"Playing" is only dismissive if you view the incredible, fast learning children achieve (compared to adults) as "mere child's play".
By "playing" at reenactment, we test out theories on how things worked, how people did things, and why they did them.
My favorite example is a Dutch hat. Every instance two friends found in artwork had a spoon slipped into two cuts in the raised brim. They thought that looked stupid, and made one without the spoon (they merely pinned the brim up). The hat wouldn't stay in place, so they decided it needed a weight to stabilize the raised side of the brim... like a spoon.
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?
You don't have to take it personally - roleplay can be an effective tool. If you're training to operate a tractor on a farm, then you are consciously "playing farmer" with the intent of driving positive results.
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.)
I don't understand how you can exist in this space (that is, Hackernews and the larger startup culture) while being dismissive of folks out there exploring their particular parameter spaces, outside of practical constraints.
But, for example, if I say that this site is a bunch of people playing at being engineers, in most contexts (maybe other than this thread) I’d expect to get some pretty annoyed responses.
Firstly, because there’s a difference between saying we’re playing with a problem, and saying we’re playing at being something.
Secondly, because it is great to be self-effacing, but less so to be others-effacing.
But having fun and playing as part of work is doesn't mean I was "playing programmer." Even had I been an unpaid trust-fund baby.
What does "play Viking" mean to you, and how do we know that's what this researcher is doing?
Would you also say that he "plays sailor", given that he's an actual sailor?
Should we say the people building the 13th- century style castle at Guédelon are playing serfdom?
Those trying to rediscover ancient building techniques are playing Egyptians, Romans, Eastern Islanders, Incans, etc.?
Was Thor Heyerdahl was "playing a 'Tiki person'" in his famous raft voyage, when that culture doesn't exist, or was he trying to demonstrate that the raft hypothesis for human migration could not simply be rejected as impossible?
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".
Unnecessary Personal attack
They struck out into the ocean without a map of the world, let alone GPS and satellite phones. They didn't even have life jackets.
Without downplaying this researcher's earnest efforts, nothing we do today could come close to truly recreating what it was like back then for people to live and breathe the sea like your life depends on it and to reacquire whatever deep nuanced tacit wisdom they accumulated about how their ships handled in the waves.
Whenever I've watched interviews or studied people at the top of a craft, any craft, you'll be surprised at the amount of detail they are sensitive to. A recent thing that comes to mind is how much Chopin studied and analysed the anatomy of the hand to deepen his understanding of piano technique
Where does it say they didn't have GPS or satellite phones with them, nor maps?
Is it a sustainable career? He only recently got his PhD.
As a kid I dreamed about being a programmer (among many other things), and I am one.
If I bought an old PDP 11/70 to get hands-on experience on using early Unix systems work, would that mean I'm playing a Bell Labs researcher?
If that word bothers you, substitute "recreating" or "testing".