“we don’t apologise for what the Vikings did 1,000 years ago”

By way of the Guardian’s NewsBlog, Lars Erikson provides a corrective to the story that the Danish Culture Minister, Brian Mikkelson, had apologised for those Vikings.. well, not those Vikings.. ANYhoo.. According to the NewsBlog post, “in an interview with the Danish newspaper Politiken, Mr Mikkelsen denied having said the S-word during a visit to Dublin to mark the arrival of the replica Viking ship, Havhingsten (the Sea Stallion).”

“What I mentioned in my speech was ‘it did a lot of damages to the Irish people’, but we don’t apologise for what the Vikings did 1,000 years ago. That was the way you acted back then.” The culture minister said he had told an Irish newspaper that there was no need to apologise. He had also spoken to several Irish minister who had not perceived his speech as an official apology. “The Vikings were brutal conquerors,” the culture minister told Politiken’s website, “but research has also shown that they were commercial travellers.”

And, you know, he’s quite right.

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.