Sweet Jumping Jebus … sorry docs and doc candidates, but do they make you lose all of your common sense before granting the doctorate?
I was watching a pseudodocumentary on the pseudoDiscovery Channel. I guess they couldn’t find an episode with Hitler in it.
It was mildly interesting, I got to see a bit more Iceland than the Reijkavik Airport which is a good thing. I do intend to go there on vacation one of these years.
So here is this guy who has a doctorate in bone stuff. Since they found a spiffy skeleton, that comes in handy. They determined that there was some viking dude named Hring who purportedly broke an assassins back across a large rock, then later died by being ambushed by a bunch of norwegians from back in the home country. Very vikingish.
So here we have a nice skeleton, pretty much complete. Broken back at the l2, some healing action going on.
So cue the next 40 minutes, was some amusing footage of him with a body bag weighted with enough dirt and stuff to be a reasonable body which he tried cracking the back over the rock. OK, plausible, in mythbuster terms. Hm, bones are gracile [not ogre heavy monster viking bones] so perhaps it isn’t Hring [who did not apparently get his back broken, but hacked into bits.] There was this assassin - who did get his back broken.
OK, I get that Hring is why the place is called Hrings Valley and that he was mythic, and that he was best known for breaking some guys back over a rock. And due to the isolated character of Iceland, frequently the place names and sagas line up and you can find archeological evidence.
What in the name of bloody blue blazes makes you think that a guys skeleton with a broken back that left him paralized from the waist down and had healed could possibly be the mythic Hring? Or even the assassin he cracked in half [sort of]? Look, the healed guy was paralized, so how could it possibly be Hring, who subsequent to breaking the baddie over a rock then ran around fighting off more vikings before getting capped?
If you want to not go by the sagas, you still do not have Hring breaking his back, but some random assassin. You would then have to believe Hring would carefully tend said assassin several years while he healed, though still paralized to then get killed after carefully burying his assassin with a shield, sword and spear. :dubious:
If I ws at that dig, I would have made the guess that it was a man who had never actually gone viking, but did occasionally fight in defense of his farmland, perhaps was a descendent of Hring as he lived in Hrings Valley or perhaps was an employee or clan member of Hring. He had a crushing blow to his spine that left him paralized, but was maintained by family and clan for several years and then buried with honor. But that isnt sensational and worth making a tv show about. 