[Sca-cooks] barbarians.... was lent, wine, indulgences, de Nola

[Jeff Gedney]

> Anyone out there watching The Barbarians on the History Channel?

Yeah I saw the Vikings episode... 
I was not that impressed... 
Most of the stuff they presented is available in ten minutes of googling on the web. Nothing new. 

But several things irked me.
They completely screwed up in several places regarding the boats...
Sheesh... they could at least have contacted a decent reneactment crew for the boats and boat construction.... 
Boats were so integral to the whole viking ethos, that It seemed tome that at least a LITTLE research on the boats would have been nice.

The construction scenes used a frame first style of construction that was not used for small boats in northen europe until after 1400, and was never used in any viking era norse context. 
And the vikings did not use fixed decking either! 

Viking longships had a completely amazing construction that enabled them to flex and take the waves and it really merited a better representation. 

And the floating ship scenes were just awful.
Looked to me like they simply converted an existing sloop or dory by taking out the decks, adding rowing seats(!), and gluing round shields to the side, and a dragonhead to the top...
And the Vikings HAD several kinds of MALLETS AND HAMMERS! sheesh... 
The axe and nail scene was just gratuitous.
...and dont get me started about the rigging, no parrels, no brailing lines, no diagonal reinforcing strips of leather, no beitass, and they used pully blocks... Dang. it only takes a few minutes on the freaking web to get the details right.

And they never used the drakkars in the LONG voyages to Iceland/Greenland/America either. They used the Halfskip or Knarr, which actually had room for unimportant things like, Oh, food, and water, as well as livestock, tools and fabric and other supplies ...

bleah.

Makes me wonder what other "facts" they played fast and loose with.
(Like the fact that Harald's invasion of England was partly in concert with William's, and they barely touched on the relationship between the Vikings and Normans... )
All in all I can't say I recommend it as anything but the broadest overview.

Brandu/Capt Elias