A Few Comments about Still Another Comic

 𝔄 couple of weeks ago, I put together a brief piece on Gemma Correll's 5 April 2021 "Serf's Up" on The Nib, working in the same line as an earlier piece on Joseph Faill's punning comic on A Pleasant Waste of Time. I note in that piece an attempt to work toward explicating the joke and likely killing it as I dissect it; I am evidently some kind of a serial killer.

The comic in question,
presented here to facilitate commentary.

A different comic I recently encountered, Humon's "Glow Up" on Scandinavia and the World (the most recent of the offerings on that site as of this writing), suggests itself as the next such victim. I've read the comic intermittently for some years, having stumbled onto it via social media sharing from one friend or another some time ago. (My apologies to said friend that I do not recall who actually pointed me at it.) And this is not the first of the offerings on the site to suggest itself as something worth looking at for its neo/medievalism, to be certain--but the most recent is the easiest to access.

In the comic, a character representing an older Svalbard (the age inferred due to the collar ruff) chastises another representing Norway for use of cosmetics, citing shared "tough Viking ancestors" as justification; another character representing those ancestors emerges and questions the rebuke. Obviously, there are simplifications and inaccuracies to be found in a two-panel comic, in addition to the usual problems of compressing time. The characters have to serve as short-hand for entire nations and attitudes associated with them, and the Viking character, with horned helmet, is a historically "incorrect" presentation whose appearance makes use of a theoretical combination of Scandinavian flags (not unlike the combination of flags that create the United Kingdom's banner) and a device commonly noted as indicating humor because it is known to be both a medievalist trope and inaccurate. (In brief, as I am informed by several Scandinavians of my acquaintance, folks know Vikings didn't wear horned helmets; any presentation of them as doing so is meant to be taken other-than-seriously. It is not hard to read a rebuke of those who adhere to views of horned helmets as practical battle-wear in the assumption.) As with earlier commentaries on comics, though, the inaccuracies seem to be occasioned by concerns of medium; while it is the case that jokes can inhere in small details (as argued here, for example), jokes that aim to address broad audiences generally do better to make them in broad strokes.

The crux of the joke, that the Vikings adorned themselves, does proceed from historical accuracies, however, and some that are often disregarded by the same kinds of folks who will proclaim loudly, following one ideologue often and appropriately subjected to ridicule, that "the facts don't care about your feelings"--all while disregarding emergent facts to suit narratives they maintain only because they make them feel good (most often about maintaining execrable ideologies as some means to cover their own ample and abundant inadequacies). As attested here, here, here, and elsewhere, the "tough Viking ancestors" were greatly concerned about their appearances, taking time and care with them unusual--and, again, remarked upon--in the region. They wore jewelry; they styled their hair and beards; they wore makeup. In brief, they did many of the things often associated (derisively, unfortunately) with femininity--even as they are often held up as exemplars of "real manhood" by ill-informed, worse-aligned people.

I know it's "only a webcomic." I know "it doesn't matter." But I also know the comic stands in opposition to that which ought well and always to be opposed, and I know that it grounds itself in authentic detail about the medieval--as well, yes, as inauthentic detail deriving from the medievalist or neomedieval--to do so. And I believe that that kind of thing ought to be encouraged.