Conclusions: Beyond the Vikings
The contrasting images of the Vikings discussed in this short essay – ranging from satire of Trump’s Greenland plans to confected ancestry for Trump’s dynasty and self-identification with the strongman image – reinforce the “plasticity” of the image of the Viking in American discourse. As pointed out by Annette Kolnody with reference to nineteenth-century literary representations, this plasticity “rendered the Northmen perfect progenitors for a nation whose own postwar identity was then in flux”
1 Annette Kolodny, In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 204.: she also notes the irony in the fact that those once considered “wild berserkers” could become “conduits for essentially conservative impulses.”
2 Kolnody, In Search of First Contact, 204. Andrew Wawn has made similar observations about the malleability of the Vikings in a British context,
3 Andrew Wawn, “The Viking Revival,” BBC History, February 2, 2011, <https://www.bbc.com/history/ancient/vikings/revival_01.shtml>, last accessed August 1, 2025. while a collection focused on the global reimagining of the Vikings also emphasized the sheer range of projections that the Viking cipher can sustain.
4 See Tom Birkett, “Introduction,” in The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement, ed. Tom Birkett and Roderick Dale (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 1–18 (3). In the most recent engagements with the Vikings in and around the MAGA movement, we can witness the very same plasticity identified in earlier periods of intense interest in the Vikings, and the same shift within a very short timeframe from illustrations of barbarism, to mocking of overblown reactions, to embracing of this originally negative image as a positive signifier of hypermasculinity and dominance. In the most recent furor over Greenland, while political cartoonists jumped at the chance to represent “Donald the Orange” as a patently ridiculous Viking barbarian blundering into confrontation with a NATO ally, the alt-right ecosystem was already poised to deploy Viking imagery in precisely the opposite way: to burnish Trump’s macho credentials and, in the case of Don Jr.’s provocative Viking cosplay, to “own the libs.”
Obviously, Viking imagery and the “Donald the Orange” moniker are one tiny facet of the wider ecosystem of political satire generated by and responding to the MAGA movement. It is, however, instructive to identify certain dynamics in the deployment of this particular medievalist trope that may have broader applicability. First of all, at the most basic level it highlights the fact that in the fractured political landscape of the US, the same historical reference point can mean vastly different things depending on where and by whom it is deployed. This is particularly true of the Viking, which has evolved since the nineteenth century to bear the weight of very different interpretations in US political discourse, but it also goes to show that what might have been considered largely uncontentious across the political spectrum only a few years ago (that torch-bearing Viking “barbarians” are a stock negative symbol, for example) can no longer be taken for granted. Secondly, Don Jr.’s posting of an AI-generated image of himself as a Viking – following years of online engagement with this trope in various corners of the internet – illustrates a defining feature of MAGA populism: the willingness of Trump and his circle to not only circumvent traditional media to play directly to their base, but to pick up on and amplify trends that arise both from within this movement, and from more extreme areas of the far-right ecosystem.
5 A good example of this is Trump’s use of the white supremacist Pepe the Frog meme. See Justin Baragona, “Trump Posts Meme Saying He’s ‘on a mission from God’ Featuring Alt-right Symbol Pepe the Frog,” The Independent (Online), May 30, 2025, <https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-meme-pepe-the-frog-b2760163.html>, last accessed August 1, 2025. These rapidly evolving trends often outpace legacy media’s ability to respond, and mean that traditional political satire is sometimes drawing on derisive images that have already been embraced by those they are intending to insult. Finally, the dynamic illustrated here of images initially used to attack and disparage MAGA populism being in turn absorbed and repurposed by this movement is certainly not unique to the Vikings, and is illustrative of how unproductive it has become to rely on historical norms to counter far-right populism. The most infamous example of this mockery backfiring is the “basket of deplorables” comment made by Hillary Clinton of Trump’s supporters, which almost immediately became a rallying cry within the MAGA movement.
6 Matt Kwong, “How Trump Turned ‘deplorables’ into a Campaign Rallying Cry,” CBC News (Online), September 14, 2016, <https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/donald-trump-deplorables-rallying-cry-alt-right-hillary-clinton-meme-1.3760971>, last accessed August 1, 2025. Particularly when it comes to an image as flexible and contingent as that of the Viking, its use to disparage is liable to be turned on its head: the “Donald the Orange” moniker may have been an attempt at mockery, but for the MAGA faithful, it will likely be received as another badge of honor.