“Donald the Orange”: Vikings in and around the MAGA Movement

The cartoon immediately signals several things to the readership of this British political magazine, which is closely associated with right-of-center politics and the UK’s Conservative Party.4 Ivor Gaber, “What the Spectator takeover means for the UK’s right-wing media and politics,” The Conversation, September 18, 2024, <https://theconversation.com/what-the-spectator-takeover-means-for-the-uks-right-wing-media-and-politics-239118>, last accessed August 1, 2025. Firstly, though only referenced obliquely through a pair of astonished seals, the Norse imagery is making clear reference to Trump’s repeated statements that he means to “get” Greenland, or make the autonomous territory part of the US, reported on widely in the national and international press.5 See, for example, Jessie Yeung and Piper Hudspeth Blackburn, “Trump Renews Threat of Military Force to Annex Greenland,” CNN, May 4, 2025, <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/04/world/greenland-annexation-threat-trump-nbc-interview-intl-hnk> , last accessed August 1, 2025. The “empire” mentioned in the title of the issue is being linked to the Norse expansion in the Viking Age and the settlement of Greenland led by Eiríkr Þórvaldsson, better known as Erik the Red.6 Though there was a Norse presence in Greenland from the 980s to the fifteenth century, Danish sovereignty in the present was the result of later colonial manoeuvres.

The second thing the cartoon signals through the Viking imagery is that this is a symbol of violent conquest: as the associated article goes on to note, Trump does not rule out gaining control of Greenland through military force.7 Freddy Grey, “Empire of Trump,” The Spectator, January 18, 2025, <https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/empire-of-trump-the-presidents-plan-to-make-america-greater/>, last accessed August 1, 2025. This is, of course, where the historical analogy breaks down slightly: the Norse settlement of Greenland cannot really be characterized alongside the violent conquests of, for example, lands in northern France, Ireland, and Great Britain, where the image of the Viking raider has more legitimacy, and where North Sea and Irish Sea empires were indeed forged through military campaigns. Norse encounters with native peoples in Greenland in the Viking Age (Late Dorset people already present in the far north when the Icelanders arrived in the 980s) are not well-documented beyond some archaeological evidence of trade.8 Jette Arneborg, “The Norse Settlements in Greenland,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink in collaboration with Neil Price (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), 588–97 (594). However, the settled farming lifestyle that the Norse immigrants practiced in the south of Greenland probably did not bring them into regular contact with Greenland Inuit in the Viking Age outside of possible shared hunting grounds in the far north, and there is little evidence of the kind of “raiding” activity in Greenland that this cartoon gestures towards, even if it may have been a feature of the later centuries of the Norse colony.9 Gordon Campbell gives ethnic conflict with the Thule who expanded into Greenland around 1300 as one possible contributing reason for the decline of the settlement, Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 112–13. Of course, the illustrator is not interested in depicting the realities of Norse activity in the North Atlantic, but it is noteworthy that he relies on his audience being able to make the link between Vikings and Greenland and to assume violent conquest and the analogy of Empire: indeed, the threat of violence and Trump’s refusal to rule out military intervention are key to the illustration’s conceit.

Trump is not alone in this depiction of a modern Viking raid. Behind him are two sidekicks: his bearded and grinning vice president, J. D. Vance, and his national security advisor, Mike Waltz, all dressed up and playing the part of Vikings, but also relegated to the background and very literally hanging on the coat-tails of Trump. A final figure is harder to make out as it forms the dragonhead prow of the longship, but the long eyelashes and hair suggest a woman, and the natural assumption is that this is Usha Vance, who accompanied the politicians, and whose proclaimed “cultural trip” to Greenland escalated into a diplomatic spat (and a much-reduced itinerary). Usha Vance is depicted as the Viking ship itself, the vessel that Trump and his acolytes use to make their landing in Greenland and advance their political agenda.

It is remarkable how much this simple cartoon is able to convey to a reader even mildly invested in the American news cycle, and it is clearly the work of a very skilled political illustrator. But it is worth recognizing that the playful political satire of the message is facilitated by just how deeply established the historical visuals are. Not only do we have the horned helmets, axes, barbarian aesthetic, and longship so closely associated with the popular perception of Vikings, but the specific pose that Trump strikes in this cartoon plays on countless representations of the armed Viking scanning the horizon from the prow of his ship, which ultimately have their roots in nineteenth-century artistic representations such as Vikings Heading for Land (1873) by English painter Frank Bernard Dicksee, and Oscar Arnold Wergeland’s endlessly reproduced 1877 painting Nordmennene lander på Island år 872 (Figure 2). Because it is one of the most deeply established visuals of Norse exploration and conquest, the illustrator is able to conjure up a whole network of associations onto which he can overlay his contemporary theme.

Rothman is just one of many political satirists to draw on the medievalist trope of cartoon Vikings to depict Trump’s aggressive overtures towards Greenland. To take an example from the other end of the political spectrum, the left-leaning magazine The New Republic used a collage by UK artist Cold War Steve (Christopher Spencer) to illustrate a feature titled “Real Men Steal Countries: Inside Trump’s Absurd Greenland Obsession.”10 Christopher Hooks, “Real Men Steal Countries: Inside Trump’s Absurd Greenland Obsession,” The New Republic, May 15, 2025, <https://newrepublic.com/article/194716/trump-greenland-nineteenth-century-steal-country>, last accessed August 1, 2025. In his signature photomontage style, used initially to satirize UK politics and the dark absurdities of Brexit in particular, Spencer pastes the heads of a MAGA “warband” including Vance, Donald Trump Junior, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Pete Hegseth, onto the bodies of a bare-chested raiding party bearing flaming torches. The vice-president shows off a severed Arctic wolf’s head, and other members of the group bear aloft the president, naked except for an American flag cape and a crown and scepter, probably a nod to the Danish folktale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Elon Musk sits alone in the vacated Viking longship beneath its MAGA-branded sail, referencing his rift with the president.

This collage, effectively depicting the chaos and conflicting personalities of the Trump administration, is based on a similar repertoire of stock “barbarian” images, but introduces a few additional tropes from the realm of popular Vikings. Vance, for example, is widely believed to wear eyeliner, and here his eye make-up is exaggerated to match that used by many characters from History’s Vikings series, an aesthetic itself probably inspired by a tenth-century account of the inhabitants of Hedeby darkening their eyes with “a kind of indelible cosmetic,” probably kohl.11 Aḥmad Ibn Faḍlān (quoting Ibrahim ibn Ya‘qub of Tortosa), Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London: Penguin, 2012), 163. All the characters, with the exception of Taylor Greene, are also bare-chested, which brings to mind Vladimir Putin’s performative machismo, and the famous image of him riding a horse without a shirt. But it also reflects the tendency of recent series such as Vikings and video games such as God of War: Ragnarok to depict Norse warriors fighting bare-chested in another performance of hypermasculinity. A good example of this comes in the opening of the season two premier of Vikings, in which Rollo’s army are largely fighting with heavily tattooed torsos exposed.12 Vikings: Series 2, Episode 1 “Brother’s War,” Dir. Michael Hirst (MGM Television/History Channel, 2014). That these on-screen Vikings are usually played by actors (including Clive Standen as Rollo) who conform to a modern aesthetic of the toned “superhero” body and the barbarians chosen for Spencer’s collage are pale and unremarkable is intended to enhance the satire of these cosplay Vikings, while also leaning on a popular image of bare-chested warriors for which we have little evidence.13 Even the idea of bare-chested berserkers is largely based on a false etymology for berserkr given by Snorri. See Roderick Dale, The Myths and Realities of the Viking berserkr (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), esp. 99–100.

These two satirical artworks, different as they are, are both good examples of the way that certain longstanding and largely static images of the Vikings – including the “Viking Heading for Land” pose, the barbarian aesthetic, and the mindless violence indicated by the severed wolf head and torches – are often merged in public discourse with rapidly evolving portrayals of the Vikings driven by film, television, and videogame representations. Both established and more recent stereotypes are embedded enough to allow for effective political satire that will be recognized by a large proportion of the intended readership. Further afield, the inevitable references to “Donald the Orange” – a riff, of course, on Erik the Red – were picked up by publications including India’s The Telegraph and demonstrate that the embedded associations are both global and extend to widely understood cultural reference points such as the byname convention in Old Norse.14 Aniket Jha, “Donald, the Orange King, to ‘Dune’ Jabs, Internet Roasts Trump’s Greenland-Canada ‘Takeover’,” The Telegraph Online (India), January 9, 2025, <https://www.telegraphindia.com/gallery/donald-the-orange-king-to-dune-jabs-internet-laughs-guts-out-at-trumps-greenland-canada-takeover-photogallery/cid/2076505>, last accessed August 1, 2025.