More Viking Pictures

 

 

Iceland – Reykjavik, Vikings and Explorers

We found the Hotel Bjork with no difficulty at all and once we had checked in and found our room I emptied my bag and hung up my clothes and we went through the contents to share them out equitably between us and I gave up my spare hat and pair of gloves but the offer of baggy underpants was rejected.

I told Kim that things could have been a whole lot worse – it could have been my bag that had gone missing!

By some curious twist of female logic the lost bag was still my fault and Kim remained tetchy and irritable but a glass of duty-free wine cheered her up a little (just a little) and when we left the hotel to walk into the city and the rain stopped and there was even a patch or two of blue sky puncturing the steely grey skies so things were beginning to look up.

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More Leif Ericson – The Answers

A few days ago I set a TV western challenge to name the actors from their birth names:

Here are the answers:

Marion Mitchell Morrison – the one and only John Wayne

James Scott Bumgarner – James Garner (Bret Maverick)

Jack Carlton Moore – Clayton Moore (The Lone Ranger)

His companion Tonto was played by actor Jay Silverheels who was a genuine First Nations Mohawk but whose real name was a disappointing Harold J. Smith!

Buddy Lee – Robert Fuller (Wagon Train)

Norman Eugene Walker – Clint Walker (Cheyenne Body)

Leonard Franklin Slye – Roy Rodgers

Roy’s horse was called Trigger but its real name was Golden Cloud.

Lyon Himan Green – Lorne Green (Ben Cartwright, Bonanza)

Eugene Maurice Orowitz – Michael Landon (Little Jo, Bonanza)

Orison Whipple Hungerford – Ty Hardin (Bronco Lane)

Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg – Jane Seymour (Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman)

How did you do?

7-10    Blazing Saddles

4-7      How the West was Won

0-3      Custer’s Last Stand

Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward

Leif Erikson contemplates a Voyage of Discovery…

There is no real evidence that Eiriksson discovered America but his statue faces to the west as though in expectation of belated recognition for his achievement.  Today he looked out over Viking skies full of Nordic drama with mountainous clouds as big and as grey as a medieval cathedral.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Free Spirit

Leif Ericson, Reykjavik 

Outside the cathedral in Reykjavik is a statue of Leifur Eiriksson who was an Icelander born about 970 and who explored the oceans and the lands west of Iceland, establishing colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland and who according to legend reached America long before Christopher Columbus or Amerigo Vespucchi.

The statue was a gift from the American Government in 1930 to mark Iceland’s one thousandth anniversary and October 9^th is commemorated as Leif Ericson day in the United States.  The date is not associated with any particular event in Leif Erikson’s life, it was chosen because the ship Restauration sailing from Stavanger in Norway, arrived in New York Harbour on October 9^th 1825 at the start of the first organized immigration from Norway to the United States.

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