Mel Gibson Viking movie?

Mel did a great job both in Apocalypto & The Passion & Braveheart. If his agent (by any chance) reads this, acknowledge this and watch the DVD special features in classic Kirk Douglas' The Vikings, based upon historical basis even for a romance, I mean the look of that film and even the horses, the ships, etc. Yet, after his personal life mistakes I regret to say we won't see any project like that in the future.

We have seen Antonio Banderas and the 13th Warrior and other film with vikings in America. Considering Leonardo Di Caprio was sought to be Lenin and Mel Gibson's former wife is Russian, it would be interesting to see a Russian epic like that one called Taras Bulba with bald and bold Yul Brynner but more in the sense of what I wrote in the last paragraphs:

Vikings did not have helmets with horns (as shown in the popular comic strip Hägar the Horrible). In fact, it is not clear if Vikings used helmets at all!!!!! Viking helmets were conical, made from hard leather with wood and metallic reinforcement for regular troops. The iron helmet with mask and chain mail was for the chieftains, based on the previous Vendel-age helmets from central Sweden. The only true Viking helmet found is that from Gjermundbu in Norway. This helmet is made of iron and has been dated to the 10th century.The Gjermundbu helmet, which dates to ca. 970 AD, is now displayed in the Museum of National Antiquities (Oldsaksamlinga) in Oslo. This Viking helmet was found in nine separate fragments that allow us to study its construction. The helmet consists of a framework in the form of a horizontal rim and two vertical metal strips, one of which goes from the back of the head to the forehead, and the other from ear to ear. Four plates are fastened to this framework with rivets, thus forming the helmet’s skullpiece. The ocularia, which provided facial and nasal protection, are fastened to the horizontal rim as well. One may suggest that the back and sides of the neck were protected by a chain mail (called aventail or camail). The Viking helmet from Gjermundby also probably had a pike at the apex and a leather chin strap. The ocularia had inlaid decoration. Earlier Scandinavian helmets, such as those which were found in Valsgärde and Vendel, had a more complex construction.

Among the Central European helmets traditionally associated with the Viking Age a few specimens have to be mentioned: helmet of St Wenceslas (St Vaclav) from Prague; helmet from Olomouc, Czechia; helmet from Ostrów Lednicki, Poland. All these were made of one piece of metal.

http://www.gjermundbu.com/helmets.html


While tens of thousands of Viking weapons has been uncovered, only 1 helmet from around the Viking period exist. The Viking helmet is a merely a legend.

Vikings wore clothes similar to those of people in England, Scotland and Wales at this time. Men wore tunics and trousers. Women wore long dresses, with a kind of long apron. Clothes were made from wool, linen and animal skins.

• They cooked meat in a big stew-pot over the fire, or roasted it on an iron spit. Fish and meat were smoked or dried to preserve it. Viking bread was made from rye or barley flour. They used milk mostly to make cheese and butter, then drank the buttermilk left over.

At a feast, guests drank ale and mead (a strong drink made from honey). People drank out of wooden cups or drinking horns (made from cow-horns). Feasts were held to mark funerals and seasonal festivals, such as midwinter. Some feasts lasted over a week!

• Jobs such as collecting wood for the fire, weaving cloth and baking bread took up a lot of time. Vikings did not have much furniture - perhaps a wooden table and benches for sitting on and sleeping on.

There were no bathrooms in Viking homes. Most people probably washed in a wooden bucket, or at the nearest stream. Instead of toilets, people used cess-pits - holes outside dug for toilet waste. The pit was usually screened by a fence. Slimy muddy cess-pits have been found by archaeologists studying the remains of the Viking town of Jorvik (modern York).

Vikings made vegetable dyes from plants to colour their clothes: blue (from the woad plant), red (from madder) and yellow (from weld).

Vegetables in Viking times were smaller than those we eat, more like wild plants. Viking carrots were dark-purple not orange.
Viking women usually covered their hair with a scarf, but girls went bare-headed.

It was thought very un-cool for a Viking man to show too much bare chest!

Family possessions were kept in wooden chests, locked with padlocks.
Pigs were killed in autumn in the 'Bloodmonth'. Pig meat was smoked to make hams, to last through winter. Viking women were greatly respected in their culture. They were skilled at running households and farms while men were away. They could choose their own husbands.

The Vikings were probably the first to make and use skis and ski poles. They also skated using shin bones!

At Viking victory celebrations, they drank draughts of their enemies’ blood out of drinking vessels fashioned from human skulls. The toast “Skol!” may be derived from this custom.

At the turn of the last millennium, the world’s largest slave market was run by Vikings in Dublin.

The worst possible death for a Viking chief was to die peacefully in bed.

The beginning of the Russian - Scandinavian relationship dated from the 9th century is described in the Russian Primary Chronicle written by Orthodox monks. At that time, different Slav tribes lived in the North - West of Russia along the Neva and the Volkhov rivers as well as around the lakes Ladoga and Ilmen. The great Russian plain covered with forest and grassland was ideal for hunting, fishery and agriculture. Also it represented real trade crossroads between Northern Europe and Byzantine Empire. That was one of the reasons to build there the town of Novgorod which was a capital of the Old Northern Russia and an important commercial centre.

In 862 the Slavs, exhausted by uninterrupted inter-tribal wars, made the following proposal to the Rus (a name borrowed from the Finns to designate the Swedes): "Our country is rich and immense, but it is rent by disorder. Come and govern us and reign over us".

Three Swedish Vikings responded and came to Russia. Rurik became governor of Novgorod, Sineus settled down in Beloozerg and Truvor in Izborsk. Two years later Sineus and Truvor both died and Rurik extended his rule over the whole country. Later two of his lieutenants went down to Kiev, nearly six hundred miles away, and conquered it. In 882 Oleg, Rurik's successor, came to Kiev in his turn. Having established his own leadership over numerous towns and tribes Oleg strengthened considerably the new Russian State and became its master. The new capital, Kiev, little by little became one of the richest towns in Europe.
Rurik's successors became a ruling dynasty in Russia for more than 700 years.



The use of human skulls as drinking vessels—another common motif in popular pictorial representations of the Vikings—is also ahistorical. The rise of this legend can be traced to Ole Worm's Runer seu Danica literatura antiquissima (1636), in which Danish warriors drinking ór bjúgviðum hausa [from the curved branches of skulls, i.e. from horns] were rendered as drinking ex craniis eorum quos ceciderunt [from the skulls of those whom they had slain]. The skull-cup allegation may also have some history in relation with other Germanic tribes and Eurasian nomads, such as the Scythians and Pechenegs, and the vivid example of the Lombard Alboin, made notorious by Paul the Deacon's History.

The image of wild-haired, dirty savages sometimes associated with the Vikings in popular culture[clarification needed] is a distorted picture of reality. Non-Scandinavian Christians are responsible for most surviving accounts of the Vikings and, consequently, a strong possibility for bias exists. This attitude is likely attributed to Christian misunderstandings regarding paganism. Viking tendencies were often misreported and the work of Adam of Bremen, among others, told largely disputable tales of Viking savagery and uncleanliness.

The Anglo-Danes were considered excessively clean by their Anglo-Saxon neighbours, due to their custom of bathing every Saturday and combing their hair often. To this day, Saturday is referred to as laugardagur / laurdag / lørdag / lördag, "washing day" in the Scandinavian languages. Icelanders were known to use natural hot springs as baths, and there is a strong sauna/bathing culture in Scandinavia to this day.

As for the Vikings in the east, Ibn Rustah notes their cleanliness in carrying clean clothes, whereas Ibn Fadlan is disgusted by all of the men sharing the same, used vessel to wash their faces and blow their noses in the morning. Ibn Fadlan's disgust is possibly because of the contrast to the personal hygiene particular to the Muslim world at the time, such as running water and clean vessels. While the example intended to convey his disgust about certain customs of the Rus', at the same time it recorded that they did wash every morning.

There's a thin gap between skepticism and cynicism

by a lot of scotish people actually and many others