ramonmercado
CyberPunk
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2003
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- Eblana
I guess this fits in here.
With each episode of America’s Lost Vikings, archaeologists Blue Nelson and Mike Arbuthnot move a little further away from L’Anse aux Meadows in their quest to trace the path of the Vikings on their hypothetical exploration of New England and the interior of North America. That means that each episode, in theory, should become a little more speculative and a little more out there. I hate to admit this, but I really wish they would just bite the bullet and try to be a little more extreme, because as it is, the show is so pedestrian and dull that even when confronted with purported evidence of Vikings deep in the interior of America, the hosts do little more than shrug and run off to play dress up. They whiffed playing t-ball, and it is no wonder viewership has sunk down to around 390,000 viewers for this episode.
This week’s episode, S01E03 “War in the New World,” explored the passages in the Icelandic sagas describing battles between the Vikings and the “Skraelings,” the indigenous peoples of Greenland and Vinland. It is commonly accepted that in Greenland the word referred to the Dorset people or their successors, the Thule, who are the ancestors of the Inuit. The controversy comes into play when extending the term to Vinland, since the thirteenth century sagas use that word to describe peoples encountered in the eleventh century. Since the location of Vinland has never been fully established, the people that the Vikings encountered there can’t be determined with certainty. Nelson and Arbuthnot want to play around in that uncertainty and extend the term “Skraeling” to a variety of Native people throughout New England and upstate New York, though there is not yet a reason to do so. Nor are they terribly clear about the widely accepted identification of Skraelings with the Arctic peoples, for to do so would limit the persuasiveness of the assertion that Native Americans of the continental U.S. were the Skraelings of the sagas. ...
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-americas-lost-vikings-s01e03-war-in-the-new-world
With each episode of America’s Lost Vikings, archaeologists Blue Nelson and Mike Arbuthnot move a little further away from L’Anse aux Meadows in their quest to trace the path of the Vikings on their hypothetical exploration of New England and the interior of North America. That means that each episode, in theory, should become a little more speculative and a little more out there. I hate to admit this, but I really wish they would just bite the bullet and try to be a little more extreme, because as it is, the show is so pedestrian and dull that even when confronted with purported evidence of Vikings deep in the interior of America, the hosts do little more than shrug and run off to play dress up. They whiffed playing t-ball, and it is no wonder viewership has sunk down to around 390,000 viewers for this episode.
This week’s episode, S01E03 “War in the New World,” explored the passages in the Icelandic sagas describing battles between the Vikings and the “Skraelings,” the indigenous peoples of Greenland and Vinland. It is commonly accepted that in Greenland the word referred to the Dorset people or their successors, the Thule, who are the ancestors of the Inuit. The controversy comes into play when extending the term to Vinland, since the thirteenth century sagas use that word to describe peoples encountered in the eleventh century. Since the location of Vinland has never been fully established, the people that the Vikings encountered there can’t be determined with certainty. Nelson and Arbuthnot want to play around in that uncertainty and extend the term “Skraeling” to a variety of Native people throughout New England and upstate New York, though there is not yet a reason to do so. Nor are they terribly clear about the widely accepted identification of Skraelings with the Arctic peoples, for to do so would limit the persuasiveness of the assertion that Native Americans of the continental U.S. were the Skraelings of the sagas. ...
http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/review-of-americas-lost-vikings-s01e03-war-in-the-new-world