Vikings and Sunbirds YEARS?

School colors and mascots are important and even integral symbols of an institution’s identity and spirit. While school colors are vital to branding, it’s the mascot that is so uniquely uniting. After all, ranging from the realistic to the fantastical, these characters faithfully appear at every athletic event and community gathering. If asked, nearly everyone has at least one story involving a school mascot infused with pride, entertainment, fear or dislike. For the community it represents, the situation may involve a costume issue or a problematic connotation.

How much of the story and related materials documenting the creation and influence of a mascot kept by an archive varies. Here in the Mennonite Library & Archives at FPU, references to both Vikings and Sunbirds appear most often in student newspapers and photographs. There’s no record of a mascot before 1960. From then until the 1980s, a Viking ship and helmets appear, as well as a green and white color palette, despite having no ties to California or the ideals associated with a Mennonite school. In the spring of 1981, a shift in name and a community effort brought plenty of play with the words and ideas of sun and birds much more befitting a California Mennonite school led to the creation of the Sunbirds—enter Sunny.

Though (as later discovered) sunbirds are in fact real birds; as with many mascot depictions, Sunny has always leaned towards the more fantastical. There have even been a few iterations across time, and it’s fun to see the changes in historical images—from the early days of homemade “nightmare-fuel” caricature, complete with a Viking helmet, to the more official, athletic and brightly colored version seen today.