A little bit of graffiti, scrawled in white spray paint along the short barrier wall of the ramp leading from Northbound Dulaney Valley Road to I-695 West (the outer loop of the Beltway) just north of Towson, Maryland. (More accurately, it was along the first stretch of Hampton Lane.)

It was erased sometime between 1995 and 1997, presumably by some civic-minded organization. The message had been there since at least 1989, probably longer.

Probably this referred to the mascot of Cockeysville Middle School, formerly Cockeysville Junior High; it is doubtful that it referred to the indigenous Norse tribes of legend, considering its suburban location.

As Holden Caulfield pondered the imagery of Comin Thro' the Rye, many a youngster growing up North of Baltimore has gazed on this cryptic message as it dashed by in the opposite direction of the car and wondered about its true meaning.

Could it be that female Vikings (the explorers or the students) were physically, mentally, or socially superior to others? Or was it a long-lost note from another time that the well-known Scandinavians were in fact a matriarchal society, despite historical records indicating otherwise? Maybe it was a suburban street gang marking their territory. Or perhaps it was just the product of a drug-fractured mind.

Whatever the source was, the message has been indelibly burned into my memory; who knows how many others have witnessed and contemplated it. And now, having been sandblasted away, it is lost from influencing another generation.

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Update 25 August 2001: The recently-completed construction on the I-695/Dulaney Valley Road interchange has led to the demolition of the barrier wall which formerly featured the "Viking Women Rule" message. Lost forever. Sniff.