Pretty much the last thing I did on my trip to France before going home was a trip to Viking World in Iceland. Viking world is a museum about the Norse people, it is in Keflavik, near the airport. I had a layover for 19 hours before going to LAX, so I could sleep, eat breakfast, and visit the museum.
If you haven’t read my previous posts on Iceland, there are 3 things that I need to tell you about the country. 1: there are lots of interesting places to go to and things to see in Iceland. 2: the Norse people lived there, and 3. Iceland is very, very, very cold! It is so cold that your ears feel like they are going to need a funeral, and your hands are already dead. So, keep these things in mind as you read on.
When I got to the museum, I couldn’t wait to get started and my blood was pumping. The museum gives free admission to kids under 14. I took my brochure and walked through to enter. The first section had tools and artifacts found in Iceland. There was a model of a Norse boat in the room, and it looked real enough to set sail.
My second favorite part of the museum was a large Norse ship. This was a model made by a team of researchers in Iceland, they sailed it across the Atlantic Ocean! It was cool to stand in a boat that had really sailed before, it looked exactly like the original Norse boats. Some of the panels were different colors than others, that’s because if one panel broke then you had to replace it with any piece of wood that you could get, you wouldn’t care if it matched.
The final exhibit that I saw was an exhibit on Norse mythology. I had already learned a bit about Norse mythology from reading a couple of books. So, I thought that I would recognize some of the pictures. But it turns out, there weren’t pictures; instead, there were cardboard cut outs showing some of the mythology scenes. There were many scenes that I recognized already, and at the end there was the famous worlds tree. If you need an introduction to Norse mythology, you’re in luck.
In Norse mythology, there were several different worlds, all bound together by the world tree. Some of the most important gods were Odin, Thor, Freya, Frey, Balder, and Loki. There were also 2 of my favorite villains: the Midgard Serpent, and Fenrir the wolf. Odin was the chief of the gods, he had only one eye, a staff, and two ravens. The ravens were said to whisper news in his ear, and he was very smart. Thor is probably the most famous, he was large and muscular, he had a shield, and a powerful hammer. The name of the hammer is Mjolnir, it could hit any target and it always returned to Thor. He also had a chariot pulled by two goats.
Freya and Frey were twins, they are not well known but Frey had a ship that could shrink to fit in his pocket, and a boar that pulled his chariot. Freya had a chariot pulled by two cats. Balder was cheerful, and nothing could hurt him except mistletoe. Loki often got drunk, he pulled nasty pranks and stole things. The Midgard Serpent was a large snake that circled the worlds, in the end of the story’s it fought Thor. Fenrir the wolf was raised and tricked by the gods, but that’s a long story. He ended up fighting Odin.
To wrap things up, I recommend the museum (and that you read Norse mythology). Until the next post!
The Beary Good Adventures 