Stubborn Norway fan refuses to do Viking Row at World Cup because it's factually inaccurate

When Norway beat Brazil in the World Cup on Sunday, fans around the world erupted in celebration by performing the so-called Viking Row. Except, that is, for Emil Anners Lappen. 

Lappen made headlines around the world last month when he sat in the stands, steadfastly refusing to join his fellow fans who, in unison, pretended to row the oars of a Viking ship to celebrate Norway's historic victory against Senegal.

"I just found it stupid," Lappen, a forestry manager in Bergegarda, Norway, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. "I just didn't enjoy it."

Lappen's issue with the celebratory dance is twofold. One, it's too derivative of Iceland's Viking Thunderclap. And, two, it's not factually accurate. 

That's because the song that plays alongside the chant — Vikingblod by Oljeberget x Katastrofe — features the lyrics: "We're crossing the Atlantic, we'll row all the way."

"The Vikings didn't row across. They sailed across the ocean," Lappen said. "They rowed up rivers, but they sailed the ocean."

CBC reached out to several Vikings experts and they all agree Lappen is correct in his assessment.

"Rowing across the Atlantic would have been arduous indeed," Oren Falk, a medieval historian at Cornell University in New York, said in email. 

"Even someone with [Norwegian soccer player] Erling Haaland's physique would probably not have been up for that sort of feat.'"

But the Vikings did, indeed, row.

"What we commonly call Viking ships were built to be both sailed and rowed," Falk said. "Certainly a ship would have been rowed during delicate, close-quarters manoeuvres…. Also in battle, when one had to outmanoeuvre (or chase down, or escape) enemy vessels."

The history behind Norway’s Viking row at the FIFA World Cup

Ole Frøystad, the