Saturday, August 17, 2013

Synchronicity

Vikings
Vikings, a photo by The Gonk on Flickr.
Right now, I have just finished the first two books of Bernard Cornwell's the Saxon Stories/Tales/Chronicles, whatever it is. They are awesome! The primary protagonists of the series so fare are Halfdan, Ivar the Boneless, and Ubba-- the historical leaders of the Great Heathen Army of Danes which conquered almost all of England, leaving only a toehold of swamp for Alfred the Great to stage his great come back from. All three of them were the sons of Ragnar Lothbrook, the star of the History Channel's Vikings. I can't believe the "Ancient Nazi Aliens" of the History Channel put out something this good and something this historical-- or, if not historical, at least consistent with the legends. It's not perfect-- of course, the hero Ragnar is at both the Lindisfarne and Portland Bay raids, which were six years apart but are represented closely together, in the wrong place, and in the wrong order in the show. But it is still awesome!! I can't wait to watch some more...and get some more Anglo-Saxons painted and run some Dux Britanniarum games!!

1 comment:

  1. I like Cornwell's non Sharpe stuff like this a lot better; the former gets kind of formulaic and repetitive.

    Something actually worth watching on the History Channel? Yikes!!!

    Most of their stuff seems to consist of 20 minutes of material of dubious quality, which they then restate ten or twenty times because of course we're too dumb to get it the first time... otherwise we'd be watching something else! :-)

    ReplyDelete