Friday, July 10, 2020

Would be fun to watch a movie where one of those Brosatru and Nazitru self-proclaimed "warriors" go back to Viking Age Scandinavia only to discover that most Norsemen were farmers, fishermen, traders and woodcarvers who respected and sought the appraisal of women, who sought gender-bending sorcerers for counsel, who treated the sick for free,  who paid taxes to the common good, who were extremely concerned with courtesies -  correct and polite behavior, or else... - and who met in rituals where they prayed for peace and good crops.
Back home, our weary protagonist had hailed and called brave those men who hide behind a machine gun and a bullet proof vest while shooting away against unarmed civilians, only to discover that every Norseman he met was shocked at the story and named his heroes the lowest of cowards and their actions the zummit of ergi - shameful unmanliness, a man afraid to meet his enemy as an equal, man to man.
I see him, searching frantically in this time and place for some resemblance of his modern ideology, only to discover that the chief has a dark skinned wife who owns a couple of white skinned male slaves,  that women are proudly breastfeeding in public just about everywhere, that men keep feeding little birds and listening intently and joyfully to the birdsong seeking their profound wisdom and that there cannot possibly be a war in another three years, because the farmers refuse to fight more often than that and no king could force them, because they had long since voted for a law where the king could only demand that peasants be warriors every third or fourth year.
Besides, he discovers that the current king is one of those peace-loving kings that the sagas keep mentioning, and one concerned with frendly relations with his neighbours, and so there would probably be no war at all, which is exactly why he was democratically elected and why the people like him.
At loss for where to go to find some actual vikings in this place and age of vikings, he asks around and is met mostly with suspicion, because why would he want to be a rogue and landless pirate bandit when he can get a good woodworker post like decent folks?
Frustrated, he hurls mindless insults at some cripple because duh, them Norsemen could not possibly be snowflakes who got easily offended, only to find himselves charged with the capital offense of insult and slander by some real warrior farmers who would never let anyone speak to any of their kinsfolk that way without consequence.
So suddenly he is taken to court and told to either pay up and leave the country for the crime of offending these surprisingly easily offended Norsemen, or else fight man to man with a peasant champion seeking to restore his friend's honor. He has no money and no place to go  and these soft-hearted farmers who keep feeding and listening to the little birds singing, and who kept offering to lame goddesses of the land, they could not possibly be that much of a threath?
Finally, there will be battle.
I see him equipped with an axe only, because that is all he can afford, and nobody will sponsor a slandering insulter, and realizing that this is nothing like a video game or like when his hero could shoot away at unarmed civilians, this is real and man to man, the peace-loving, birdwhispering and easily offended peasant has transformed into an axe wielding eye lolling berserk and our tragic protagonist is about to lose life and limbs, all for the unforgivable crime of being a Bully.

-Maria Kvilhaug

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