The Vikings Are Coming...

It is but a few short days until Season 3 of Vikings drops. And it is such a credit to the fans of this show that the History Channel are putting everything into creating engaging content for the shows following. Up first is the premiere installment of, what will hopefully be, a long series of video journals from Athelstan(George Blagden). Serves as both an insight into how the actors get inside the heads of their characters to convincingly portray them, as well as a handy little recap on everything leading up to the new season!

And if that doesn't get you all excited for new raiding and the escapades of our slightly cleaner than their stereotype warriors of the sea, for good measure, the people of the History Channel have spoiled us all rotten with a quick taster and behind the scenes look at what is in store in the next 10 episodes. Grab your drinking horn, fill it with meade, and enjoy this little teaser...
#LikeAViking
(If you're confused about where to view this video, the hashtag is the link...click it...click it! Or if you are one of those people who are motivated by mischief and act out the exact opposite of what you are instructed then DON'T CLICK THE LINK ON THE HASHTAG! A little bit of reverse psychology for you there :) )

Viking Injury #1 and Imminent Viking Rockstardom...

I think had I been around during the Viking Age I would have had the absolute craic with them! They seem to have been a fun, easy going peoples with all their singing, and dancing, and games, and story telling. Yes I know, that pretty much made them sound like Carebears or Smurfs when they are largely known for great acts of brutality(Blood Eagle, anyone?). But I'm talking about in their down time! When raiding and pillaging is done for the day and it's time to celebrate. Vikings are the sort of people most of us would like to hang around with. The ones that know how to have a good time. Get the party started. Kick back with a few jugs of meade and have a bit of a sing song.

Full of the Viking spirit of merriment, when I was offered the chance to lend my vocal talents to a friend who was recording some new material I got involved. As involved as Bjorn rowing a longboat across the seas to new lands in Northumbria...VERY!

Quite the enjoyable day being in Sonic Studios in Dublin. Worked with a sound engineer who has worked with the likes of Van Morrison, Tom Jones, Don Baker and Sinead O'Connor. The mixing desk in the studio was a restored one previously owned by Def Lepeord...fun fact! With that in mind, you can imagine the horror when we had just walked into the studio not even two minutes and one of the session musicians knocks over a travel mug full of water on this expensive piece of rock'n'roll history/equipment. All I can say is, thank all the Viking gods it wasn't me!!!!!! Guess he learned the hard way the most important rule of recording studios everywhere: NO LIQUIDS IN THE MIXING ROOM, ESPECIALLY ON THE MIXING DESK. After calling in an engineer to assess the damage, recording began after a fan, a heater and a hair dryer worked their magic for around an hour on the console. And to top it off, I can call myself a real session musician now because I got my very first per diem! Being paid = professional! I should have a clip of the track to share in the coming days. It's a bit of jazz funk for Valentine's...sounds weird but it works! The rough mix sounded pretty good when I was leaving so here's hoping the finished product will be awesome.

It also gave me a taste for recording. So there might be a few more projects in the pipeline that I can share with you in the near future. Oh, the suspense!

On a bad note(see how I kept the musical theme going there!?!), I have suffered a little setback. During some sprinting earlier, I have torn my Achilles' Tendon. Major ouchies! Unfortunately this means training has to cease for a little while. I'm hoping it's not too bad and can be back to it in a week or so. Worst case scenario, I've been told it could be six to 10 weeks...let's hope I heal as quickly as Rollo did in Season 2. Remember? When he looked like he could double as Two Face from Batman one minute, and was all Leonardo Di Caprio 'Man in the Iron Mask' post shave two seconds later?? That's the speedy recovery I'm hoping for! #LikeAViking

It's Only One Month Away...

Who said Vikings can't read?

Very excited to have taken delivery of a couple of books today. One in particular was recommended to fans of the show by the one and only, Clive Standen, himself. The Hammer and the Cross A New History of the Vikings by Robert fergusson shall be my main source of historical guidance on this little adventure. Looking forward to having a bit more insight into the entire Viking Age to put the show into some sort of perspective. If it weren't for the fact I have to go to work for the evening I'd be happily curled up on the couch with a large cuppa speed reading it from cover to cover...

However, I'm not going to lie, I'm eagerly anticipating the new series like everyone else so I might have, slightly, kinda, maybe, possibly checked out the index of the book seeking out the bits that relate to Ragnar Lodbrok and some of the other figures that are being depicted in the series...After seeing a clip on Youtube with the cast talking about the upcoming third season and that there is going to be a few deaths...I'm a little concerned that the new king of Sweden is going to meet his end in season 3 :( Let's hope the producers don't take any notice of Game Of Thrones and don't kill off half the cast just yet!

Also, in a bid to aid the training to become more badass Viking, a little less couch potato, I'll be trying to eat a bit more like our hairy northern friends. So I'm reading up on the Paleo plan which would be quite similiar to what the vikings would have eaten...no recipe yet for meade though! Bye bye enjoyable food and hello salad...And yes, i'm quite aware that no great story ever began with "this one time I had a salad..." but we'll see what happens.

Archery classes have not commenced yet but I've been looking into how I'm going to learn sword fighting with a complete lack of any sort of class or course in the area. I have come to the conclusion that I'll be taking an online tutorial course for the foreseeable future. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up the basics quite quickly and maybe take a weekend course over in England for stage and screen combat to help me a little more. Right now I'm looking into getting the right equipment and sourcing a training partner...who would have thought getting the equipment was the easy part? Turns out family members and friends are a little dubious about the whole idea. I'm actually shocked at the amount of times people have questioned the motive for learning the skills of the longsword as being merely a means of a legitimate excuse for any possible injuries/fatalities that may occur. And further still, there is concern that they themselves have too much aggression that might spill out in any high tension sparring...and yet i'm not deterred...

How hard can it be? Someone, somewhere, made a sword for the first time with no fancy training and just got on with it...simples! #LikeAViking

Torstein as Techno Viking in Vikings/Dirty Dancing crossover...

A little bit of humour for you on this blustery night in Ireland.

I came across this little clip on Youtube. I reckon that it's possible he's grown a bit of hair since it was filmed but it could totally be Torstein(Jefferson Hall)...starring in his very own Viking/Dirty Dancing crossover as Techno Viking!