Erling Haaland is the only man who can unite America

Unfortunately for Republicans, he is Norwegian.

Wikipedia

In a summer of ICE raids, war and political misery, America finally found its unifying figure: a 6-foot-5 Norwegian striker built like a Viking tank.

Erling Haaland has seven goals in this World Cup. He is blond. He is enormous. He eats heart and liver. He is Thor in Fendi. On the field, he looks less like a soccer player than a Norse god who has been informed there is a village nearby that has not yet surrendered.

His two goals against Brazil sent Norway into the quarterfinals and straight into soccer history.

And because of him, Americans have spent the past week engaged in the increasingly rare act of liking the same guy.

Haaland now stands between England and the World Cup semifinals. But goals alone cannot explain his complete internet takeover.

The 25-year-old phenom is now a global cultural icon far beyond soccer. His Instagram following has exploded from 40 million to 60 million during the tournament. Feeds are filled with his cowboy era, Hermès bags, man bun and supposed “healthy masculinity.” He has compared himself to Shrek and Majin Buu. Nike released an ad Wednesday called “The Five Stages of Haaland,” and he has been invited onto The Tonight Show. When a woman went viral as his doppelgänger, Haaland appeared in her comments with a simple: “Hi.”

Then came the Norway Row, a celebration involving synchronized imaginary oars that has somehow infected the entire planet. It has spread from a Boston escalator to the New York subway and a Mets game. Dallas police rowed on the tarmac as Norway’s plane landed. Kindergartners are rowing. Nursing homes are rowing. Parliament is rowing. The prime minister is rowing. We have apparently discovered that the highest expression of human joy is sitting in a line and pretending there is a fjord nearby.

This is apparently all America needed.

But the Haaland Effect has had one unexpected side effect.

It accidentally made Americans google Norway. And what Americans are discovering presents something of an ideological problem.

Americans are learning about a place with universal health care, public universities without tuition for its citizens, generous parental leave and a comprehensive social safety net. It is exactly the kind of delicious social democracy Republicans have spent decades warning would turn men soft and lazy.

For the American right, a generous welfare state is supposed to produce dependents, not Vikings.

Instead, it produced Erling effing Haaland.

This is particularly inconvenient for an American right currently in the throes of a masculinity panic. The right has spent years demanding the return of the strong Western man and built an entire political movement around the idea that men are catastrophically low on testosterone.

Haaland should be their perfect specimen.

But Haaland does not seem particularly anxious about being a man.

For all that Viking ferocity, he is emotionally generous. Most important, he appears to be having an absolutely fantastic time.

Maybe that is part of why Americans have fallen so hard for Haaland. For a few weeks, we have been allowed to participate in something that feels almost quaint: a shared cultural obsession that does not require us to declare which half of the country we hate.

Haaland cannot fix America. But for 90 minutes, maybe he can get us on the same boat.