A hush will fall over the crowd on Sunday night at U.S. Bank Stadium, just before kickoff between the Vikings and the Atlanta Falcons.

The calm before the storm.

In that moment, Hall of Fame defensive end Jared Allen will raise his arms above his head, wait for that unmistakable beat to drop, then clap his hands together while more than 65,000 people join in unison.

“If somebody isn’t ready, for whatever reason, I promise they’ll be locked in after that Skol Chant,” safety Josh Metellus said. “It’s almost like a college feel because everybody in the building is doing it.”

As the tempo slowly picks up and the Skol Chant builds to a crescendo, Allen will put an exclamation point on the pregame ritual by sounding the Gjallarhorn from its permanent perch in the northwest corner of the stadium.

“There’s nothing quite like it,” edge rusher Jonathan Greenard said. “It really makes it feel like we’re about to go to battle.”

That type of reaction has always been the ultimate goal for vice president of content and production Bryan Harper. He has served in his current role with the Vikings for the past decade and takes immense pride in fostering an environment in the stands that provides an advantage on the field.

Where does the Skol Chant fall into that equation? It might be the most important part of an elaborate production that features everything from fake snow falling from the rafters to players running out of a tunnel shaped like a Viking ship that used to shoot fire before the NFL banned pyrotechnics.

Though the addition of the Skol Chant can be traced back to Sept. 18, 2016, when the Vikings were host to the Green Bay Packers in the first home game at U.S. Bank Stadium, the inception of the idea came a few months earlier — when Iceland upset England in the knockout stage of the 2016 European Championship to reach the quarterfinals of its first major international soccer tournament.

After bowing out in the next round, Iceland returned home to a hero’s welcome, greeted by more than 30,000 people that showed up in the capital city of Reykjavik to celebrate the accomplishment. A video clip of the celebration went viral on social media. It showed the crowd participating in something known in Iceland as the Viking War Chant, with everybody in attendance raising their arms over their heads, waiting the beat to drop, then clapping their hands in unison.

That sound familiar?

“We knew we had an opportunity to create a new tradition when we opened U.S. Bank Stadium,” Harper said. “That happened and it kind of smacked us in the face, like, ‘There it is.’ ”

As intrigued as the Vikings were immediately after seeing it, it was important to them that they didn’t rip it off. They wanted whatever they did with it to feel authentic at its core.

That prompted vice president of social impact Brett Taber to reach out to Football Association of Iceland on behalf of the Vikings. Eventually, Taber got in contact with team captain Aron Gunnarsson.

“It meant something special to us that it was coming from Iceland,” Taber said. “There was like a Viking heritage aspect to it.”

In the end, Gunnarsson gifted the Viking War Chant on behalf of Iceland, doing so with the help of professional powerlifter Thor Bjornsson, who has also starred as the Mountain in the HBO hit series “Game of Thrones.” A video clip of Gunnarsson and Bjornsson explaining the Viking War Chant was shown on the big screen at the first home game at U.S. Bank Stadium.

“They were visible Icelandic figures that people might recognize,” Harper said. “The pride that they had in it was really cool.”

After making some subtle tweaks to make it their own, the Vikings rolled out the Skol Chant before kickoff. A number of team legends were at the epicenter of the spectacle, including quarterback Fran Tarkenton up in the stands and the Purple People Eaters down on the field.

“We knew the key was going to be how we launched it,” Harper said. “We knew if we got it right, it was going to something that we could build upon.”

It was a steady build from there as the Skol Chant started to become more and more ubiquitous across the state.

As much traction as it gained in the early stages, the defining stretch came roughly a year later when journeyman quarterback Case Keenum led the Vikings on a magical run that culminated with the Minneapolis Miracle.

“We started seeing it pop up everywhere,” Harper said. “You really started to see it take hold and we knew, ‘OK. This is going to last.’ ”

Asked if there is a specific Skol Chant that stands out above the rest, Harper and Taber both pointed to the immediate aftermath of the Minneapolis Miracle. There’s a memorable camera shot of Keenum leading the Skol Chant amid of the euphoria.

“He just started doing it by himself, and then the crowd started doing it with him,” Taber said. “That was when it it was like, ‘OK. This is never going to die. This is a part of who we are.’ ”

The momentum has continued over the past decade as the Skol Chant has taken on a life of its own. It’s commonplace for fans to greet each other on the street by raising their arms above their head and clapping their hands together.

“It has become this rallying cry synonymous with the Vikings,” Taber said. “That’s even more special than what it means inside of U.S. Bank Stadium.”

It still means something inside U.S. Bank Stadium, too.

“I’m extremely excited to get that Skol Chant going,” quarterback J.J. McCarthy said. “It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

It’s safe to say the Skol Chant has worked out better than anybody could’ve ever imagined.

“We hoped that it would turn into something like this,” Harper said. “Now we look at what it’s become and it’s like, ‘Wow.’ ”

What if Iceland never goes on that Cinderella run?

“None of this ever happens,” Taber said. “We never would’ve thought of it.”

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By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Republicans handed President Donald Trump a political victory Friday, giving final legislative approval to a redistricting plan that could help Republicans win an additional U.S. House seat in next year’s elections.

The Senate vote sends the redistricting plan to Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe for his expected signature to make it law. But opponents immediately announced a referendum petition that, if successful, could force a statewide vote on the new map.

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Missouri is the third state to take up mid-decade redistricting in an emerging national battle for partisan advantage ahead of the midterm elections. Republican lawmakers in Texas passed a new U.S. House map last month aimed at helping their party win five additional seats. Democratic lawmakers in California countered with their own redistricting plan aimed at winning five more seats, but it still needs voter approval.

Each seat could be critical, because Democrats need to gain just three seats to win control of the House, which would allow them to obstruct Trump’s agenda and launch investigations into him. Trump is trying to stave off a historic trend in which the president’s party typically loses seats in midterm elections.

Republicans currently hold six of Missouri’s eight U.S. House seats. The revised map passed the state House earlier this week as the focal point of a special session called by Kehoe.

Missouri’s revised map targets a seat held by Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver by shaving off portions of his Kansas City district and stretching the rest of it into Republican-heavy rural areas. The plan reduces the number of Black and minority residents in Cleaver’s district, partly by creating a dividing line along a street that Cleaver said had been a historical segregation line between Black and white residents.

Cleaver, who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor, has served in Congress for over 20 years. He won reelection with over 60% of the vote in both 2024 and 2022 under districts adopted by the Republican-led state Legislature after the 2020 census.

By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — There still are no protocols for attorneys to get in touch with clients at the immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, and detainees are often transferred just before scheduled lawyer visits, according to new court papers alleging continued unconstitutional obstacles for meeting with legal representatives.

Thursday’s court papers were filed in response to a transfer from Miami to Fort Myers of the federal lawsuit claiming detainees have been denied private meetings with immigration attorneys while being held at the facility built by the state of Florida in the Everglades wilderness.

It also comes a week after a federal appellate court panel, in a separate environmental lawsuit, allowed operations to continue at the detention center by putting on hold a lower court’s preliminary injunction ordering the facility to wind down by the end of October. A third federal lawsuit challenging practices at the facility claims immigration is a federal issue and Florida agencies and the private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate the facility.

“Detained individuals have a First Amendment right to communicate with their attorneys in confidence,” lawyers said Thursday in the legal rights case.

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to omit information about detainees at the facility from its online locator system “so attorneys cannot confirm whether detained clients are held at the facility.” During videoconferences with their lawyers, detainees are placed in cages that aren’t soundproof with staff in earshot, and documents for clients are subject to review by staff, the attorneys said.

Unlike other detention facilities which don’t require prior appointments, at the Everglades facility, if lawyers want to meet in-person with their clients, they must schedule a meeting three days in advance. That gives the facility the opportunity to transfer out detainees, denying them legal access, they lawyers said.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in late June raced to build the facility on an isolated airstrip surrounded by wetlands to aid President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport people living in the U.S. illegally. Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups around the nation as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations.

The center has been plagued by reports of unsanitary conditions and detainees being cut off from the legal system. Other states have since announced plans to open their own immigration detention centers.

As part of the legal rights lawsuit, the attorneys for the detainees want to make a visit to the facility in mid-October, but the federal and state government defendants said it wasn’t necessary. The detainees’ attorneys also asked for permission to keep their clients anonymous in public court filings and to use pseudonyms instead.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social

By Brett Pulley, Michael Sasso and Gabrielle Coppola, Bloomberg News

Before the immigration raid on the battery plant in Georgia that’s upended relations between the U.S. and South Korea, there was growing resentment from locals who felt left out of the jobs, economic opportunities and wealth created by the factory, part of a massive $7.6 billion manufacturing complex anchored by Hyundai Motor Co.

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In the nearby port city of Savannah, where over half the population is Black and most elected officials are Democrats, leaders questioned how jobs were being filled at the battery plant, a joint venture by the Korean companies Hyundai and LG Energy Solution Ltd., and other nearby factories. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, and local politicians had touted the development as a boon to the entire region, eventually offering more than $2 billion in taxpayer-subsidized incentives.

“First we’re told to support this because it will create jobs — then we’re told, ‘Because you’re not trained, I’ve got to bring these other people in,’ ” said Jamal Toure, an adjunct professor at Savannah State University and host of a radio show and podcast, where the topic has been discussed. “How do we benefit from this? For the average citizen, the average African American here, they don’t see the impact.”

Some 25 miles west of the city, the sprawling industrial complex that Hyundai calls Metaplant sits in once rural Bryan County, where over 70% of residents are white and President Donald Trump and other Republicans have received strong support. The politics and demographics are different, but the concern over who wins from the surge in economic development is similar.

“They said Hyundai is coming, and we’re just going to make you all bigger. We’re getting new everything,” Megan Lee, a 26-year-old who grew up here, said as the sound of bulldozers and backhoes rumbled at nearby construction sites. Lee said the truck stop where she works booms with business as a result of the plant, but she’s not sure that she and her neighbors directly benefit. “I liked us being a small town.”

Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America employees watch as a pre-production IONIQ 9 makes its way through General Assembly in Ellabell, Georgia, in November 2024. (Hyundai/Hyundai/TNS)

The fallout from the raid last week that saw 475 people, mostly Koreans, rounded up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and accused of working illegally is still playing out in Washington, Seoul and in corporate boardrooms around the world. The Korean workers are flying home on Thursday after the countries’ top diplomats met in Washington in a bid to alleviate the tension between the governments.

Among local opponents, who run the gamut from activists focused on jobs for underserved communities to anti-development forces who broadly oppose change, there’s often confusion about how the various factories operate and the difference between temporary jobs needed to set up a plant and longer-term roles once operations begin. But as Trump pushes for more foreign investment to fuel a manufacturing renaissance in the U.S., tensions like those seen around the EV battery plant outside Savannah are a risk for his ambitions.

And indeed, Hyundai Chief Executive Officer José Muñoz said in an interview that construction work at the battery plant is being delayed at least two months as the companies involved grapple with worker shortages.

South Korean firms from LG Energy to SK On Co. are building some 22 plants in the U.S., but the companies say the projects hinge on moving trained engineers quickly across international borders — a practice being undermined by visa bottlenecks and heightened immigration scrutiny.

Asian companies dominate the market for EV batteries, having developed the technology in their home countries for decades. Automakers looking to bring the expertise to the U.S. have formed joint ventures to build new plants, and it’s common for tensions over language, workplace culture or intellectual property concerns to arise during the process, according to two U.S. battery manufacturing executives who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive issues.

The manufacturers typically hire American companies for construction of the buildings that house production lines. But when it comes to installing specialized equipment, they rely on employees of the companies that sell it — typically Korean, Japanese or Chinese — to work in the U.S. temporarily to install the equipment at the plants. That’s because they are trying to replicate a finely tuned system where tiny flaws like a leak or loose pipe can contaminate an entire line, causing defective batteries. Once the equipment is up and running, local people are trained on the technology to fulfill permanent jobs, the executives said.

Other Asian manufacturers with plants in the U.S. have tapped their overseas personnel for some technical roles during construction, but those specialists typically numbered in the dozens not in the hundreds, according to people familiar with their operations.

The manufacturing complex in Georgia stretches along Interstate 16 in the town of Ellabell, with pristine new streets bearing names like Genesis Drive and Kia Drive cut through pine forests. Hyundai’s vehicle assembly plant is already producing the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 9 EV models and has plans to expand output.

A spokeswoman for the Hyundai Metaplant, Bianca Johnson, said the immigration action didn’t affect the main auto manufacturing plant. She directed questions about hiring and the immigration raids to a spokeswoman at its battery factory partner, LG Energy Solution, who declined to comment on its hiring practices.

Angela Hendrix, a spokeswoman for the Savannah Economic Development Authority, which played a large role in luring Hyundai to the region, said the detained workers weren’t full-time permanent employees. Instead, they were a mix of people working on construction, installing equipment or training people how to use that equipment.

She added that the Hyundai assembly plant and onsite affiliates have more than 2,800 employees. A Hyundai spokesman said more than 50% of the workforce at the factory is Black.

Some Savannah-area firms that supply labor to Korean-owned parts makers said the suppliers have shown a preference for employing Korean workers or contracting with Korean-owned personnel companies, creating some friction in the community.

One agency owner said he provided about 60 temporary workers to a Hyundai supplier in Rincon, Georgia, northwest of Savannah, about a year ago. The company ended the contract and hired replacements from Korea, the agency owner said, asking not to be identified to avoid upsetting companies he hopes to work with in the future. The workers were in assembly roles and wouldn’t ordinarily be considered skilled labor, the owner said.

An executive at a second Savannah-area staffing firm, who asked not to be identified for fear of disrupting her business, said Hyundai’s suppliers largely draw labor from area firms owned by fellow Koreans. To cope, the owner, who isn’t Korean, began partnering with a staffing agency owned by Koreans, supplying workers to the firm which otherwise didn’t have its own pipeline of talent, she said.

She added that many workers in Savannah have soured on Hyundai and its suppliers because of strict work rules that can lead to quick dismissal for minor infractions.

From the north Georgia mountains, Michael Aubrecht runs a boutique recruiting firm specializing in battery and energy-storage professionals. He said he approached the battery JV in the past, only to be told the company wasn’t interested in his services and had its own network of people to tap for the hard-to-find roles.

Aubrecht said he was glad to see last week’s enforcement action. “They wouldn’t consider U.S. citizens for those roles,” he lamented. “They said, ‘No, we’ve got our own group of people.’ ”

Kemp, Georgia’s governor, said that his state is committed to its relationship with South Korea and Hyundai, and appreciated their commitment to adhere to state and federal laws. “As President Trump has also noted, our relationships with the government and businesses of Korea stand on a firm foundation,” he said.

Since the ICE raid, there’s been a slowdown at many of the new businesses catering to the influx of Korean workers. “They are scared to come out,” explained Savannah native J. Brown, who said employees at his landscaping company are also fearful of ICE confrontations. “Would you come to work now?”

At 912 Korean BBQ & Hot Pot, Hyundai workers had almost disappeared in the past week, according to a server named Lulu.

But other, less conspicuous locales seemed to be doing better. One spot down the road, Jin Guk, was packed with more than 50 diners as a Korean golf tournament played on the LG flat-panel televisions hanging on the wall.

Workers were expecting business to drop off because of the raids, according to a young man at the cash register, who appeared to be the only worker in the restaurant who spoke English and Korean. But that hadn’t been the case, he said.

One Korean engineer working at the battery plant said that he arrived on a temporary visa to install equipment and train workers. The man, who asked to be identified only by his surname Lee, and who speaks English haltingly, said he had arrived in Georgia just one day after the immigration raid.

“We help with setup and installation, and some supervising,” Lee said outside Jin Guk. “For three to six months, we train and make sure everything is working right. After that, we go back to Korea.”

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