You might have picked up the news already: Ancient Arabic, or to be more precise, Kufic characters have been discovered in tablet woven bands from Sweden. If this is true, the consequences might be most interesting...

One of my favourite Viking/SCA-blogs posted something really useful yesterday. It's an overview over the abundance of certain weaves (like tabby, twill, diamond etc.) in Viking Age Scandinavian textiles. Bad news for all herringbone lovers: Quit using it so much.

After the muddy showdown at Mudgård, we went south to Denmark's oldest city: Ribe. There, we would have our last stay during our Denmark tour at the Ribe Vikingecenter.

Before we continue with the article on our first time at the Ribe Vikingecenter, we pause for a small interlude with pictures from the National Museum of Scotland...

Moesgård was really big as well - this year they had more than 600 warriors fighting, plus all non-fighting companions and traders. But even though the campground not only covers a big, grassy field, but extends to the beach as well, it was very, very crowded...

Our first Danish market would have been at the Viking Age fortress Trelleborg on the island of Zealand. But before we got there, we did a short stop at Hedeby...

A few days ago we came back from our big Denmark-summer-tour. Almost a month of "Viking life", traveling from one market to the next, staying always at least one week at one place, gave us some really special impressions.

The summer solstice is over and now we walk towards the darker times of the year again. However, this is no reason to fall into some kind of winter lethargy. It's rather the opposite - most of this year's markets lie ahead of us, after all. And apart from that, we haven't been lazy.

Because the time was just right to do it, we dyed some woolen fabrics and yarns with birch leaves last weekend. The results are quite amazing...

This year's Viking season is well underway with the first market having been the exceptionally nice Easter market at Hedeby and our recent visit to the Frankfurt Archaeological Museum with Ylgia and Gisli. But there's of course more going on, so here comes a brief update on our current 'behind the scenes' activities.

During the exhibition "Odin, Thor and Freyja - Scandinavian Cult Sites of the 1st Millennium AD and the Frankish Realm" by the Archaeological Museum Frankfurt and the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, there are several guided tours focusing on a certain aspect. We visited one of them - "Women (and women pictures) in the pagan North and on the Christian continent", by Dr. Petra Hanauska.

At the first weekend of this year's May we visited the special exhibition "Odin, Thor and Freyja", hosted by the Archaeological Museum Frankfurt in cooperation with the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen. In the following post we describe our personal impression of the exhibition.

The season's first market led us to the place where the southernmost runestones once stood, a meeting place between North, South, East and West: Hedeby. We took part in the spring market and experienced a market as beautiful as the colours of the rainbow...

The Sagas tell us how Icelandic Vikings settled in Greenland, archaeological evidence has proven it a long time ago. For generations there lived a Norse population on the southwestern coast. But during the 15th century, contact with Europe ceased. The Greenlanders have died. Why?