With Americans thinking of fleeing the US for Cape Breton, the question has to be asked. Is Donald Trump a Viking?

Not the “axe-wielding”- “no holds barred”-“take no prisoners” kind. 

How’s about a genetically real Viking?

Trump's Germanic background on his father's side is well known. But perhaps less well known  - and the source of his blonde hair -is the legacy he inherited from his mother. 

Mary Anne MacLeod was born in 1912 at Tong on the outer Hebridean Island of Lewis in Scotland. The Hebrides have hardly been strategic territory for almost anyone except the Vikings. They raided often -so often that the raids eventually became “visits”. And they left a fair bit of blonde hair among other things in the gene pool.

Mary Anne also probably left Donald with her “Wee Free” legacy. The Free Church of Scotland was formed by evangelical presbyterians who broke away from the Church of Scotland in reaction to state-control of the Church and the patronage which followed. They are known in Scotland as the “Wee Frees” and are orthodox Christian conservatives. (They’re featured in the 1996 drama “Breaking The Waves” shot in Lewis.) So it may turn out that Trump is a real Republican after all.

As to the other kind of Viking… Trump’s appearance and behavior in the Republican Nomination is not unprecedented -contrary to the currently held view of the American media. The other Viking in that pool was Teddy Roosevelt. 

His nomination battle with William Taft was just as brutal and “no holds barred” as this one has proven to be. Roosevelt was also a self-made man and had a genius for furthering his “brand”. He saw Taft as a political insider, an Establishment man who was an agent “of the forces of reaction and of political crookedness”. Taft fired back stating that Roosevelt was “the greatest menace to our institutions that we have had in a long time”. He was a dangerous man, said Taft, “because of his hold upon the less intelligent voters and the discontented”. Both men were calling each other liars and spent most of the campaign slinging mud and bricks at each other.

Roosevelt went on to win all but one of the primaries only to see the party insiders stack the convention with delegates. Taft was given the nomination -Roosevelt set up a third party run and Democrat Woodrow Wilson came up the middle to become President.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1912-republican-convention-855607/