the legacy ship.

We have to point out the spectacle of the Minnesota Vikings Legacy Ship. While one can write this off as NFL sports team marketing, if you were to take this same sculpture from in front of the US Bank Stadium and place it elsewhere, say just 2.2 miles south to compliment the American Swedish Institute, then it would play on a different level.

Where it is, it's Viking kitsch as as an unapologetically commercial trope instead, featuring a jumbotron video sail that slideshows advertising and events 24/7, plus the ship has audio, can produce smoke effects, and has night lighting.

Taken by itself as a sculpture by day there is something monumentalist & partly brutalist in its sharper angles and contemporary presentation, but also subtractive in only having a dragon prow above ground with only a negative space outline for the back, implying a whole ship's presence, as if the rest were still buried under the fan-inscribed pavers, only re-emerging at the tail. If it wasn't for the modern sail-screen and materials, you might feel as though it were being uncovered at a strangely promising dig site. This setup also calls back to the many ship outline burial sites.

Yet this isn't the team's first ship -- it's an update of a more conventional one outside their former training location at Eden Prairie:

Used in a 1981 CE parade by two department stores, they were left wondering what to do with it after the event, so they donated it to the NFL team. Yet it wasn't originally a whole ship but crafted as a three-part wreck for the float, so much later after taking possession, the team's organization decided to assemble those original pieces and make it whole with some new paint and their logo'd sail. After the team moved to a different training facility, the ship stayed and got unbranded as the place became a sports center. Thus the stadium's ship is actually their second version.

[sponsors on shield backs.]

The newer legacy ship really is something strange in terms of cultural reception, but if we look at Wagner, or at History Channel's Vikings, the material gets restyled for the medium, depending on its purpose (we might also compare/contrast this ship with Reykjavík's abstract arftul Sólfar). This sculpture in its Norseplay'd way cues into how the Norse mark the landscape with runestones, burial mounds, and distinctive lore-based names to give their places cultural context, and it can be argued that this ship does the same, albeit in it's very commercial way over a millennium later.

[Special thanks to Bill Dennis for going out of his way to bring this landmark to our attention! Legacy ship exterior photos from sculpture designers Nelson Worldwide, interior prow shot by Svein Å, original ship snipped by Patch via Google Streetview.]

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Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology,  field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.