So you get onto a plane, assuming you make it through the TSA herding procedures, and fly to Oslo...well, with some plane changes. On the way across the Atlantic, you monitor progress in the lite screen built into the back of the chair in front of you. You look out the window at 39,000 feet but there are only clouds below and you wonder when darkness will come and then you realize you are too far north for darkness to come, that light will shine all night and that, for the Vikings who sailed in the waters below you some 1,000 years ago the light may have helped avoid icebergs but then the, again, the stars would not be available for guidance on the long voyages.
Today you visit the Viking ship museum in Oslo and the ships are so elegant and spare in their design and you wonder if the Vikings felt as annoyed with the crowding on their decks and as anxious about possibly falling to the bottom of the ocean as you were on your flight. And did the beauty of the curved design of their prow give them as much reassurance as the 24 media channels provided by Scandinavian Airlines. And is there, perhaps, more similarity than difference between their voyages and ours today...their search for new lands, resources, experiences and our flights to discover new lands or acquaint ourselves with old ones.
