It sure looks like they are wearing life jackets in the video.

Where does it say they didn't have GPS or satellite phones with them, nor maps?

We are agreed that the first is meant more negative, and the second more positive, yes?

Is this researcher more like the first case or the second case?

The Norse used their ships for trade and pirating, and to travel places where alternative transit was far too difficult. Like your farming example, trade and pirating helped put food on the table.

This researcher did none of those. His income came from other sources.

What does it mean to "play Viking", and how is it connected to monetizing one's PhD, which is the other half of what I complained about?

(In any distinctive sense. Anyone with a career in their PhD field has by definition monetized their PhD, and in some careers (like my high school teachers), a PhD in any field gives you a salary raise. But none of the examples are referred to "playing X" in order to monetize their education.)

That's not Heyerdahl's diffusion model. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl

> The expedition was supposed to demonstrate that the legendary sun-worshiping red-haired, bearded, and white-skinned "Tiki people" from South America drifted and colonized Polynesia first, before actual Polynesian peoples. His hyperdiffusionist ideas on ancient cultures had been widely rejected by the scientific community, even before the expedition ....

> Heyerdahl's hypothesis was part of early Eurocentric hyperdiffusionism and the westerner disbelief that (non-white) "stone-age" peoples with "no math" could colonize islands separated by vast distances of ocean water, even against prevailing winds and currents. He rejected the highly skilled voyaging and navigating traditions of the Austronesian peoples and instead argued that Polynesia was settled from boats following the wind and currents for navigation from South America. ...

The genetic evidence does not support his theory.

Nor is it right to attribute the idea of a possible connection to Heyerdahl. Nordenskiöld wrote about "'Oceanian' Cultural Elements in South America" in 1931, https://archive.org/details/09-comparative-ethnographical-st...

> As is well known, we find in South America quite a number of culture elements of which parallels are found in Oceania.1 These we may call ’’Oceanian’’, although this certainly does not imply any proof that they have been imported into America from Oceania. These “Oceanian’’ culture elements may derive their origin from the crew of some weather-driven vessel, because the possibility of such having landed upon the coasts of America is not entirely to be disregarded, as Friederici has fairly convincingly shown.

> [p24]... Friederici has pointed out that there is much which speaks for the theory of weather-driven Oceanian vessels having reached America but nothing of their returning whence they came, or of Indians sailing westward and reaching any Oceanic island. It is important to note that all islands off the South American coast that cannot be seen from the mainland, such as the Galapagos, Juan Fernandez, etc., at the time of the discovery of America were uninhabited and, judging from everything, always had been so.

(I think the Friederici reference is "Zu den vorkolumbischen Verbindungen der Südsee-Völker mit Amerika" - "Regarding the pre-Columbian connections of the South Seas with America", 1929. Heyerdahl was born in 1914, so about 15 years old.)

As I recall, the prevailing hypothesis was that any contact came likely from the Pacific. Heyerdahl didn't believe that was possible, and it must have been the other way. People argued that South Americans didn't have the sailing ability to reach Polynesia. Heyerdahl demonstrated that opposing argument was incorrect, by doing it. That doesn't mean it must have happened.

So, no, Heyerdahl's hypothesis is completely wrong, and the new evidence we have more strongly support older hypotheses by others, which Heyerdahl disagreed with.

No, I didn't say "play" was dismissive.

I said that describing the researcher's work as "play Viking", done as a way to monetize one's PhD, is dismissive.

The more so as the researcher was partially self-funded, and didn't have a PhD.

I don't think it's right to characterize everyone doing experimental archeology about Norse practices as "playing Viking", nor to only pick out those studying shipping routes.

The same for other fields - I wouldn't say that people researching how the ancient Romans made concrete are "playing Romans".

Where do you see me dismissing play?

What does "play Viking" mean to you, in the context of what this researcher is doing?

Don't overlook that snowwrestler coupled playing Viking to monetizing one's PhD.

Do you do historical reenactment in order to monetize your play?

If I learn to operate a 1907 Avery steam tractor, would you say I am playing farmer?