A Viking Misunderstood

This business, needless to say, is a barbaric one. My name is Timothy Rasmussen son of Rasmus, although my fellow Viking companions refer to me as Timmy “the brute” Rasmussen. Vikings, that is the title bestowed upon my sea-fairing Scandinavian peoples. The name does imply a somewhat brutish and haughty type of character, not wrongly so, but personally I would have much preferred a slightly more euphemistic title such as possibly “The Daringly Tenacious Explorers of Eastern Lands That Had The Bad Luck of Already Being Inhabited”, but let’s be honest here, “Vikings” is just a way catchier marketing tool and has the good fortune of not containing as many syllables as the title I had previously suggested. Anyway, I can’t blame you; all that ruthless murdering and pillaging on our part can really get to one’s head, and despite me being a Viking myself, I can see where you simple European village folk are coming from, I feel for you. Especially if you’ve recently been victimized to one of our own interpretive torture creations…you know, like the one where we open up your torso and pull your lungs out over your ribs to make it look like some kind of birds’ wings (awkward cough) , yes well it’s all a tad melodramatic really… But I guess what I’m really trying to say is… that even I get tired of the lifestyle, the umpteenth bloody eagle becomes one too many, and all that pilfering just gets soooooo redundant to the point where it all becomes incessant you know what I mean? I wish I could say the same for my fellow savage pilferers, whom are always enthusiastic of a good raid. Sometimes I wonder how they manage to stay so amused, this always baffles me, and now that I think back, I can’t even recall a time when I ever enjoyed it. Even the social aspects of Viking-hood, is a routine challenge. Imagine having to constantly express yourself in only two sentiments using two types of grunts: the satisfied grunt, and the dissatisfied grunt. This “all brawn no brains” façade has become a pain to perpetually maintain. I might be what you call the black sheep in the clan, but I think I’m just severely misunderstood (although the two basically go hand-in-hand, don’t they?). I’m not saying I want to retire and become a florist or anything, I mean it's not that I’m totally ignoring that option, I just think that its genetically out of the question since I come from an entire family lineage that lacks a basic sense of color. Anyway, that’s besides the point, the point that I was trying to make was that I think I would much rather enjoy a slightly more mellow line of work.(sighs longingly) But you know, what can a lonesome Viking do these days except fantasize…