I Sit In Solidarity With The Norway Fan Who Refuses To Do The Viking Row

Norway’s charmed and charming run to the World Cup quarterfinals has been a good time all around. Erling Haaland is probably the most lovingly memed man on Earth at the moment, and with good reason. The Norwegians are getting really into cowboy fashion. It’s all very fun. They seem like a fun hang. And they are rowing. They are rowing after wins. They are rowing in Times Square. They are rowing up the escalator.

The Viking Row is the breakout celebration of this Cup, with supporters joining the team after victories in a metronomic pantomime of their ancestors crossing the storm-toss’d seas, possibly to raid some abbey or other. But after Norway’s victory over Senegal in the group stage, a photo went viral showing one lone Norway fan refusing to put his back into the oar. Emil Anners Lappen refuses to row! He simply will not. In the silly season of World Cup human interest stories, this has made Emil famous. The news is covering him in his home country. They’re covering him in Sweden. And now, ahead of England’s final-eight match against Norway, Emil has finally been interviewed in English, by Sky News.

“I think that rowing was a stupid idea from the start. I have never been happy about it,” Emil told Norwegian tabloid Verdens Gang. “I have to ​stand up for [my opinion] and there will ​be no ⁠rowing in the future either.” Upon giving the most Nordic quote ever, Emil went on to explain his two reasons for disliking the Viking Row.

First, he feels it’s derivative of the Icelandic “thuderclap” celebration that gained popularity a decade ago. I will admit to having the thought, upon seeing the Viking Row, that I’d been doing that at Amon Amarth shows for years. So I get you, Emil. But Iceland was first settled in the ninth century by—who else—Norsemen. Can you blame them if they inherited Norway’s love of rhythmic seafaring?

Emil’s second reason is one of historical accuracy. The national team, he notes, was to “row across the Atlantic” to this World Cup. Emil notes how foolish that would be! The clinker-built, square-rigged viking longships were built with rows of oars, sure, but it’d be a foolish navigator who relied on manpower to cross an entire ocean.

Rowing is “more Swedish than Norwegian,” one Swedish pundit noted. Swedish vikings relied more on oars as they navigated the shallower inland waters and rivers of Europe, reaching as far as al-Andalus and Kievan Rus’ and Constantinople (read your Bengtsson!) and serving the Byzantine Emperor as an elite mercenary unit. But Norwegian vikings preferred the open ocean. When Erik the Red settled Greenland, he sailed there. When his son Leif Erikson settled Vinland, in what is today Labrador, Canada, he sailed there. You might call this irrelevant to a fun little soccer chant. You might call any objection clear evidence of being on the spectrum. You might say, “Hey Emil, it’s pretty funny that there are oars on the wall behind you in your interview.” Keep talking; a true viking cares not for the bleating of sheep.

You know what? I’m going to hijack this blog for my own complaint, because there’s a chance Emil is reading this and he’s the only person on Earth who wouldn’t tell me to “Shut up, nerd.” I am a certified history enjoyer, Bernard Cornwell reader, and Nordic metal listener, and if I have learned anything useful, it’s that all the jokes and references about the vikings raiding England ahead of England-Norway are mostly wrong! The Norwegian vikings largely avoided England during the Anglo-Saxon period; their largest and longest-lasting settlement was Dublin. Instead, the Scandinavian raiders of England were mostly Swedes and Danes. (Read your Beowulf! Geats and whatnot.) There’s a reason the occupied East of England was called the Danelaw. There’s a reason the protection money paid them was called Danegeld. The Great Heathen Army was led by the sons of the Swedish and Danish king Ragnar Lodbrok, with only a few stray Norwegians among them. The one time a strictly Norwegian. army tried to invade England, they got their shit rocked at Stamford Bridge. English pundits are hoping Norway pulls a Harald Hardrada in the quarterfinal.

Of course, a few days after Harold Godwinson’s victory there, the Normans crossed over from what is now France and handed Harold his ass at the Battle of Hastings, The Normans—”north men”—were only lightly Christianized Norse who had been paid off with land and titles to quit raiding France. William the Conqueror was just five generations removed from Rollo, the Norway-born Viking who was named Count of Rouen to get him to stop pillaging. The Norman Conquest—which permanently altered and defined England’s language, customs, aristocracy, legal and justice systems, and national self-conception—was in many real ways a Norwegian victory.

So no matter which team wins tomorrow, you’ve got this, Emil.