Ship of Theseus

“Suppose the Ship of Theseus were on display in a museum,” said Professor Fawkes.

She’d had LASIK done when she was young, her teeth were mostly ceramic.

“As the years go by and the wood begins to rot, each part is replaced, one by one.”

One knee, the other hip, were plastic and titanium. Hearing aids sat in each canal.

“The question is: When all the parts have been replaced, is it still the Ship of Theseus?”

A younger woman’s heart beat in her breast, as she waited for their answer.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, there was a small man who lived a small life, filled with resentment and failure. Each day he woke up, rode the subway to his office, sat unspeaking in front of a computer for eight hours without even pretending to work, went home and went to bed. 

He’d always assumed that screwing up your life this badly took effort, a perverse desire to do the wrong thing out of malice or spite, so it was a shock to find you could just sleep-walk into it, that you could fall and land at the bottom of the well just by being your plain and lumpy, unexceptional self.

What happened next? Nothing. That was it. It was a long climb to get out of the well and he didn’t know how, and suspected life out of it would be as dark as the one inside. So there he stayed, and there you'll find him now.

The end.

More Than Enough

In a snow-bound farmer’s field, two bands of men were going to kill each other. There were a lot of them, just how many nobody knew, but enough to make it hard to count with all the big white flakes blowing about. It was more than enough. They were going to kill each other, regardless of how many of them there were, and at the end of the killing one of them would get to be king. 

The fact that it wouldn’t be them personally who got to be king didn’t dampen their spirits as much as the snow did. Indeed, everyone seemed to agree that killing each other was the right and proper way to decide if someone else should receive the crown while they received six feet of frozen ground. 

The archers loosed their arrows, and in their excitement and the blizzard, never noticed their shafts falling short, and so enthusiastically feathered the ground. With a shout to drown out their fears, the two sides strode through drifts and slipped on ice, for the chance to hack and stab and poke and slash at one another until they staggered apart again, steaming and swearing and cursing and bleeding, for five minutes of blessed respite.

They kept at it until the wan grey sun began to sink, the dim field grew darker, and one of the ones who were supposed to become king got himself killed. 

The cry went up, “The king is dead!” In the blinding storm they couldn’t see who it was, so they just stopped, just put down their poleaxes, hammers and swords, and waited to find out if they’d won. Not much point in killing each other if their guy didn’t get to be king at the end of it. Who wants to die for nothing?

As they awaited judgement, the wind died and a cold and heavy silence fell.

The dead did not wait to hear the result. There were a lot of them, how many nobody knew. It was a lot, it was enough. It was more than enough.

Valhalla

Valhalla is full but the Vikings and berserkers have fallen silent. Odin shifts his patch to the other eye, the better not to see. The halls are packed now with baffled American investment bankers and Ugandan children, Russian opera-goers and Yemeni wedding guests, the glorious dead from our most glorious wars.

Second Cambrai

October 1918, the Second Battle of Cambrai: The assault was a great success, sustaining only light casualties. One light casualty lay in his trench, my name upon his breast. A life of 22 short years. One month not long enough.

None Loved Them More

The hidden ones, the huldufolk, were here before the sun and moon, when the world knew only endless night beneath the stars. They loved the slow and graceful arch that danced in spirals above their heads, and lit fires not for light or warmth, but in worship. 

None loved them more than Erebus, who would lie upon the ground, entranced, one hand held up as though to catch and claim the light. Other times he gathered moss to make greater and greater fires, or dug for metals which burned yet brighter still.

The other huldar laughed at him, and ran into the meadows to dance beneath the wheel of heaven. And in Erebus another fire grew, one that burned more darkly.

Deeper and deeper he dug into the world, until he reached its secret heart, and there found a fire great enough to fill even his desire. He might have been content, then, were it not for the memory of the laughter.

Erebus broke apart the light, though it burned and blackened him, carried its ember back and threw it into the sky. There it burned so beautiful, so bright. 

It blotted out the stars.

To Sail with the Stranger

Adam agreed to sail with the stranger, to cross the oceans and explore the hidden shore, although they’d only just met. The stranger’s teeth were straight, and they’d read the Iliad, so they seemed the trustworthy sort.

They bought a boat, and sailed out of sight of shore. As days and weeks lengthened to years, the horizon changed from fair green hills to monotonous, breaking waves. The transformation in the stranger took a little longer: Their white teeth grew yellow and crooked, their hair fell out and turned to scales. 

Adam lay awake each night in fear of the beast, wondering if he could still swim back to land or if he would drown, wondering which he would prefer. One night he crept on deck, and made to leap over the side. 

In the waters below Adam saw his reflection: it too was hideous, scaled and snarl-toothed. 

Adam sat back down again, ashamed. Knowing the stranger must have seen his face, had the same fears and made their own midnight journey, but never made the jump. And when the stranger awoke and came on deck there was, if not love, then understanding in their eyes, and they sailed on, to find the hidden shore.

The Empire a Fortress

The Son of Heaven summoned his councilors, and shared with them his troubling visions, of his realm crumbling into ruin. He ordered them to build a wall, to make of the empire a fortress.

“Who will build the wall?” asked the Vizier. 

None volunteered, so they hired laborers from the western desert. 

Ten thousand men labored for ten thousand days, and the shadow of the wall lengthened and grew, shutting out the lands outside. Behind its foreshortening walls, the people cast their gaze inwards, and grew fat on wealth and certainty.

“Who will man the wall?” asked the General.

None volunteered, so they recruited mercenaries from the northern steppe. 

Ten thousand men marched upon the ramparts, and the forest of their spears blotted out the sun, made a cloudy cataract of the moon. Beneath their watchful gaze, the people dazzled one another with displays of gold, and cast their sights on comfort and ease.

“Who will pay for the wall?” asked the Treasurer.

None volunteered, so they borrowed gold from the eastern islands.

Ten thousand tons of gold were sent in ten thousand boats, and the glow of it was as blinding as the sun. Secure in their own private, hoarded wealth, the people closed their eyes, and slept.

And when the invaders came from the southern kingdoms, the northern mercenaries, western laborers and eastern bankers looked the other way. It was neither their land nor worth protecting, for the realm inside the walls was already ruined.

A Shower of Applause

The splendid city was made of marble and music; its foundations of mud and marshland. And so month by month, millimeter by millimeter, it slumped back into the murk and mire, and minnows splashed in the maze of its streets.

People waded through the waist-high water. Ministers in mold-damp miters prayed for a miracle, but pattering rains were merciless. Damp seeped into their minds and bubbled up in misery. The merchants squelched into the plaza that spread before the mayor’s palace, then merely ankle-deep, and spoke their misgivings. “Our city is stricken with a malady for which there is no medicine,” said one. “We must move, or else submit to a monstrous fate.”

The mayor mulled over their words, and in the morning replied: “My friends, you are mistaken. Malingerers who sputter about disaster speak from malice. They must be muzzled, made outlaw, yes, even murdered. We must show no mercy for such madness! Instead, make merry, for our city is a marvel, our millennium just begun.”

Raindrops cascaded from the brim of his hat, like a shower of applause.

Vikings

Title: Vikings

Written/Created by: Michael Hirst

Network: History (via Amazon Prime)

Forget everything you think you know about the historical Vikings. In fact, stop thinking altogether. Do no thinking. Think zero things. This show will improve immeasurably if you do.

I’m on season four (out of five, soon to be six seasons) of this Canadian-Irish co-production, and I’m now deep, deep into guilty pleasure territory. I’m enjoying watching it, though it probably couldn’t be classified as a terribly well-made show. It’s off-brain entertainment, an off-brand version of Game of Thrones, filled with sex but without any tits or bums, filled with battles but without any blood (slow-motion action scenes in particular make it painfully obvious the actors are hitting each other with blunted prop swords), filled with intrigue but none of it any more clever or inventive than “hit the other fella with the blunted prop sword.”

But you know, it’s light, it’s fun, and if nothing else it’s a spur to finding out what the Vikings were actually like.

The show is based on the semi-legendary Viking hero Ragnar Lothbrok (Travis Fimmel), a simple farmer who first leads his men west to raid the British Isles, the success of which attracts the jealousy of powerful enemies at home, including Earl Harald (Gabriel Byrne) and King Horik (Donal Logue). He defeats them both and becomes king, though he finds this is an empty reward. He is eventually betrayed and murdered by the Anglo-Saxons, which in later seasons spurs his quarrelsome sons to seek revenge by raising an army and invading England.

AHISTORICAL HISTORY

Making your main characters bloodthirsty Vikings poses some challenges in terms of making them sympathetic to the audience. The Vikings TV show’s response has been to completely ignore all that, and portray the Vikings as basically nice people who are constantly done dirty by the scheming, duplicitous Anglo-Saxons.

There is a little bit of bloodthirsty butchery in season one, though always instigated by someone other than Ragnar, of course: His brother Rollo (Clive Standen) mistrusts some Saxon emissaries and slaughters the lot of them; the eccentric boat-builder Floki (Gustaf Skarsgard) kills a priest despite Ragnar’s attempts to avoid bloodshed; a raider attempts to rape a woman but is killed by one of his fellow-countrymen.

Even this ludicrous whitewashing is abandoned after season one however, featuring instead scenes of peaceful Viking settlers being butchered by bloodthirsty Anglo-Sax—and wait a fucking moment. This is completely and utterly bonkers, 100% things which did not happen, indeed the opposite of what happened, you know that. Right? There’s hagiography, then there’s just silly wish-fulfillment, and this show is just frothingly, shield-bitingly, berserkly determined to paint the Vikings in the best possible light.

For a show that was made for the History Channel, it’s blithely cavalier about historical accuracy. This extends across everything from the way people dress, to the activities, ages and relationships among historical figures. A full accounting of all the inaccuracies would probably take as long again as the series has already lasted, but a few random highlights:

• The Vikings are portrayed as being completely oblivious to the existence of the English Isles before the first raid on Lindisfarne in 793 AD (they weren't)
• The Anglo-Saxons are shown wearing scale armor (they didn’t) and fielding massive cavalry armies (which might have come in handy at Hastings)
• In one episode, the Anglo-Saxons crucify an apostate who has joined the Vikings, although there is no evidence Christians ever did this, and indeed, considering the whole Jesus thing it seems unlikely they’d have tried
• Rollo, the founder of the Duchy of Normandy and thus ancestor to William the Conqueror, appears as the brother of Ragnar Lothbrok, though the two were completely unrelated and indeed lived about a century apart
• Speaking of Rollo, he goes from not speaking any French at all to becoming completely fluent in about two episodes, or one year of ‘real’ time, which is not how learning languages works and as someone who has spent years learning and mastering a foreign language this drives me a little bit bonkers
• Prince Burgred of Mercia is murdered by his sister Kwentrith after being captured by the Vikings: The historical Burgred was only distantly related to Kwentrith, became king and ruled Mercia for about 20 years before an invasion led by Ragnar’s sons drove him into exile in Rome
• English princess Judith (Sarah Greene) is portrayed as the daughter of Northumbrian king Aella: She was actually the daughter of the Frankish king Charles the Bald (who also appears in the show, portrayed by the wonderfully-named Lothaire Bluteau with a full and luxuriant head of hair and a Salvador Dali moustache)
• Scheming Count Odo of Paris (Owen Roe) is executed by the Frankish king, when the historical Odo was about 10 years old when Charles the Bald died, and actually became king himself and ruled for 10 years

For all that, one of the good things about the show is that it may inspire you (as it did me) to research the original stories and history the show is based on. A funeral scene, for example, is clearly based on an account of Norse burial practices by Arab Muslim writer Ibn Fadlan. While Ragnar Lothbrok exists mainly in legend, his sons Bjorn Ironside, Ivar the Boneless and others are likely historical, as is Ecbert of Wessex, his son Athelwulf, Frankish king Charles the Bald, Count Odo and a host of others.

In that sense, the real joy of the show has come after each episode, playing detective and trying to figure out what really happened during the events portrayed.

SHOW LOGIC

The writing cleaves strongly to what I’d call Show Logic rather than Character Logic. The serial TV show creates certain requirements for drama, surprise and action to be evenly spaced out within each 40-odd minute episode or 10 to 20-episode season.

A well-written TV show can meet these demands, but have them make internally consistent sense—you can see why the characters did what they did, how the conflict was caused or resolved. Character Logic. A less well-written one figures out what they want to happen first, and then tries to write around character motivation second. Show Logic.

Vikings, alas, is often not a well-written show.

Having a cast of thousands means you need to give those cast members something to do each week, even if there’s nothing especially going on in their part of the story at the moment. So what could be tight, punchy story lines are reduced to wandering, flabby affairs by the need to cut back to Ragnar’s wife and kids getting up to their usual go-nowhere hijinks, just to keep that particular juggler’s ball in the air. For a show about master navigators, it wanders dreadfully to and fro, with no goal in sight.

Episodes often end in abruptly in very odd places, just because they need a dramatic ending. In one early episode, the show resolved the main action with 10 minutes left to spare, so a Saxon prisoner randomly asks, “So, what is Ragnarok?” and a blind seer suddenly appears and everyone has apocalyptic visions, and then the episode ends and none of this is ever mentioned again.

Later, Ragnar turns from raiding to thoughts of settling in England, so agrees to meet King Ecbert of Wessex (Linus Roache), who casually mentions the existence of the City of Paris. Hearing of its glories, peace-loving Ragnar promptly decides the best thing to do is raise a massive army so he can murder-fuck the entire city. This leads to the Siege of Paris, which is admittedly one of the best arcs in the entire show—though the siege itself is a bit too dependent on James Bond gadgets like floating siege towers and rolling spike balls—but makes zero sense based on what we’ve been shown of Ragnar’s transformation from raider to ruler.

Similarly, the relationship between Ragnar and his brother Rollo swings from friendly rivalry to murderous hate almost at random, depending on the needs of the story. In another case, shield-maiden Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) falls in love with her enemy, Earl Kalf, gets pregnant by him, then murders him on their wedding day because Game of Thrones did something similar and whoops, think I just cracked the code.

Travis Fimmel’s portrayal of Ragnar Lothbrok is, um, eccentric, filled with lunatic twitchy smiles and ticks, like suddenly picking up a goat when caught in an uncomfortable confrontation between his wife and his new lover, or skinning and eating a live rat when talking to the king. It’s hard to fathom why anyone would follow this madman as far as the next piss-up, much less off the supposed edge of the world.

In another scene, Ragnar executes his rival Jarl Borg by the blood eagle, which essentially means cutting open a man’s back and pulling his lungs out. This is played as a touching moment of mutual respect between two men forced by circumstances to be enem … okay, hang on again. He’s literally murdering him in the nastiest, most painful, bloodiest, most gruesome manner the Norse could imagine, and they were no slouches on this score.

THEN WHY ARE YOU WATCHING?

The show is not without its attractions though.

The opening theme song, “If I Had a Heart” by Fever Ray, is nice and moody, for a start.

For another, the show is largely filmed outdoors, and the sweeping panoramas of Ireland, subbing for Norway, are absolutely, piercingly beautiful.

For all that I’ve complained about the acting, the byplay among the Viking leaders, and between Ragnar and King Ecbert does have its moments—contrasting the collegiate leadership style of the Vikings with the more authoritarian Anglo-Saxons.

The siege of Paris arc in season 3 is another standout, partially because it brings almost all the key cast together so we don’t have to go wandering off every five minutes for a superfluous 30-second cameo scene just to remind you who everyone is. Instead, the show can finally focus on the planning, scheming and action, and deliver tense, action-packed and suitably Vikings-y brutal scenes.

Last but not least, as I mentioned above although the show itself is about as historical as Charlton Heston’s wristwatch in “The Ten Commandments”*, the show + looking up the history and mythology on your own is actually quite enjoyable. 

(*Joke within a joke: He never wore a watch, it's an urban legend)

So while I find it hard to recommend the show, I’d recommend the overall “Vikings” experience as a kind of starting point for engaging with history, a doorway rather than a destination itself.