Tea at Trianon: Viking Art

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Viking Art

From Art in Context:

Before we discuss Viking Art, it is useful to understand who these “Northmen” were. The term “Northmen” was used to designate the Norsemen, otherwise, the Norse people, who inhabited medieval Scandinavia, a collective of the Northern European countries of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.

The Vikings were Norsemen and a group of seafaring “warriors” who invaded Europe and prominent areas like the British Isles – they also went as far as Russia and Canada in their conquests. It is important to understand that the Vikings were only a part of the whole of this Norse culture and there was more to them than the modern-day understanding of them as violent, barbaric “pirates”.

The term “Viking” has been given multiple meanings over the ages and a general understanding of its origins will provide better context. “Viking” has been used as a noun and verb in certain contexts. It is particularly defined as “pirate” and derives from the Old Norse word vikingr.

The word vikingr is also derived from the word vík meaning “inlet” or “bay” and the suffix –ingr connotes someone who “belongs to” – the meaning can loosely be given that it is someone of the bay, which is where the Vikings were perceived to come from when they crossed the seas to invade new lands. (Read more.)