I'm just a litte bit cuirios, is it a lot of people from Sweden here?

Tjena. Jag det iallafall.....

me too

bah, Finland rules! ;)

Insomnium, are you from Finland too? :D loads of us here ;D

Heia Norge! ;)

Og i hvert fald en enkelt fra Danmark her :-)

Seems to be some scandinavians here after all. Passar bra lagom till OS!(OL!) :o) vsbyn, Norrbotten, Sweden here. About 1000 km from the nearest poser user i'm afraid... Thank god for Renderosity! /man

no, France :), hello Sweden ..............

Hi from Sweden! :-)

I played football for Sweden once :o)....Steve PS not the national team of course LOL

Hi Swedish too. Southern part in a town called Helsingborg.

I've been running a Viking campaign which starts in Birka (trading town on Lake Malar a thousand years ago), does that count? If there is anybody from that area present in this forum, I'd love to exchange emails - yes I have some questions! :) Carolly

Nice to see there are people from northern Europe here among all these Americans that seems to believe there's no life outside the US! Carolly: Glad to know there's someone who knows what a real viking looked like instead of that common icon of a guy wearing a horned helmet. See you, guys! - Zoot

The only horns my guys have are for drinking! ;^) I'm trying to limit the magic in the world of the campaign to what is mentioned in the sagas. Aside from the occasional troll or talking boar, the landscape, clothing, and customs are as real as I can make them. By going east from Birka to Mikligardi, the world is rich enough. A pity that gravegoods do not survive intact, but even if they did, we'd only get part of the story. If we had a similar practice today, we might be buried with the car and the paintbrushes, but who would take an alarm clock to the next world? Carolly

Carolly, It's really nice to see that someone has an interest in the vikings, it's a fascinating period in our history that is often misunderstood. The vikings were not only about rape, pillage and plunder as the myths seems to focus on. They were skilled sailors and explorers and traded with remote parts of the world. I was born not far from where Birka was situated, allthough I live in another part of the country now.

My degree field 30 years ago was "a special projects major in early Scandinavian culture". Everyone else was studying their ancestry ("Roots" had just come out), so I wanted to study mine. Having followed many of Tolkien's sources back to the Eddas and family sagas (I love doing research), it was natural to want to learn more. :) Finding professors here in America who could teach me about law and trade and such wasn't that hard, either, so the view I have of the Vikings is indeed well rounded and richly textured. Right now I have the monographs from the finds in the Birka burial grounds (textiles and metal work) but they are in German, and from the earlier digs, not the recent one. However, they do provide images of what they thought was important enough to be buried with. The water level has changed a lot (what actually killed Birka as a trade city was apparently losing the harbors), but I'd still like to visit someday and visualize all those traders from so many lands docking there. I believe that there is also a museum nearby? Did you visit Rosaring when you lived there? That should be near, too? Carolly

No, I didn't. As is usually the case, I'm very bad when it comes to visiting tourist sites and museums in the immediate vicinity of where I live! That is the typical thing to do when travelling somewhere else, LOL.

::chuckle:: I can understand that. I haven't been to any of the local zoos, and few of the museums... or tourist sites. When visitors come, I usually take them to the Yosemite high country (a 4-hour drive, but it used to be my "backyard"). Living in a area with 6.9 million people, the last thing I want to see is more people, and my friends are of like mind. I've been drawing old castles and stone circles and such for decades. Someday I'll get to walk in real ones. Is there a good "Old Norse to English" Dictionary? I have a "grammer", but not a "dictionary"... and it would really help. Thanks, Carolly