“Row! Row! Row!” a crowd of Norway football fans chants in unison as they steer a fleet of invisible longships up a Boston escalator, where they were recently spotted by Northeastern University communication studies professor Stephen Warren on his way home after a Norway-Iraq watch party.
Created by superfan Ole Frøystad in 2025, the “Viking row” has swept the globe during the 2026 World Cup, erupting everywhere from New York’s Times Square to the Norwegian Parliament, where politicians joined in the viral trend.
Norway football fans are not the only ones breaking into what looks like spontaneous street theater these days. The Dutch Oranje Bus Parade in Monterrey, Mexico, had arm-linked fans hopping in unison as they performed the iconic left-right jumping dance. The Scottish “Tartan Army” swept through Boston around Scotland’s June 13th opening match, with thousands of kilted fans marching through Fenway Park to the sound of bagpipes and “putting traffic cones on top of things,” Warren says. The makeover dates back to 1980s Glasgow, where the Duke of Wellington statue at the Gallery of Modern Art was first spotted sporting the humorous headpiece.
Read more at Northeastern Global News
Photo by Cornelius Poppe/NTB via AP
