Tales from St Anthony Part IV -- Viking Quest

I really want to be a Viking.

The fact that Norstead Village is just up the road and who regularly hire Vikings over the summer period, I am in pole position to fulfil my dreams so this morning I fired off the following cover letter (below) and resume to push my cause.

Fingers crossed they like it and like me.

I asked Sir Richard to ring Norstead for me put in a good word but instead he went over his finances and called his stockbroker. I don't speak feline but I heard him bleating "meow, meow, meow" which doesn't sound good.

COVER LETTER

Re: Employment as a Viking during summer

To Whom it May Concern:

One of my boyhood dreams was to be a mighty Viking but alas being born in Australia in the late 1970s cruelly curtailed that as a vocational option but with your help I may now finally achieve that goal having just become a permanent resident of St Anthony.

As such I would like to offer my services to you as a spritely young Viking this summer.

I have long imagined what it must have been like to be a Norseman traversing the oceans under sail and oars on a longship heading for far off lands on a journey of discovery clad in mail, iron helmet and wielding a battle axe.

As glamorous as that sounds I am fully aware of Vikings’ other nefarious activities, pillaging and the like and while armed combat in a theatrical setting would be awesome, I am sure if I were alive in the Viking age, my time as a marauder would have been short lived and brutally ended.

With a thirst for knowledge and love of history, I have spent countless hours in libraries reading about Norsemen and their gods. I even delved into the Poetic Edda in a bid to garner more details for a comedic fictional novel I am writing, a re-imagining of Ragnarok in which the Norse gods aren’t destroyed but instead sent to Earth to live while Asgard is rebuilt.

Due to the global financial crisis and lack of workers (the Gods did kill all the giants in the melee after all) the reconstruction has taken hundreds of years. Thor, depressed about not being able to wantonly kill, has become an alcoholic bar owner, the mischief making Loki is now head of a giant global media corporation and Odin is a paranoid, forgetful yet still very angry patriarch with a love of pigeon racing. As you can imagine hilarity ensues but that is beside the point.

There is only so much you can learn by yourself squirreled away in a library which is why learning and in turn teaching will really give me a feel for Viking life, the trials and tribulations. Most of all I want visitors to Norstead to gain the same love of Vikings, their mythology and their lives as I do.

While I have no direct experience at being a Viking (I did play a really annoying American tourist visiting in a high school play) I am sure I could one of your chieftain’s best thanks to my outgoing personality and appearance (see attached picture).

I have attached a resume outlining my service experience but in short, and I know this going to sound desperate, please hire me. Please.

With warmest Viking regards.