Each end of promenade on Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue honor heroic personages. The only one I can remember is Leif Erickson, the Viking outlaw reputed to be the first European to set foot in the New World. The Norsemen were great sailors ranging from Byzantium to Vinland. The owner of Jenny Bar on Soi Xcite in Pattaya upheld that tradition with 20 years service in the Norwegian Navy.
“We are sailors of the sea. Our people explored the great unknown. Skoal.”
Lars was a great drinker, but his only voyages away from Pattaya were visa runs to the Cambodia border.
In 1983 I met a Danish sailor on the Isle of Wight. Kurt drank sixteen bottles of rose wine a day and wore a kaftan.
“It is very comfortable.”
Kurt was a drunk on shore, but on the deck of sailing craft Kurt had no rivals. The only time he went aground was when he relinquished his yacht’s navigation to Toby Bonham oj the approached to St. Malo. The hotel owner stuck the yacht on the rocks. Kurt saved them all by jettisoning his wine.
“It was either that or sink.”
Sadly not all Scandinavians are great sailors as in the story reported in a 2008 Bangkok Post.
A Swedish man had been hired by a Thai nautical museum owner to tow a decommissioned Russian submarine from Sweden to Thailand for the sum of over 20 million baht. The Thai thought, “Swede, boat, ocean, mai pen rai.”
Wrong.
The sub sank off the coast of Denmark in February, which was the stormy season in the North Sea. When the museum owner asked why the submarine went to the bottom, he learned that the Swede had used a pleasure craft for the tow instead of a tugboat. For some reason this didn’t seem right and the Swede was asked to report to Thai authorities to explain his side of the story.
The twenty-nine year-old is in a lot of trouble.
But Vikings are a hardy breed, if not rare these days.
Years ago at the Viking Bar in Bangkok a drunken Dane swore that true Vikings have hair on all their knuckles. Even the one with the fingernails. Obviously the Thai businessman wasn’t aware of this phenomena or else he would have entrusted his submarine to a real Viking.
Hairy knuckles and all.
Did them no good against the skraelings.
