I ALONE AM responsible for the Viking invasion of England.
No, not the ones in the Middle Ages. The one in last Friday’s Gazette.
You see, last week I ran across a rather interesting story on the Associated Press wire. A father and son found a Viking treasure trove that had been buried on an English farm for more than 1,000 years. The treasure contained more than 600 coins and many other valuable pieces and was easily the largest find of its sort since 1840.
I gaped and goggled and figured readers would do the same. So I slapped it on the page and began looking for an appropriate headline. The one I meant to use began:
VIKING HOARD FOUND ON ENGLISH FARM
To the point and very evocative. But alas, the English language lays traps for the unwary and this time I got snared. The headline that actually appeared read:
VIKING HORDE FOUND ON ENGLISH FARM
That’s right. We now had a Norse war party, presumably led by Hagar the Horrible, biding its time in the farmhouse. Do you suppose the new British Prime Minister knows about this?
Embarrassing? You bet. But at least I’ve got plenty of company.
English is perhaps the greatest language ever created. According to one source, it now has close to a million words, giving it a word for every occasion or shade of meaning. That’s partly because its speakers are also the greatest pirates in linguistic history, stealing such useful words as “bronco” and “tornado” (Spanish), “prairie” and “souvenir” (French) or even modern coinages like the German “earworm,” used to refer to those songs that enter your head and refuse to leave.
All this borrowing and creativity makes English a wonderfully flexible language. It also makes it a treacherous one. As Bill Bryson put it, “Any language where the unassuming word ‘fly’ signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman’s apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.”
Well, ask and you shall receive. Mangled it has been, and never more hilariously than in the columns of the American newspaper.
One of my favorites came from a Colorado paper in the 1990s. The name of the journal escapes me — perhaps mercifully — but not its literary effort. The article dealt with a gasoline tax that was steadily making its way through the Legislature. The editor ran out of room for the headline and broke it into two lines, creating the masterpiece:
HOUSE PASSES GAS
TAX ONTO SENATE
We’d known for some time that the Legislature was full of beans, but it’s always nice to have proof.
Some of the greatest have been collected over the years by word-lover Richard Lederer. His specimens include interesting anatomy:
RICHARD BURTON FACES SURGERY ON HIS BACK
Or curious hygiene:
HERE’S HOW YOU CAN LICK DOBERMAN’S LEG SORES
Or even the all-too-appropriate:
REAGAN TO HAVE TISSUE REMOVED FROM NOSE
Every one of those probably caused its share of blushing and profanity when it hit the streets. Now they’re entertainment. The humor lives on long after the writer, the editor and even the newspaper involved are forgotten.
Don’t you wish all our lives worked that way? Forget the fault, remember the fun?
So with that, I’m going to put my brief excursion into Viking history behind me. It’s not my proudest moment, but at least it might give someone a good chuckle down the line.
Besides, there’s no sense in beating a dead Norse.
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.