, and added “when they released [the song] I found it stupid and I wanted to show that I didn’t appreciate it, and I think I got the message across.”
In point of fact, the sculling scoffer is correct to a point. After all, if the Vikings only rowed their boats from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden all the way to the British Isles and elsewhere up and down the European coasts, it seems doubtful they’d have so easily become the scourge of the region.
On the other hand, their famed longboats were equipped with oars, and it seems clear that they rowed when the ocean currents were against them, when the wind was slow, or when they needed a quick getaway in the heat of a sea battle.
Regardless, Lappen is one stern fan who won’t bow to popular opinion.
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