2006-2016: A Decade Of The Daily Norseman

There are times when you take a look at your watch or a calendar or whatever it might be and you wonder exactly how the heck you got here and where the time has gone in the interim.

Today, for me, is one of those days.

Yes, it was exactly ten years ago today. . .a whole damn decade. . .since the first ever article went live here at The Daily Norseman. Sure, it was just a post of me introducing myself because I guess that's how blogs get started, but that's what it was. It certainly didn't look as pretty as our posts here do now.

Man, that list of names on the "Who will be the Vikings' leading receiver" poll. Woof. If you feel so inclined, you can poke around here to take your own trip back in time.

Also, if you see the list of football blogs at the bottom right, that was the complete list of the NFL team sites that were under the SB Nation banner when DN finally came online. This was the 60th blog on the SB Nation network overall. . .they had all the Major League Baseball teams covered first and then moved on to other spots. DN was the third blog for an NFC North team on here, following Windy City Gridiron (one of the "original six" SB Nation NFL blogs) and Pride of Detroit. I really owe WCG a lot as far as the start of this site is concerned, since happening upon their site led me to e-mailing the folks at SB Nation and asking if they needed anyone to do a Vikings' blog. Right place, right time. . .hooray for me!

We certainly have been through a lot over the time that this site has been a part of the Vikings' blogosphere.

-We went through three different coaches in Brad Childress, Leslie Frazier, and now Mike Zimmer.
-We watched as the 2008 season went down to Week 17 and a last-minute drive to give the Vikings a division championship.
-We went through the Brett Favre circus and the 2009 season in general. Who can forget the final game of that season when the Vikings demolished the Dallas Cowboys in the playoffs, huh?
-Then we got all the insanity of the 2010 season, with the Metrodome roof caving in and the Vikings wandering the countryside for their final four games of the season.
-Speaking of stadiums, we were here for the stadium debate in 2012. That was a pretty high point for us. . .I remember having 500+ people here (which, at the time, was a lot) at midnight on a weeknight so that we could watch a bunch of old people debate about taxes and fireworks and racinos and OH MY GOODNESS THINK OF THE CHILDREN! That was pretty awesome.
-There was the 2012 season, with the Vikings going on a four-game winning streak to reach the playoffs and Adrian Peterson chasing Eric Dickerson's record.
-We closed down the Metrodome with a fourth quarter comeback win, which was nice. (And man, does my Cordarrelle Patterson hyperbole in that post look ridiculous now.)
-We then had Peterson's 2014 adventures, which were. . .ummmm, significantly less awesome than his 2012 adventures. I'm going to leave it at that because, seriously, I don't want to listen to the crap storm again.
-We got to watch Mike Zimmer come in and take this team to the post-season, becoming the first team to do so while playing at a "temporary" home, culminating in the third-coldest game in NFL history.

It's been a pretty outstanding ride to this point, ladies and gentlemen. There have been a lot of fun moments and a lot of folks that have contributed to them. From the stats I've been keeping (both through Sitemeter when we had it and through Google Analytics since we lost it), this side has generated over 40 million visits since it came online in 2006.

I'm not sure how many folks out there have been around for the entire ten years that we've been online. I know that some folks. . .both on the front page writing side and on the commenting side. . .have been here for a long time. But whether you just stop by to read occasionally or you have a billion comments under your belt or you've written articles for our site that have been read by thousands, I want to say thank you for making this site everything it's become over the past ten years.

Hopefully in another ten years. . .since I'm not planning on going anywhere. . .we can use this space to talk about the titles the Vikings have won in the past ten years, Peterson's first-ballot enshrinement into the Hall of Fame, and when they're going to rename that big silver thing the Super Bowl winner gets every season to the Mike Zimmer Trophy.

Thanks again, everybody!