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Category: the most interesting men in the world

Hello, I’m Viking Cronholm. Think Of Me As A Swedish Jack LaLanne That Can Kick Your Sorry Ass

Hello, I’m Viking Cronholm. Think Of Me As A Swedish Jack LaLanne That Can Kick Your Sorry Ass


Viking Cronholm might not be the Most Interesting Man In The World. But if I were the MIMITW, I wouldn’t take Viking’s seat at the bar when he goes to the bathroom, or talk to one of the several girlfriends he brought with him, because when he gets back, there’s going to be… trouble.

Not trouble for him, of course. Trouble for you. His name is Viking, for crissakes.  You don’t want to get into scrapes with men named Viking, do you? It’s like sending diplomats to talk to Vlad The Impaler. Your chance of success is right there in the name, isn’t it?

Viking was a troublesome youth. Born in 1874, he was too adventurous for his staid upbringing, so his father took him out of school and sent him off as a sort of merchant seaman to teach him a lesson about being a tough guy. It didn’t dissuade him. Sure, when he got back, he went to school to study physiotherapy, but apparently only so he’d know more ways to pull your arms out of their sockets and beat you over the head with them. After that, he went to the US, learned to box, and won a championship or two. Then he moved to South Africa, probably hoping to wrestle cape buffalo or something, and it’s there that he learned jiu jitsu, the original martial art –no doubt just so he could kick everyone’s ass without bothering to take off his coat.

He wrote the book on Jiu Jitsu, literally, and it’s gone through 34 editions.  He died in 1961, no doubt from boredom. 

Sometimes, There’s A Man…

Sometimes, There’s A Man…

I won’t say a hero, ’cause, what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man. And I’m talkin’ about Russian Speedo Dude here. Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that’s the Russian Speedo Dude, crashing the aerobics class at the beach. And even if he’s a lazy man – and the Russian Speedo Dude was most certainly that — quite possibly the laziest in the remains of the Soviet Union, which would place him high in the runnin’ for laziest worldwide. But sometimes, there’s a man — sometimes, there’s a man. Aw. I lost my train of thought here. But… aw, hell. I’ve done introduced him enough.

Spam, Oatmeal, And Brandy

Spam, Oatmeal, And Brandy

If you’re searching to place the accent, he was in the Italian Boy Scouts.

John Henderson passed away at 74 this week, at his home near Las Vegas, Nevada. He was something of a loon, a wildman, a gambler and an adventurer. In short — a duke in the kingdom of the Borderline Sociopathic Boys.

He crossed the Atlantic because it was there, and the Pacific because it was also there.
He made both crossings in a rowboat because it, too, was there, and because the lure of sea, spray and sinew, and the history-making chance to traverse two oceans without steam or sail, proved irresistible.
In 1969, after six months alone on the Atlantic battling storms, sharks and encroaching madness, John Fairfax, who died this month at 74, became the first lone oarsman in recorded history to traverse any ocean.
In 1972, he and his girlfriend, Sylvia Cook, sharing a boat, became the first people to row across the Pacific, a yearlong ordeal during which their craft was thought lost. (The couple survived the voyage, and so, for quite some time, did their romance.)(read more here)

You have to love a guy smoking a cigarette while telling you about rowing across an ocean. Insouciant is the word, I think. He was just sort of a free-spirit knockabout waif, but at the same time deadly serious about everything he was doing, while laughing and joking about it. He is the Dos Equis man for real.

Seeking to give her son structure, his mother enrolled him at 6 in the Italian Boy Scouts. It was there, Mr. Fairfax said, that he acquired his love of nature — and his determination to bend it to his will.

On a camping trip when he was 9, John concluded a fight with another boy by filching the scoutmaster’s pistol and shooting up the campsite. No one was injured, but his scouting career was over.

His parents’ marriage dissolved soon afterward, and he moved with his mother to Buenos Aires. A bright, impassioned dreamer, he devoured tales of adventure, including an account of the voyage of Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo, Norwegians who in 1896 were the first to row across the Atlantic. John vowed that he would one day make the crossing alone.

At 13, in thrall to Tarzan, he ran away from home to live in the jungle. He survived there as a trapper with the aid of local peasants, returning to town periodically to sell the jaguar and ocelot skins he had collected.  (read the rest here)

God rest ye, merry gentleman, whether he exists or not. After hearing about you, I’m not sure I believe in you, either.

(Thanks to Sam in Astoria for sending that one along)