A brief history of Minnesota Vikings mascots

This week’s theme week among the SB Nation NFL blogs has to do with jerseys and mascots. We’ll have something jersey-related coming up tomorrow, but for now I wanted to take a look at the long and illustrious history of Minnesota Vikings’ mascots over the years. They’ve had quite a few, and a couple have had pretty interesting stories.

Many of the older generation of Vikings fans will likely remember Hub Meeds, who was the Vikings’ first mascot. Meeds made his debut as the Vikings’ mascot at Super Bowl IV back in 1970, and did so pretty much entirely by accident.

Meeds and his brother made the trip to Tulane Stadium in New Orleans to see the Vikings take on the Kansas City Chiefs. Stadium personnel, seeing them in costume, simply assumed that they were with the team in some way and let them onto the field. (Security wasn’t quite as big a deal in those days, obviously.) After that, Meeds asked the team if he could be their permanent mascot, and he filled that role until 1992. He even busted out the costume for the final game at the Metrodome back in 2013.

After the team went sans mascot in 1993, in 1994 the world was introduced to Ragnar. Ragnar, who was played by Joe Juranitch, came out onto the field driving a motorcycle, sporting a long beard and a fuzzy vest. Ragnar made the move with the team to TCF Bank Stadium in 2014, but abruptly cut ties with him in 2015 when it was rumored that Juranitch was looking for around $15,000 a game to continue with his duties. He was last seen doing. . .well, this.

And who could ever forget Vikadontis Rex? The big, purple dinosaur. . .as opposed to that other, slightly more famous big, purple dinosaur. . .was the official mascot of the Vikings Children’s Fund, and was with the team for much of the 90s. He was retired before the start of the 2000 season.

Seriously, he was a Zubaz-wearing purple dinosaur. I have no idea why the heck this didn’t catch on.

(Found that picture on the Vikings Reddit page, so I think it’s safe to use.)

Viktor the Viking is the team’s current mascot, and has been with the club since 2007. The team had made a couple of prior attempts to make a team-based mascot, but finally settled upon the Viktor concept in hopes of connecting with younger fans. Thus far, it seems to have worked.

The Vikings have had a mascot on the sidelines for the better part of their history, and now you know all about who all of them were. Do you have a particular favorite?