User:Nikau/Vikings
Vikings were the foremost repossession firm of the early 8th to late 12th centuries, servicing a wide area of the North Atlantic for a reasonable price of only two buxom daughters per hour. They are best remembered for their sagas about conflicts, family feuds
with the characters frequently meeting Gods and turning into
Although the original goals of the firm to "reacquire goods with the utmost punctuality" and "make them fear the name Knuttson for all eternity" were achieved with flying colours, the gradual encroach of Christianity and a hungry media market would cause business to slowly splinter into a diverse array of franchises and axe swings, although all headed by hefty white people with unkempt facial hair.
While the enterprise may have gone, enchanting sagas about claiming chattels from those with short fuses would ignite excitement in the hearts of cable TV subscribers for centuries to come.
Origins[edit | edit source]
The routine transport of Religious gear for a respectable Church book club in Northern England characterized the first recorded entry of Vikings into the European scene of heavy couriering:
- "Never before has such an atrocity been seen," declared the incensed scholar Alcuin of York, "they hath mixed the relics of St. Cuthbert and St. Edgar, but other than that their bubble wrapping is first rate."
The rapidity of arrival captured the minds of the European Royal courts, as Viking employees had seemingly arrived before even being called out. This attentiveness would set Vikings apart from the other tribes in the very competitive removal services industry of Greater Europe.
Said industry had long been dominated by the Goths and Vandals, who had famously worked to transport the antiquities of Ancient Rome for a suitably barbaric price. However, by 793, their work was a mere shell of what it had been and most claimed they "had the Plague of Justinian" or were "too busy tending to a fledgling Kingdom" to shift any goods. This did not sit well with the European Royal courts, who had once more begun to amass a pile of blindingly shiny things after the usual three-hundred year period of male brooding about their friend, Rome, being unable to bring the vino around any more.
With an absence of regional friends the courts had also been at a loss how to pass the time
Success[edit | edit source]
Ragnar Lodbrok, a 9th century removalist with royal lineage and a voice for exposition, was the first to exploit the profitability of the media. According to legend, a Norwegian author of sagas noticed Ragnar moving a particularly large harp, leading to a series of events that culminated in an arrogant King removing his shirt, flexing his pecs and comically jiggling gut, and threatening to hurl Ragnar in a snake pit for his poor service.
The recount of Ragnar having sex of the non-rape variety with a beautiful woman, Aslaug, was edited down to a brief yet blatantly obvious innuendo for adult members of the audience, however responses remained overwhelmingly positive. People were particularly enamored to the inclusion of customers so hot headed and egotistic they imagined they were Celtic royalty, with the warrior spirits to match; in reality the customers were merely Celtic nobility, with spirits that only matched the stains on their undergarments. Undergarments that would inevitably be bared during a scuffle featuring much comical jiggling.
A team of half a dozen wordsmiths would soon follow Ragnar around the North Sea as he was confronted by customers who demanded a refund; to be paid in good old hard currency, or face a beating to a rendition of the Yakety Sax (or Yakety Saxon). The prose writers were able to portray the dull day-to-day operations of the wholesome family-owned-and-operated horde of berserkers as an engrossing narrative that could be digested by the European populace in blocks of 45 minutes each week, or on 2-tonne granite blocks for a 'marathon' viewing.
With the success of Ragnar's series of sagas, the scope of Viking removalist activities gradually began to expand to include Ireland, Greenland and the Iberian peninsula. In a move of great racial sensitivity that tested well with audiences, Erik the Red even brought his business to the minority neighborhoods in North America that other civilizations refused to enter.
Later in the 9th century, Halfdan Ragnarsson ordered the construction of special longhouses for the storage of transported goods until such time as the owner had paid the commission, or was reincarnated in a form able to carry receipts. This provided amusing encounters that could be retold in stanza upon stanza, as armless Celts tried to reclaim bracelets and were instead lead of the premises by an overweight guard.
Finally, realising the need for a clean-cut appearance, Björn Ironside issued a blanket ban on warpaint. Steles recovered from archaeological digs of contemporary Viking settlements clearly state:
- War cries are fine, but warpaint is precisely vulgar and Scottish.
A devout fan of Viking sagas, Charles the Simple of Francia signed a treaty with Rollo, King of the Norsemen, to open a Viking settlement in Western France. French media infrastructure was so extensive a prospective customer could track their favorite Noresmen as he transported a crate of Carolingian pikeman to the door of the accursed-slave salt-mines.
However the Vikings achieved perhaps their greatest success in England, owing to the preference of English-speakers for employing shady foreigners to do manual labor. Danish King Cnut (who was referred to as something else by his subjects) lead the final takeover of the English market in 1016, due in part to his deep knowledge of the artifacts plundered. The English imagination was captivated by his frequent feuds with his father, Sweyn Forkbeard, and son, Harthacnut, as recorded and retold in alliterative verse. Unfortunately Harthacnut would depart to feature in his own series of legendary saga and Forkbeard would feature in a homophobic hunting series, allowing the British lifestyle market to be eventually be taken by French chef William the Coq au vin.
Decline[edit | edit source]
Perhaps the greatest stimulus for the fall of Vikings was an increased focus upon drama to fill their sagas and epics, at the expense of satisfying business outcomes. Leader of the berserkers, Ivar Ragnarsson, barely survived a frightful accident with a dresser and became Ivar the Boneless; captain of a longboat, Sigurd, failed to tape all the boxes in a reptile collection and became Sigurd Snake-in-the-eye; and murderous heathen chieftain, Ubba, moved to Devonshire to search attics for curios with his shieldmaiden.
Legacy[edit | edit source]
Viking sagas would be told and retold throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Though many were captivated by the passionate violence and brutal profit margins of the sagas, others dismissed them as simple populist imagery from the mind of a composer who would probably fascinate a deranged German.
Despite this resurgence of Romantic nationalism, the Scandinavian peoples have continued to build minimalist kitchen settings and generally kick the rest of the worlds' collective behind in any measure of Human Development as they have done so ever since the unceremonious end of the Viking age.
However sitting around for hours trying to assemble a minimalist timber kitchen setting does evoke the wish that you could move home, as far away from flat pack furniture as possible. That or slay a few hundred Celts with a battle-axe.