The story behind - Iron Viking Medal!
The desired Iron Viking medal/opener can be earned by conquering the toughest marathon in the world! The Iron Viking, with its 42 kilometres and over 100 obstacles. Will you conquer the Iron Viking?! This OCR Marathon starts by saying a pledge. In this pledge you promise your fellow athletes that you will conquer all obstacles and when failing you will do your penalty burpees. All of this within the set time limit and cut-off times. This special and extremely heavy challenge deserves an awesome medal with its own background story.
The story behind the Iron Viking medal requires a dive into the Norse mythology. Vikings were not known for living a quiet and carefree life. Vikings were tough warriors who often went to battle with their rivals. While fighting they travelled through Europe. As soon as they finished a battle they were already on their way to the next battle. According to stories of Norse mythology at the end of every battle the king or leader of the enemy was decapitated. The skull was kept by the Vikings because that same night they would drink from this skull as a sign of respect to the fallen enemy. How thrilling this story might sound, it appears to be just a mythological story. In reality Vikings did not drink from the skulls of their enemies, they did however drink from the horns of goats, for example.
So, Vikings did drink out of horns, but what about the horns that are portrayed on the helmets of Vikings? The most common image of a Viking nowadays is the men with the helmet with horns. But that image appeared at the end of the 19th century for the first time. Helmets with horns would actually be super unpractical in battle. The image of these helmets was developed by the popularity of a Wagner opera in which villains wore helmets with horns (
starting at 02:40). Vikings never wore such helmets, they did however wear iron helmets for protection during their battles.
The Iron Viking medal/opener has an image of a helmet with horns. This makes this medal an illustration of Norse mythology mixed with reality. For a lot of people conquering the Iron Viking is a myth. For those of us who are proudly wearing the Iron Viking Medal, you know better! Although it may seem impossible at sometimes, if you keep going and pushing through, some myths will turn out to be reality!