Annagassan Viking - sand sculpture

As an Irish person I am graced with two names, one my Irish name and one my English name. When the English invaded Ireland they really didn't like or understand our language and so tried to ban and make it sound more English, Dubh linn became Dublin, Donal O' Dubhghall became Daniel Doyle.

My Second name Doyle or Dubhghall actually means Dark foreigner and would have it's ancestry in the Vikings So I suppose you could say that I am part Viking, They were also invaders of Ireland. (We are really not good at protecting ourselves) . It is one of the funny things when I hear people say they are a proud 'insert country' person. Our history is all mixed up and we are all mongrels if you go far enough back.

When the Vikings did come to Ireland, they did the usual rape and pillage type nonsense, cutting down lots of the forests to make their ships and trying to impregnate as many of the natives as possible, I am probably an ancestor of one of these bastards. One of the first settlements of these lads was in the year 827 AD in a place called Annagassan, County Louth and it is place where they make a yearly Viking festival.

Niall Magee and myself where asked to come along and do a one day sculpture. It was never going to be too impressive with the limited time but sometimes it's nice to just go and make something quickly and be home in time for bed.

Out standing in their own field

We came up with this simple composition due to the limits of our materials. Just a couple of tonnes of sand dumped in the corner of the field. Two Vikings fighting with each other in some water. We went with the water idea so that we didn't have to worry about the thin legs causing an issue with support and also having one sit down saved lots of sand.
I worked on the bigger figure and as you can probably tell I was very limited by the size of my block of sand. That arm with the sword is bending in some strange ways as it tries to keep within the form and make sure the sword had some support.

Some people take Viking festivals very serious and dress up in all the wonderful handmade clothes and weapons. They were impressed that I didn't give my fighter any horns on his helmet. It is a common misconception that the vikings had these and it's history can be traced back to Wagner's ring cycle opera what the costume designer thought it would look cool. But one of the Viking reenactors at the festival told me it was probably because they found some graves where the drinking horns were laid beside the head of the dead fighters but not actually attached to the Helmets which were in fact more similar to Norman helmets.

So, not really the most interesting sculpture in the world. For one day it was Ok but at least you now know about Viking helmets and how mixed up the Irish are.

Ps

Thanks for reading. I use PeakD to document my work as an ephemeral Sculptor of sand, snow and ice, amongst other things. This will hopefully give it a new life on the Hive Blockchain. Below you will find some of my recent posts.