Exhibition Centre, University Of York: Fill & Download for Free

London and New York City are the current contenders for most powerful or influential global city, though that may change in the decades ahead. The following are the most up-to-date city versus city rankings between the two in a wide variety of global city metrics, from financial power to livability, from a diversity of sources.The list includes everything from poll-based listings by second rank online publications to gold standard meta-analyses by the reputable Big Four auditor groups. Generally speaking, you can take any study by the likes of Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG and Ernst & Young to be peer review-standard reliable and comprehensive.I'll leave it to you to decide which is greater.Economic, Financial and General RankingsCities of Opportunity (Economy, Business, Innovation, Intellectual Capital, Technology) - PricewaterhouseCoopers, 20161. London2. Singapore3. Toronto4. Paris5. Amsterdam6. New York7. Stockholm8. San Francisco9. Hong Kong10. SydneyGlobal Financial Centres Index - Z/Yen, March 20171. London2. New York3. Singapore4. Hong Kong5. Tokyo6. San Francisco7. Chicago8. Sydney9. Boston10. TorontoGlobaltown - Deloitte, 2013Financial services1. London2. Chicago3. New York4. Boston5. Hong KongTechnology, media, communications1. London2. Los Angeles3. New York4. Singapore5. Hong KongBusiness and professional services1. London2. New York3. Chicago4. Los Angeles5. BostonConsumer Business1. Los Angeles2. London3. Chicago4. Singapore5. New YorkEducation1. London2. New York3. Hong Kong4. Sydney5. BostonCulture1. London2. New York3. Los Angeles4. Paris5. SingaporeLife sciences1. Los Angeles2. New York3. Toronto4. Boston5. ChicagoGlobal Power City Index (Economy, R&D, Culture, Livability, Accessibility) - Mori Memorial Foundation, 20171. London2. New York3. Tokyo4. Paris5. Singapore6. Seoul7. Amsterdam8. Berlin9. Hong Kong10. SydneyCity Momentum Index (Transformative Projects/Policies, Economy, Real Estate) - Jones Lang LaSalle, 20171. Bangalore2. Ho Chi Minh City3. Silicon Valley4. Shanghai5. Hyderabad6. London7. Austin8. Hanoi9. Boston10. NairobiThe World's Most Influential Cities (Business, Foreign Investment, Finance) - Forbes, 20141. London2. New York3. Paris4. Singapore5. Tokyo6. Hong Kong7. Dubai8= Beijing8= Sydney10= Los Angeles10= San Francisco Bay AreaGlobal Cities Index - AT Kearney, 20161. London2. New York3. Paris4. Tokyo5. Hong Kong6. Los Angeles7. Chicago8. Singapore9. Beijing10. Washington DCCities in Motion Index (Economy, Human Capital, Transit, Technology, Governance) - IESE, 20171. New York2. London3. Paris4. Boston5. San Francisco6. Washington D.C.7. Seoul8. Tokyo9. Berlin10. AmsterdamGlobal Economic Power Index - Richard Florida/CityLab, 20151. New York2. London3. Tokyo4. Hong Kong5. Paris6. Singapore7. Los Angeles8. Seoul9. Vienna10. Stockholm/Toronto (tied)This study has a number of errors. Among these, it uses the 4 point score from the UN's City Prosperity Index, which excludes the equity index, though the author references it in his city ranking. Using the correct 5 point score and the most up-to-date GFCI from Z/Yen (2015), the correct ranking should be as follows (score correction is in brackets):1= New York 38 (-10)1= London 38 (-2)3. Tokyo 34 (+5)4. Hong Kong 215. Paris 18 (-1)6. Singapore 177. Los Angeles 138. Seoul 12 (+1)9. Vienna 1010. Oslo/Helsinki (tied) 9 (+6)/(+4)Global Cities Investment Monitor (Foreign Direct Investments) - KPMG, 2017Global image1. New York2. London3. Paris4. Tokyo5. Hong Kong6. Shanghai7. Berlin8. Singapore9. Frankfurt10. DubaiGlobal attractiveness1. London2. New York3. Paris4. Shanghai5. Singapore6. Tokyo7. Dubai8. Berlin9. Hong Kong10. Los AngelesNumber of greenfield investments1. London2. Singapore3. Dubai4. Shanghai5. Hong Kong6. New York7. Paris8. Sydney9. Bangalore10. TokyoGlobal Market Perspectives (Real Estate Markets) - Jones Lang LaSalle, 2015Global real estate health monitor1. Beijing2. Boston3. Chicago4. Dubai5. Frankfurt6. Hong Kong7. London8. Los Angeles9. Madrid10. Mexico CityDirect commercial real estate investments, 20151. New York2. London3. Paris4. Los Angeles5. Tokyo6. Chicago7. Shanghai8. Boston9. Washington DC10. Hong KongDynamics Of A Global City (Office Market Investments) - Savills, 20141. London2. New York3. Tokyo4. Paris5. Los Angeles6. San Francisco7. Boston8. Washington DC9. Sydney10. ChicagoWorld Residential Markets (Residential real estate) - Savills 2016City market typical prices (prime two bed apartment)1. Hong Kong2. London3. Paris4. Singapore5. New York6. Shanghai7. Dubai8. Milan9. San Francisco10. SydneyAnnual Foreign Investment Survey (Real Estate Investment) - AFIRE, 20161. New York2. London3. Los Angeles4. Berlin5. San Francisco6. Paris7. Tokyo8. Washington DCGlobal Investor Intentions Survey (Real Estate Investment) - CBRE, 20151. London2. Tokyo3. San Francisco4. Sydney5. New York6. Madrid7. Dallas8. Los Angeles9. Seattle10. ParisWinning in Growth Cities (Real Estate Investment) - Cushman & Wakefield, 2016Importance to global investors1. London2. New York3. Paris4. Sydney5. Tokyo6. Washington DC7. Berlin8. Amsterdam9. Frankfurt10. BostonInvestment volume1. New York2. London3. Tokyo4. Los Angeles5. San Francisco6. Paris7. Chicago8. Washington DC9. Dallas10. AtlantaGlobal Location Trends (Foreign Investment, Brand Appeal) - IBM, 20171. London2. Amsterdam-Rotterdam3. Paris4. Singapore5. Bangkok6. Chicago7. Ho Chi Minh City8. Dubai9. Shanghai10. BerlinOffice Space Across the World (Most Expensive Office Locations) - Cushman & Wakefield, 20151. London2. Hong Kong3. New York4. Rio5. New Delhi6. Moscow7. Tokyo8. Beijig9. Sydney10. ParisIndustrial Space Across the World (Most Expensive Industrial Locations) - Cushman & Wakefield, 20111. London2. Tokyo3. Geneva4. Singapore5. Sydney6. Hong Kong7. San Francisco8. Helsinki9. Oslo10. ParisRanking Global Cities (Economy, Technology, Intellectual Capital) - Martin Prosperity Institute, 20151. Ottawa-Gatineau2. Seattle3. Oslo4= District of Columbia4= Amsterdam6= Tel Aviv-Jaffa6= Copenhagen6= London9= Calgary9= New York-NewarkScorecard on Prosperity (Economy, Global Attractiveness, Transport) - Toronto Board of Trade, 20151. Paris2. Stockholm3. Calgary4. Oslo5. Toronto6. Boston7. San Francisco8. Seattle9. London10. SydneyRetail and Tourism Market RankingsHow Global is the Business of Retail? (City Retailer Representation) - CBRE, 20151. London2. Dubai3. Shanghai4. New York5= Singapore5= Moscow7. Hong Kong8. Paris9. Tokyo10. BeijingMain Streets Across the World (Most Expensive Retail Locations) - Cushman & Wakefield, 20161. Upper Fifth Avenue (New York)2. Causeway Bay (Hong Kong)3. Avenue Des Champs-Élysées (Paris)4. New Bond Street (London)5. Via Montepoleone (Milan)6. Bahnhofstrasse (Zurich)7. The Ginza (Tokyo)8. Myeongdong (Seoul)9. Kohlmarkt (Vienna)10. Kaufinger/Neuhauser (Munich)Mastercard Global Destination Cities Index (Tourism) - 2016International overnight visitors1. Bangkok2. London3. Paris4. Dubai5. New York6. Singapore7. Kuala Lumpur8. Istanbul9. Tokyo10. SeoulInternational overnight visitor spending1. Dubai2. London3. New York4. Bangkok5. Tokyo6. Paris7. Singapore8. Seoul9. Kuala Lumpur10. TaipeiInternational connectivity score (flight frequency to international destinations) - 2015 edition1. London2. Paris3. Dubai4. Frankfurt5. IstanbulTop City Destinations (International Tourism) - Euromonitor International, 20161. Hong Kong2. London3. Singapore4. Bangkok5. Paris6. Macau7. Shenzhen8. New York9. Istanbul10. Kuala LumpurTravelers' Choice Awards (Tourism) - Tripadvisor, 20161. London2. Istanbul3. Marrakech4. Paris5. Siem Reap6. Prague7. Rome8. Hanoi9. New York10. UbudLivability RankingsMercer Quality of Living Index (Cost of Living, Healthcare, Environment, Transport) - 20161. Vienna2. Zurich3. Auckland4. Munich5. VancouverState of the World's Cities (Productivity, Quality of Life, Infrastructure) - UN Habitat, 20131. Vienna2= Helsinki2= Oslo4= Dublin4= Copenhagen6. Tokyo7. London8. Melbourne9. Stockholm10. AmsterdamCommuter Pain Survey (Commuting Experience) - IBM, 20111. Montreal2. London3. Chicago4. Stockholm5. Toronto6. New York7. Madrid8. Paris9. Los Angeles10. Buenos AiresGlobal Liveability Report - EIU, 20141. Melbourne2. Vienna3. Vancouver4. Toronto5= Adelaide5= Calgary7. Sydney8. Helsinki9. Perth10. Auckland...18= Paris18= Tokyo...51. London56. New YorkSustainable Cities Index - Arcadis, 20161. Zurich2. Singapore3. Stockholm4. Vienna5. London6. Frankfurt7. SeoulAmsterdam8. Hamburg9. Prague10. MunichQuality of Life Survey (Healthcare, Crime, Business, Education, Culture)- Monocle, 20161. Tokyo2. Berlin3. Vienna4. Copenhagen5. Munich6. Melbourne7. Fukuoka8. Sydney9. Kyoto10. StockholmCity Prosperity Index (Quality of Life, Productivity, Infrastructure, Equity, Environment) - UN, 20151. Oslo2. Copenhagen3. Stockholm4. Helsinki5. Paris6. Vienna7. Melbourne8. Montreal9. Toronto10. Sydney …18. London23. New YorkEIU Best Cities (Spatially-Adjusted Livability), Economist Intelligence Unit, 20121. Hong Kong2. Amsterdam3. Osaka4. Paris5. Sydney...12. London16. New YorkInfrastructure survey (Subset of Quality of Living Survey) - Mercer Consulting, 20121. Singapore2. Frankfurt3. Munich5. Düsseldorf6= London6= Hong KongCultural RankingsLeading Culture Destinations - 2015Jury Award – Best City for Culture: Manchester, UKJury Award – Best Emerging City for Culture: Mexico CityJury Award – Best Art Experience in a Hotel: La Colombe D'Or, Saint-Paul-De-Vence, FranceLeading Culture Destination 2015: Museum of Modern Art, New YorkExhibitions & Programming: Tate Modern, LondonArchitecture & Spatial Design: The Fondation Louis Vuitton, ParisEating & Drinking: Centre Pompidou, ParisShopping: Victoria and Albert Museum, LondonDigital Experience: Museum of Modern Art, New YorkExhibition and Museum Attendance - The Art Newspaper, 20141. Louvre (Paris)2. British Museum (London)3. National Gallery (London)4. Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)5. Vatican Museums (Vatican City)6. Tate Modern (London)7. National Palace Museum (Taipei)8. National Gallery of Art (Washington DC)9. National Museum of Korea (Seoul)10. Musée d'Orsay (Paris)Fashion Capitals - Global Language Monitor, 20161. Paris2. Milan3. London4. New York5. Los Angeles6. Rome7. Barcelona8. Berlin9. Madrid10. TokyoUltimate Sports Cities - SportBusiness Group, 20121. London2. Melbourne3. Sydney4. New York5. ManchesterMichelin Star Ranking of Cities (Dining) - 20121. Paris2. Tokyo3. New York4. Hong Kong5. Kyoto6. London7. Florence8. Macau9. Copenhagen10. BerlinUltimate Fun City Ranking (Culture) - GoEuro, 20141. Berlin2. London3. Paris4. New York5. Tokyo6. Hamburg7. Rome8. Vienna9. Barcelona10. IstanbulIntellectual Capital, Competitiveness and EmploymentInnovation Cities (Economic and Social Innovation) - 2thinknow Consulting, 20151. London2. San Francisco-San Jose3. Vienna4. Boston5. Seoul6. New York7. Amsterdam8. Singapore9. Paris10. TokyoPeople Risk Index (Recruitment/Relocation Risk) - AON Consulting, 20131. New York2. Singapore3. Toronto4= London4= Montreal6. Los Angeles7= Copenhagen7= Hong Kong9. Zurich10. VancouverSea Turtle Index (Returns on International Education Investment) - EIU Bank of Communications, 20101. Montreal2. London3. Hong Kong4. Toronto5. Cambridge6. Oxford7. Boston8. Sydney9. Zurich10. New YorkNetworked Society City Index - Ericsson, 20161. Stockholm2. London3. Singapore4. Paris5. Copenhagen6. Helsinki7. New York8. Oslo9. TokyoThe World's Crowdfunding Capital (Business) - Forbes, 20141. London? New York? San Francisco10. TokyoGlobal Cities Competitiveness Index (Global Appeal, Economy, Human Capital) - The Economist, 20121. New York2. London3. Singapore4. Paris5. Hong Kong6. Tokyo7. ZurichCompetitive Alternatives (Business Costs) - KPMG, 20148. (Europe) London - 99.9 [Lower score ranks higher.]21. (NE US) New York - 103.6Global Urban Competitiveness Project (GDP per capita, Productivity, International Firms) - 20121. New York2. London3. Tokyo4. Paris5. San Francisco6. Chicago7. Los Angeles8. Singapore9. Hong Kong10. SeoulAcademic RankingsBest Student Cities (Ranking, Affordability, Employment, Social) - QS, 20161. Paris2. Melbourne3. Tokyo4. Sydney5. London6. Singapore7. Montreal8. Hong Kong9. Berlin10. SeoulBusiness School rankings - Financial Times, 20161. Insead2. Harvard Business School3. London Business School4. University of Pennsylvania: Wharton5. Stanford Graduate School of Business6. Columbia Business School7. University of California at Berkeley: Haas8. University of Chicago: Booth9. Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Sloan10. University of Cambridge: JudgeAcademic Ranking of World Universities - Shanghai Ranking Consultancy, 20161. Harvard University2. Stanford University3. University of California at Berkeley4. University of Cambridge5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology6. Princeton University7. Oxford University8. California Institute of Technology9. Columbia University10. University of ChicagoWorld University Rankings - QS, 20161. Massachusetts Institute of Technology2. Stanford University3. Harvard University4. University of Cambridge5. California Institute of Technology6. Oxford University7. University College London8. ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology9. Imperial College London10. University of ChicagoCharacterising Scientific Production and Consumption in Physics (Physics Research) - Nature, 20131. Boston2. Berkeley3. Los Angeles4. Tokyo5. Chicago6. Paris7. Princeton8. Rome9. Piscataway10. LondonGlobal Attractiveness and Brand Image RankingsThe Wealth Report (Wealth, Investment, Connectivity) - Knight Frank, 20171. London2. New York3. Hong Kong4. Shanghai5. Los Angeles6. Singapore7. San Francisco8. Beijing9. Tokyo10. ChicagoDecoding Global Talent (Global Attractiveness, Employment, Relocation) - Boston Consulting Group, 20141. London2. New York3. Paris4. Sydney5. Madrid6. Berlin7. Barcelona8. Toronto9. Singapore10. RomeCity Brands Index (Global Brand Image) - Anholt-GfK, 20151. Paris2. London3. New York4. Sydney5. Los Angeles6. Rome7. Berlin8. Amsterdam9. Melbourne10. Washington DCIpsos Top Cities Index (Business, Livability) - Ipsos MORI, 20131. New York2. London3. Paris4. Abu Dhabi5. SydneyTop 29 Cities to Live In (Quality of Life, Relationships) - AskMen, 20121. London2. Mumbai3. Washington DC4. Rio De Janeiro5. Shanghai6. New York7. Cartagena8. Hong Kong9. Marseille10. MelbourneGovernment and Social Media: A Case Study of 31 Informational World Cities (Twitter, Youtube, Social Media Presence) - Mainka et al., 20141. Berlin2. Seoul3. Barcelona4. New York5. Vienna6. Vancouver7. Tokyo8. Paris9. Toronto10. MilanCities Brand Barometer (Twitter, Facebook, Social Media Trends) - Guardian, 20141. Los Angeles2. New York3. London4. Paris5. Seoul6. Barcelona7. Rio De Janeiro8. San Francisco9. Las Vegas10. DubaiBillionaire Census (USD Billionaires) - WealthX/UBS, 20141. New York - 962. Hong Kong - 753. Moscow - 744. London - 675. Mumbai - 306. Singapore -7. Beijing - 268= Paris - 258= Riyadh - 2510. Dubai - 24Sunday Times Rich List (GBP Billionaires) - Sunday Times, 20141. London - 722. Moscow - 483. New York - 43Forbes Top 10 Billionaire Cities - 20131. Moscow (84)2. New York (62)3= London (43)3= Hong Kong (43)5. Istanbul (37)6. Sao Paulo (26)7. Mumbai (24)8. Seoul (23)9. Beijing (21)10= Dallas (18)10= Paris (18)

The Viking story has fascinated people for centuries. But as a major exhibition opens at the British Museum, have people got them all wrong?The longships arrived on 8 June. The monks at Lindisfarne didn't know it then - the year was 793 - but it was the beginning of 300 years of bloody Viking raids on Britain and Ireland."Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race," Alcuin of York wrote at the time. "The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets."Over 12 centuries later and the Vikings are the subject of a major exhibition at the British Museum - and they still loom large in the imagination. Blond, powerfully built men with horned helmets, nostrils flaring with naked aggression, descending on settlements to rape and pillage.Stora Hammars shows a man lying on his belly with another man using a weapon on his back, a Valknut, and two birds, one of which is held by a man to the right.That at least is the perception. But long-held views are being challenged. Let's start with the helmets, so beloved of Scandinavian football fans. The Vikings never wore them. They have only been included in depictions since the 19th Century. Wagner celebrated Norse legend in his opera Die Walkure (The Valkyrie) and horned helmets were created as props for the performance of his Ring Cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876.The horned helmet is based on historical fact, says Emma Boast from the Jorvik Centre, but it just wasn't a Viking thing. The British Museum has a ceremonial horned helmet from the Iron Age that was found in the River Thames. It is dated 150-50 BC.The Vikings used horns in feasting for drinking and blew into them for communicating. They were depicted in Viking brooches and pendants. They weren't worn. And for battle it would have been a major encumbrance, adding weight to the helmet.But today a child asked to draw a Viking will start with the horned helmet, Boast says. "I can understand that kids are drawn to that. It's so embedded with our society that I don't think we'll ever get rid of that. But actually there's a richer explanation."With the new exhibition there has been soul-searching in the media. A recent New Statesman headline asked: "The Vikings invented soap operas and pioneered globalisation - so why do we depict them as brutes?"A Daily Telegraph reviewer - brought up on the idea of them as "all hirsute jowls and beady eyes bent on rape and pillage" - suspects that the new British Museum will be an exercise in academic debunking. "I will learn that these rapacious raiders were in fact vegetarians, that they maintained some of the leading universities of the day and, worst of all, that they did not wear horned helmets."His tongue-in-cheek fears show that the British Museum has a difficult job on its hands. "The debate about whether the Vikings were cuddly or not has been going for a long time," says Matthew Townend, who teaches Old Norse at the University of York.The classic view is that articulated in Hollywood's 1958 movie The Vikings. Starring Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, it opened with what one critic today describes as a "full-blooded depiction of rape, fire and pillage". At least there were no horns in evidence.In the 1960s and 70s their portrayal as marauding barbarians was questioned. Academics pointed out that most of the written records for the Viking invasion of England were written by monks who, as the "victims", would not have been objective. Archaeology began to replace the Norse sagas - written several centuries later - as the most reliable evidence.A crucial turning point came in the late 1970s. During the construction of a shopping centre in the Coppergate area of York, Viking homes, clothes, jewellery, and a helmet were found well preserved in the moist earth. It led to the creation of the city's Jorvik Centre. The Vikings became seen as domestic, family-oriented people."Until Coppergate our view of the Vikings was skewed," says Chris Tuckley, head of interpretation at the Jorvik Centre. The Viking makeover saw them transformed from bloodcurdling raiders into resourceful traders. A British Museum exhibition in 1980 - the last before this week's opening - reflected this view. They were poets. They wore leather shoes and combed their hair.On a trip to Dublin in 2007, Danish culture minister Brian Mikkelsen was reported to have apologised to the Irish people for what the Vikings had done. He later denied having said sorry, telling a Danish newspaper: "What I mentioned in my speech was 'it did a lot of damages to the Irish people', but we don't apologise for what the Vikings did 1,000 years ago. That was the way you acted back then."An apology 1,000 years on would have been absurd. But others question Mikkelsen's second point - that their behaviour was the norm.The correction to "cuddly" Vikings had gone too far, says Prof Simon Keynes, an Anglo-Saxon historian at Cambridge University. "There's no question how nasty, unpleasant and brutish they were. They did all that the Vikings were reputed to have done."They stole anything they could. Churches were repositories of treasure to loot. They took cattle, money and food. It's likely they carried off women, too, he says. "They'd burn down settlements and leave a trail of destruction." It was unprovoked aggression. And unlike most armies, they came by sea, their narrow-bottomed longships allowing them to travel up rivers and take settlements by surprise. It was maritime blitzkrieg at first.Worse was the repeat nature of the raids. The Vikings, like burglars returning over and over again to the same houses, refused to leave places alone.Ivar the Boneless is said to have been particularly cruel. According to the sagas, he put Edmund, king of East Anglia, up against a tree and had his men shoot arrows at him until his head exploded. And Viking rival King Ella was put to death in York by having his ribs cut at the spine, his ribs broken so that they looked like wings and his lungs pulled out through the wounds in his back. It was known as the Blood Eagle. But the accuracy of these stories is disputed.A Daily Telegraph reviewer - brought up on the idea of them as "all hirsute jowls and beady eyes bent on rape and pillage" - suspects that the new British Museum will be an exercise in academic debunking . "I will learn that these rapacious raiders were in fact vegetarians, that they maintained some of the leading universities of the day and, worst of all, that they did not wear horned helmets."His tongue-in-cheek fears show that the British Museum has a difficult job on its hands. "The debate about whether the Vikings were cuddly or not has been going for a long time," says Matthew Townend, who teaches Old Norse at the University of York.The classic view is that articulated in Hollywood's 1958 movie The Vikings. Starring Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, it opened with what one critic today describes as a "full-blooded depiction of rape, fire and pillage". At least there were no horns in evidence.In the 1960s and 70s their portrayal as marauding barbarians was questioned. Academics pointed out that most of the written records for the Viking invasion of England were written by monks who, as the "victims", would not have been objective. Archaeology began to replace the Norse sagas - written several centuries later - as the most reliable evidence.A crucial turning point came in the late 1970s. During the construction of a shopping centre in the Coppergate area of York, Viking homes, clothes, jewellery, and a helmet were found well preserved in the moist earth. It led to the creation of the city's Jorvik Centre. The Vikings became seen as domestic, family-oriented people."Until Coppergate our view of the Vikings was skewed," says Chris Tuckley, head of interpretation at the Jorvik Centre. The Viking makeover saw them transformed from bloodcurdling raiders into resourceful traders. A British Museum exhibition in 1980 - the last before this week's opening - reflected this view. They were poets. They wore leather shoes and combed their hair.On a trip to Dublin in 2007, Danish culture minister Brian Mikkelsen was reported to have apologised to the Irish people for what the Vikings had done. He later denied having said sorry, telling a Danish newspaper: "What I mentioned in my speech was 'it did a lot of damages to the Irish people', but we don't apologise for what the Vikings did 1,000 years ago. That was the way you acted back then."An apology 1,000 years on would have been absurd. But others question Mikkelsen's second point - that their behaviour was the norm.The correction to "cuddly" Vikings had gone too far, says Prof Simon Keynes, an Anglo-Saxon historian at Cambridge University. "There's no question how nasty, unpleasant and brutish they were. They did all that the Vikings were reputed to have done."They stole anything they could. Churches were repositories of treasure to loot. They took cattle, money and food. It's likely they carried off women, too, he says."They'd burn down settlements and leave a trail of destruction." It was unprovoked aggression. And unlike most armies, they came by sea, their narrow-bottomed longships allowing them to travel up rivers and take settlements by surprise. It was maritime blitzkrieg at first.Worse was the repeat nature of the raids. The Vikings, like burglars returning over and over again to the same houses, refused to leave places alone.Ivar the Boneless is said to have been particularly cruel. According to the sagas, he put Edmund, king of East Anglia, up against a tree and had his men shoot arrows at him until his head exploded. And Viking rival King Ella was put to death in York by having his ribs cut at the spine, his ribs broken so that they looked like wings and his lungs pulled out through the wounds in his back. It was known as the Blood Eagle. But the accuracy of these stories is disputed.And others point out that the Anglo-Saxons were hardly upholders of a prototype Geneva Convention. In 2010 it was reported that 50 decapitated bodies had been found in Weymouth, thought to be executed Viking captives.The Vikings also went west to Newfoundland, to northern France and Germany, and east into what is now Russia and Ukraine. Perhaps less known is the Viking influence in central Asia and the Middle East. "It's very difficult to find a single way of assessing them all because they did so many things," Keynes says.The largest body of written sources on the Vikings in the 9th and 10th Century is in Arabic, points out James Montgomery, professor of Arabic at Cambridge University. The Vikings reached the Caspian Sea and came into contact with the Khazar empire. They may even have got as far as Baghdad if one mid-9th Century source is to be believed. Vikings known as the "Rus" are thought to have contributed to the formation of the princedom of Kiev, which turned into Russia, Montgomery says.It has led some to paint the Vikings as global traders more than warriors. And even - with their Icelandic sagas - as inventors of the soap opera.Revisionism is natural. Academics are always looking for a fresh angle. And people change their mind as social mores evolve."Stendhal said that the biography of Napoleon would have to be rewritten every six years," says historian Antony Beevor, author of The Second World War.But revisionism and counter-revisionism happens more in some fields of history - World War One for example - than others. For Beevor it tends to occur "over periods and questions which have contemporary political resonances - civil wars, slavery and colonialism, labour, the treatment of women and so forth".Townend says the Vikings were both invaders and migrants. They didn't just raid, pillage and leave. Over the 300-year Viking period, many stayed. Their attitude to the local populace was more complicated than just that of thuggish raiding parties. "They don't wipe them out. So how do these two groups live together?"It becomes a story about not just conquest but immigration and assimilation. Many of the Vikings embraced Christianity. There was intermarriage. King Cnut, who became King of England and ruled for 25 years, replaced those at the top but allowed society to go on as before. At the same time they held on to Norse names and traditions. "My view is that there was a good deal of give and take," Townend says.Haakon the Good converted to Christianity while in England. On his return to rule Norway, "he was given a hard time", Townend says. "His religious beliefs were rather different to the majority of his subjects."What came after the Vikings was arguably worse, argues Tuckley. The Normans went about things in a more systematic way, he says. "They oppressed the local populace rather than integrating as the Vikings did."No doubt the revisionism and counter argument will be fine-tuned. But the Viking story - replete with violence, colonialism and trade - has it all. With or without horns.Journalism is said to be the first draft of history, but it is often disappointing to find that the second or third drafts, by historians, move little further in establishing the truth about what happened. Errors made by reporters in the heat of the moment, instead of being eliminated, have become part of the authorised version. Factors that are crucial in creating the context within which events occurred go unmentioned.That context is the mix of hopes, fears, hatreds and habits, frequently the fruit of an individual's or a community's previous history, which are so important in determining how they will act. This is particularly true of wars when, even a few seconds after being truly frightened, it is so difficult to evoke in one's mind what those moments of terror felt like. "Can a man who is warm understand a man who is freezing?" Alexander Solzhenitsyn famously asks in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.The experience of mass fear, when large groups of people believe they are in danger of extermination or enslavement, is so important in shaping the historical instincts of countries and governments. Most European countries have suffered devastating war, foreign occupation or both over the past century, with exceptions being the British who remained unmarked by any recent experience of being wholly at the mercy of another's armies.For all the current focus on 1914 and the mass slaughter on the Western Front, the British experience of the First World War was, in many respects, not as bad as what is happening to the Syrians today. Britons were not driven from their homes and their whole families were not threatened, whatever death toll from the trenches. Most people are more frightened for their children than themselves, which is why the Syrian, Iraqi and Lebanese wars created such all-embracing terror.Writers all over Europe at the time of the Vikings, whose very name in Old Norse means "pirate", are at one in describing their savagery. But their terrified accounts of what happened were set aside by experts as biased because the eyewitnesses were often monks whose monasteries were prime targets of the raiders. Emphasis was instead put on the role of the Vikings as traders (though their main trade was in slaves), sailors, poets (though the Sagas were written much later) and craftsmen (though the most impressive objects in Viking hoards were looted from other countries).The centre-piece of the present exhibition is the remains of what is known as Roskilde 6, an 11th-century ship, discovered and excavated from the bottom of a Viking port in Denmark in 1996-97. Skilled though the Scandinavians may have been at building better warships than anybody else, it is also worth recalling that these vessels played the same role in attacking other peoples in Europe as German tanks did much later.It is extraordinary that the myth of the Vikings as misunderstood spreaders of Nordic culture should ever have had any credibility. My late friend Patrick Wormald, one of the great experts on Anglo-Saxon England, writing in The Anglo-Saxons, edited by James Campbell, mockingly derides the idea that the Viking attacks were "mere plunder raids which were insufficiently sensitive to local religious susceptibilities".Signs are overwhelming that the Vikings waged total war against the Anglo-Saxons from the time of their first recorded raid in 789. These escalated by 865 into invasions by hundreds of ships bent on conquest and settlement. Wormald notes that the kings of East Anglia and Northumbria were defeated and then seemingly killed in a sickeningly gruesome Viking ritual known as , which involved "ripping a victim's lungs out of his rib-cage, and draping them across his shoulders like eagles' wings".The pro-Viking lobby claim this is exaggerated stuff and there is no proof of such Viking atrocities. But the absence of evidence is scarcely surprising. The invaders, themselves illiterate, were so destructive that almost no writings survive from the conquered Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.The Anglo-Saxons fought back heroically, reconquering much of the country, only to succumb to a final Viking onslaught in the early 11th century. The warfare never lost its ferocity: if I look out the front door of the house where I am writing this in Canterbury, I can see the city's great medieval walls behind an earlier version behind which local people withstood a three-week siege by the Vikings from 8-29 September 1011. The Vikings finally stormed and sacked the city, taking prisoner Archbishop Alphege whom they held hostage. Angered by his refusal to allow the people in Canterbury to pay a ransom for him on the grounds that they were already too poor, the Vikings beat him to death at a drunken feast.The intensity of the violence was equal to anything in present-day Syria. Not many people have heard of the St Brice's Day massacre on 13 November 1002 when the Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelred the Unready, ordered the deaths of all Danes in his kingdom. In Oxford, surviving Danes barricaded themselves in a church (where Christ Church Cathedral now stands) and successfully defended themselves until townspeople set fire to the church. The skeletons of some 34 young men believed to have been killed in the same massacre were discovered under St John's College in 2008.Overall, the Scandinavians have a lot to apologise for. The leader of almost every Viking raiding party or army about which anything is known committed crimes which today would see them charged before the International Criminal Court.SOURCES:@BBCNewsMagazine: Were the Vikings really so bloodthirsty?Were the Vikings a civilization or savage barbarians?The truth about Vikings: Not the smelly barbarians of legend but silk-clad, blinged-up culture vulturesWere the Vikings Barbarians?Were the Vikings Really That Bad? - New HistorianSorry – the Vikings really were that bad | The SpectatorMass murderers: The Vikings were feared for a good reasonViking History: Facts & Myths

This mostly would have been bad for both the NFL and for Toronto.Toronto has had NFL ambitions for decades, but when push comes to shove, no-one want to put up the megabucks to make it happen.So, let’s say that Toronto gets an expansion franchise in 2002. There’s only one stadium large enough for them, what’s now called the Rogers Centre. That means Toronto becomes one of the few teams that are still stupid enough to play in a combo stadium.The Argos are probably out right away. They were thinking of moving out of Rogers Centre anyway, so instead of moving into BMO Field, they probably get a purpose built stadium that’s also used for University football, either on the University of Toronto campus on the site of Varsity Stadium, or up at York University in what is now Event Field. The Argos gave up that search when they were offered Rogers Centre for next to nothing.But now the NFL franchise has to deal with MLB scheduling issues. Those drove the Argos nuts towards the end of their Rogers Centre deal when the Jays unexpectedly needed the stadium for playoff games and the Argos had to play in the stadiums of opposing teams.Now, the Rogers Centre only holds 55,000 for football, which would make it the smallest NFL stadium. But where do you build a new one that would hold 80,000? The obvious answer would be on the Exhibition Grounds (where BMO field now sits) but there’s a reason the Jays and Argos wanted to get out of there. It has poor transit and there’s a lot of competition on the site from other venues. The weather there sucks too. Also, that’s city owned land and they would want the stadium to be shared. Good luck sharing it between the NFL team, Toronto FC and the Argos.And Toronto had a bad experience with Skydome. It cost $500 million against an initial budget of $150 million and it finally sold to Rogers Communication for $30 million. Expect a lot of local opposition to a plan to build another stadium.So maybe the ‘burbs. Plenty of land out there. But no transit in a city that uses a lot of it.So let’s say they get a stadium built. Would Toronto fans support a middling NFL team? Well, the Bills thought so when they agreed to play four late season games at Rogers Centre. Although interest was initially high, when fans saw the cheap seats going for $75 Cdn. they stayed away in droves. Frankly, apart from the Leafs who can sell infinite tickets, it’s fairly easy to get seats for the Raptors, Toronto FC, the Jays and the Argos.And there’s a reason we play football from June to November in Canada. After November, the weather is just too big a variable. I don’t think people would enjoy reaching an NFL championship game in late January.