Underbelly

Two weeks after Elsinore and I'm still brooding over Saxo Grammaticus. Have you reread Saxo lately (you never ask an intellectual...

I did a bit of Googling last night and satisfied myself that the Norwegian kroner is indeed one of the most overvalued currencies in the wo...

I've spent a good bit of time these past few days admiring Viking longboats, warrior halls, stave churches and suchlike. It's a hu...

So we're checking in from Gotland off the Swedish coast, where they like to think they are not quite part of Sweden and that the langua...

Women in the Viking world,  how did they do?  Were they just chattels, baggage, or did they have a life of their own? On the surface, you...

From a marker by a Swedish burial mound: The Thing took place at Anundshög all through the Middle Ages.  This was a meting point for the ...

Please walk on the grass.

I know it is a total cheap shot to make fun of people's efforts with a language not their own but here is an item that deserves more ho...

I've spent more of my life than is entirely wholesome wandering around the interiors of Medieval European Cathedrals: on documents tha...

From the window display at the English language bookstore just a heartbeat away from the campus at Uppsala, Sweden's esteemed and vener...

My mother came from a Swedish family.  I took her back here for a brief visit when she was in her 70s--younger than am now, actually.  She...

“Those Viking raids: I think they were misunderstood.” Sven—his name have to have been Sven—took another Swig on his Duges Perfect Idjit. ...