[Northkeep] amusing from Calon list

[Hugh & Belinda Niewoehner]

  Ok, it started out as kind of a serious discussion...but then as in 
many things in the SCA it took a sharp turn:

First message:

"In many respects the Vikings were the medieval equivalent of organized 
crime," says Simon Keynes, a professor of Anglo-Saxon history at 
Cambridge University. "They engaged in extortion on a massive scale, 
using the threat of violence to extract vast quantities of silver from 
England and some other vulnerable western European states." "Certainly 
the Vikings did all these things, but so did everyone else," says 
Dagfinn Skre, a professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo. 
"Although admittedly, the Vikings did it on a grander scale." Martin 
Carver, an emeritus professor of archaeology at the University of York, 
characterizes the antagonism between the Anglo-Saxons and the 
Scandinavians as part of a wider clash of ideologies. Between the sixth 
and ninth centuries, Vikings in Scandinavia preferred to be organized 
"in loose confederations, favoring enterprise," says Carver. But other 
parts of Europe, such as Britain, yearned for a more orderly, 
centralized government---and looked to the Roman Empire as a model. ... 
According to the /Anglo-Saxon Chronicle/, Aethelred was "informed" that 
Danish mercenaries intended to "beguile him out of his life." (It is 
unknown whether an informer learned of an actual plot, or if Aethelred 
and his council fabricated the threat.) Aethelred then set in motion one 
of the most heinous acts of mass murder in English history, committed on 
St. Brice's Day, November 13, 1002. As he himself recounted in a charter 
written two years later, "a decree was sent out by me, with the counsel 
of my leading men and magnates, to the effect that all the Danes who had 
sprung up in this island, sprouting like cockle [weeds] amongst the 
wheat, were to be destroyed by a most just extermination." Read more: 
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/A-Viking-Mystery.html?c=y&page=2#ixzz11WH87PUL 
<http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/A-Viking-Mystery.html?c=y&page=2#ixzz11WH87PUL>

(I assume the subject of 'gorse' refers to the cockel [weeds])

Followed by the following commentary:

> Date:    Wed, 6 Oct 2010 18:06:02 -0500
> From:    Roberta Lauderdale<bertlaud at COMCAST.NET>
> Subject: Re: Viking: victims and vicious
>
> Gorse is  a spiny sticker (thorn). Also the same thing as furze,
> which is "a prickly evergreen shrub (Ulex europaeus) of the legume
> family, with dark green spines and yellow flowers, native to European
> wastelands."  Webster's New World Dictionary, Second College
> Edition.  I believe Eyore ( of Winnie the Pooh fame) was fond of
> browsing on gorse.
>
> Hertha
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Thu, 7 Oct 2010 02:48:22 +0000
> From:    "Hall, Hayward"<HallH at EVANGEL.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Viking: victims and vicious
>
> Of course the horse of fabled Norse
> would gorge on gorse without remorse
> and no recourse but that of force
> would thus divorce him from the source.
>
> Guillaume
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Wed, 6 Oct 2010 19:55:03 -0700
> From:    Mathurin Kerbusso<mathurin at CALONSOUND.INFO>
> Subject: Re: Viking: victims and vicious
>
> Hall, Hayward wrote:
>> >  Of course the horse of fabled Norse
>> >  would gorge on gorse without remorse
>> >  and no recourse but that of force
>> >  would thus divorce him from the source.
> A gorse is a gorse, of course, of course,
> And no one can talk to a gorse, of course,
> That is of course unless the gorse is the famous Viking Ed.
>
> Hertha
>

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