Thyra’s one shot entry into the I Write the Songs contest has been posted under her human fiction section.
Read, enjoy and comment!
To read the other entries by other author’s in the I Write the Songs Contest, go here.
Chapter 24 has now been posted! Read it here.
Yggdrasil is a huge ash-tree with branches so long they go into the sky and three long roots that end in three different worlds.
One root ends up in Åsgård and the norner are living by a well close to that root. The three norner, called Urd, Verdande and Skuld, are the goddesses of the past, present and future. When a child is born the norner will be there and measure up the time this child will have to live. The three norner are also keeping the Yggdrasil alive by giving it water from the well.
Another root ends up with the rimtusser or jotner – the giants. Here is Mime`s Well which is looked after by the very clever Mime. This well is the source of wisdom and this is where Odin almost died to get that wisdom.
The third root is in Nilvheim or Hel – the land of the dead. There is a well there as well but it`s filled with snakes and worms, among them the terrible Nidhogg who is chewing on the root of Yggdrasil.
The Yggdrasil is the most holy of all places.
Yggdrasil is also the name of a Swedish folk-metal band. Here is one of their songs:
Hi, Thyra10 readers! Please forgive the inundation of posts while I get some of the navigation straightened out on the site. For those of you who follow the blog by email, there is an option to get a daily digest if you have subscribed to instant updates.
Please be patient while I continue to work on her site. The only stories that are navigating properly are Sookie the Shieldmaiden and her one shots. This does take a bit of time to sort out, so your patience is very much appreciated! 🙂
Jennifer
A post without Vikings – yes, it can happen even here 🙂
Midsummer is near and here is the Swedish celebration of it:
I found this map in a school book and figured that it would be interesting for other people than school children. It`s a map of where the Vikings went and which Vikings went where. Like all things for children, this is simplified, but it`s still interesting.
As you can see, Vikings didn`t just go places. They settled too. The color of the settlements reflect where they came from.
Sooooo in 15 minutes the game between Denmark and Germany will start (yes, we`re talking about football) – a game that will determine if Denmark will advance in the Euro cup, currently being played in Poland and Ukraine. Sweden is already out of the cup so Denmark is the last Nordic country left.
I`m biting my nails in a serious way and am clutching these pictures for good luck:
It`s Danish player Daniel Agger displaying the Danish Viking history on his back. The names of mportant Viking kings are on the tomb stones and even if this tattoo isn`t exactly pretty, I find it pretty cool – horned helmets and Chinese (?) letters and all.
The Latin text means “We are all going to die. We just don`t know when.”
We are red. We are white. We are Danish Dynamite.
It seems I`m not the only one who is fascinated with the Viking age. Viking ship are still being built so many places in Scandinavia. One project I find especially interesting is this one in Tønsberg, Norway. They are building a copy of the Oseberg ship.
The last time they tried to do that the ship sunk. The reason was that it was an exact copy of the Oseberg ship. Unfortunately the Oseberg ship was found in a gazillion little pieces and wasn`t put together entirely right so when they made a copy of a ship that wasn`t exactly the way it should have been, things went wrong.
Now, with new calculations, they are trying again.
You can read more here:
http://www.osebergvikingskip.no/eng/
And follow them here:
Thank you so much for your patience while we get all of Thyra’s fiction moved over here. As of right now all of the one shots and Sookie the Shieldmaiden are properly formatted. I am still working on the others.
Please contact one of us if you find something that is not in the right place or not working correctly.
Jen
Thyra’s Designer
Archaeologists have found a few Viking ships either used in burials or sunk in the fjords to stop enemy attacks. These ships can be seen for instance here in Oslo, Norway: The Vikingshipmuseum in Oslo or here: http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/
Copies of the ships in these museums have been made and are being made. I`ve visited several of them and they are truly lovely. But what archaeologists ask themselves is whether these ships are what the Vikings truly did use. One can`t help wondering if they didn`t use the scrappy ones for burials and to stop enemy attack. Maybe the truly great Viking ships will never be found?
Here are a couple of old ones and copies of old ones. I`ve picked different sizes. The long, narrow ones are called Longships.
