The Vikings Starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis

By Kevin Sweeney

One of the best things about the movie was Kirk Douglas
being blonde, like me, a fat 10 year old, so I gained hope
one day I too could have a chiseled face and muscles with
veins and not be afraid of heights, one day climb walls
while people above are throwing spears at me. Kirk was
tougher than Tony Curtis, tough as Ernest Borgnine
who jumped into a pit of wolves screaming “ODIN!” a
Scandinavian word that meant something other than “free
health care.” Vikings weren’t afraid of anything. Later
I heard some got shipwrecked near Ireland and swam
to shore where, after converting to Catholicism and
having sex with Irish wives, they fathered blonde blue–eyed
babies who looked like ME! I’d heard something similar
about the Spanish Armada survivors, which is why some
Irish babies had dark hair but were still as gloomy as the rest
of us. What I remember most is how Kirk didn’t kill
Tony, pondering a moment the possibility Tony was his
half–brother. Tony, afraid and seeing an opening, suddenly
killed Kirk, who, the end of the movie suggested, wasn’t
a bad guy, though no one would use an un–Viking word
like “sensitive.” So maybe the other lesson is that Irish
Catholic Guilt wasn’t born on the Emerald Isle but came
to us via those reasonable and sharing people of the
fjords who refuse to kill their own kin, believing, the
song about smiling on your brother still holds true