FOXBORO, Mass. — In a dazzling display of tradition mixed with marketing, Norway’s national soccer team was decked out in Viking garb for a team photo last week before traveling to North America. As The Athletic’s Greg O’Keefe put it so well, the photo shows a “gang of grizzled Nordic warriors assembled beside a fjord, weapons in hand, long boats in the background, preparing to raid.”After training in Greensboro, N.C., Team Norway traveled to Foxboro, Mass., for one more practice before making its first World Cup appearance since 1998, a 4-1 victory over Iraq on Tuesday night at “Boston Stadium,” home of the New England Patriots. Here’s another first: It marked the first time a collection of Vikings has performed in this building since the lads from Minnesota suffered a 24-10 loss to the Patriots on Dec. 2, 2018.Those 2018 Vikings had quarterback Kirk Cousins and the pass-catching tandem of Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs, each of whom registered 1,000-plus receiving yards. But with apologies to all three of these fine players, the 2018 American football Vikings didn’t have anybody with the star power of Erling Haaland, the 25-year-old striker who scored two of Norway’s goals in this, his first World Cup match.There’s an urge to proclaim Haaland the biggest megastar to perform at Boston Stadium/Gillette Stadium since Tom Brady was lighting up the sky for the Patriots. Except that wouldn’t be quite accurate. Soccer legend Lionel Messi has played here several times, including two visits in the post-Brady era. And come on: Taylor Swift has performed here. But Haaland breathes that sort of rarefied air. We could roll out all the scoring magic he’s performed as a member of Manchester City in the Premier League, but this is more fun: Haaland has some 40 million Instagram followers. To put that in perspective, New England’s own Drake Maye, who earlier this year quarterbacked the Patriots to the Super Bowl, has about 1 million.For New England-based fans in the house, then, this might have been the first time they’ve seen the 6-foot-5, 207-pound Haaland. And they didn’t come away disappointed. Haaland’s first goal came in the 29th minute when he went into a slide while redirecting David Møller Wolfe’s cross. After Iraq tied it, Haaland gave Norway a 2-1 lead thanks in large part to a defensive breakdown that allowed him to redirect an attempted clearing pass by Iraq goaltender Jalal Hassan into the net.