Re:Re: The New Era: A Curmudgeon's Thoughts.

> From: [email removed] (Burton Choinski)
>
> Again, taking the anology too far.  Do their Vacc suit helmets have horns
> on them as well?  And the engineer's name is always Sven. :)

  Unfortunately I have a hard time disproving the existance of engineers named
Sven, especially since my grandfathers brother was one:)

  I can however totally disprove the existance of horns on viking helmets.
The horns are an invention by the same age that gave us the fat singing lady
wearing the above (and a breastplate).
  Although horned helmets existed in the time period before the vikings
(a few hundred years or so) they were not used 850 to 1200 and were not even
present except on some old (religious) statues(1).

  An accurate comparision to showing vikings with horns would be to show US
marines charging up a beach wearing full plate armour.

  Comparing the general behaviour of the star vikings and their namesakes,
there is less of a difference that what people might believe. The star vikings
*seem* however to have a less profit-at-any-cost orientation that the
originals: The vikings often worked on the "if they are strong, we trade and
if they are weak, we take", while the star vikings apparently reason "if they
don't want to trade, we hose down the seat of government with orbital
artillery, and ask them once more; repeat until we get a 'yes'".
  This might however be an artifact of knowing the whole story: We know that
the hivers are behind it to stabilize the frontier, while the star vikings
might think they do everything from a pure drive for profit.

  Comparisions to the Hanseatic League have been made, but IMHO the Hansa seems
to be a little on the bad side of the star vikings. They were basically a
German colonization operation out to totally monopolize the baltic trade and
install Hansa-loyal merchants as an major economic force in all the harbours of
the baltic sea.

- -bertil-
(1) And the horns on most of them was more of the 'deer' type than the usual
    'bullhorn' which led me once to speculate in a pre-viking celtic
    connection. This so incensed an (american:) asatru fundamentalist that
    he started to behave like the average tv-evangelist. Fundies are nofun:)
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