Back in the 10th and 11th centuries, Viking raiders would set forth from Norway in mid-October, after the harvest was laid in. \u00a0They’d go to sea and loiter off the coast of the various nations, waiting.<\/p>\n
Waiting.<\/p>\n
And on the morning after Thanksgiving, the Vikings would strike. \u00a0They counted on catching the locals – the indolent French, the filthy Irish, the martinetical Germans, the hapless English – in the throes of hangovers and awash in tryptophan. \u00a0The locals, disabled by wine and whisky and turkey and thinking only of the ceremonial winter market, were at a low ebb of alertness and competence, leaving them easy pickings.<\/p>\n
The Vikings would storm ashore, hauling away longships full of swag; French wine and cheeses, German oxcarts, Irish filth and emigrants, and any foodstuffs the English hadn’t yet cooked.<\/p>\n
And that is the true legacy of Black Friday.<\/p>\n
Well, it’s as true as Toni Braxton’s version<\/a> of it seems to be<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Back in the 10th and 11th centuries, Viking raiders would set forth from Norway in mid-October, after the harvest was laid in. \u00a0They’d go to sea and loiter off the coast of the various nations, waiting. Waiting. And on the morning after Thanksgiving, the Vikings would strike. \u00a0They counted on catching the locals – the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-and-its-making"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49440,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49439\/revisions\/49440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}