Seeing the old drive-in last weekend in San Antonio reminded me of one of the last movies I saw at a drive-in theatre (near Atlanta, of all places): The Norseman (1978), starring Lee Majors, Jack Elam, Mel Ferrer, Cornel Wilde, Susie Coelho and Deacon Jones (football!) and written, produced a directed by Charles B. Pierce; then-secret executive producers: Lee Majors and Farrah Fawcett.The Norseman is absurd, but the premise of Viking/Norsemen encounters with "the Iroquois" (even if depicted in ridiculously anachronistic garb) is not quite so far-fetched. The Vikings did, after all, come to what is now North America hundreds of years before any other Europeans, and they did have extended encounters with the people already there.
Between archaeological finds and genetic tracking, we'll find out a lot more in due time, no doubt. Was there a major disease exchange ca. 1000 A.D.? Did knowledge of these early encounters spread in many directions? If so, how far, and to what effect?
Folks, hard to get cheesier than this trailer:
Coming soon: Spanish forts in the interior of what is now North Carolina -- two hundred years before the American Revolution.
History keeps evolving, and myths keep dissolving. Still, many outdated notions stubbornly persist, thanks in part to certain grade school texts and plain dumb politics, I guess.
History keeps evolving, and myths keep dissolving. Still, many outdated notions stubbornly persist, thanks in part to certain grade school texts and plain dumb politics, I guess.
Today's Norseman Rune: Wholeness. Happy May Day!
5 comments:
If these "were the men who discovered America" and they had encounters with "the people inhabiting the land" wouldn't it stand to reason that them inhabiting the land had ancestors that discovered it before the Norsemen?
Although this movies seems the perfect thing to see at the drive-in I still assert that brother...your memory is either to good or you have seen some remarkably bad films in your time.
i cannot remember the last time i went to a drive in movie -- there used to be one where i grew up and my father took us there all the time
Egads, could Deacon Jones look any more out of place? But at least he didn't speak in the trailer. If only the same thing could be said for Lee Majors and his "Too Odin."
OMG! That movie looks AWFUL! Gotta love Majors' bad, porn mustache, too. Very Norse.
That's one of the things I always told my students-- that history is ever-changing-- new discoveries change the big picture all the time.
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