Let's Go a'Viking!

There's been some consternation, confusion, and discord on my Facebook friends' list today on how far the Vikings travelled. First, though, viking is what you do when the crops are in, not who they were, not exactly. They're vikings like you're a little league coach. It's usually not a day job.

Let's start with what is recorded in Wikipedia.  The boards for the Straight Dope took up the question but became hung on the Kensington Runestone. The Kensington Runestone is rune covered greywacke found in Solem, Minnesota, circa 1898. Consensus seems to be that the stone dates from the late 19th Century rather than the 14th.

An article in the Smithsonian looks at claims of Thorfinn and speculates the vikings may have found themselves as far south as Gowanus Bay in New York Harbor. National Geographic covers Norse textiles from Greenland found down the coast of Canada from Baffin Island. 

It's a lovely idea that the Vikings made it down to Virginia and even around to the Mississippi River, or possibly through rivers to the Great Lakes and over to Minnesota, but there's no evidence to prove it. It's a god story in fiction and one I love. Mike Grell used it for an issue of Jon Sable, Freelance, though his lost Viking explorer made it down to Nicaragua. Warren Ellis came up with Morning Dragons, a comic that teased the idea of a Viking longboat travelling over to Japan. Ellis mentioned an image in his head (ahistorical, of course) of a Norse battleaxe coming down on and being blocked by one of the Japanese blades of story. Lovely image and idea, unfortunately this project was never completed.

(Side note: According to the Telegraph, young men going a'viking were warned away from Scotland. Heh.)

Has anyone ever written a blog post that mentioned both Warren Ellis and Ray Stevens?

Is my life in danger now?