His remark about lowering oneself to attain power echoes one attributed to Napoleon: "The crown of Europe is lying in the mud. One has only to stoop to pick it up."

it's so cold here, at the first scene I thought, "Don't you need a hat?"

She lived in my town. Her parents insisted that she had to maintain at least a B average if she wanted to record. She did a French version of "You Don't Own Me" - "Je Ne Sais Plus" (Je ne sais plus, pourquoi je hesite tout a coup…") Always a class act.

But unless Edith were a widow, her being a single mother would mean that she had been "not virtuous". And careless, too. Both upper and middle classes would have droppped her like a hot potato.

I'm not sure how great a scandal there would be seeing that Mary is a widow, not a virginal girl, and an engagement hadn't been publicly announced. Unless she gets a reputation as leading men on, which she does, in fact.

Is halting and catching fire something computers are prone to do?

End of June, 1969, MM folks watching the evening news: "Say, isn't that our old art director being dragged away from that Greenwich Village bar?"

I ate there many times in the Seventies when there was a franchise at my university. And wouldn't you know it, I found Burger King to be superior to Burger Chef - the burgers were fresher, the sauce saucier.

Yes, that was gorgeous. Supposedly the exteriors are shot iin Ireland - I don't know where that location was.

Clearly it's time I got a larger TV - if Torstein came back to life I completely missed it.

Spectacular photo of Floki at the head of the article!

The nicknames would have more impact, in my opinion, if they just started using them to refer to people instead of the heavy-handed "I now dub you Ivar the Boneless". That way the other warriors can just casually tell each other, "Give this to Bjorn Ironside". There's only one Bjorn, viewers would know who they mean.

But he hated the weather!

I noticed that when Horik gay-baited Aethelstan the latter looked sheepish rather than insulted or indignant.

I don't see Horik as villainous - the modus operandi of all of the leaders is to look out for their own interests. As a king he seems more "first among equals" than lord of the land, which was essentially the case in other lands of the era such as Ireland.

(To all): I think that his sweetheart's name is actually Thorunn, not Porunn, the "Th" being spelled in Old Norse with a letter called "thorn", which looks like a P.

It sounded more like Human Potential Movement, Esalen - a little too early for est. And she's not even in California!

If a baby were notably deformed he would be exposed or left to die - they wouldn't have the resources to care for a seriously disabled child. If his bonelessness comes from impotence, that won't be recognized until he is nearly an adult.

Supposedly there were very few Christian martyrs under the Norse. As you get out to the edges of power centers, people tend not to care so much and to continue to do what they've been doing for centuries.

Biker gangs… good point. I just saw "King Arthur" (with Clive Owen) because I had been reading a book that said that Guinevere was Pictish, as she is portrayed in the movie. The actors said they thought of the knights as a sort of biker gang. This version goes very well with "Vikings" - it's not an Arthurian romance…