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.
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