short thread: Vikings: the new pictures set

MOESAN

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I looked at the film sets « Vikings »
not too fall at first sight, and I'mnot a pictures analyst
first surprise : some head-haircuts !


Yet the same remark when speaking about'peplums' and other « historical » pictures
a priori concerning physical aspects,and oblivions of proper history + the foreigner is focalized on,but not the « autochtone » : as in other picturesabout Vikings and about « french » Normans, theAnglo-Saxons are compared to current british people – it isforgetting that the freshly settled Anglo-Saxons of Northumbry,Yorkshire and East-Anglia were very dominantly pure northernGermanics ; they had pushed the most of the Celts and takentheir place ; the today mixture of East England, that is farfrom erasing completely the initial differences between West and EastBritain at these times, isless germanic than the 8°Century one but still more germanic than inwestern and southern Britain – so middle statured middle pigmentedpeople with well crossed visages of today Britain big towns is a verybad choice to evocate the Anglo-Saxons of that ancient time –concerning visages, we can say also, to choose some blond people tomake Vikings more credible is not the solution : there are facesthat don't pass as natural in Scandinavia, even if we know that someVikings bands came from Western Norway, less light pigmented and morebrachycephalic, more variated concerning visages, than the averageNorth people (before 20° C. end emigrations!)
concerningNormans-Saxons pictures, we can say the same – Normans were not« latin lovers » (they were a mix of Celts, Germansand Scandinavians more than true southern people) and eastern Saxonsof Nottinghamshire even if less pure than 2 centuries earlier werenot britannic citizens!)
otheraspect : in battles, the collective victory was not obtained bya 100% individual fights winned only by the victorious side, as inmovies -


justa thank to this « Vikings » pictures set : even if avague « biker style » (not « beaker ») seemshanging over, they avoided the bodybuilding training for their men ofthe North (I have in mind these overswelled X-rays tanned and blondwigged Vikings of the picture where played Kirk Douglas and TonyCurtis in the last century: a shame !
 
I looked at the film sets « Vikings »
not too fall at first sight, and I'mnot a pictures analyst
first surprise : some head-haircuts !


Yet the same remark when speaking about'peplums' and other « historical » pictures
a priori concerning physical aspects,and oblivions of proper history + the foreigner is focalized on,but not the « autochtone » : as in other picturesabout Vikings and about « french » Normans, theAnglo-Saxons are compared to current british people – it isforgetting that the freshly settled Anglo-Saxons of Northumbry,Yorkshire and East-Anglia were very dominantly pure northernGermanics ; they had pushed the most of the Celts and takentheir place ; the today mixture of East England, that is farfrom erasing completely the initial differences between West and EastBritain at these times, isless germanic than the 8°Century one but still more germanic than inwestern and southern Britain – so middle statured middle pigmentedpeople with well crossed visages of today Britain big towns is a verybad choice to evocate the Anglo-Saxons of that ancient time –concerning visages, we can say also, to choose some blond people tomake Vikings more credible is not the solution : there are facesthat don't pass as natural in Scandinavia, even if we know that someVikings bands came from Western Norway, less light pigmented and morebrachycephalic, more variated concerning visages, than the averageNorth people (before 20° C. end emigrations!)
concerningNormans-Saxons pictures, we can say the same – Normans were not« latin lovers » (they were a mix of Celts, Germansand Scandinavians more than true southern people) and eastern Saxonsof Nottinghamshire even if less pure than 2 centuries earlier werenot britannic citizens!)
otheraspect : in battles, the collective victory was not obtained bya 100% individual fights winned only by the victorious side, as inmovies -


justa thank to this « Vikings » pictures set : even if avague « biker style » (not « beaker ») seemshanging over, they avoided the bodybuilding training for their men ofthe North (I have in mind these overswelled X-rays tanned and blondwigged Vikings of the picture where played Kirk Douglas and TonyCurtis in the last century: a shame !

Ha! As I was reading, I was thinking, I have to post a picture for Moesan of Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, and then you mentioned them!:LOL:

Heck,I'll post them anyway, for the youngsters who don't know what we're talking about...they're both Ashkenazi Jews, btw.

Tony-Curtis-Sword.jpg


Very fetching indeed, but not very authentic looking!:grin:

And Kirk Douglas, never my cup of tea, and particularly not in this role...this casting wasn't quite so bad, was it?

500full.jpg


Hollywood just didn't care about these things...still doesn't. And don't get me started on how Romans are protrayed!
 
Neither of them were six feet tall. Tony Curtis' real name was Bernie Schwartz Kirk Douglas had a Russian name or something ending in -sky. Both have famous offsprings Jamie Lee Curtis whose mother was Janet Leigh (Psycho) and Mike Douglas of multiple wives with current spouse Catherine Zeta-Jones.
As a kid, I did liked Kirk Douglas' movies. I think playing the 'Boston Strangler' ended Tony Curtis' career as a movie star.
 
If you want to see a really hilarious Viking movie, try The Vikings, released in 1978 and starring Lee Majors as a Viking with a Texan accent. So hilariously bad that it's great fun to watch.
 
Who told you that Vikings had a certain look?
Besides,Scandinavians are quite diverse,as phenotypes,because they are actually a mix of Germanic,Baltic, Finnic and Sami people.
(and also in lower percentages,of other nations).
Scandinavians from Norway are also mixed with Celts,so they are even more diverse,as look.
Vikings the History series have actually a very good cast,considering how people there look.
Also they are all tall and strong.
As for your idea with "pure North-Germanics",oh really,how about native Celtic,Picts and other people from England,what happened to those,were all mass slaughtered?
Now coming back to those pure "North Germanics" were they not already mixed with Central European people,Baltic,(or even Slavic people) other Indo-European migrants from that period,like for example Alans?
 
Who told you that Vikings had a certain look?
Besides,Scandinavians are quite diverse,as phenotypes,because they are actually a mix of Germanic,Baltic, Finnic and Sami people.
(and also in lower percentages,of other nations).
Scandinavians from Norway are also mixed with Celts,so they are even more diverse,as look.
Vikings the History series have actually a very good cast,considering how people there look.
Also they are all tall and strong.
As for your idea with "pure North-Germanics",oh really,how about native Celtic,Picts and other people from England,what happened to those,were all mass slaughtered?
Now coming back to those pure "North Germanics" were they not already mixed with Central European people,Baltic,(or even Slavic people) other Indo-European migrants from that period,like for example Alans?





excuse me, but :

  • ethnies are not phenotypes : some ethnies are the mixt of a lot of phenotypes, where no component can be easily told from another or at least where no component can be said as dominant – some other mixtures contain a lot of componants but one of them is clearly dominant -
  • sometimes, numerous names of different ethnies correspond to the same basic mixture sometime of very few phenotypes, and without to great variations
  • telling Vikings were the same as every sort of population in Europe at their time is a nonsense - and AS A GROUP the 20° Century « native » Norvegians were very easy to tell from Flemish or Corsicans or Pomeranians or Dalmatians or Kosovars or Pelopponese Greeks or … or … or … or you have not seen sufficiant samples, or, no offense, you are to young to have known the Scandinavians before the modern massive emigration !
  • I find some of the Vikings in the picture are not too convincing (keep in mind they were at that time the first ones with the aim of discovering the western european world) but I rather focalized my « unsatisfaction » on the representation of pseudo Anglo-Saxons in it, as in other pictures or sets : Brownish-blackish obese Saxons in Berwick or Northumbry or York in the 8° century is a nonsense (even in 20° century, concerning aspect, it was very easy GROUP VS GROUP to distinguish Yorkshire peasants and fishers from Cornish or Black Country (W-Midlands) peasants... I DON'T SAY : INDIVIVUAL TO INDIVIDUAL - so these differences in Britain would be born after complete crossings between pre-Celts, Celts and Germanics (+...?) when in the 8° these people were all the same, according to you ???


    yet, if the Germanics had not slaughtered all the Celts, they kept separated in everyday life at some stage and the nobles and warriors were surely more anglo-saxon than celt, at least on the eastern coasts – and we can imagine some newcomers from North Sea Continent came to reinforce the first germanic settlers of the 5°/6° C, wives comprise in it.
  • we don't need PURE « races » to distinguish between european or elsewhere populations : even the western Norwegians (less blond : 50% only vs 66% in someparts), more brachycephalic (CI:about 82 cs 76 in some parts in the 1040's) had a global look that did not pass everywhere in Europe : crossings can differ from crossings according to the involved components:
  • Vikings was basically Northmen with very little Finnic or Saami genes and the Baltic people were partly of the same stock even if different as a whole ; but this postulated baltic presence among Scandinavian wait for a proof (in the sense of cultural baltic, because a small component of baltic-N-E-european autosomals is evident and normal, from mesolothic times) – the most of the (male) first people who took foot in Iceland came from western Norway and Trondelag plus some rare Swedes and Danes... all of 'nordish' look as a whole taken in the broad sense as first Anglo-Saxon were (look at Frisians : very 'nordic'!)
  • some hundreds of supposed Vikings skeletons (in their settlements) were studied and it was possible to see a difference of features between the male means and the female means, attributed as History confirms to the rapt of celt females by the Vikings (but not only celt one ?) - the story of every settlement here is not always the same : the weight of foreign females varied according to places, as mt DNA seems confirm, by instance within Scotland (Hebrides # Caithness # Orkney-Shetland...) -
  • the « Celts » in Norway is a good question : in an other thread I told my doubts about the number of supposed Irish male slaves there : what doesn't exclude a presence of people physically close enough to these Irish people tracing back to older times ; all the way they were surely not the dominant % among the 8° C. Viking population and so didn't make the dominant aspect among them – the Irish influence is verified in this pictures where almost of second rôle actors had gaelic first names and surnames !!! (being the principal ones Canadian, Australian, British abd so on...)
    &: I had the possibility to look at over 17000 Europe sportmen photos and I have some documents and memory of them, not speaking about live people -
I fear that the present day politicallycorrect theories and the present day big international mixtures couldlead to a re-reading of History and Anthropology, doing that« present is the almost unchanged picture of past », avery easy and useful concept to justify some ideas... I think thedeep psychological basis of Humans is very common and ancient, but itis not to say that all other aspects (in which the physical look)were the same and never changed -


to come back to the pictures inquestion, anthropological aspect left aside, surely the Vikings knewdifferents fashions as time ran, but I red they had homogenous enoughlooks concerning hair, at the beginning, and not the abundant varietyof forms shown in this pictures set – but it is not so important ?Americans and their imitators know how rewrite ancient History tocheck their present day myths ?: it has some value forintertainment but not for History – but I concede concerning otherfacts this precise set is not bad at all -


having said all I have to said aboutphysical anthropology I will not write more on this aspect -
 
I add: some "invasions" took place here and there: with how many people? the Alans does not seem to me having influenced too much the northern Angles and Saxons and Jutes and Frisians -
and by example the mix (let's say): N-Germanic+Balt # mix N-Germanic+Hun # -Germanic+Roman ...
 
I defer to your knowledge of physical anthropology, Moesan. That said, I don't think casting decisions are often made for "political correctness" reasons.

I would doubt that the casting people for this mini series had any clue that the northeastern "British" people of this era would have looked almost totally "Anglo-Saxon". Probably, they were thinking generally "Scandinavian" versus "British", and their visual image of British people would be based on the current mix in the British Isles.

Then there's the fact that funding for projects like this often depends on whether you can guarantee a "bankable", popular actor guaranteed to draw viewers. I would assume that's why Gabriel Byrne was cast as a "Viking". He doesn't look much like a Viking to me, but you would know better. (He's actually the only reason I watched a few episodes of this series. I just love him.) There's also the example of the British productions about the Roman era.
The actual Emperor Caligula vs. Derek Jacobi:
Claudius_Vatican_Museum.jpg

I-CLAUDIUS-001.jpg


Regardless, he was brilliant in the role. :)

They did much better with some of the casting in "Rome" the miniseries, although not with the lead.
 
I defer to your knowledge of physical anthropology, Moesan. That said, I don't think casting decisions are often made for "political correctness" reasons.

I would doubt that the casting people for this mini series had any clue that the northeastern "British" people of this era would have looked almost totally "Anglo-Saxon". Probably, they were thinking generally "Scandinavian" versus "British", and their visual image of British people would be based on the current mix in the British Isles.

Then there's the fact that funding for projects like this often depends on whether you can guarantee a "bankable", popular actor guaranteed to draw viewers. I would assume that's why Gabriel Byrne was cast as a "Viking". He doesn't look much like a Viking to me, but you would know better. (He's actually the only reason I watched a few episodes of this series. I just love him.) There's also the example of the British productions about the Roman era.
The actual Emperor Caligula vs. Derek Jacobi:
Claudius_Vatican_Museum.jpg

I-CLAUDIUS-001.jpg


Regardless, he was brilliant in the role. :)

They did much better with some of the casting in "Rome" the miniseries, although not with the lead.

I totally agree about the commercial and artistic view (I'm not so naive) - but concerning the "landscape roles" (french "figurants") it would be better took "natives" or people of same origin even if today Australians or Canadians or...X citizens - it has been done in some pictures and worked very well
That said I had some pleasure seeing this set of Vikings
 

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