Another Vikingfest Parade...

Roadside Vikings

Vikings loved to leave their "mark" before moving on to the next New World tourist attraction. Modern Viking worshippers are no different. While your horned helmet may be rough on the minivan ceiling, you'll have no trouble finding these roadside Valhallas...

 

Wayward ship in Redwood country.

Viking Longships have run aground in suspect places -- you can find one next to the Grandfather Tree on California's Redwood Highway. There's a full-sized Leif Erickson Viking ship in Duluth, Minnesota -- single-masted, and not all that impressive (Update: Built in the 1920s, it was locked in a shed in 1999, awaiting a "long overdue" restoration). A larger 76-foot, exact replica of a Viking ship sits at the Heritage-Hjemkomst Interpretive Center in Moorhead, MN. It built by Robert Asp, a junior high school guidance counselor, in the 1970s; he dreamed of sailing it to Norway.

Asp died before the journey (though he did pilot the dragon-headed vessel when it was launched on Lake Superior). In 1982, family members and a crew of vounteers sailed the 6,000 miles from Duluth to Norway.

Deerfield, New Jersey's manly Carpet Viking

A Viking Festival is held every year in the town of Poulsbo, Washington.

Heroic Viking statues tower of towns with Scandianvian heritage. A fiberglass Viking stands near New Virginia, Iowa.

Vikings, for reasons forgotten in unrecorded history, are used to promote carpet stores. Giant carpet vikings stand in several states, though most have been moved as the carpet stores tanked. One was redeployed as team mascot statue at Nauvoo-Calusa High School, Nauvoo, Illinois. A peg-leg Viking stands near Chincoteague, Virginia.

Monuments to later Viking invasions -- by immigrant Swedes and Norwegians -- are comparatively unremarkable. Norway, Illinois's Norwegian Settlers State Memorial is five imported stone markers out on a lonely farm highway. It honors those that came in 1835, seeking religious freedom. During our visit, we noted that on the back of one stone slab someone had spray-painted "Odin Lives."

Viking Runestones

February 9, 2010