Viking funeral
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The Vikings often immolated their dead leaders in ship burials, known from archaeology and notably from the account of Ibn Fadlan.
Ibn Fadlan's account is contentious, as it refers to Rus rather than Norse vikings. The ceremony he describes may have been of Slavic rather than Nordic origin.
A Viking funeral can mean burning a boat with a corpse, as a spectacular tribute.
Also it is a humorous term to refer to the destruction of any mechanical object, especially a vehicle, by fire.
Viking funerals in
- In the 1988 film Rocket Gibraltar, Levi Rockwell, played by Burt Lancaster, tells his grandchildren that he wants a Viking funeral. He dies on the day of his birthday celebration, and at the end of the film, the children give him his final wish as his birthday present. At sunset, they put his body in a boat, filled it with kindling, and sent it out into the ocean. They lit a huge bonfire, lit the tips of arrows in the fire, and shot them at the boat. According to Levi, a Viking could achieve immortality if his corpse is incinerated upon a great seafaring warship. If the color of the fire matches the color of the sunset, that means they led a good life, and they had gone to Valhalla.
- In the Alan Moore graphic novel V for Vendetta as well as the 2006 film adaption a kind of Viking funeral is combined with an attack: V's corpse is put in a subway train with explosives, which is released unmanned through an abandoned tunnel to strike a target (10 Downing Street in the novel and the Palace of Westminster in the film).
- In one episode of the Simpsons, Bart starts to realize that he is becoming an adult. This is realized when he tries to imagine a G.I. Joe-like toy climbing up a frozen waterfall, but as soon as the toy reaches the top, he imagines an insurance agent persuading the toy to get insurance. He then gathers all of his childhood toys (i.e. most of them rip-offs of real toys), puts them in a box, shoves them into a stream and sets it on fire with a magnifying glass.
- In the film The Ring of the Nibelung, after Siegfried (Sigmund) dies, his body is sent down the river and he is set on fire, and it is only then do they realize that the Valkyrie Brünnhilde is with Siegfried's corpse, and she dies along with him.
- In the game Legend of Legaia for the PlayStation, the day after the Seru attack the protagonist's village, the corpses of the ones who died the previous night are sent on a Viking's Funeral into the sea.
- In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (the book), Boromir is sent down a waterfall on a boat (Chapter 1: the departure of Boromir). However, this can not be considered to be a Viking Funeral, because the body must be on fire or burned.
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All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.