Day 610: The Viking Lady

It's not just Disney Deja Vu that brings complete Disney randomness to mind. As you already well know, often times little hints of Disney just sort of pop up in my classes here at SNC, and this semester seems to be no different. As a matter of fact, I believe I've thought of Disney in class more this semester than the previous two, although Fairy Tales definitely puts up a fight. However, that was more of Disney movie thinking process, and this is most certainly stuck in the parks.

In the matter of about one sentence, my music theory class connected Haunted Mansion, Vikings and a discussion we had had in my British Literature Course about Pirates, because yes, all these things are related. And as a bonus, Epcot. 

For starters: Music Theory. We have a history class once a week where we learn about the history of music and how it came from the simple chants of the earliest days to the music we hear today, whether that be Jazz, Orchestras or on the radio. Today we happened to be discussing Opera, and the age-old question, of course, came up: "What's up with the Viking Hats?"

As far as Opera itself goes, there's actually a very easy explanation for this. The Fat Lady with a Viking Hat is NOT what opera actually is, as it actually only has to do with one composer: Wagner. As far as the rest of the operas in the world go, the Viking Lady isn't exactly the most common character. 

But of course, my mind went on a bit of a run once the Opera singer idea came up, because as far as Disney is concerned, there IS a viking singer somewhere on property...multiple properties actually. Know where?

Here's a hint: 

Know it now? Of course the Haunted Mansion has an Opera singer, although her Viking Helmet seems to be a bit different from those we generally think of, no horns involved. But wait! There's a reason for this too, and for the answer to that we're going to have to take a detour to my English class.

My British Literature course features some of the oldest English Literature that has been found, and it's translated so that we can make some kind of sense of it. I honestly don't even remember how we got on the topic, but sometime last week we were discussing Vikings, and how for the most part, Vikings were basically Pirates, or at least were the equivalent to the groups we were talking about. 

And with all this talk about Vikings (and Pirates), I decided to do some research. 

Turns out, Vikings never actually had horns on their helmets. That's purely a misconception. So that Fat Viking Lady that sings Opera isn't even really a Viking Lady, hence the reason her helmet looks different in the Haunted Mansion (or maybe it's just because she's a ghost and the wings are a humorous addition). Either way, I read up on Vikings, not a lot, but enough to get a sense of what we were talking about and couldn't help but think of Norway and Malestrom. I'm one of those people that generally sits and watches the film unless it isn't running, and I'll be super sad to see the entire attraction go if Frozen does indeed take over (and now's when the next blog post will get really confusing because all I'll do is talk about how much I love Frozen). 

But either way, I guess you could say that within that one question about Viking Hats in Opera, I associated Music to the Haunted Mansion to Pirates to Malestrom to Frozen. Now that certainly doesn't happen every day. 

Have a magical day!