An English language propaganda “newspaper” in Turkey just published this story about a 1200-year-old statuette of Odin being seized in Central Turkey.
The statuette pictured is absolutely not a 1200-year old Norse artifact. Actually my inexpert guess would be that it’s a modern souvenir supposed to be a Celt.
I wonder who vouched for it being Viking art? The supposed criminal?
I didn’t realize Odin was hanging out in Turkey these days.
~VOW
Turkish authorities are currently searching for a Mr. Franklin Mint at this time…
Are you sure this wasn’t from The Onion?
Looks like a decoration they might sell in Walmart.
Vikings LOVE the Mediterranean, as this documentary shows:
Despite the Wikipedia claim that the movie discarded all of the book, quite a bit of it is actually in the originally book by Swedish author Frank Bengtsson
This is more like what Viking art of that period looked like.
That part isn’t ridiculous. The Vikings established the Kievian Rus state in modern Ukraine and traded and fought with the Byzantine Empire. It’s not implausible that a Viking artifact could be found in Turkey.
The Ynglinga Saga says that some Norse Gods (while they were still mere mortals*) originated from a land separated from the Turks (who weren’t in Turkey yet) by a mountain range. So some shared cultural items from ~20000 years ago would be possible. If the account were true. (Thor Heyerdahl thought it was and spent some time trying to prove it. Maybe not the best idea he had.)
The Rus/Byzantine/Anatolia thing is a thousand years later.
Visiting old haunts: Viking vandalism in the Hagia Sophia
Definitely not the best. Entirely based on the fiction of Snorre, who was trying to make the sagas acceptable for a Christian audience, and standard crack pot archaeology approaches, like non-etymologists comparing modern languages to establish links, without knowing the evolution of said languages.
A Norwegian etymologist showed that by the same shallow analysis one could show that the Sami language belongs in an African language group.
Did they check the bottom to see if it says “copyright Marvel Entertainment” on it?
Amazing!
I guess this is just a reproduction
But it is made of an unknown metal that present day science cannot reproduce!
Dennis
This type of thing isn’t unprecedented.
Fought, traded and more.
OMG! It’s ISIS! ISIS is in Jerusalem! ISIS! Daesh! The sinister global caliphate! The–
Oh. [Emily Litella]Never mind.[/Emily Litella]
Unless it is ISIS, as in Daesh. And they’ve teamed up with the Germans! And they can MANIPULATE ENERGY FIELDS! It’s an ISLAMO-GERMAN DEATH RAY!!!
That one actually has a patina…I could better buy it being misidentified as OLD than the untarnished one in the OP.
It sound more like ISIS has teamed up with Gwyneth Paltrow…
I knew the Teeming Millions wouldn’t disappoint. Did you just find the image, or is there more info?
Actually, I found the photo using Google Image Search. This led me to a Goodwill auction site that was auctioning the figurine off, but the auction had ended and they were no longer hosting the image, but I could link to the image that appeared in Google Images, which is what I did.
I wanted to post the auction, figuring it would be a lot more interesting, but without the image, it kind of lost its appeal.
Too bad. It would be interesting to find out where it’s from.
