This is the statue of Leif Eriksson outside the Minnesota state capitol. It is a very bad statue. That thing in his right hand? It’s supposed to be a ship’s tiller. It looks nothing like a ship’s tiller.

In the complete absence of clever ideas for blog posts tonight, I think I’ll break with my personal tradition and actually announce something I’ll be doing ahead of time. Next weekend (Oct. 12-14), I and my Viking henchmen plan to be in Norway, Michigan for the Leif Erikson Festival. The opening ceremonies Friday evening, we are reliably informed, will include a Viking funeral, complete with the launch of a burning “ship” onto a lake. (Apparently they’ve gotten permission from the natural resources people to do this.) So far they have not asked for volunteers to ride the ship, and I’m definitely keeping my hands in my pockets.

The image of a Viking funeral ship sailing out to sea in flames is super-glued to the public imagination, thanks to movies like “The Vikings” and “S.O.B.” (“Beau Geste,” I should note, got it right, keeping the pyre on land.) In fact, the only scenes of such funerals we find in Norse sources come (as far as I’m aware) from the Eddas, where it happens among the gods in Asgard, and in a legendary story from the early chapters of the Ynglingasaga in Heimskringla—purely folklore, days-long-gone stuff. Never in the historical sagas is anyone sent off that way, nor do we have a description of such a thing from eyewitnesses. Ibn Fadlan (on whose writings Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead, the source of the movie “The Thirteenth Warrior,” is based), describes the Russ in Russia burning a chieftain in his ship on land, something which comports with archaeological evidence. At other times and in other places, people were simply inhumed in ships or boats, providing wonderful opportunities for later archaeologists, the most spectacular being the Oseberg and Gokstad ship graves in Norway.

Of course, if anybody ever did send a ship out to sea in flames, it would be unlikely to be found by archaeologists. So we can’t prove it didn’t happen. All I can say is that most scholars consider it fairly improbable.

Let’s face it—a burning sail isn’t likely to take a ship very far. And a ship without a living man at the helm will probably go somewhere you don’t want it to go.

If you’d like any further cherished illusions shattered, I’m your go-to guy.