Before every episode of Masterpiece Mystery these days, there’s an ad for a tour company called: “Viking River Cruises”. They take you for boat tours all over the world. But do you get to put on horned helmets and armor and sprint into these tour destinations with sword held high, charging in to raid and pillage these cities and towns like a Viking might do? If you don’t get to go sack and pillage, taking for yourself the plunder of conquest, then it’s really false advertising to call it Viking River Cruises, don’t you think? And it’s just going to make all these towns build defensive structures they don’t need, too, when you name your tour group after Vikings like this.
Maybe next they’ll open new tour businesses called: “Hun River Raiders”, and: “Mongol Horse-Riding Hordes Plunder Tours”. The Hun cruises can go through the Rhine, the Danube, and to Rome, and the Mongol horseback tours can go to where the Mongols conquered, mostly from China and Mongolia and west through the “stan” countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, you get the picture) to the Persian region, I think. As long as they keep to the appropriate areas, I don’t see a problem with it, do you? I mean, after all, how could people still foster a lack of goodwill about invader warrior hordes that raped and plundered their way through people’s homelands like the Vikings, Huns and Mongols after so many hundreds of years, right? No? Not a good idea to name a tour company after murderous raiders and plunderers? But who could object? Really: everyone? Okay… Well, sorry I brought it up, then.
