My writing is flavored with Norse, Viking, mythology. We all have our weird obsessions, and the romanticized life of Viking explorers is mine… well, one of them. Now, I’m not one of those Larping wannabees who dress in furs and talk with an affectation made up by television and movie writers. Hint to those guys: There wasn’t audio recordings back then, and the Vikings left very little written texts. What you see on TV is make believe created in a conference room by a bunch of people who would never survive in the 800s.
While I love the architecture of the late Viking era, adhering to their documented customs makes little sense to me. If you took a Viking kingdom and gave them all the power of modernity, I have no doubt they’d embrace it… and probably use it to subjugate the weak.
What I really love about them is their fascination with exploring. It’s why I like Elon Musk, Jacques Cousteau, Einstein, Oppenheimer, and so many more. They are driven to expand our knowledge, and thrust our species out into the universe, for better or worse. My love for the Vikings extends to all the daydreamers who push the boundaries of human engineering and science.
By extension, I have little to no empathy for those who don’t at least want to expand human knowledge. If a person simply exists with no useful drive, I want nothing to do with them. The idea of wasting resources on useless eaters repulses me.