Viking Funeral
Samantha and Jay were wrong in "Viking Funeral". They should have sold Thorfinn's bones to some museum. It was their duty.
After all, Thorfinn was no longer using his bones and seems to have no trouble functioning as a ghost without them. Presumably Thorfinn would continue to get along fine if his bones were removed to a museum tens or hundreds of miles away. Most of the other ghosts who died on the property were buried away from it, but continue to haunt the place where they died instead of the places they were buried.
And Thorfinn was not a Viking. Nobody was a Viking. There was no ethnic group named Viking. Dark Age Scandinavians were ethnic Danes, or Norwegians, or Swedes. And some Dark Age Scandinavians, maybe one to ten percent of the men, went on viking raids and had the occupation of viking while doing so. Calling all Dark Age Scandinavians "Vikings" is like calling all 17th century English, Franch, and Dutch persons "Buccaneers".
And in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian culture, nobody's body was ever placed in a boat, set adrift at sea, and then burned. Except for a few Jarls and kings, and then only in legend. There are no real examples of such Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian funerals.
So there never was a Viking funeral. Where there ever viking with a small v funerals? If a rading party of vikings was defeated, the dead vikings would have been stripped naked and left to feed the crows. Or maybe they would have been skinned, and their skin tanned to make leather - there are some church doors in England covered with "Daneskin" leather.
If vikings won a fight, their dead would have been cremated and the ashes put in small containers, or shallow graves would have been dug and the dead vikings hastily buried. The vikings couldn't afford to stick around long to bury their dead with elaborate funerals (and they needed all their viking boats to sail home with their loot and slaves). If a viking died at sea, his body would have been weighted down and dropped in the ocean.
So as a Scandinavian, Thorfinn would not have much desire or hope for what is called a "Viking funeral", and if Thorfinn was ever a viking he would not have expected such a funeral either, epecting a quite different type of funeral if he died while a viking.
Thorfinn does talk like a bloodthirsty viking, but maybe he was actually a fairly peaceful Scandinavian who only dreamed of being a viking, like many law abiding men dream of being pirates.
Wikipedia even claims that Thorfinn is Thorfinn Karlsefni, a real Scandinavian explorer in Vinland:
A version of Thorfinn also exists in the CBS television series "Ghosts" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_(2021_TV_series), who is portrayed as a Viking that was separated from the rest of his shipmates, which matches the storyline found in the aforementioned anime series. This Thorfinn exists in the year 2021 as a living ghost.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorfinn_Karlsefni#In_popular_culture
The Saga of Eric the Red says that many members of Thorfinn Karlsefini's expedition were Christians, and they baptised two native boys they captured. Thorfinn's son Snorri, born in America, became a leading Christian chieftain in Iceland.
So if Thorfinn was a Christian, he would want a Christian burial instead of being cremated on a boat.
Even if Thorfinn wanted a "Viking funeral", Samantha and Jay had a duty to everyone to increase knowledge. There is absolutely no proof that Scandinavians from Greenland or Iceland ever travelled southwest of Newfoundland. Proving that a Medieval Scandinavian died in the Hudson River Valley would be a major historical discovery. The pleasure that it gave to millions would outweigh any annoyance that Thorfinn suffered.
And if Samantha and Jay had any love or affection for Thorfinn, they shouldn't they run the risk that satisfying his desire for a "Viking Funeral" would enable him to pass on. How can two people in a modern, scientific, society be so naive and optimistic as to believe in an afterlife without evidence? They have evidence that some dissatisfied people have an afterlife as ghosts, but no evidence of any other afterlife. There is no evidence available to Samantha and Jay, or to the audience, for any sort of after-afterlife for ghosts who pass on.
"An afterlife in the hand is worth two in the bush". It is quite possible that the problems and dissatisfactions of the ghosts are the only things keeping them as alive as they are, and that if they become satisfied they will totally cease to exist.
If I knew a ghost I would not assume that there was a happier afterlife awaiting them once they cut their ties to the mortal world. Instead I would assume that passing for a ghost means real and total death.
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