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
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