Dear RogerRadio:
i don't know what all connotations Vikings have for children in England--
for kids here in Wisconsin--
Vikings are from Minnesota--play in a doom and wear purple, have a coach
named Green and a terrifying "deep threat" named Moss--
in other words--they're the virulently feared and passionately hated
Minnesota Vikings National Football League who play in the "black and blue"
Central Division twice a year with our Green Bay Packers--
the sports pages here could furnish you with no end of Vikings titles!--
(some explanation: Green Bay plays outdoors on the "Frozen Tundra" of
Lambeau Field; the Vikings play indoors on artificial turf, which favors
their mush faster team; in the Seventies--only yesterday for obsessive
Midwestern football fans with long memories of the bitter rivalry--the
Vikings were known as the Purple People Eaters due to a ferocious,
violent defense--)
"Vikings Lose Way, Find Doom on Frozen Tundra"
"People Eaters Swallowed in Fog, Swarming Defense"
"Green Grass of Home Slows Vikings to Dead Standstill"
"Crowds Delirious as Vikings Speared, Gutted in Debacle"
"Pack Annihilates Vikings in Cold, in Cold Blood"
(many games at Lambeau are played in "Packer Weather"--below zero F)
"Pack Puts Vikings Out of their Misery with Late Heroics, Attack"
a few years ago sheets of collector's cards were available here in
Milwaukee--
one set featured memorable annihilations of the Vikings from the last
quarter century
the other featured carnage, destruction and bloody, gleeful mayhem from
the most
recent decades of the more than seventy year rivalry with "the Monsters
of the Midway, "Da Bears" from Chicago
these are the kinds of Vikings legends kids grow up with here!
(not to mention knowing the Vikings lost all four Super Bowls they played
in--
while the Packers have won three of four--in the years when the Vikings
routinely
loot and pillage terrible Packer teams, this fact always is always
unearthed like a treasured talisman reminding and heartening all with
the promise of a return to
glory and full scale decimation of the Evil Vikings and Bears from
Hell--Excalibur will be found by some Packers Arthur and good restored
to the green/frozen tundra)
Of course, football ("soccer") pages the world over are full of this
manner of
historical writing!
davidbc
