Exploration

Footage from first discovery of Titanic in 1986

I am just a sucker for these types of stories – where footage of a seminal event is unearthed. As long as I can remember, the story of the Titanic checked all the boxes for me, way before James Cameron’s movie of the same name was released. So when the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute this week released previously unseen footage from their very first exploration of the wreckage site in 1986, I was all in. Yes, I sat and watched the whole video. Imagine being the scientists in 1986 and being the first humans to see the wreckage since it hit the ocean floor on that fateful night in 1912?

In a milestone that will definitely make you feel old, this year marks the 25th anniversary of Titanic’s (the movie) theatrical release and to celebrate, the studios re-released it in select theaters! So last weekend, I went to see it with my son – primarily because he had never seen the movie before! The movie has been made fun of, has been meme-ed to death, and has received its fair share of criticism, yet watching it again on the big screen was spectacular (!!!), I have to say. I picked up things I had not remembered or noticed the first few times I’d seen it. Seeing Leo and Kate 25 years younger was pretty awesome. And the scenes at the end when (spoiler alert) the ship is sinking and the stern of the vessel starts to raise out of the water were just stunning on the big screen! You can try all you want, but you won’t get that same experience watching it on your TV in a living room. Yes, the movie could have been shorter. Yeah, the water that breached the ship was ice cold in real life, yet the actors in the on-ship scenes made it feel like they were wading in the town pool on a 75 degree day. Yeah, Jack could have fit on the piece of wood with Rose. For all it’s flaws, seeing Titanic in the theater was an outstanding experience and I would recommend you take advantage of this opportunity to see it on the big screen!

The Vikings Were Badasses

The Draken Harald Hårfagre. via drakenhh.com

Through history and popular culture, the Vikings of the northern parts of Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland) have always had a the reputation as hardened, sturdy folk who were able to deal with any situation head on, with the matter of fact clarity that make men and women swoon.

In my opinion, the importance of the Norse on European culture has always been underrated. They were prolific explorers and a critical piece of their traveling exploits were the amazingly sturdy, iconic boats that they built.

So as we fast forward a couple of thousand years to present day, we find the Norwegian Sigurd Aase, who in 2008, initiated a project to build a modern day version of the traditional Norse ship – the Draken Harald Hårfagre. The ship looks exactly like the traditional Norse ships, all the way down to the decorations and embellishments, and was built to as close to specification as could be.

The Vikings left almost no record of how they built their ships, or how they sailed them. Draken Harald Hårfagre is a recreation of what the Vikings would call a “Great Ship”, built with archaeological knowledge of found ships, using old boatbuilding traditions and the legends of Viking ships from the Norse sagas.

Yet, at the same time it has very modern technology built into it. Here is a video of it traversing the North Sea during a storm.

From their YouTube page:

Sometimes it is hard to imagine that this was just a couple of months ago. Draken and her crew have been through storms on the North Atlantic Ocean. What an achievement, sailing from Norway, to Shetland Islands, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland – just like the Vikings did a 1000 years ago, and into the St Lawrence Seaway, trough the locks and into the Great Lakes. She made it, it is a real modern Viking voyage.

Now, let’s think back a couple of thousand years when the ‘real’ Vikings sailed around the North sea, wearing handmade fur outerwear, navigating the seas in these boats with nothing but wooden oars. Pretty amazing. Pretty badass.