Spelling is hard, especially when the word is “Gjallarhorn”

On Friday, a champion was crowned in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. The winner, a young man from Texas, won the competition when he correctly spelled the word “koinonia.” Koinonia, as you’ll all surely recall, was the title of an Outkast album from early in the 2000s.

(No, it wasn’t.)

In the spirit of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the folks from the Minnesota Vikings’ official website asked some members of the team how to spell the word “gjallarhorn.” For the uninitiated, the gjallarhorn is the giant instrument that is sounded at U.S. Bank Stadium at the start of every game, generally by someone pretty famous.

The results of this more informal spelling competition were captured and put up on the Vikings’ website, which I unfortunately can’t embed here because NFL rules are what they are and stuff. But, you can check it out at the link.

Apparently being able to spell gjallarhorn is a prerequisite for Vikings’ tight ends, as the only two players in the video that got it the first time without any assistance were tight ends Kyle Rudolph and David Morgan. Not surprisingly, most of the players quizzed missed the “J” at the beginning, and Stephen Weatherly thinks the “o” in gjallarhorn is an “O with the thingy over it.” And, in true spelling bee spirit, we even got Nick Easton asking for “country of origin.”

No earth-shattering news or anything here, but it is an entertaining watch on a Saturday afternoon. And, in the interest of full disclosure, if I hadn’t been using the word on this site on a regular basis, I probably wouldn’t have any idea how to spell it, either.