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beauty-and-passion · 3 years

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What Eurovision 2021 taught us

1. That a nice, enjoyable show was possible (even if 4 presenters are still too much)

Of course nothing can beat Love Love Peace Peace (even if Ja Ja Ding Dong does its best), but this year's intermissions were very enjoyable.

We expected something flashy and over the top because hey, The Netherlands. Sex, drugs, gays and all that jazz.

But instead Covid surprised us. And then The Netherlands surprised us even more, by making a very enjoyable show, despite the restrictions. My personal favourites were:

The water intermission of the first semi-final. I loved the mixed feelings, how water is both scary and respected, for being such a powerful, unstoppable force.

The rooftop concerts during the final. Social distancing? Sure, no problem, let's make the past winners sing on top of some roofs all over Rotterdam. That was pure genius, I loved it so much.

On the other hand, the presenters were basically all useless. We could've had just two of them instead of four. But hey, at least they weren't as cringy as the three scary ukranians from 2017 or the useless four ladies from Portugal. The true highlights of the show were the intermissions, the guests and especially the songs themselves and this is perfectly good for me.

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2. That we can live in a world without boring ass ballads

I’ve never been so proud of the Eurovision public, especially during the second semifinal: that evening was PACKED with ballads. Boring ballad after boring ballad, with just a couple more funny songs in between.

The ballads were all left behind. Even the two Amen. And I love the irony we chose El Diablo and the finnish band for the final, but no Amen. No saints allowed, only the norwegian angel. As it always should be.

And so we had the best final I've seen since I started following Eurovision in 2014. Catchy songs, dance songs, upbeat songs. And power ballads. Yes, ballads can still have a place, but only if they're good.

Because yes, Switzerland and France were good. Very good. Just not as good as the ones the public wanted.

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3. That we want Eurovision, not Englishvision

Every year, the same message blasts from all Europeans: send a song in your native language. This show is supposed to make other people from Europe (and the rest of the world) to know more about your own country, to enjoy its rhythm and to listen to something we don't usually hear. So why waste this huge opportunity, to bring a generic song in English?

Because the English song wins. Because we all understand English, so English has more chances.

Flash news: GUESS WHO WON THIS YEAR. No, it’s not the generic English song.

The public has been crystal clear, the final poll is even clearer: the top five includes an italian song, an ukraine song, two french songs and only one english song. We want different styles and rhythms, we want to listen to Europe.

So I want to give my full thank you to:

Albania: amazing song, great voice, wonderful language. Do it again.

Serbia: these ladies are fantastic, their song is great and they sang it in their language so I love them

Switzerland: thank you for leaving English to the side to give us some good french

Spain: the song wasn't as good as Universo, but it was in sexy spanish, so thank you for using it almost every year

Danemark: the song was terrible, but it was in your language and this alone deserves everything

France: I know we all make fun of you for being France, but your language is perfect for songs, so thank you for always using it

Ukraine: take note, Ukraine, because Europe is madly in love with your language and your rhythm

Italy: our language is beautiful, so thank you for delivering every year

While my biggest biases go to:

Greece: a generic pop song with no balkan rhythm and no greek either? An absolute shame, greek should always be used for songs.

Russia: russian language is very melodious and yes, we got something this year, but what about bringing a full russian song? We want it!

Germany: I may sound crazy, but I honestly think german language is good for songs. It's not like the mediterranean languages, but it still works. So please, do not be scared and show what you can do with it!

Scandinavian countries: why do you never want to bring your own language? Do it, don't be scared! Yes, Sweden, I'm talking with you: you still never tried to bring something in swedish, so do it.

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4. That we don't want Americans to play with us

For reasons we still have to understand, Flo Rida was competing this year. And he was competing for San Marino, the smallest European country.

I'm pretty sure they took some time to explain to him what was going on, where he was, where San Marino is, wtf was happening, why there were sexy italians and ukranian witches and a norwegian angel and loads of beautiful women everywhere.

And I loved how we all send memes about this, about ahahah why is Flo Rida here, what if San Marino wins where would they host Eurovision, all while enjoying an actual catchy song.

And then, in the end, Flo Rida basically disappeared. Who remembers Flo Rida, when we got Ukraine, Italy, Finland, Iceland, and the UK? And Germany being wholesome? And the love story between Norway and Azerbaijan? We collectively forgot about him and I think it's very sexy from Europe to just say "nope" and push America away, even if for just one week.

And this isn't the first time: we basically showed Madonna in a corner in 2019, thanks to Mans, Eleni, Verka and Conchita. Once again, Europeans knows what they want: we don't want Americans. Australia can because they're like that little brother we took under our wing for no reason and now it's part of us. But not Americans.

The rest of the year is all yours, but one week is ours.

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5. That we can lose like bosses

This year, the voting results have been absolutely insane and FOUR COUNTRIES got zero points from the public, while the UK got both zero points from the public AND the jury.

Don't get me wrong, the song was bad. And yes, Brexit played a role in this. And yes, hating England is Europe’s favourite sport.

But can we please all take a moment and appreciate how James Newman reacted? The public gave him a round of applause and he celebrated this achievement like a boss.

And he had all the reasons! He achieved something incredible, he unlocked something that this new voting system was supposed to never lead to. But he did it. So hats off to you, my boy: My Last Breath was better.

Germany is also used to the bottom of the chart, but this year I really thought Jendrik could have a chance to achieve a higher position. The song was funny, carefree, lively, the hand costume was the kind of trash we need and the message was nice as well. But he still got 3 points.

Despite that, Jendrik celebrated like a maniac and seeing his this happy made me happy as well. I really wish him the best.

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6. That FUCK YOU JURY

Again, same message every year: the jury vote should be eliminated. It's a fucking farce and their votes have nothing to do with what the public want.

The jury focuses on the voices, except when they don't, and clearly giving points to your neighbours is because you like the song, not because they're your neighbours.

I usually make fun of Greece and Cyprus showing eternal love to each other, by giving 12 points to each other every year, but this time, it sounded even more stupid than usual. It really looked like a farce. Why should we see this farce? Why can't we just choose what the public wants? So at least we would blame ourselves for our shitty musical tastes.

Even if I'm pretty sure we all have great musical tastes. Let's not forget that in 2019 the public's winner was Norway, with a song that mixed english, a catchy rhythm and an amazing part in yoik language. Arcade is good as well, but we cannot deny the norwegian entry was a lot more interesting.

And this year, the public's taste was flawless:

Look at this beauty: italian glam rock, ukranian techno folk, french powerful ballad, finnish hard rock and whatever that thing was with Iceland.

There's variety, there's everything for everyone. And there are native languages. Italian, Ukranian, and French on top three, followed by English.

Moral of the story: the public is great and the jury should be abolished forever.

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7. That Ukranian technofolk is all we needed in our lives

I didn’t see enough love for Go_A, so as italian, I think it's my sworn duty to give my appreciation to them and their amazing entry, because this band is awesome and Shum is currently on top of the Spotify top 50 - as it should be, because everyone should listen to it and join this slavic rave party.

I already liked their entry for 2020, Solovey. But I also liked My Last Breath from the UK and Universo from Spain. And this year they brought two of the worst songs. So I was very wary of Go_A.

But Shum is an absolute blast. Katerina Pavlenko's voice is unique and the song is even more, because based on ukranian folklore and traditional dances to summon the spirit of spring. They managed to teach something to all Europe in a three minute song and I think that’s incredibly sexy of them.

And so, I searched for other songs and OMG, I don’t know how it’s possible, but they are all great. Rano-Ranenko, Zhalmenina, Tanula, they all are perfect and I’m in love with this band.

And if all of this is not enough, THEY DID A COVER OF DANCING LASHA TUMBAI. The most iconic Eurovision song, sang by our god Verka. And this is the coolest, most badass cover ever in the whole universe. Please listen to it HERE everyone needs to hear this.

So thank you, Ukraine, for giving us Go_A. We all had a small empty place in our hearts and this place has ben perfectly filled by them.

And yif you think you don’t need ukranian technofolk, is only because you still haven’t listened to it. Please listen and enjoy Shum. You’re welcome.

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8. That rock and roll never dies (and Italy’s well deserved victory)

The last time Italy won was in 19-fucking-90. 31 years ago. I was just born.

And now, they finally won again. And what a song! Despite being italian, I've never listened to Maneskin before, but oh damn, this song is good. Not all their songs are, but this one is. And also Morirò da re.

Their show was perfect as well. This post is really eye-opening about how well they put on their show. The use of the stage, the movements, everything has been part of a great performance, even their clothes. Damiano's voice never faltered, despite having an entire continent watching him. They handled the stage like bosses, despite being only in their twenties. And they gave us some good fucking rock.

And so the public said a loud "FUCK YOU" to the jury and chose its winners. The sassy, sexy italians.

And yes, I know that there has been a lot of petty polemics because those youngsters are having drugs!1!! as if they were a bunch of idiots who used drugs on international TV, with their manager sitting next to them.

Of course it was a pointless accusation and honestly I don't care if some people are sore losers. The drug results were negative anyway, what a shocker.

What we should truly think about is how strong the Maneskin's bladders are, because they spent the whole evening of the final drinking the entire alcohol supply of the Eurovision and, at the end, they were still happy and cool. Hats off to you, you sexy people.

This man is just iconic, why did I miss him before.

Also, have some more Maneskin. You know, as a treat.

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9. That solidarity and wholesomeness are the biggest winners

It's just beautiful to see these nice people, from all over Europe, bonding, having fun, taking photos together and being friends.

The true winner of this, is probably Norway: Tix wanted to have a good time and he had a good time. The video of him vibing with Ukraine and Germany while listening Hard Rock Hallelujah is the best (HERE). His love story with Efendi from Azerbaijan is even better (please, check the video on his youtube channel, it's hilarious). I don't like his song, but he's a great guy and deserves everything.

The italian and finnish rock relationship is also great. Maneskin and Dark Sides found each other, considering they were the only two rock bands in the competition, so mutual appreciation was inevitable.

But Damiano is also a man of culture and he appreciates Ukraine's entry. And Ukraine appreciates both Finland and Italy. Is this what world peace looks like? Because I love it.

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10. That Italians will be Europe's clowns again (and you're all allowed to make fun of us)

Beware, Europe: we Italians are messy and chaotic, our presenters don’t know a single word in English, we are homoerotic AND homophobic at the same time, our musical competitions are so fucking sloooow... let’s say next year’s Eurovision is going to be interesting.

And yes, you’re allowed to make fun of us. We don’t care, we won, so we deserve to be Europe’s clowns once again.

And I don’t know who the presenters will be (my bets are on everyone’s favourites: Fiorello, Amadeus and Malgioglio), I don’t know how we will ridicule ourselves once again, I don’t know where will we find the money to put on the show, I don’t know how ungodly long it will be... but I know that Mans Zelmerlow will be part of it. This man loves Eurovision just like all of us, so I can already see him packing his suitcase and planning his flight to Italy. Come to us, Mans, we will wait for you. We actually need an English presenter, so if you have nothing else to do...

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years

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“Garden Island Once Scene of Busy Shipbuilding Industry,” Kingston Whig-Standard. March 25, 1942. Page 2. ---- Garden Island Vessels Plied High Seas Of World --- By FRED PENSE (Staff Reporter) Ships which sailed the high seas, as well as the lakes and rivers during the past century, were built at Garden Island. Few men now engaged in making ships here to meet the enemy in battle realize that over 100 years ago a shipbuilding industry was established at Garden Island and it continued to operate until shortly before the start of the First Great War.

John Calvin, son of the late Hiram Calvin, who for years was identified with the Calvin Company, which conducted the thriving industry on Garden Island, told The Whig-Standard some of the happenings he could well remember. He told this reporter he could recall schooners being built at Garden Island and later steamboats, tow-barges and tugs “It used to be a very busy centre," he said, “especially in the wintertime; it was arranged that the men who sailed our boats during the season of navigation would be given employment in our shipyards in the wintertime and they certainly appreciated this.

“The length, width and draught of the boats all depended upon the size of the Welland Canal, At first, these schooners were very small, as they could only be built of sufficient size to go through the locks. As the Welland Canal was enlarged the boats were made bigger and so on Our boats were mostly built for the timber trade and they used to sail up the lakes and bring the timber to Garden Island where it was put into rafts and taken to Quebec City,” he declared.

Construction Varied “The construction of the boats all depended on where they were going to sail. If they were fresh water craft, steel spikes were used, but in the case of ocean going vessels, wooden tree nails had to be used, as the steel spikes would rust with the salt water. The boats were built of oak elm and pine oak being used for the hull above the water elm under the water and pine for the decks.

“The sails were also made on Garden Island and in fact the building la now intact and may be seen from the’ ferry dock. Experts in the making of sail were constantly engaged by the Calvin Company," Mr Calvin said.

“The launching ceremony can well be recalled, In those days, the ships used to be put Into the water stern first and as far as I can remember, there were no mishaps. I can recall some of the names of the schooners — they were the “Norway,” the “Sweden,” the “Denmark," etc. and they were all engaged in the lumber business. I also recall one mishap when one of our sailing vessels encountered a very severe gale on the lake and all the crew was lost but the ship was saved. It will never be known the reason for the crew leaving the schooner and taking to the life boat, but the schooner was later found intact, minus the crew and those men were never located.

Old Boat Used “Some few years ago when I was in Halifax, I noticed one of our old boats, the “Ceylon" by name, being used as coal lighter, We sold her to the Montreal Transportation Company and it later was bought by other interests and taken to Halifax,” he said.

“One of our schooners, the “Garden Island” by name was for many years engaged in the ocean going trade and in fact it sailed to all parts of the world. At least one trip was made by this sturdy schooner from Quebec with a load of timber which was taken to Great Britain. The boat was 175 feet long and was built so that it could go through the St. Lawrence Canal without a cargo. It was later sold to three Norwegians and after that I lost track of her. I remember my father going to the American ports and meeting this vessel when it returned from ocean voyages.

“All that remains of the shipbuilding industry at Garden Island is happy memories and the sail loft, and a section of the old ways on which these vessels which became known in all parts of this Dominion had their beginning," Mr. Calvin recalled. Photo caption: Through the kindness of Mrs. Thomas White, whose husband is the gardener on Garden Island, The Whig-Standard is permitted to print this picture of a large sailing vessel, under construction many years ago at Garden Island.

#kingston ontario #st. lawrence river #shipbuilders #shipbuilding #shipbuilding company #sailing ships #cargo ships #schooners #welland canal #lachine canal #ville de québec #halifax #montreal #canada during world war 2

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pvffinsdaisies · 3 years

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NORDIC SLEEP HEADCANONS

Norway:

morning person (though he might try and deny this and say he’s a night person to seem cooler). goes to bed around 22:00, early riser.

fairly heavy sleeper (due to all the coffee he drinks), but despite this he usually wakes up before he should and is too tired.

after waking up, he’s definitely not the type to lay in. up on his feet, throws on a robe or dressing gown and in for some light reading and coffee before the day begins.

window open, doesn’t care too much abt the curtain being open or closed- the light’s not an issue, nor is the dark.

sleeps nude, no reason for this, it’s just more comfortable to him.

a stuffed teddy is an absolute necessity, perhaps the one thing he cannot sleep without. he will stay up all night pouting if he doesn’t have one.

doesn’t snore, nor does he sleep walk or sleep talk. but if you watch, he does slightly smile in his sleep (only a small smile)

blanket hogger. but that’s only if he’s sleeping alone, if his partner’s there he doesn’t care so much and will cling onto them.

will deny both of the previous points.

Iceland:

night person (though he will claim to be a morning person). goes to bed late, wakes up late. probably because he’s lost track of time reading or knitting.

like norway, he’s a pretty heavy sleeper. he’s also pretty reliant on alarms to wake him up (unlike his brother), but he is actually pretty well rested (which may come as a shock to most)

will lay in (if he has the time (but even if he doesn’t þetta reddast, right?)), open a curtain and just look at the pretty scenery and view outside.

Ice can pretty much sleep with either the window open or closed, but he does need his curtains to be closed. he might be used to sleeping in the light, but he still doesn’t prefer it.

he sleeps in pyjamas, usually a long sleeved, plain top and bottoms.

he doesn’t need anything to hold onto or clutch onto- and if he is sleeping next to someone he prefers to be held than to do the holding. he loves being held (do not tell anyone that)

he doesn’t snore, but he does occasionally sleep talk! it’s rare, but it does happen. it’s usually stuff in old norse (or even modern norwegian).

need blanket. need something covering him. n e e d b l a n k e t.

curls up into the tiniest ball ever

Sweden:

somehow both a morning and a night person. (has anyone ever seen sweden tired??)

the heaviest sleeper out of all the nordics, it’s quite scary actually, n o t h i n g can wake sweden up. no alarm, no nothing. but he always wakes up early.

no time to lay in. he will start his day as soon as he’s up, and then he has the rest of it to rest and spend time with sealand and ladonia.

window open (but only on a latch!) and curtains closed.

pyjama bottoms, but shirtless. sometimes just his underwear.

cuddles are not necessary at all, though he’s more than happy to hold and pull his partner in as close as he can. let’s the kids sleep in his bed and holds them close if they have a nightmare (or just want a hug from their dad)

sweden snores, louder than you’ve ever heard snoring. it’s not a pleasant experience if you’re not used to it.

he likes having a blanket, but it’s not a necessity, and he will sometimes end up having to throw it onto the floor bc it feels too restrictive.

he sleeps on his back, with exactly one pillow.

Denmark:

he’s neither a morning person, nor a night person. no specific time when he is or isn’t tired.

he’s a very light sleeper. pretty easy to wake up. uses an alarm to wake up at a set time everyday (even if he has nothing going on on that day)

surprisingly, he’s not the type to lay in- even less so than norway and sweden- he likes up be up on his feet, already dressed, ready to hand all his fellow nordics a cup of coffee when they wake up (that is, of course, when theyre not all in their own countries).

window closed. curtain closed. no exceptions. ever. he needs it quiet, he needs it warm and he needs it dark.

den will pretty much throw anything on when he’s going to bed- but he prefers a simple t-shirt and boxer shorts.

he does not do cuddles, it’s practically impossible, he tosses and turns and rolls around too much in his sleep and probably has ended up accidentally slapping his partner before in his sleep.

he snores, loudly, and he wakes himself up sometimes from his snores.

god no, no blanket at all!! far too restrictive! he’d rather just turn the heating up to the highest temperature than use a blanket at this point.

like previously stated, he tosses and turns a hell of a lot in his sleep! but he usually winds up waking up on his back with his limbs sprawled out anywhere and everywhere.

if you do want to try to cuddle den, the best option is wait until he’s seemingly found that position and use his chest as a pillow- but good luck.

Finland:

the biggest night person you will ever meet. you will have to literally drag him to bed

he needs his alarm, because there’s literally no way he’s waking up without it.

he will lie in, the only thing getting him out of bed is literally needing to in order to have his morning coffees.

he literally could not care less whether the window or curtains are open and closed. but it’s easier when the window is open and curtains closed.

another naked sleeper, and he will not bother to cover himself up when going downstairs even if there’s someone else in the house. he’s too tired to care.

even if fin were to try and cuddle someone under a blanket- it would never work, hes a sleep walker. he has woken up by throwing a glass of water onto himself whilst stood by the kitchen sink before.

FAROE ISLANDS (oc):

incredibly light sleeper, and generally has issues sleeping.

window open- she needs sound!- and curtains open.

no point setting an alarm, she’ll probably be awake most of the night anyway.

again, also sleeps naked.

need cuddles!!! need cuddles!!! need cuddles!!!! either she HAS to be held by someone tightly, or she has to sleep with a mountain of whale teddies in her arms or on her. sometimes both.

depending on whether or not she is sleeping alone, she might just kinda give up and walk around the area and enjoy the beautiful scenery.

if she does get to sleep, she does snore. not heavily, only light small snores and it can sound like she’s giggling rather than snoring.

blankets are okay... but who needs them?? she’s got the whales, and shes got her beautiful partner to keep her warm.

#hetalia #hetalia nordics #hws nordics #aph norway #aph iceland #aph denmark #aph faroe islands #aph finland #aph sweden

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zurichtooslo · 5 years

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Day 52, 11th Oct, Lubeck

I was really looking forward to today as the last two days had been very busy. I was staying the night in Lubeck again so I could relax and just wander around today seeing the sights. Lubeck isn’t a huge city or the Old Town isn’t and that’s where the main attractions are. The Old Town was on an island.

The Bridge of Statues is the former outer bridge in front of the second town gate.

Looking towards the Holsten gate complex. The gate has a definite lean on it.

Close up of the gate with the St Petri church tower in the background.

This was the detail on the other side of the Holstentor

The Salzspeicher or salt warehouses are next to the Holstentor. They were built in the 16th-18th centuries and stored salt that was mined near Luneburg and bought to Lubeck on the Stecknitz Canal. The salt was then shipped to several ports in the Baltic region, where the commodity was relatively rare, but was in high demand for the preservation of food. The salt trade was a major reason for the power of Lubeck and the Hanseatic League.

It was a bit damp this morning and as the weather is getting colder many outdoor sitting areas are empty and getting ready to be packed up for winter.

You could go up the tower of St Petri. I thought it would be worth the clim but when I got there they had a lift so that was easy. Looking towards the Dom at the other end of the island.

Looking down on the Salt Warehouses and Holstentor.

Looking over the main city area. St Marien.

Inside St Petri.

After being up the tower I just spent my time wandering the city. There is always so much to see in these historic places with a cafe stop or two and a bit of shopping or browsing at least. It makes for very pleasant days. With my camera and my map I’m very happy. The Rathaus and market square.

Market area.

Gothic ceilings in the walkway.

This memorial was sad. At 6 o’clock on the evening of 10 th November 1943, the Protestant minister and three Roman Catholic chaplains were put to death by guillotine in Hamburg after being sentenced by the arbitrary judicial system of the National Socialist Government for their protests against the injustice of the state. The four clergymen resisted the rule of terror and opposed Nazi Germany.

Lots of interesting buildings all over.

Decorative window on the street

St Martian. ‘The leaves of the little lime trees around the churchyard of St Mary’s, across the way, had turned yellow, though it was but mid October. The wind whistled around the corners of the massive Gothic pile, and a cold, thin rain was falling.’ This was written in 1901 from Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann who was a German novelist and lived opposite the church. He won the Nobel Prize in 1929 for Literature for Buddenbrooks. The church was the usual impressive huge buildings. They always amaze me thinking of how they would have appeared to people back when they were built.

During a bombing raid in 1942 part of the church was destroyed. The bells were left where they fell.

The high ceiling.

The Astronomical clock.

One of the church buildings.

Me in the passage way near the church.

The long passage way and shop building

The story of this devil is intriguing as supposedly when the first stones of St Mary’s were laid the devil was happy as he thought it was going to be a wine bar where he would get more people but soon he realised what it was going to be, a church, as the building grew higher and higher. Full of anger he grabbed a huge boulder to smash the walls but then dropped it next to the church where it is lying today. You can see the claw marks of the devil on the boulder, so the story goes.

A main pedestrian street.

Down nearer the harbour in one section of Lubeck there are a lot of ‘hidden’ streets just accessed by these low doorways into the side of buildings. You have to go looking for them but once you know what to look for they are all over.

The walkway is low and under a building.

Once through the walkways which are all a bit different you come out into narrow passageways with little houses on each side, in some cases, or just on one side, in others.

Looking back towards the street. They are low the entrances.

Some passages had slightly more substantial houses than others.

This walkway was very old.

Each narrow street was different but all quaint.

Some of the entrances had a chain across them up not locked as they are public streets.

Looking up towards St Jakobikirchhof.

This was just a normal narrow street near the water. I loved walking around these streets looking at the window decorations.

The Harbour which played such an important part in Lubeck’s wealth.

Looking at the impressive Burgtor which was another entrance to the city.

The town side of the Burgtor.

The Helligen Geist Hospital has an elegant old entryway to Germany’s first hospital dating back to 1227.

As you walked into the front of the building it appeared a bit like a church with very elaborate frescoes and decorations.

Behind this wall was a long building with the hospital section.

Looking down the long hallway of the hospital. Behind each door was a tiny room with a bed and wash basin. There wasn’t access to walk down the corridor. This warren of small living cubicles dates back to 1820. They gave refuge to aged seafarers.

The tiny cubicles.

Koberg square across from the hospital.

The Willy Brandt Haus which was a museum about his life and his part in Germany’s politician journey. He was born Herbert Frahm into a working class family in Lubeck. He became politically active at an early age and fought against the rise of Hitler’s NSDAP. He was forced to go into exile to Norway and Sweden where he changed his name to Willy Brandt. During the war he worked as a journalist and travelled with a Norwegian passport.

Brandt had matured by the time he returned to the ruins of Germany coming as a foreign correspondent to the Trial of the Major War Criminals in Nuremberg. He witnessed the beginnings of a new democracy in post- war Germany.

In the years from 1957 to 1966 Brandt was Mayor of West Berlin. With the building of The Wall be tried to make the division of the city more tolerable. However, Brandt spent his most important part of his political career in Bonn, as Foreign Minister and then Federal Chancellor. He had a huge impact on the Federal Republic of Germany. He died in 1992.

All these towns have a number of churches that dominate the skyline.

Nice street.

This brick building used to be an orphanage but now has been turned into accomodation

The other side of the building.

Plaques in the garden explaining what some of the buildings were used for.

The red brick Lubeck Synagogue is North Germany’s only still functioning prewar Synagogue which was opened in 1880. The community is only tiny now but each seat in the synagogue has a prayer book on it. At the moment the building is undergoing some renovations, so closed. It is interesting to see a police box on the grounds as well. A sensitive area I suppose.

More stumbling blocks in this area of the city and close to the Synagogue.

These sunflowers were in a church but when travelling from Ludwigslust to Wismar there were crops of sunflowers all over.

I will be heading to Hamburg tomorrow which very much impressed me last time I was there in 2013.

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ohalemalia · 6 years

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Daily Dose - (Part 2) (S.M Imagine)

Pairing: Scott McCall x Reader

Warnings: emeto (throwing up), i havent proof read this whoops

A\N: Thanks for being so patient with me. Family things came up but i really wanted to get this out so here we go, part twoooo. Debating on a title change

Word Count: 1974

Summary: What makes Scott McCall so damn interesting? And what’s he got up his sleeve?

Needless to say, against my will and better judgement, thoughts of Scott McCall bounced around my head for the longest time. I came to the realization (all by myself, not because I eavesdropped on his conversation with Nurse Melissa, of course) that Wednesdays he got out of school early and would be by around 1:30pm to drop lunch off for her.

There was absolutely no reason for me to be interested, but when I really thought about it, I think it was because he was the only fresh face in this bland hospital (and the fact that he brought his mom lunch every single week, like come on, it doesn’t get better than that). But for the record, I am not into him because that would be insane considering we’ve had one, well, half of just one conversation. I refuse to be a cliche character who falls in love with the first boy they see no matter how smooth their skin looks or how toss able their hair is that you can just run your fingers throu

NO.

NOPE.

Not even going there.

Besides, realistically speaking the only relationship that I would be in anytime in the foreseeable future is me and this hospital bed. The only action I would get would be

Never mind, I’m not going there either.

Anyway, in case you were wondering it’s 1:23pm on a Wednesday. Not that that has any significant meaning.

P.S. I Still Love You by Jenna Han was currently under my nose and although my eyes were skimming over the page, my brain was elsewhere. My room had a side view of the front desk, so if he was coming, I would know about it.

What was I even going to say? Was I going to say anything? Was he going to even come in here?

This was stupid. I was stupid. I was being stupid.

I tried to focus on Lara Jean, but out the corner of my eye there he was again.

He set a bag of food on the counter and smiled at the front lady at the desk as he spoke to her. She pointed somewhere. He nodded and took a seat in one of the plastic waiting chairs. He looked down at his phone, scrolled for a few moments and laughed at something on his screen. I craned my neck to get a better look at him. He was wearing yet another tight shirt, this time in an olive green color and a denim jacket over it. His motorcycle helmet was sitting on the chair next to him. He leaned back in the chair and spread his legs in that guy sit that guys always do. He scrolled. And he scrolled. And he kept scrolling.

“Oh my god, could you look up from your phone for just one second,” I muttered underneath my breath.

His head snapped up as if someone spoke to him. He looked around the waiting room until his eyes met mine through the glass. I nearly choked. He blinked and then furrows his eyebrows at me. I quickly looked down at my book, hoping that he would just look away. I gave it about thirty seconds before I looked up again, and to my surprise he had disappeared from the chair. My shoulders slumped. Oh well. I guess I’d see him next week.

The doorknob to my room clicked and the door slowly opened. I looked up and my heart damn near stopped right then and there. He was there, in my doorway, smiling that puppy dog smile at me.

“I figured you could use some company,” his eyes widened and his words blurred together as he rambled on, “Unless that’s totally not okay then I can just leave and I’m really sorry and you can totally forget that I was even here.”

“No, it’s, I,” I closed my eyes, trying to reset my brain and get it to form complete sentences, “Yes, you can come in.”

“Cool,” He came in and shut the door behind him. He looked over my room again, his eyes resting on the dead flowers on my side shelf.

“I would water them,” I started to explain, “But I’m just, you know, really busy…”

“Yeah I bet,” He walked over to the shelf and gestured toward the books, “Can I?”

“Um, yeah, go ahead.” I’d never had anyone else touch my books before, so I watched him very carefully.

“Wow,” he mumbled under his breath, “It’s like your own personal library.”

“I wish,” I sat up straighter on my bed, “At least at a library I can get new books, I’ve read all of these.”

His eyes widened again and he held up a book, “All of them?”

“At least three times.”

“Wow,” he mumbled under his breath, “So, what do you read?”

“At this point, anything.”

It was silent as he went through my books. I felt self conscious as I heard the turning of pages of my books ripple through the air. Did he think my book taste sucked? Did he think reading was lame anyway?

My mouth began to salivate but I wasn’t hungry for answers, I wanted food. Real food. Whatever was in the bag that he had set down on my counter.

“That smells really good,” I felt like I was in a trance, a servant to the delicious smells of Fatburger.

Scott looked over his shoulder at the bag, “That?” He set the book down and walked over to the bag. He opened it up and looked inside, “It’s a burger and some fries. I brought it for my mom, but I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t mind if you had a couple fries.”

“Oh, I think she’d mind a lot,” I laughed half heartedly. He looked at me as if he didn’t get the joke. Or as if it wasn’t funny. I think the latter.

“I really shouldn’t,” I made it sound like I was being modest and humble, but my body would probably expel that greasy mess as soon as I put it in.

“No seriously, it’s okay Y/N,” he chuckled, “Really.”

As tempting as it was, I grimaced, “I can’t. Really. But thank you.”

He frowned as he folded the bag up and put it back on the counter, “Can I ask you a kind of personal question?”

“I suppose so,” I tapped my chin, “If you don’t mind that I might get really offended and kick you out.”

“I just,” he pressed his lips together as if he were selecting the right words, “Do you ever get out of here?”

I pressed my lips together and shook my head.

“Ever?” He was incredulous, “Like, what about school?”

“I don’t mind missing that,” I laughed, “Trust me.”

“Well, where do you wanna go?”

I was all too prepared for this. There were countless hours of staring at blank white walls to compile a list of places I’d rather be. I reached toward my books, “Can you pass me The Little Prince? It’s the book with the--”

“‘Got it,” He held the book up and handed it to me. I opened it up to page 42 and slid the sheet of notebook paper out that was scrawled on with glitter gel pen.

Y/N’s List of Places to Be Other Than Here

(No offense Melissa if you see this)

1. A friend’s house

2. A sleepover

3. Disneyland

4. Birch Aquarium

5. Greece

6. Mexico

7. Italy

8. A park

9. Fatburger, or any place that sells real people food

10. In the arms of someone I love

11. Northern Lights in Iceland, Sweden, Canada or Norway

12. Paris

13. On a road trip with friends

14. A Diner

Scott read over my shoulder as I read the items on the list out loud. I could feel my face burning up as I got to number ten. I had definitely written that in a moment of weakness and vulnerability and it doesn’t reflect who I am as a person, obviously. I am not some cheese ball. “It’s not finished,” I folded it up, “And some of them I obviously can’t actually do, so, it’s just a dumb list.”

“I don’t think it’s a dumb list,” Scott held his hand out, “Can I see it again?”

“I, um, well,” I sighed and placed the paper in his hand. He looked it over again, his brow knitting in concentration. He nodded, “Okay, yeah, no totally not a dumb list.”

“I’m glad it has your seal of approval,” I picked at a loose thread on my sheets, “But I think I’ll just--”

“Uh,” Scott looked at the door as if he heard something coming, “Shoot. I gotta go.”

“Oh? You do?”

“Yeah,” he whirled around the room, packing up his belongings, “I probably shouldn’t be here and I might’ve told the receptionist I was going to the bathroom.”

“Oh, yeah, you probably should...you should go…”

“Before my mom kills me,” He grinned, “But at least I’m in a hopsital, right?”

His face immediately paled, “I mean, well she can’t really, you know--”

“Scott?!”

I could hear Melissa calling Scott’s name from the hallway. By the sounds of it, it sounded like she very well might wrangle Scott’s neck.

“Gotta go,” Scott opened the door and began to slip out.

“Wait, Scott, you still have my--”

The door shut behind him. I sighed.

“...my list.”

---

The next couple of days were a haze for me. I had a pretty bad fever. All I remember is waking up at 4:12am and immediately emptying the contents of my stomach into a bed pan. Nurse Melissa was off that night and instead Nurse Rosa came in and took my temperature while another Nurse, probably an intern since I didn’t recognise him, wrote some stuff down. Nurse Rosa reported me having a fever of 102. I slipped in and out of consciousness after that. I really wish I had a better description for it but it honestly all just was a haze that I was mostly asleep for it. My body felt like huge sandbags strapped into my mattress. My skin was burning. The light was too bright for my eyes. I was miserable.

When I woke up, I would’ve been happy about the fact that I felt better if it wasn’t for the fact that it was Thursday evening. Scott had come and gone by now. I sighed and turned over on my bed to face my books. What I saw there improved my mood easily by fifty points.

There was a stack of new books on top of my book collection, all with yellow BEACON HILLS HS LIBRARY stickers on them. There was my flower vase, but it had brand new totally not withered flowers in it. There was a note attached to the vase. I pulled it off and unfolded it to see some messy handwriting scrawled inside:

-Y/N

I asked my mom if it was ok to come visit since you dont get a lot of visitors and she said yeah (: I came by but the docs said it wasn’t a good time, i waited around as long as i could, i’ve been coming after school too but it’s still being pretty bad, i hope you feel better soon because i’m bringing you something on wednesday and i don’t want it to go bad before you get to it. check in your drawer all the way in the back on the right. hope you enjoy it (but if it’s going to make you sicker...probably don’t eat it. get better soon,

-Scott M..

I leaned over as far as I comfortably could and opened the drawer on the bedside table. My hand flew to my mouth as I gasped, tears welling up in my eyes.

I had never been happier to see a Fatburger bag in my life.

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#teen wolf imagine #imagines #tw imagine #teen wolf #fandom imagines #imagine teen wolf #Scott McCall #scott teen wolf #scott mccall imagine #scott mccall imagines #daily dose

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unionrising · 6 years

Photo

Finnish Biologist Corrects Trump On Rakes

r JI (pictured here at a mushroom exhibition) is an avid TPM Reader from Finland who is also a Phd plant biologist. He did us the service of giving a detailed explanation of how forest fires work in Finland and how raking is just not part of the equation.

My short non-biologist summary would be this: it’s fairly wet and cold in Finland so it’s pretty different. They don’t use rakes to avoid forest fires. Their big problem is bog fires. Many of the best parts of JI’s letter are cris de coeur, insisting on the non-role of rakes in any part of Finnish forage management.

– In general, this seems just to be one of Trump’s routine/compulsory smoke bombs, lies and distractions.

– Forest fires in Finland are much limited by the snowy winter (length varies acc. to year and region, but traditionally around 3 months, is shortening due to climate change). Snow and ice are solid water, forests cannot burn in wintertime.

– Even after the visible snow melts, the soil remains frozen for a couple of weeks more, postponing the soil/humus fire a bit more.

– When all the snow and frost have melted, the melting water is still absorbed by the soil/humus for various amount of weeks, giving an important boost for spring vegetation and hampering soil burns.

– Some spring weeks after melting, if dry winds prevail, are vulnerable for grass etc. burns, due to the withered grass, but these seldom develop into economically important. E.g. March-April. After this period, the green leaves make burning more difficult.

(- In whole Finland, making an open fire prohibited in given areas of drought.)

– The most vulnerable period for forest fires is late summer (e.g. July-August), in summers of long-term droughts and winds. Towards September, the rainy fall season usually makes it more unlikely.

– In Finland, the annual rainfall is relatively high (moist winds from southwest prevail), and, very importantly, the Nordic cool temperatures leads to less evaporation, so the soils keep the moisture longer, and also the relative humidity is physically higher in cool temperature. So, our air is often relatively moist (not as moist as in the Atlantic coasts of Norway, however). This seen e.g. in the nearly ubiquitous moss cover of our forests.

– The soil and vegetation type of Finland, typical for the Boreal vegetation zone, is different than that in Temperate regions. The soil and vegetation would make any extensive raking HIGHLY unpractical and useless, up to directly damaging, in our large forests.

– Due to the climatic conditions, in most forests there is NOT just a mineral soil or a mull where the plants grow. This would be a very mechanistic view. Instead, on the (often “podzole”-type of) mineral soil here, there is typically a felt-like layer of old, brown, still partly un-decayed, fibrous humus layer, consisting e.g. of lignin of tree remains, mixed with living and dead plant roots, fungal hyphae and so on. This layer is rather acidic and can be e.g. from 5 to 15 cm thick and is very important for the forest. If it gets deeply dry in dry summers, it will easily burn, but IT CANNOT BE REMOVED BY RAKING, without damaging the forest’s root and mycorrhizal network. The forest trees absorb their water and nutrients largely in this layer, with the help of the symbiotic fungi, and the mentioned humus layer acts as a moisture buffer for the trees.

– In our many water-logged areas this poorly decayed humus layer extends up to ten meters down, as the turf of bogs, also acting as an important reservoir of greenhouse gases. Difficult to rake so deep….

And bog fires are notoriously difficult to extinguish in long dry periods. – Our forest vegetation under trees consists commonly of berry-bearing and other boreal shrublets such as the blueberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) and lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea), and under them the acidic humus layer is typically covered by mosses such as Hylocomium splendens, Pleurozium schreberi and several Dicranum species. The bushlets (with their rhizomes in the humus layer) would make any extensive humus-removing raking very INEFFECTIFE, and the gentle mosses would be largely detached from the humus, as would many bush-like lichens on rocky sites such as Cladonia stellaris.

– The continuously falling needles and twigs, when they decay, return important nutrients back to the forest trees. Removing them regularly would deprive the trees and other plants from the bulk of long-term nutrients, not to speak of the extremely complex mesh of nutrient chains of thousands of other forest organisms, from fungi and insects to birds and mammals.

– Any small site CAN of course be raked and many people in rural houses or summer cottages DO rake their lawns and sometimes adjacent forest edges in, say, around 5 to maximally about 20 m radius from the house. The basic purpose of this is NOT fire prevention or forest management, but to keep the yard tidy, to keep the lawn mowable, to accumulate some litter to the garden, just out of custom and so on. This is not forest management, this is cleaning a yard. Such places would develop into grassy sites under the trees, not typical forest.

– If some site would be raked, why would that be done? What would be the effect for the large cost? Sometimes in history, e.g. on some nutrient-poor islands, litter may have been raked in small scale locally and brought e.g. to barns under the animals or in the gardens, not in any significant amount any more.

– The economic semi-natural forests are typically managed by thinning (gleansing) some times during the about 80 years’ logging cycle, but this is done by large forestry machines or farmer’s tractors and by machine saws. The time spent by humans in the forest in each step is tried to be minimized even then. NO PART of the routine management cycle includes raking!

– You are not allowed to rake in other people’s forests, even if you for some reason would like it. Typically, a forest owner is a farmer who owns, say, 20 to 100 hectares of forest in addition to fields and often also goes to additional paid work somewhere else. He or his family would have not time to do it. Who would rake the vast forests?

– In Sweden, our neighboring country with largely similar forests, there were this summer 2018 very difficult and long forest fires, simply due to the exceptionally dry summer (added with random sparks or other fire sources). This is equally possible in Finland, as well. And the climate change is making such summers more and more common, even here in the moister north! So, regarding your arid southern areas, my personal view is that you (and globally we all) are simply gradually loosing large, previously viable land areas, largely due to the serious climate change.

Josh, sorry this lengthy letter, hoping that somebody finds something useful detail in it.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/finnish-biologist-corrects-trump-on-rakes

#rake #forest #trump #idiot #fire #finland

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voidcrow · 6 years

Text

The Battle of the Road to Caen

A historical treatise by Josephine Childress-Busey Published November the ninend, MMVII

1119 is a year that many of my fellow historians look to as that in which the world's fate was forever derailed from its course. To assume this is to ignore the factors that enabled the brief battle fought on that day.

Personally, this scholar is more given to arguing that the true tipping of destiny's scales came in 1102. This was, after all, the year in which Pope Paschal II excommunicated the nation of Norway seemingly on a whim. Paschal never openly stated a reason for condemning the Norwegian people to spiritual damnation and would take whatever rationale he had to his grave. Whatever the case, the ripples started here-- ripples that, by the time they reached English-ruled Normandy, crashed ashore as a tsunami.

The news that they were no longer Christian in the eyes of the Christ-on-Earth rattled the Norwegian people. Collective dismay hastily evolved into collective anger, fueling a nationalistic movement that saw the Norwegians embrace their pre-Christian traditions to set their identity apart from that of other European powers. Chief among these deviations was their choice to reject Catholicism outright and return to the old polytheistic beliefs of the Norse, wearing the derogatory term "pagan" as a badge of pride.

That winter, Norwegian raiders made landfall in Scotland by longboat for the first of many new pillages. The Vikings had returned.

For over a decade thereafter, the fruits of Norway's ongoing pillages fueled a war of expansion back in Scandinavia. Gradually, Sweden and Finland were absorbed. In 1117, forces under the command of Snorri Ragnvaldsson captured Jutland. This move had the dual effect of not only wiping the Kingdom of Denmark off the map, but giving the Norwegians a convenient staging point for raiding the Holy Roman Empire, Poland and northern France by land.

By this point, England had gained more territory on mainland Europe-- specifically, the county of Brittany that lay west of Normandy. A road running between the cities of Rennes and Caen became one of England's busier trade routes, so it should come as no surprise that a band of Vikings came along to prey on caravans along this road. Each time they captured a haul of goods, they'd keep the food and drink to supply themselves, send the treasures home to Norway, and feast in celebration until their fingers itched for another plundering. As the English nobles thought little of this problem in the grander scheme of things, this group of Vikings was able to keep up the profitable venture for two years, until a young English serf-- born in Cornwall but living in Brittany at the time-- roused himself from his drunken stupor to loudly declare that enough was enough.

His name was Alfred Codd, and he had no earthly idea what he was doing-- only that he was tired of bar brawls and pushing around wheelbarrows full of dung.

When spring came in the year 1119, Codd was successful in convincing the Earl of Brittany to let him levy and command a militia. He put out a call for able-bodied citizens of Rennes to defend king and country from the Viking menace... but less than a thousand answered, all desperate peasants like himself. Those volunteers with experience in hunting were equipped with a bow. The rest were armed with pitchforks. Their armor mostly amounted to padded cloth and leather vests, with the few available chainmail shirts being given to Alfred himself and some of the pitchfork-wielders. In total, around seven hundred men were put at arms-- four hundred archers, and three hundred "spearmen" (insomuch as farming tools can be treated as spears). Following the morning sun, they departed from Rennes through its eastern gate and started trekking up the Road toward Caen, certain that the Vikings would show themselves somewhere along the path.

English morale was low on the morning of April the sixenth, and it is little wonder, as Alfred woke up with a hangover only minutes before the fighting began, and his second-in-command had to remind him what was going on. Through a spyglass, it had been determined that the Viking band headed toward them numbered about one thousand, and consisted wholly of melee infantry and light horsemen with axes. After splashing some cold water on his face and having his second punch him in the face a few times to induce alertness, Alfred ordered the peasant mob into a formation; he told the archers to stand together in a short, broad column and instructed the "spearmen" to surround them as a two-row-thick box, then ordered them all to stand their ground.

On being told it would help the men's morale to say a few words before battle was to be joined, Alfred Codd spoke thus:

"Bah, my head rebels against me. Thank you for joining me, brave Britons. I'm told many a general likes to rouse his men before battle with some manner of lip service to God. I am not one of them. Instead I will pay lip service to Maggote, a fine barmaid here in Normandy whom I am proud to call the first person ever to punch me out cold. God's blood, what a woman. Would that she would join us today. Now, our foes are Norwegians who would see us dead and our treasures looted. I, erm... I respect the Vikings-- not for their violence or their heathen beliefs, but for their prowess and courage in battle, and the hardiness forged by the harsh winters of their homeland. It is a shame, therefore, that we must now fill them with pointy sticks. Still, I confess that my codpiece is tightening at the prospect. Is that a snake? A snake! Kill it! Kill the bloody snake! Wait; it's only a twig. Thank the Lord. What else? Remember to watch out for spears. Oh, shite, they're almost here. Hold steady, lads!"

Alfred's oratory skills would improve over time.

After delivering the above speech, he took up his pitchfork and joined the other "spearmen". The Vikings stopped on their way west when they noticed the English army standing on the road in formation. Confident in their ability to quickly do away with the rabble but with no options to attack from a range, the raiders charged forth.

Whilst Alfred used protests and threats to keep his infantry from breaking formation, the four hundred hunters began to let fly. Their accuracy was lacking, but by virtue of there being so many bowmen and a decent supply of ammunition being available to them, they filled the air of the battlefield with enough arrows that for some of them to find their mark was an inevitability. At least ten volleys were fired before the mounted Vikings could complete their charge, and by the time they did, a third of the raider band was already dead.

The Viking horsemen plowed into a section of the "spearmen" box, trampling over some, causing dozens of others to spend a few moments fleeing, and even wedging some ways into the archers' formation. But now these horsemen were surrounded. Horror gave way to confidence, the hunters nearest to the mounted Vikings drew clubs, and together with the pitchfork wielders, they crushed the cavalry. It quickly became clear that, given some time at a smith's grinder for sharpening, a pitchfork lent itself decently to killing a horse or forcing a cavalryman off his mount in a pinch.

Alfred was able to rally the mob back into formation, and the hunters continued firing on the approaching Norwegian footmen. A little over half the Viking band had fallen by the time its main bulk closed in for melee combat. Flanking the English proved futile; the box of "spearmen" surrounded their archer comrades on every side. The melee struggle was grueling, but the long reach of the Britons' pitchforks did prevent many Vikings from being able to get a solid swing in without being skewered, and the hunters carried on firing over the melee lines to kill more raiders that were waiting behind those already engaged in combat.

In the end, the raider band-- reduced to a fifth of their numbers-- gave in to survival instinct and was put to rout. Alfred Codd looked around to see many of his fellow peasants on the ground, bloodied and writhing. The victory would turn out to be less Pyrrhic than it seemed; among the many dozen injured, only two had actually died of their wounds. These numbers surprised Alfred himself, but not as much as his family's elevation to the nobility as a reward for his accomplishment that day.

"If this is to be my lot in life," remarked Alfred upon his appointment to the lofty position of a general, "then I will need a substantially larger codpiece."

Spirits were high across the French provinces of England in the wake of the battle, a minor triumph over the Viking Resurgence though it was. Yet Lord Alfred was scarred by it in more ways than one, and wrote as much in his personal journal:

I drink to the dead now, until I achieve a blissful stupor. Us suffering a mere two losses would be much happier news to me had those two not been my only friends.

Granted command over an army of professional archers, heavy infantry and horsemen, Alfred Codd was soon summoned across the English Channel to the isles of Britannia. The new wave of Vikings had brought the Kingdom of Wales to its knees, handed Scotland some grievous defeats and placed fortresses along the eastern coast of England. It was time to bring these isles to order.

#Alternate History #Total War

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hetaliawhatifs · 7 years

Note

What would be the most mischievous thing that each of the Nordics have done?

Norway: Lukas is typically someone who stays pretty calm…but, once or twice, when someone annoys him, he’d lightly sprinkle itching powder on the inside of their shirts..shoes..underwear..you name it. But, not enough to make them scratch like crazy..just enough to make them ever so slightly itchy..

Iceland: Since Emil is the youngest, they often make fun of him for not being able to join in on their drinking games…well, with that being said, once when everyone got super wasted, he took all of their phones, put them in Ziploc bags, put it in a bowl and water and proceed to freeze them. Don’t worry, they were fine..after they defrosted. No regrets.

Finland: Since Tino loves to bake, and most people trust him, once when he made cookies for the group, and added- nothing extreme..just a drop of ghost pepper extract to the batch of cookies. And, for some odd reason, all the milk was gone! Whoops!

Sweden: Whenever someone realllly gets on his nerves, he’ll go into their room with his tool kit and just barley unscrew things throughout their room so everything squeaks. Lays in bed? Squeaks. Relaxes in comfy chair? Squeaks. Best part? Only Berwald has the tools to fix it.

Denmark: Matthias usually pranks the others about twice a week, but the one that takes the cake has to be his Lego one. He would subtly place Legos all around their rooms and in their shoes. Walking around? Suddenly Legos under their feet. Flopping into bed? Legos under the sheets.

#hetalia #aph #hetalia what ifs #hetalia headcanons #aph nordics #hetalia nordics #nordic #aph norway #aph iceland #aph finland #aph sweden #aph denmark #lukas bondevik #emil steilsson #tino väinämöinen #berwald oxenstierna #matthias kohler

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yandere-of-your-dreams · 3 years

Text

BEST UK HALAL SUPPLEMENTS

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Technique for butcher

Fundamental article: Dhabihah

Halal meat segment at a supermarket in Canada.

The food should come from a provider that utilizes halal practices. Dhabīḥah (ذَبِيْحَة) is the endorsed technique for butcher for all meat sources, barring fish and other ocean life, per Islamic law. This strategy for butchering creatures comprises of utilizing a sharp blade to make a cut that slits the front of the jugular, throat and jugular veins yet not the spinal cord.[24] The top of a creature that is butchered utilizing halal halal supplements strategies is lined up with the qiblah. Notwithstanding the bearing, allowed creatures ought to be endless supply of the Islamic supplication Bismillah.[25]

The butcher should be performed by a grown-up Muslim.[26] Animals butchered by non Muslims isn't halal. Blood should be depleted from the veins. Remains (corpses of dead creatures, halal supplements for example, creatures who kicked the bucket in the wild) can't be eaten.[8] Additionally, a creature that has been choked, beaten (to death), murdered by a fall, gutted (to death), savaged by a monster of prey (except if polished off by a human), or forfeited on a stone raised area can't be eaten.[27]

Staggering of the creature isn't permitted prior to butchering. It is permitted just on the off chance that it important to halal supplements quiet down a fierce animal.[26] The UK Food Standards Agency figures from 2011 recommend that 84% of dairy cattle, 81% of sheep and 88% of chickens butchered for halal meat were dazed before they passed on. General stores selling halal items likewise report that all creatures are shocked before they are butchered. Tesco, for instance, says "the lone contrast between the halal meat it sells and other meat is that it was honored as it was killed."[28] Concerns about creature experiencing butcher without earlier dazzling has brought about the boycott of butcher of unstunned creatures in Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.[29][30] Generally, murdering creatures in Islam is just allowable for two fundamental reasons, to be eaten[31] and to take out a threat, for example a frenzied dog.[32]

Primary articles: Islamic and Jewish dietary laws analyzed and Christian dietary laws

Eid ul-Adha Islamic occasion in Pakistan

Creatures butchered by Christians or Jews is halal just if the butcher is completed by jugular cut, halal supplements it is referenced before butcher that the intention is of reasonable utilization, the butcher is done after the name of Allah (demonstrating that you are thankful for Allah's favors). The necessity to conjure Allah's name is an unquestionable requirement. At the end of the day, the word ṭaʻām alludes to dhabīḥah meat; i.e., the meat arranged after the butcher of a creature by slitting the jugular (i.e., the jugular vein, the carotid corridors, and the windpipe) and during butcher God's name is summoned (Ibn ʻAbbās, Mujāhid, ʻIkrimah all cited by Ṭabarī, Ibn Kathīr).[24]

Legitimate meats are allowed to be eaten by Muslims.[33] This is because of the likeness between the two techniques for butcher and the comparative standards of genuine meat which are seen by Jews.[34] Visit below to get best halal supplement! https://halalsupplement.net/ https://halalsupplement.net/ https://halalsupplement.net/

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rilenerocks · 4 years

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Sometimes things just have to blow, out of nowhere, for no reason in particular. Internal seismic shifts. The other day started out innocently enough. In fact, it was a welcome relief from the previous one which was incredibly stressful. The events of that day began with a morning email from my mortgage company, telling me I’d filed legally incorrect documents. As I’d completed them myself with no lawyer, I got seriously worried. The bank’s underwriters turned out to be wrong, but still. Not the most relaxing way to start the morning. Then I got a truly disturbing phone call from a friend who’s suffering from intractable depression which has thus far been unresponsive to pharmaceutical intervention. Behaving way beyond my pay grade, I managed to find at least some temporary intervention for him by using my powers of persuasion on his primary doctor. But I know my limits and I was edging past them. I was seriously afraid and uncomfortable. Next up was having some truly beloved people stop by my house, people who were visiting from a coronavirus hotspot in this country. And they have been only sporadically wearing masks. What a dilemma. Contact or no contact? Did I get exposed? No one we love and who love us wants to deliberately harm us. But we can’t possibly know who’s quietly carrying the virus, nor whether we’ll be the ones who wind up with the life-threatening aspects of this disease. When will this pressure end? Not for a long time, apparently, when the public’s responses to the threat are so disparate. Then the guests used the toilet where the seat, unbeknownst to them had been hanging by a thread. When they left, I went in to the bathroom to sanitize and found the seat hopelessly broken. Groan. I ordered a new one that I could pick up without going into a store. I picked it up, went home and took everything apart. The new one was the wrong size. The day just kept going. I got a huge painful splinter in the bottom of my foot and I couldn’t get part of it out. Later, another friend wrote me from the ER where her teenaged son was in some inexplicable digestive agony. He was released without having a Covid19 test which made me nuts. My youngest grandson swallowed Legos. I couldn’t wait for bedtime. Just one of those wake ups you’d rather forget.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!

1:40 PM · Jul 6, 2020

444.3K

158.7K people are

In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!

The next day started with Trump’s unhinged comments on opening U.S. schools in the fall, including the threat of cutting federal funding to them if they choose to put their students’ health ahead of his re-election objectives. This infuriating drivel in the midst of the accelerated rate of Covid19 infection in this country wasn’t what I needed after the previous day’s irritations. So I made my way out to my backyard and my tiny pool which is my current substitute for the swimming I so desperately miss right now.

I slipped my headphones on, put my feet in the water and focused on relaxing. After a short time, I felt the familiar deep rumbling of that seismic shift I was talking about, the one associated with the deep grief I still feel over Michael’s death and the inconsolable sense of loneliness connected only with him. So the wailing burst from me in a series of mini-convulsions that are shocking in their physicality. I’ve learned that there’s nothing to do but let them complete their cycle until I’m left at the end, exhausted, with not much left inside. These don’t happen that frequently any more but I expect they’ll be my companions intermittently for the rest of my life. Big consuming love comes with the expense of its absence. I wouldn’t trade away any of it. My approach was always and remains, full speed ahead, embracing the euphoric and wonderful along with the gaping hole and the despair. Yes. Full speed ahead.

I was pretty spent but took a stroll around the garden where there’s always something to lighten the mood. I decided to try staying away from the news which is never an easy choice for me. One day off won’t hurt anything. I was going to focus on finding some laughter and lightness. Maybe the stars were aligned for me because when I went inside to seek a television line-up, often a wasteland for me, there were some serendipitous options for a change. I mean, really, does Gladiator have to be playing every single night for seven straight days? Or Kevin Costner’s pathetic excuse for a Robin Hood film when everyone knows the Errol Flynn one from the 1930’s is the best?

youtube

I was lucky enough to find Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’ve always found that movie really funny. This scene, filmed in my hometown of Chicago, never fails to make me smile.

That was followed by the fabulous screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Good acting and great writing hold up over decades and I’m so glad I know how to yank myself out of a dark space using old reliable films.

I finished my mental rehab with the Marx Brothers’ Night at the Opera. Sometimes slapstick works and sometimes it doesn’t, but ridiculous zingers and mad physical antics worked like a tonic for me. All in all, fairly easy ways to revive myself after a big slump. For the rest of the night, I cut myself some slack and just let my mind wander. I started thinking about the different television shows I watched when I was growing up.

There was Lassie, Fury, My Friend Flicka and Annie Oakley. I was always partial to animals and Westerns. I often have conversations with my daughter about how much tv time is too much time for kids these days. Maybe the level of sophisticated technology and the dynamic relationship between the person and the device is really different from how sitting in front of the tube was back in the day. But I certainly watched a lot of shows. And I didn’t get lazy or stupid. I read a lot of books, too. But I suspect there were people in my generation for whom that sedentary part of their lives had adverse effects. Maybe the difference between now and then really isn’t that dramatic. Or maybe I just feel like being optimistic and naive for awhile. Truthfully, it’s a welcome relief to being grounded in today’s dystopian reality.

I realized that I’ve been so intent on the pandemic, its effect on the foreseeable future and the constraints I’m wrestling with, that I hadn’t gone out in several days to look up. The clouds and skies are always so interesting and soothing for me. So I got back with the program. I was glad I did. Later, when I discussed what I’d felt like on the lousy day with my daughter, I told her that fundamentally, I thought I’d been doing pretty well under the circumstances. Ever the nihilist, she told me she agreed that for a person who was living alone, in a seemingly endless lockdown, with perhaps this current Groundhog Day life being the way my old age would end, I was doing fantastic. I have to say, her comment made me roar with laughter. I’ve risen from the depths again. As I said, full speed ahead. Maybe to nowhere, but whatever.

Full Steam Ahead Sometimes things just have to blow, out of nowhere, for no reason in particular. Internal seismic shifts.

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years

Photo

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/coronavirus-whats-happening-around-the-world-on-wednesday-4/

Coronavirus: What's happening around the world on Wednesday

The latest:

As the number of COVID-19 cases surpassed three million in the U.S. on Wednesday, President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal money if schools don’t reopen in the fall, and lashed out at federal health officials over school reopening guidelines that he says are impractical and expensive.

Taking to Twitter to voice his frustration, Trump argued that countries including Germany, Denmark and Norway have reopened schools “with no problems.” He also repeated his claim that Democrats want to keep schools closed for political reasons, not because of any risks associated with the novel coronavirus.

“The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November election,” Trump tweeted, “but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!”

—@realDonaldTrump

He did not immediately say what funding he would cut or what authority he had to make the move.

Shortly afterward, Vice-President Mike Pence announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be issuing new guidance next week “that will give all new tools to our schools.”

The advice will keep students safe, he said, but “the president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough. “

WATCH | Vice-President Pence says COVID-19 fatality rate remains ‘low and steady’:

U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence thanked health care workers and the American people for their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 1:28

Trump made his comments a day after launching an all-out effort pressing state and local officials to reopen the nation’s schools and colleges this fall.

At a White House event on Tuesday, health and education officials argued that keeping students out of school for the fall semester would pose greater health risks than any tied to the coronavirus.

His comments came as Johns Hopkins University reported the grim new milestone in the number of cases confirmed in the U.S., a day after the country’s two most-populous states, Texas and California, reported record numbers of new infections. As of Wednesday, 131,594 people are known to have died from the respiratory illness in the U.S.

Authorities have reported alarming upswings of daily caseloads in roughly two-dozen states over the past two weeks, a sign that efforts to control transmission of the novel coronavirus have failed in large swaths of the country.

Meanwhile, Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr. Bruce Dart said Wednesday that a crowd of thousands attending Trump’s campaign rally in Tulsa, Okla., in late June, along with large groups of people who showed up to protest, “likely contributed” to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus cases in the area.

Tulsa County reported 261 confirmed cases on Monday, a new record one-day high, and another 206 confirmed cases on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A waiter carries plates past social distancing greenhouse dining pods in the former parking lot of the Lady Byrd Cafe in Los Angeles on Tuesday. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Worldwide, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has climbed to 11,922,399, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of global deaths stands at 546,325.

What’s happening with coronavirus in Canada

As of 7 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Canada had 106,434 confirmed and presumptive coronavirus cases. Provinces and territories listed 70,232 of the cases as recovered or resolved. A CBC News tally of deaths based on provincial reports, regional health information and CBC’s reporting stood at 8,774.

The federal government on Wednesday released a long-awaited “fiscal snapshot” that forecast nearly two million Canadians could be without jobs this year.

The document details how the Trudeau Liberals see the COVID-19 pandemic dragging down the domestic economy and sending the deficit to a historic $343.2 billion.

The economic and fiscal report from the government lays out the Liberals’ belief that there will be a slow return to a new normal, with unemployment high and economic growth low through to at least the end of 2021.

Even though the government believes the worst of the economic harm from the pandemic is behind the country, the document says a recovery can’t begin in earnest until an effective vaccine or treatment becomes widely available.

People wear face masks at Toronto’s Eaton Centre shopping mall on Tuesday. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Also on Wednesday, Canada’s public health agency released the latest figures in its modelling of the coronavirus outbreak in the country, showing the epidemic is on the same trajectory as it was at the end of June.

Dr. Howard Njoo, deputy chief public health officer of Canada, told a media briefing in Ottawa that “the current patterns of COVID-19 infections show limited to no transmission in most areas of the country.”

While he said the outbreak in Canada remains “largely under control,” he warned that the potential for a significant spike in new cases “is not just hypothetical, as this is exactly what we are already seeing in some other parts of the world.”

Njoo was also asked about the latest discussions at the World Health Organization on “emerging evidence” of airborne transmission of the virus.

He said that evidence so far has not shown COVID-19 to be airborne “in that classic definition in a sense as measles.”

“And certainly based on what we’ve done so far in terms of public health measures, they’ve been proven effective,” he said.

Ontario, with the second-highest count for COVID-19, added 118 new cases on Wednesday, for a total of 36,178 — after reporting 112 new cases on Tuesday, when the province introduced new legislation to enable the extension of some pandemic emergency orders over the next year.

Quebec added 82 new cases Wednesday for a provincial total of 56,079.

In Edmonton, the Misericordia Community Hospital is closing its doors to new patients and has cancelled all surgeries as an outbreak of COVID-19 continues to spread.

As of Wednesday morning, 20 patients and 15 staff members had tested positive. Three patients linked to the outbreak have died.

The hospital had previously cancelled day surgeries, restricted visitors and had begun testing of staff and patients.

WATCH | Is the handshake over?

COVID-19 has made the handshake a thing of the past. The National’s Adrienne Arsenault finds out how people can show trust and goodwill without shaking on it. 5:03

Here’s what’s happening around the world

In South America, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said he is confident he will swiftly recover from the novel coronavirus thanks to treatment with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that has not been proven effective against the virus.

Bolsonaro, 65, said he tested positive for the coronavirus on Tuesday after months of downplaying its severity while deaths mounted rapidly inside the country.

WATCH | Bolsonaro tests positive after downplaying risk of COVID-19:

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro tests positive for COVID-19, after spending months downplaying the risk of the disease. 2:03

The president told reporters he underwent a lung X-ray on Monday after experiencing fever, muscle aches and malaise. As of Tuesday, his fever had subsided, he said, and he attributed the improvement to hydroxychloroquine.

The right-wing populist posted a video to Facebook of him taking his third dose of hydroxychloroquine, which has also been promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Today I’m a lot better, so certainly it’s working,” Bolsonaro said, downing the dose with a glass of water.

Brazil, the world’s sixth-biggest nation with more than 210 million people, is one of the outbreak’s most lethal hot spots. More than 65,000 Brazilians have died from COVID-19, and over 1.5 million have been infected.

Both numbers are the world’s second-highest totals, behind those of the U.S., though the true figures are believed to be higher because of a lack of widespread testing. On Tuesday alone, 1,254 deaths were confirmed.

WATCH | Respirologist on risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19:

Dr. Samir Gupta says there is not yet enough evidence to show significant spread of the coronavirus through airborne transmission. 5:40

In Europe, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday he took full responsibility for the government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, denying that he was trying to blame care workers for the spread of COVID-19.

Johnson has been criticized for saying some care homes did not follow procedures to stem the spread of COVID-19 deaths and was repeatedly asked by Opposition Labour Leader Keir Starmer to apologize. The prime minister did not do so.

Serbian police fired tear gas at protesters after being pelted with flares and stones on Wednesday as thousands protested in front of the Belgrade parliament despite warnings that such gatherings could spread the disease.

The evening before, violence erupted when a crowd stormed parliament in protest of plans to reimpose a lockdown following a new spike in COVID-19 cases. Forty-three police officers and 17 protesters were injured and there were 23 arrests.

Serbian riot police clashed with protesters in Belgrade on Wednesday. President Aleksandar Vucic backtracked Wednesday on his plans to reinstate a coronavirus lockdown in the capital after thousands protested the move. (Darko Vojinovic/The Associated Press)

Hours before Wednesday’s protest, President Aleksandar Vucic called on people to stop attending anti-government rallies to avoid a further spread of the coronavirus, warning there were no beds left in hospitals.

Although he had on Tuesday said a new lockdown would be imposed in Belgrade this weekend, Vucic said on Wednesday he had ultimately advised the government and health authorities not to introduce it. The government will announce a new set of restrictive measures on Thursday, he said.

In Romania, the number of COVID-19 cases now exceeds 30,000, with about 1,800 deaths, the government reported on Wednesday.

In Spain, Catalonia’s regional authorities will on Wednesday decide to make it mandatory to wear masks regardless of people’s ability to maintain a safe distance, becoming the country’s first region to do so, Catalan regional leader Quim Torra said.

Torra said the measure would come into force on Thursday. Wearing masks indoors and outdoors is mandatory in Spain if people cannot guarantee a 1.5-metre distance from one another until a cure or vaccine for the coronavirus is found.

Spain said on Wednesday the daily infection count doubled in 24 hours amid dozens of small outbreaks.

Africa now has more than a half-million confirmed coronavirus cases. The continent-wide total is over 508,000, according to figures released Wednesday by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The true number of cases among Africa’s 1.3 billion people is unknown as its 54 countries continue to face a serious shortage of testing materials for the virus.

“A tremendous problem. A real crisis of access,” the World Health Organization’s Africa chief, Matshidiso Moeti, said last week.

A boy stands in front of graffiti promoting the fight against the novel coronavirus in the Mathare slums of Nairobi, Kenya. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Already COVID-19 has killed more people in Africa — 11,955 — than Ebola did in its deadliest outbreak from 2014 to 2016 in West Africa, the WHO said Wednesday.

In Asia, Indonesia reported another record high of 1,863 coronavirus cases, bringing the national total above 68,000, while the government expects to slowly reopen the tourist island of Bali.

Fifty people died in the last 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 3,359, the highest in Southeast Asia.

Bali Governor I Wayan Koster said that starting Thursday, the island will gradually reopen to local tourists, then domestic and international tourists. It will open to Indonesians from other parts of the country on July 31 and to foreign tourists on Sept. 11.

In Iran, the death toll from COVID-19 passed 12,000 on Wednesday, health ministry spokesperson Sima Sadat Lari said in a statement on state TV. The total number of infections in the country has reached 248,379, she said.

WATCH | Almost 5 million Australians under lockdown after spike in coronavirus cases:

Lockdown in Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city, includes the closure of the state border, creating headaches for people who routinely work or travel between Victoria and New South Wales. (Ross/AAP Image/Reuters) 1:08

In Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Wednesday said the country should slow down the return of its citizens from abroad, as Melbourne, the capital of Victoria, and surrounding regions began another partial lockdown to slow the spread of the virus.

The border between the states of Victoria and New South Wales, the busiest in the country, was closed overnight.

Morrison said he would take a proposal on reducing the number of repatriation flights to a national cabinet of state and territory leaders on Friday.

#World

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athingofvikings · 7 years

Text

Chapter 14: Relationships

Previous Chapter | Summary | Table Of Contents Main | Next Chapter

Chapter 14: Relationships

The initial Norwegian outreach to Berk, notwithstanding popular belief otherwise, was actually instigated by Magnus the Good's regent, Einar Eindridesson Thambarskelfir (c. 980-1047), of the Lade jarls, not Magnus the Good, although he was an enthusiastic supporter of the idea.

Originally an opponent of King Olaf Haraldsson, Magnus's father, Einar supported King Cnut the Great's efforts to overthrow Olaf. Those efforts succeeded in 1028 AD, sending King Olaf and his family into exile. Olaf returned two years later after the death of Cnut's first viceroy, Haakon Ericsson, in an attempt to regain his kingdom, and died at the Battle of Stiklestad (29 July 1030 AD), defeated by a peasant army led by Kálfr Árnasson, Thorir Hund and Hárek of Tjøtta. Einar was not present at the battle, but this was more due to happenstance than intent—Einar was visiting King Cnut in London when the battle was joined. The purpose of his visit was to petition Cnut to make him the new viceroy of Norway.

The petition failed; Einar was not given the viceroyalty over Norway, and neither were any of the other Norwegian nobility that had supported Cnut. Instead, Cnut chose his fourteen-year-old son Sveinn as viceroy and Sveinn's mother, Ælfgifu of Northampton, as the boy's regent and therefore the effective ruler of Norway. This decision infuriated Einar and the others who had supported Cnut's overthrow of King Olaf, as each of them had wished to be named as regent over Norway, and Cnut had promised each of them the position (or so they claimed). Sveinn and Ælfgifu's subsequent viceroy reign was seen as oppressive due to new laws and taxes, and was marked by intense resistance on the part of the Norwegian nobility.

In 1035 AD, Einar, acting in concert with Kálfr, betrayed Cnut's viceroys. Traveling to Yaroslav the Wise's court in the Kievan Rus', the two chieftains found Olaf's eleven-year-old illegitimate son, Magnus, who had been left there by his father to be fostered in exile by Yaroslav and his wife Ingegerd. Returning to Scandinavia with Magnus, they allied with King Anund Jacob the Coalburner of Sweden, Magnus's step-uncle, to place Magnus on the Norwegian throne as a puppet ruler to the noble chiefs.

Political machinations quickly followed, and Kálfr was quickly outmaneuvered by Einar. Using Kálfr's direct involvement in the death of King Olaf against him, Einar depicted himself as blameless, and managed to have Kálfr incriminate himself by showing how he killed the boy-king's father with a stab to the neck. Einar became Magnus's new regent and effective ruler of Norway, while Kálfr and Thorir were driven into exile. Magnus, reportedly furious, wished to have them executed, but refrained from doing so on the advice of his godfather, Sigvatr the Skald.

His primary rivals gone, Einar spent the next half decade as the de facto ruler of Norway; even when Magnus reached his majority and assumed some level of legal power, Einar made certain to keep the young monarch dependent on him.

This status quo, however, was broken by one of Einar's miscalculations. Hearing of the tamed dragons and dragon-riders of Berk from a traveling skald in the spring of 1041 AD, he dispatched one of his minor rivals in the court, the herald Yngvarr Arlaksson, to make contact with Berk, reasoning that either his rival would be killed by fearsome Norse dragon-riders or they might potentially make an ally of the same.

This backfired, as Berk—and Hiccup Haddock and his associates in particular—were not what he had expected.

—Corpus Historiae Berkiae, 1396

"This is amazing!"

Hiccup grinned as Wulfhild held on behind him, Astrid and Stormfly doing their best to keep up, or at least stay in range. The other Hooligans, plus Magnus, were out flying as well, mostly off on their own, but a few were staying near him.

The princess was not as much of a thrill-seeker as her half-brother was, but her eyes were bright as Hiccup and Toothless took her up as high as they could manage, above the mountains and the clouds. As they dove, she cheered, which made Hiccup smile from his spot in front of her. As they flew, she pointed out landmarks below, mostly farms belonging to the nobles. The people working the fields waved—or occasionally scurried for cover—as they flew by.

Magnus, for his part, had managed to either bribe or convince Tuffnut to give up his seat and was now riding on Barf's neck next to Ruffnut on Belch's; the two of them were flying along the cloudtops with the rest of the Hooligans. During the (brief) moments when they buzzed past the Zippleback, Hiccup could hear the two of them talking—it sounded like Ruffnut was reciting some saga, unsurprisingly.

Astrid and Stormfly blew past as Toothless leisurely skimmed above the waters of the fjord. Wulfhild squealed and clutched at Hiccup's shoulders as Hiccup's girlfriend and her dragon came out of a dive within a few handspans of Toothless's wingtips.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Hiccup hollered at Astrid, "Cutting it a little close there, aren't you?"

Astrid twisted in her saddle and grinned. "If we don't do that sort of thing, how will you get better?"

"Oh, I see," Hiccup called back with a grin. "It's for practice."

Wulfhild snorted behind him.

"Yep! Race you!" Astrid said, and turned to face forward, and Stormfly poured on the speed.

Wulfhild called out, "Hey, no fair! Toothless is carrying two!"

Hiccup gave a mock-menacing chuckle. "No, princess, that's what's going to make this fair. C'mon bud!" he said, addressing the last to Toothless, and the race was on.

Astrid made for the nearby peak that overlooked the city, which Wulfhild identified as the Storheia. Despite Astrid's head-start, Toothless gained slowly.

Hiccup nonchalantly and insolently waved at Astrid as they pulled alongside the Nadder. "Everything all right over there?"

"Oh, we're just fine," Astrid called. "We're just winging it," she said as Stormfly suddenly did a little roll and whirl, and moved herself forward and in front of Toothless.

"Nice move! Won't help, though!" Hiccup called back, and directed Toothless into a dive, cutting under and in front of Astrid and Stormfly, who flew down after them.

"Dropping out already?"

"I don't see any reason to have this drag-on," Hiccup said with zest, making Wulfhild groan behind him.

"I'm not going to tal-on you to the princess, but, Wulfhild, just to let you know, he's always like this," Astrid said in a faux-conspiratorial tone across the gap between the two dragons.

Wulfhild covered her eyes and started to shake with repressed laughter.

"Fangs for nothing, Astrid!" Hiccup called as Toothless and Stormfly rounded the peak in a dead heat.

Wulfhild whimpered while clutching her sides, trying to keep from laughing. They turned back to the city, Wulfhild rolling her eyes at them and occasionally breaking out into giggles.

"So, princess, check this out!" Astrid called and then said, "Stormfly, keep level, like we practiced."

The dragon acknowledged the instruction with a purr as Astrid unbuckled herself from the saddle. They were flying a hundred or so paces above the ground, and she made a calming motion to Hiccup as he started to protest. He quieted down, and then made an incoherent protesting noise as she stood up and then flipped over into a handstand on Stormfly's back.

He heard Wulfhild gasp behind him, and Hiccup paid close attention… just in case he and Toothless had to catch her in midair.

Again.

As Astrid showed how skilled and talented she was with her gymnastics—showed off, really—doing handstands and, at one point that made Hiccup wince, a full-on cartwheel down the length of Stormfly’s back and tail, the princess behind him made little squeaking noises of awe, obviously trying to keep from being a distraction. Hiccup was trying to keep himself focused on the here-and-now, and not the happy memories of the previous night that were being unwillingly conjured by his traitorous brain. Yes, it was brave, and daring, and an incredible show of skill that made him so proud of her, and all of that…

And if she fell, he and Toothless would have only a matter of moments to catch her, and he just could not stop having other thoughts as he saw her do a backbend between Stormfly's wings.

After a minute or so, Astrid finished with a midair flip that landed her right in her saddle, and rehooked her belaying lines with a flourish.

Wulfhild burst into applause, and Astrid gave an exaggerated bow. Hiccup swallowed and blinked repeatedly for a moment; Astrid must have caught some of it, as she smiled at him, with enough of an edge to it that it was practically a leer.

Nudging Toothless in closer, he asked mildly, "How long have you been practicing that?"

Astrid shrugged and gave a smug smirk. "A month or so. We might not be able to win at speed, but we can definitely beat you two for style!" Her eyes suddenly narrowed. "Hey, what's going on…?" She pointed ahead, and Hiccup looked to where she was indicating.

Near the fort and the associated farm—both of which, Hiccup had been surprised to learn, actually belonged to the regent, not to Magnus—Hookfang and Snotlout were visible, on fire. A blue-and-gold Zippleback that Hiccup recognized as Nott and Delling, who belonged to Fritjof clan Jorgenson, was hovering nearby. On the back of the double-headed dragon was the ornery old thane and two other figures. Below them, a small fire raged in a dense overgrown thicket of brambles and heavy brush, with a column of smoke rising from it. Wulfhild tensed behind him as Hiccup managed to identify the the other two figures as the regent and his son, the marshal.

Frowning, Hiccup turned to Wulfhild. "Isn't that his farm that Snotlout just set on fire?"

She nodded mutely.

Astrid called out from next to them, "Looks like it was on purpose. Look!"

She pointed to a group of workers who were clearing away at the edge of the brush with knives and hoes to make a firebreak.

Hiccup relaxed. "Oh, I see. He's just being help—"

Snotlout and Hookfang dove and strafed the ground with a spray of fire, sending the flames in the brambles soaring higher. The regent and the marshal watched and applauded.

They watched the fighting demonstration for a long moment, and then Hiccup worked Toothless's tailfin and sent them banking off to the side. Hiccup closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He shouldn't have been surprised. Even though Snotlout wasn't supposed to show the foreigners dragon-riding combat methods, he'd found a loophole.

They flew on in silence for another moment before Astrid said bracingly, "At least he's not chasing after the servants? And he's being helpful?"

Hiccup groaned. "Yeah, but when I said that we could show off the dragons… that isn't what I had in mind."

Astrid gave a long sigh. "I know, but let's take what we can get."

Wulfhild spoke up hesitantly. "Well… that will help you in your negotiations, I think." She gave a wan smile as Hiccup looked back at her. "Einar will definitely want a dragon for his son now. I think you'll be able to name your price from him in the negotiations."

Hiccup cocked an eyebrow at her, confused. "But we're negotiating with your brother…"

"Right. Right," she said, and then asked, "So, are you going to trade any dragons to my brother?"

He shrugged, lifting his hands up in a sweeping gesture. "Well, we spent the whole morning talking on that. I can't say that I'm immediately opposed to the idea, but we'll see how our talks go."

"I hope you do," she said. "It would be so wonderful. I'd even—"

"'Even' what?" Hiccup asked, after a moment.

"It's not important," she said bracingly. "I was wondering something, though, Sir Hiccup, if you would be so kind as to indulge my curiosity."

He frowned for a moment, and then nodded to her. Whatever it was, she clearly didn't want to talk about it, and he was going to respect that. "Yes, Lady Wulfhild?"

"Well, I was wondering about this harness," she began. "I noticed that Stormfly doesn't have a similar one, and I was wondering…" she trailed off again.

Hiccup sighed. "No, I didn't maim him in order to control him." That had been the guess of several of the visitors to Berk since Thawfest, and it still bothered him. "During the last dragon raid, I shot him out of the sky with a weapon I built, and the tail fin got torn off when he crashed. I built him a new tail, but he needs me to operate it. Without me, he can't fly, so I help him. It's the least I can do." He sighed, feeling guilty.

Toothless crooned at him chidingly.

"What's that, bu—Whoa!"

Toothless, likely being both bored and not putting up with Hiccup's guilt, rolled over in mid-air and stayed that way for a moment, Hiccup's leg unconsciously shifting the fin to match the motion.

Wulfhild shrieked in surprise, and clutched tight onto Hiccup and the saddle, and then laughed as Toothless righted himself. Astrid and Stormfly chortled, and the sullen mood from Snotlout's demonstration broke.

As Wulfhild continued to point out landmarks for them to fly to, Astrid asked, "So, Lady Wulfhild, you know the area very well. Did you grow up here?"

Hiccup could feel the princess shake her head behind him. "No, I was born in the city of Borg, in the south, and I was… fostered by my uncle, King Jakob of Sweden for several years before coming back to Norway." She gave a shrug. "I've just been paying attention to the area and the people, that's all."

Barf and Belch, with the king and Ruffnut on their necks, flew nearby, with Toast and Horsefeathers keeping pace as escort. They all waved to each other, while distant echoes of thunder sounded across the fjord.

Hiccup turned to look, and saw vast clouds of Zippleback gas on the water near the city, which Hookfang or Delling were igniting one by one.

Apparently the demonstration for the regent and marshal was more than just Hookfang's abilities.

Fishwings and Hazelnut came flying up on their Nadders, Inkpot and Prickle. Hiccup waved, and they shouted back greetings. Then Hazelnut called out, "Hey, Hiccup, have you shown the princess the top of a cloud yet?"

Astrid said, with a twinkle in her eye, "No, she's been showing us the sights instead!" And with that, she and Stormfly started to climb up into the air, Toothless right on her tail. The others joined in, and they made for one of the large fluffy clouds over the fjord.

Toothless moved to the front of the group and made the point of a short V-formation, the others following close behind in his wake. Hiccup could hear the king cheering as they flew up into the cloud. As the group burst through the top of the cloud, he shivered—the wet foggy substance was much chillier than the summer grounds below.

Wulfhild gasped as she looked out over the fluffy wisps below her, with what seemed to be the whole of Norway stretching out below them. To the south, vast ranges of snow-topped rugged mountains were visible, and Hiccup could see the islands that they'd sailed past on their way to Nidaros to the west. The mountains around the fjord looked like they'd been scraped by some immense jotunn at some point, with long lines extending for miles that reminded Hiccup of drag-lines from pushing a stone across the ground.

He'd always known that the jotunn were giants… but he was finding his previous conceptions of them being merely oversized people to be somewhat… inadequate. Shocking, really, to see the scale on which they operated, especially firsthand.

They flew higher above the clouds, the ground far below, until people started feeling dizzy. Then they dove as a group, people whooping and cheering. Hiccup was careful to make sure that they weren't coming in too fast like his and Toothless's first flight. While that had been awesome and everything, there was no reason to risk having their royal passengers go splat against the fjord.

Back down at the level of the water, Toothless and a few of the other dragons started making it very clear that they were hungry, so they returned to the fort, flying in over the city. A number of the people in the streets were pointing at them, either in awe or fear, and Hiccup made a mental note to ask Magnus if he would be willing to let his subjects interact with the dragons and show them that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Wings flapping as they came in to land, the dragons filled the courtyard of the fort. The horses in the stables squealed, and the stableboys fought to keep them from panicking, and Hiccup led the reptilian procession out of the way as quickly as he could.

As they dismounted and left the courtyard, Magnus turned to Hiccup and the other riders, his cheeks flushed with exhilaration. Before he could say anything beyond excited noises, however, Nott and Delling landed as well, and his regent made a beckoning motion to him.

His face fell, and he looked mournfully at Hiccup. "Unfortunately, duty calls," he said. "We shall continue our talks on the morrow. My fort and its paltry entertainments are at your disposal as my honored guests." With that he walked off, shoulders hunched.

Hiccup looked around at the others. "So… thoughts?"

Wulfhild looked at them, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, grinning from ear to ear, even as she gave little glances off to where her brother was walking with his regent. Once they were out of the courtyard, still smiling widely, she said, "I… I… wow. I can't find the words for… all of that." She waved her hands around to indicate Toothless's flight.

The twins glanced at each other, grinned, and started calling out suggestions.

"Ecstatic."

"Euphoric."

"Elated."

"Beatific."

"Enchanted."

"Exhilarated."

Wulfhild gave them a daunted and surprised look that shifted into consternated agreement midway through. "Those sound about right."

"Overjoyed."

"Rhapsodic."

Astrid gave them a quelling look, which bounced off without a mark, and then turned to Wulfhild. "Glad to have been of service," she said with a smile for the princess.

"Ineffable."

"Thrilling."

"Thank you," Wulfhild said with a polite bow. Astrid started to nod, but was cut off by the twins' florid and overblown genuflections. Wulfhild suddenly had a very stuffed look that made it clear that she was repressing laughter. Composing herself, she said, "Well, I feel as if it's a bare nothing compared to what you just showed me," she gave a little giggle as the twins continued to hold their deep obeisances to her, "but, as host, it's high time we entertained you."

Astrid gave Hiccup a sidelong look and cocked her head at Ruffnut and Tuffnut, still bowing down on one knee.

He rolled his eyes and gave a little shake of the head.

Wulfhild was thoughtfully tapping her chin with her index finger. "That being said, we don't have much. We have a small library and we could ask the skalds for some sagas."

Tuffnut and Ruffnut perked up at the mention of sagas, and Hiccup nodded. "That could be interesting."

Wulfhild then brightened. "Actually, I have an idea. Give me an hour?"

Hiccup cocked his head at her and she grinned.

"Okay. Until then, everybody, amuse yourselves."

Wulfhild walked off, skipping in excitement, which made Hiccup smile. Perhaps mindful of their warning this morning, Snotlout went and found the marshal, who, after some cajoling, was willing to have some of his men spar with Snotlout for some training. Tuffnut and Ruffnut went off to hunt down the skalds. The other riders also wandered off, either to their rooms or to explore the city, although Hiccup made sure that they went in pairs past the fortress gates.

Hiccup, watching them go, leaned over and whispered to Astrid, "Too suspicious to disappear now?"

She nodded, trying to hide her own disappointment, and whispered back, "Let's be out nice and public. If we… disappear again, people will notice." She suddenly smirked. "Come on. Let's go invite ourselves to Snotlout's training session. You need practice anyway."

Hiccup gave her a mock-frown. "That sounds more fun for you than for me," he said, walking with her, hand in hand.

She leaned up against him. "Two words, Hiccup. Two."

"What?"

"Grappling. Holds."

Despite himself, Hiccup grinned and they walked off to the training yard, where Snotlout's shouts were echoing. As they walked in, Astrid more or less dragged him off to a straw-padded spot and started throwing him around like a rag doll. While it was enjoyable to have her hands on him… well, she liked to play rough with her toys, and that included him.

An hour later, Wulfhild came and found them, carrying a sack of something that clattered.

He looked up from the ground, where Astrid had tossed him a few moments before, and swallowed away the taste of blood from his mouth. "Oh, thank you, thank you," he said gratefully to the princess.

She gave him an amused smile while Astrid sighed, smirked, and brusquely hauled him to his feet.

"Sorry milady, but you're going to break me at this rate," Hiccup said to his girlfriend, who rolled her eyes at him and gave him a half-pulled punch to the shoulder. Following the princess out of the training yard, they headed to the dragons, gathering up the other riders on their way.

Wulfhild carefully emptied the bag onto the grass of the courtyard, revealing a wide selection of battledore rackets and a number of fresh shuttlecocks featuring new feathers.

As people started to scramble for rackets, Hiccup gestured mutely to his peg with a questioning look at Wulfhild.

She shrugged and said, "I know that battledore is usually a child's game, but… well.." She smiled shyly, her hands clasped behind her back. "Well… I was thinking… what about playing it on dragon-back?"

Everyone froze and looked at Wulfhild, who blushed.

Fishwings spoke up first. "That's genius," she said hoarsely.

The other riders echoed the sentiment, and five minutes later, they were aloft and batting the shuttlecocks through the air. This time, Wulfhild was riding with Astrid on Stormfly's back, acting as the scorekeeper. The shuttlecocks whistled through the air, and if someone had to dive to whack one back up to the group, that counted as dropping it on the ground.

The dragons thought that it was great fun, and Hiccup started pondering how to make dragon-sized rackets for Toothless and the other dragons for the future as he and Toothless whirled into a roll and sent the shuttlecock flying to Ruffnut, and Astrid shouted cheerful obscenities at him for the maneuver.

###

Sounds issued from inside the smithy as Gobber unlocked and removed the collars from the former thralls. In at least one case, he had to take his rasp-hand to the lock, which had gotten stuck closed at some point over the years.

A few of the newly freedmen and freedwomen were standing around outside, looking dazed, or shocked, or belligerent. Or, in other words, perfectly normal.

This wasn't the first time that Stoick had dealt with freeing thralls—although he had to admit, it was the first time he'd had some given to him as tribute. Pretty much every other time he'd done this had been because he and his people had gone and, well, could you call it kidnapping when you were taking them from thralldom and freeing them? He snorted at his own wordgames. Prior times that they'd done this had involved kidnapping thralls from their masters, or those occasions when an escapee had managed to reach Berk. On those occasions, if the former owners had come to try to reclaim their onetime thralls, he'd stood firm against their demands and made it completely clear that trying to force the issue would be a losing proposition. This time, that wouldn't be an issue.

No, this was a nice change of pace. Being quite honest with himself, out of all of the ships that had visited Berk so far this year, this one had been the most enjoyable. It was a far sight from being dragged into… more… squabbling… nobles…

His eyes narrowed as the thought occurred to him.

Yes, it was. And the addition to his flocks were nice, and he'd already given the timbers to a few of the village carpenters in exchange for them crafting some things for him.

But this was too nice.

No, there was something else going on here. He could feel it. Why would someone as notoriously greedy as one of the Ua Imir give this much in tribute? Yes, they'd completely dominated the man's holding back in the spring… but it seemed too much.

Spitelout walked up to him, jarring him out of his train of thought. "Preparations for the frelsis-öl are underway," he said.

Stoick gave him a smile and a grunt of acknowledgment. The freedom feast would formally, legally, and, most importantly, emotionally change the men and women around him from property into freemen, without the obligations on their status that one would find in other Norse holds. Like any other rite of passage, it marked the ending of the old and beginnings of the new. In this case, as the name of the feast indicated, they would drink the ale of freedom and have their necks freed of their collars.

And he was looking forward to ramming that home.

"Serena's happy," his brother-in-law continued, a small smile on his own face. "Volunteered to doing the cooking for it."

"Heh. Of course she did. It's her way of honoring Mama."

Spitelout nodded. "I know. I've heard the stories from her time in a collar too, don't forget."

"Aye, sorry," Stoick said with a shrug and a nod.

"Been too long since we've done this," Spitelout said, and then, in a musing tone, said, "I know that you're dead set against us going a-viking on dragons—"

"Aye," Stoick said, giving Spitelout a level look.

"—but maybe we might want to consider letting it be known that we'll happily take their thralls as tribute instead?"

Stoick shook his head. "Then they'll just go and raid for more to replace the ones that they give us. It wouldn't change anything."

"Argh. I suppose that you're right. Pity."

Inside the smithy, there was a small cry of triumph from Gobber, and the rasping noise of metal on metal stopped. "There we go," Gobber said, and a moment later there was a thump and clink of metal as the thrall collar was removed and tossed onto the pile. "Next!"

The plain-faced baker, who had introduced herself as Rathnait, exited the smithy, looking awed as she rubbed her hands against the callouses on her neck. Spotting Stoick, she walked up to him and bowed. "Milord—"

"Stoick will do. Chief if you want to be formal. Also, I canna be your lord unless yeh want to stay. Do yeh?"

Still bowing, she nodded. "And if I say no?"

Stoick shrugged. "We have traders come once or twice a week these days. I'll give yeh coin for passage off and yeh can shake yer feet free of the dust of this place."

Her bow drooped, going from a stiff formal arc to something more wobbly. "Are yeh serious?" she asked incredulously. She clearly had thought that he was going to go back on his word, and had been prepared for him to issue some ultimatum to coerce her into staying. Well, she'd learn.

He had, after all.

"Aye, I am. I won't hold no man or woman against their will, not by hook or crook." He bent down, pulled her up straight, and looked her in the eye. "Yeh don't want to stay, then I won't make yeh. If yeh do stay, then ye're one of us. Yeh live with us, hand in hand. Yeh walk like us, talk like us, and work with us," Stoick said formally. He enjoyed giving this little speech. "Do yeh want that?"

"I do," she said. "And… thank you."

"Ye're welcome. Come, we're preparing for you all to become freedmen," Stoick said. "Follow Spitelout here. I'm going to go see on the preparations."

With that, he walked off, humming to himself.

###

That evening, at a smaller banquet, feeling quite happy—and extremely anticipatory for after dinner—Hiccup and Astrid sat at the head table again, talking with Magnus and his sister about the day. Wulfhild's eyes were bright as she was describing all she had seen from dragonback to the others around the table, from the fields to the river to the mountains and the sea, her enthusiasm occasionally causing her to stammer slightly as she ran ahead of her own words.

When there was a spare moment, Hiccup turned towards Magnus and asked, "So, what happened?"

Magnus frowned. "Some of my vassals and peasantry in the area decided that they were not happy about your presence here." He shook his head. "It does not matter, though. I have offered you my hospitality, and I will fulfill it."

Hiccup frowned, but nodded.

"Now, that aside, if it is all right with you, Sir Hiccup, I would like to ask what did happen last year that the saga might have… exaggerated," Magnus grinned.

Hiccup sighed and then smiled. "All right. So… Berk. It's twelve days north of hopeless and a few degrees south of freezing to death," he began. The Norsemen around him, familiar with the climate and the long Viking tradition of complaining about it, grinned. "It's located solidly on the meridian of misery…"

As he described his home with a decreasing amount of self-consciousness and his usual deadpan descriptions, he noticed that the hall was getting quieter and more people were paying attention.

When he paused to take a drink to wet his throat, just at the point where he was describing Gobber's smithy, someone started chanting, "Skald, skald, skald!" and more people joined in, until the entire hall was calling out for him to tell the story.

With a sigh, he looked around, opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and looked to Astrid with an expression that basically pleaded with her to help him escape. It was one thing to tell the tale to just the high table… it was quite another to try to project his voice to the entire great hall.

She shook her head, grinning at him, albeit tinged with a note of understanding.

Sighing, he continued, doing his best to speak up so that everyone in the hall could hear, describing the other teens on firefighting duty and Gobber's refusal to let him out. In the flow of the moment, he repeated his words to Gobber more or less verbatim, and, with the comment about potentially getting a date, the whole hall laughed. Astrid just shrugged with a giant grin on her face, and called out when he paused, "It worked!" and a number of people applauded in appreciation.

He waited for the noise to die down for a moment before continuing with describing his Mangler bola launcher, shooting down Toothless, which made him wince in recollection, although a number of people were looking at him in awe for the accomplishment. The description of being chased by the Monstrous Nightmare and Stoick rescuing him was received with applause as well, as well as guffaws of laughter.

The other Hooligans were deeply amused as he went on, and a few of them laughed as they themselves recalled that night, and he found the telling easier as he went. He was even able to laugh at himself when the whole village was looking at him as Hiccup the Useless.

Having Astrid holding his hand as he stood and talked definitely helped, though, and as he progressed through the story—describing releasing Toothless, the first days of dragon training, and making friends with a dragon—he found himself feeling more relaxed than he had in a long time. No one here was judging him; they were instead sitting and listening, enraptured. Even Snotlout, despite their longstanding arguments; even when Hiccup played up the humor in his cousin trying to hit on Astrid when a dragon was on the loose. Stormfly, apparently realizing that she was the topic of description, gave little draconic giggles from behind the high table as Hiccup described Snotlout's… poor throwing skills. Ruffnut and Tuffnut joined in with replicating their commentary about Astrid's ax embedded in his shield, both of them grinning and happily making themselves the butt of the joke, even as someone commented elsewhere in the room that they'd been right.

His throat was getting scratchy by the time he ended his recitation with describing the forging of the new tail prosthesis for Toothless. "As for the rest… well, that'll have to wait for another night."

There were disappointed calls from the others in the room, but, generally, it was accepted. Across the room, Hiccup could see Magnus's two skalds conferring. They had been glancing over at him every so often as he had told the story, and he had a sinking feeling regarding what was going to happen there.

As he sat back down, rubbing at his stump, which ached fiercely at the moment, Magnus pushed a tankard in front of him. "Here. You worked up a mighty thirst there."

Hiccup took it gratefully and swallowed a deep draught before putting the tankard back on the table. "Thank you."

"Thank you," Magnus said emphatically, "for indulging me." He hoisted his own tankard and toasted it towards Hiccup, who picked up his own and knocked it against the king's. "To good friends."

"To friends!"

###

The Terrible Terrors made a chirping noise as Gothi finished grubbing up the weeds from her vegetable garden bed. The peas were just about ready for plucking, the radishes were deep red and had grown to the size of her fist since her last thinning a few weeks before, the turnips likewise, and her onions appeared to be having a contest with the radishes for largest root vegetables—and were winning.

The vegetable weeding done, she took the pile of shriveled weeds over to the compost and dumped them in. A whistle from nearby made her look up at her little dragon flock as they flew around nearby, and she patted the nearest one on the head as it perched on top of the stakes for the pea plants. Grabbing the small ladder, she dragged it over to the cherry orchard, set it against the first tree trunk, climbed it and started to pluck the fruit from the branches, as her dragons helpfully carried up the bucket at a convenient height for her to just drop them in.

Then a voice called out, "Gothi? You here?" Stoick appeared a moment later from around the blackberry bushes. "Ah. Here, let me help." He reached up and started to pluck more cherries from the trees, depositing them into the bucket. As they worked, he said, "If yeh have a little bit, I need yeh to come and bless some new tribesmates."

She looked at him questioningly, and quirked an eyebrow.

"Aye. That Eirish king, the one who tried to steal the dragons, thought to bribe us with thralls. His mistake, eh?"

She gave a silent laugh and patted him on the shoulder. Dismounting from the ladder, she took up her staff and motioned to the chief, and the pair of them left her garden behind.

Behind her, she heard the Terrors chirp to each other, and hoped that they wouldn't get up to much mischief.

As they walked, Stoick talked. "Your garden is doing well this year. Do you need any help with the crops?"

She considered for a moment and shook her head.

"No? Gothi, ye're not getting any younger. Come, let me at least send some of the misbehaving children to work and do the weedin'. Save yer knees."

She smiled at him, and tapped him on the shoulder with her staff.

He laughed. "Aye, aye, I know that it helped me when I was their age. And yeh were younger then."

She bobbed her head from side to side, considering, and then shrugged.

"Fine, fine. Have yeh at least given thought to a successor?"

She made a dismissive motion.

"Gothi, yeh can't keep leavin' that up to me!"

She smirked at him and waggled her eyebrows.

"Gothi!"

She kept walking, resolutely. She had her apprentices, but honestly did not feel that such a decision needed to be made as of yet. And she trusted her chief to make the right decision should the need suddenly arise.

Stoick huffed and kept pace as they passed the dragon arena, currently being renovated by the Ingerman boy, and turned onto the path to the grove. "Fine. Anyway, I wanted to thank yeh for spinning that charm for Hiccup before they left." He smiled softly. "Gothi… if… if…"

She made an out with it motion.

He coughed and said, "If Hiccup and Astrid come back from Norway and she is carrying my grandchild… would the gods take offense for them having done so before they take oath to each other?"

With a hoarse laugh as soft as the meow of a newborn kitten, the loudest sound she could make since the pox had stolen her voice all those years before, she shook her head and gave a patient smile, not to the chief, but to the worried and proud father walking beside her. No, the gods would not take offense. Frigga and Freyja would not stand for it.

Also, there was no question that Hiccup and Astrid had an Understanding, one that made her smile. Since the honey had started to flow from her beehives, she'd been putting aside a special mead just for them. The cask was carved with runes of happiness, fertility and joy, and some of the cherries that she'd been plucking were going to be mashed and put into the cask shortly. They were nice and tart, perfect for her brewing.

They reached the sacred grove, where a crowd was already gathered. Ten men and women that she didn't recognize were milling about in dazed confusion in front of the bonfire. One of them caught her eye, a black-haired beauty with long, flowing locks and a pretty gray dress. That was unusual; thralls usually had their hair cut close to their heads as indicative of their status.

Then she saw how Fishlegs was acting around her and realized that the girl had been a pleasure thrall. Oh, how charming. She scowled. The girl wouldn't even be able to do the normal freedman deed of growing out her hair to reclaim herself.

Putting a smile back on her face so as not to frighten the new members of the tribe, she looked around. The collars had already been taken from their throats, and she could smell the mutton from the sacrificial sheep. Serena was stirring the simmering pot in front of the fire. Good. It looked like that part of the rite was already done; knowing Stoick, he had donated the sheep from his own flocks so that they could symbolically slay their servitude. They were freedmen and freedwomen now.

Gobber came up, carrying the bowl of blood from the sheep, and silently handed it to her.

With a bow, she took it and walked up to the first of the freedmen, a fiery redhead, holding his iron collar in his hands. She motioned for him to kneel. After a moment's confusion, he did so, and she dabbed her fingertips into the blood and marked his cheeks and forehead with it, forming the runes for freedom and man. Then, as he rose, she took his collar that had marked his servitude and lack of humanity, dipped it into the blood, and threw it into the fire, and then her new tribesmate turned and introduced himself to his chief, as a person… and not as a possession.

Nine more times she did the same, smiling the whole while. As the priestess of the gods, she had many duties. Of those, many were sad and depressing. The fact that they hadn't had to hold more than a handful of funerals, and nearly all of those for natural causes, since the dragons had made peace… that would be enough alone for Hiccup to have earned her own loyalty.

But this…

This was pure joy.

And they were here because of him.

As the last of the collars was thrown into the fire, where Gobber would retrieve what was left of them from the ashes later, she turned and smiled to watch as the freedmen and freedwomen were greeted by their new tribesmates. They all looked exhausted and worn out from their tumultuous day, and yet it still wasn't over. Drums and other instruments were brought out, and people began to dance to welcome the new members to the tribe. Draughts of beer were poured, with the first drinks being given to the chief and then to the freedmen. Slices of mutton from the sacrificed sheep were served by Serena, who looked beatific as she gave the welcoming meal to those who had been thralls like her mother.

Gothi stood back, participating as needed, but mostly watching and smiling. As the small rite wound down, the freedmen were led off to beds where they could rest; every single one was staggering on their feet. Near the bonfire, Gobber poked at the mounting ashes. He'd take the lumps of iron from the destroyed collars and forge amulets from them. Each of the freed thralls would get one after she had imbued them with blessings of protection and health, to be done with as they saw fit.

With a wide smile, she hauled down her chieftain's head, gave him a fond peck on the cheek, and toddled back off to her gardening. There were still several hours left in the day, and she wanted to make use of them.

She heard her dragons whistling to each other as she approached, and her smile grew wider. All through the rite, a bit of her had been wondering what the little Terrors had gotten up to in her absence.

She turned past the blackberry bushes and stopped dead, eyes wide in shock.

The buckets were filled with ripe cherries.

The garden was mostly weeded, although they'd thankfully left her herb garden alone.

The peas were picked.

The onions and garlic were spread out on the table, drying.

The wild endive flowers had been plucked and left in a pile in a basket.

The radishes and turnips had been thinned and filled other buckets and baskets.

And the Terrors were standing around atop the harvest, watching her patiently, their tails swishing back and forth as they awaited her approval.

She quickly assessed the garden, finding that the unripe fruits and vegetables had been left on the vines and branches.

The Terrors trilled at her and, still in a bit of shock, she walked over and started to stroke their heads and backs in gratitude.

It would be interesting to try to explain this to Stoick, about why, no, he couldn't use her garden for punishing misbehaving children.

And then, a mischievous smile slowly sprouting on her face, she wondered what the Terrors would be able to do with the apple orchard, or the plums…

###

With a sigh and a politely muffled belch, Hiccup put the cleaned chicken bones on his plate, replete. Next to him, Astrid cocked a smile and pushed a tureen of whipped turnips towards him, only for him to hold up a hand. "I'll burst."

"I'd pay good coin to see that," she said, smirking.

He stuck his tongue out at her and quirked his own grin.

The meal was starting to break up, and with a groan of effort, he stood and took Astrid's hand. Together, they walked towards the door. Hiccup was trying to keep his walk calm, collected… and above all, chaste.

And that was a little difficult at the moment, given that Astrid was clearly having similar thoughts from the way that she was looking at him.

"Hiccup? Could I talk to you for a moment?" Magnus's voice called out from behind him.

Hiccup shared a look with Astrid, and she cocked her head back towards the king and let go of his hand. "Go," she said softly. "I'll see you in a bit."

With a disappointed nod, Hiccup turned and walked back to the king. "Yes, Magnus?" he said, trying to convince himself that this was probably for the best; the meal had ended much earlier than it had the night before, which would have made it much harder for Astrid to sneak into his room.

"Hiccup… Walk with me for a moment, would you?" Magnus said, walking up to him.

With a shrug, Hiccup fell into step besides him, and they began strolling around the courtyard.

"I have to say, that was a wonderful flight this afternoon. Thank you so much, and thank you for taking my sister out for a flight as well," the king said as they wandered along. Once they turned a corner, though, he unsubtly checked around them to see if there were prying ears and then turned to Hiccup.

"First, I want to say that, for this conversation, I would like our agreement from this morning to hold."

Hiccup looked at him, eyes narrowed. "Which one?"

"No dueling or challenges. Words only."

Uncertain, Hiccup nodded.

"Thank you, my friend." Magnus looked a little embarrassed. "So… I know that this is a touch… blunt, even by my standards… but…" He reddened and said in a rush, "You and the Lady Astrid are together, yes? Betrothed?"

Hiccup frowned and nodded. "Yes… well, we're together, I'm just saving up for a bride price and morning gift." He sighed. "We're a poor village, and… well…" He smiled at Magnus, who nodded, "I think she deserves something… enough for her, you know?"

Magnus nodded. "I understand that. Now comes the part where I'm going to ask you to please not challenge me to a duel."

"Wait, you're not—!"

"No, no, no! I, yes, I considered it, I'm not going to lie, but I wanted to assure you that I had no such designs on her, now that I've seen you both together." He gave a pained smile. "And… I was going to offer you Wulfhild's hand…"

Hiccup looked levelly at the king, who cringed a little under the glare.

"Aye, so. No holmgang. I'm not going to do either, I swear before Christ. But, well, Einar and a few of my other advisers are pushing for it, which was the other half of what I was doing this afternoon."

With a nod, Hiccup sighed. "So, what now?"

"Well, now that I know, and that I would rather take Loki's place beneath the serpent's fangs than get between you and Astrid, I have to ask you something else…"

Hiccup sighed again. "What?"

"Lady Ruffnut."

There was a slight pause.

"What? You can't be serious."

"Well, she is close to you, or at least someone you consider to be an ally, yes?"

Hiccup screwed up his face and tilted his head back and forth as he hemmed and hawed. "We've known each other for our whole lives, yeah, but we're not exactly close."

Magnus gave an enormous shrug. "I can't say that I am either, but if I tell Einar and the others that an alliance through her will be as strong as one through Astrid, then maybe I can redirect their thinking, and leave you two in peace." He gave an uncertain smile. "Besides, when we went out flying this afternoon… she made me laugh."

Hiccup just looked at the king, not sure if he was appalled or grateful.

"I… I am not sure what to say."

"You've said enough. Well, almost. I said that I would avoid the coward's way out and be the one to talk with you on this, so, let me ask you: When they ask me if she is from a family of high birth and with a position of influence, can I tell them yes?"

After thinking it over for a moment, Hiccup nodded. "It's a big clan, and we've only got so many to go around in Berk."

"And she doesn't have anyone that she's interested in, does she?"

Hiccup shook his head. "I think anyone that might be interested just looks at Tuffnut and keeps walking."

Magnus snorted. "I can see why. He has a sharp tongue and a mean wit, but I could hold a candle up to one ear and blow it out through the other."

Trying to hold in the laugh, Hiccup smirked. "Sounds about right."

"Well, then. I won't be so worried as those other men. Although if Tuffnut wants a bride, he'll have to manage on his own merits. I'm not offering Wulfhild's hand to him." He paused. "Or Snotlout. Not if I can help it. Despite what my advisers might say about binding your tribe to my house."

Hiccup grimaced. "That's a good idea. Snotlout…"

Magnus held up a hand. "No, no, I saw. Hiccup, I am many things, not all of them a boon before the eyes of God." He slouched for a moment, eyes slightly hooded, hands rubbing against each other. "I try to be good… but it's hard. But at the same time… I can at least try. And from what I've seen of Sir Snotlout, he has not impressed me." He scowled. "To me and to my regent, he was ingratiating. And then at dinner, he treated the servants… poorly. As king, I have to do many things of which I am not proud, but I will do my best to be as good as I can. And giving my sister's hand in marriage to someone who treated a member of my household that way… no. Not while I have another choice."

Hiccup sighed, wondering which particular incident Magnus had witnessed. Being honest with himself, he hadn't been paying as close attention to the lower tables as he could have. "He's my cousin."

"My sympathies."

"Thanks."

Magnus smiled at him and extended his hand. "Thank you. I… I…" he cocked his head at Hiccup. "It's odd. I've spent my life either in exile far from home, or as king. Six years now, I've worn the crown. I've had tutors, instructors, advisers…" he smiled. "But I think that you are becoming my first friend."

Hiccup snorted and grinned at him, taking the king's hand and shaking it. "Feels odd, doesn't it?"

"Aye, that it does." The king sighed. "You said that you were friendless before, but now you have Toothless and Astrid, yes?"

Hiccup nodded, smiling fondly.

"Then I will pray that God gives me the same success and happiness that I saw in you. My friend." He grinned, and then sobered. "Tomorrow, I will again have to be the King of the Norse, trying to wring out of your people as much as I can for the benefit of my house and crown. Tonight, I am Magnus." He grinned again. "You have such amazing friends, Hiccup. A dragon, a shieldmaiden, and now a King."

Together, they laughed, and Magnus grinned wider. "Oh, but I saw that look between you and the Lady Astrid. You were always looking at each other, helping each other, being… with each other, and I have to know…" he quieted, "is that what love looks like?"

Hiccup smiled. "Well, I can't speak for everyone, but… yeah. That's what love can look like."

"And you're not betrothed, so you have… not…" Magnus paused as Hiccup suddenly reddened, caught off guard. "Oh ho. I see." The boy-king laughed. "No worries. I won't tell a soul. And it's not like I haven't either…" he flushed as well, paused, and then continued in a lower voice. "I have a daughter out of wedlock. Ragnhild. She is two now." He sobered. "Her mother was one of the chambermaids. I acknowledged her, but unlike myself," he grimaced, "she will never be able to inherit, and yet I am every bit as much a bastard born as she is."

Hiccup blinked at the math. The king was a little more than a year older than him… and he remembered how he'd been lusting after Astrid when he was fourteen. "And it wasn't love?" he asked cautiously.

Magnus shook his head, still flushed. "Lust, yes. And I have done my confessions and atonement for the sin. But it was not love. I didn't even know what love was. I kept my honor by acknowledging her as mine, but… yes. I wish now that I could have that with the sort of bond that you have with your intended."

Hiccup nodded. "Well, I don't know if Ruffnut is the sort of person that that will work with, but I'd say that you're welcome to try."

"Well, we shall see. At the very least, my friend, I will act as rearguard for your own relationship. We may end up together or not. But by pointing in her direction, I can distract those who push in Astrid's. I might not be able to have love in my own life, but, at the very least, I can avoid tearing apart yours on the political necessities that my councilors speak about with such frequency."

"You know, for a king, you are a massive sentimentalist."

"Better that than a power-hungry brute, I think," Magnus said. "I met one. Harthacnut. He scares me. But that talk can be saved for later. Politics. Feh. Tell me about your beloved, my friend. Tell me so that, maybe, one day, I might recognize it when I see it myself."

With a widening grin, Hiccup told his royal friend about his love. Her sharp mind, her skill, her constant desire to improve herself, her keen wit, her brutal honesty that she applied to everyone, including herself, her deep-seated sense of integrity, her understanding, her desire to be good, her joy at the simple things, and the pleasure she took from seeing and knowing, and that they could talk to each other, and listen to each other, and help the other in moments of weakness and in strength… He talked, and Magnus listened. At one point, there was a tear dribbling from one eye as the boy-king smiled.

And then the aides and advisers found them, and, throwing suspicious looks at Hiccup, they surrounded their king, and then politely pushed Hiccup off while chattering to Magnus about fulfilling his duties. The old regent appeared from some side area, and Hiccup was suddenly reminded that this fortified farmstead was actually Einar's home, with Magnus being hosted by him as his regent. As Einar marched over to Magnus and the group started to steer him away in earnest, Hiccup caught Magnus's eye and gave him a wry smile of understanding. Watching the king in the circle of men telling him to do this or authorize that, Hiccup felt a pang of sympathy, of another boy from a year ago who was friendless and alone in a crowd.

With a sigh, he walked off and went back to his room, to find his own beloved there, waiting.

As he entered, Astrid looked up at him questioningly. "What kept you?"

"Magnus." He smiled uncertainly. "I think I have a king for a friend now."

Astrid gave a low laugh that made Hiccup smile and his insides warm. "You gave him dragon-rides. That seems to be something that works."

"Wasn't just that." He came over and sat next to her on the bed, and she leaned up against him. "He's lonely. Wanted to know what it was to be in love. He's a romantic, it seems."

Astrid was helping him take off his peg as he talked, and he smiled at her before sobering. "Apparently, some of his people were telling him to make your family an offer."

She looked up at him, eyes wide, and he shook his head. "He's not going to. He swore it on his god. Said that he wanted at least us to be happy."

Leg removed, they slid into the bed next to each other.

"That's… nice of him," Astrid said, her hands wandering over to Hiccup's belt buckle and undoing it.

Hiccup laughed softly as he worked at the ties of her armwarmers. "It gets better."

"Oh?" Astrid said, sliding her hands under his pants and pushing them down.

"He's thinking of going for…," he made a quieting motion and leaned in even closer, "Ruffnut."

Astrid swallowed the bark of incredulous laughter that threatened to escape for several seconds, and then leaned in, her eyes wide. "Ruff? Queen of Norway?"

"Oh, gods, I hadn't even thought of it that way yet!" Hiccup was clenching his teeth to keep from laughing aloud, even as he divested Astrid of more of her clothes and she did the same to him.

They spoke softly as he told her of the lonely boy-king that he could now call friend, and talked about what to do, even as they made love again and again through the night, and parted as the sun began to dip above the horizon once again.

###

Fishlegs knocked hesitantly on the chief's door. It was late; dinner had been long since settled, along with the newly-freed thralls, who were bedded down in spare spots across the village. The door opened a handful of moments later, Stoick filling the doorframe under the pale moonlight.

"Good, you're here," the chief said, and motioned for Fishlegs to come in before turning and walking back inside.

Fishlegs stepped in and closed the door, to see Gobber, Stoick and Spitelout sitting around the table, which made him blink.

"Uh…"

"Well, come on!" Gobber called and waved him over.

Hesitantly, he walked over and took the empty seat that was usually Hiccup's. Spitelout stuck a tankard in front of him.

"Uh, thanks?" he said, taking a drink of the good ale.

Spitelout grinned at him. "Figured you should have some for your first strategy meeting with the chief," he said, timing it perfectly for Fishlegs to inhale some of the ale, spraying half a swallow across the table as he choked.

"What?" he got out between coughs. "Wait, what?"

Spitelout gave Fishlegs a look. "Boy, do you pay any attention to things that aren't written in a book? Or did you somehow miss that you're being trained for his job?" he said, pointing at Gobber, who grinned.

"Uhh…"

Spitelout rolled his eyes as Gobber laughed. "Can't come fast enough for my tastes." He slid down into his own chair, muttering something about Gobber's undies. He turned and looked at his chief. "So, now that we're all here… bring the boy up to speed first?"

"Aye. Go ahead."

Spitelout nodded. "So, Fishlegs. Did anything about this afternoon strike you as… unusual?"

"Uh… yeah. The guys who tried to kill me and steal Meatlug showed up with money, wood, baby cows, and thralls that they wanted to give us in apology." He rubbed the scar on his arm without thinking about it.

"And why would they do that? They just gave us treasure? To apologize?"

Fishlegs blinked and felt his brain start to move. "They want dragons. They learned that stealing them won't work. So… they're trying to buy them? Wait, no, that makes no sense." His eyes clenched as he thought.

Gobber leaned in. "Remember what you asked me about me hand? It being inside a dragon, and what my hand could do to the dragon?"

"Yeah? But what does that have to do with anything… ohhh." Comprehension dawned. "The thralls."

"Aye." Spitelout and Gobber both leaned back in their chairs in approval. Gobber continued. "We've been talking it out for a bit. One is a spy, here for King Adalwin."

Fishlegs cocked his head. "Wait, how? How do you know?" There was a brief pause. "And do you know which one?"

"If we did, it would be easier," Stoick said, scowling. "So, because you have reason to spend time with at least one of them, and because you have a good mind, we called you in."

Fishlegs flushed in embarrassment, either at the compliment or the comment about Heather.

Stoick ignored it and put up his fist. Extending one finger, he counted. "One. That tribute was intended to dazzle. For what they did, it was too big. Sorry, boy, but even if they'd killed you, we wouldn't have been able to demand that much weregeld out of them."

Fishlegs nodded, and suddenly the thought slid into place. "They wanted to sneak something—or someone—in with it!"

"Aye. That's two." Stoick extended another finger. "Ten thralls. Ten people. Whether they knew our tradition of freedmanship or not, that's ten people."

"But… how do you know that only one is a spy? Why can't all of them be?"

"Well, that's three, Fishlegs," Stoick extended his thumb. "If he had ten spies, all of whom had looked like they had spent years as thralls… why weren't they out spying on the other Eire kings?"

"Oh. That makes sense."

"Also, if they're all spies," Spitelout said, leaning in, "Then our chances of catching any of them goes up. Or one of them deciding to betray his former owner and tells us. So while the possibility exists that more than one of them are spies…" He considered. "You know that game with the cups and nut? Guessing which one has the nut under it?"

"Yeah…?"

"Imagine that there are ten cups. If there were nuts under each, wouldn't that be easy to find?"

Fishlegs nodded. "I see. And to stretch that… we can only tell if they're a nut—a spy—if we catch them?"

"Right. And that makes us waste effort, in watching them. Effort that we can't afford to waste."

"Okay, I see now. So… which one?"

"Well, that's the question. And we've been going round and round for hours. Whichever canny devil picked them thought that we might guess once we got over our greed, and made our lives as hard as they could," Stoick said.

Spitelout shrugged. "I'm still saying that it's the brewer, Maghnus. People talk over drink."

Stoick shook his head. "That's the problem. They're all too obvious." He gave an exasperated sigh. "Five men. Five women. Ages from fifteen to thirty-five. Each well-trained. Claims skill in some essential profession. Baker, brewer, carpenter, cook, leather-crafter, mason, chandler, smith, tailor, weaver. Any and all will be valuable to the village once they settle in; every single one of them is the kind of thrall that no one in their right mind would sell, if we did such things, and they've all said that they're going to stay and join the tribe. Which makes them all ideal spies."

Fishlegs blinked.

"Aye, you see the problem now. But if we don't figure out who, then…"

Spitelout grimaced. "We have a problem. Things are bad enough in the village right now," and he and Stoick gave each other a meaning-filled look, "that we don't need unsubstantiated finger-pointing. Especially when this is something so important to many in the village."

"Aye. We need a different look on it. Or, at least, a new pair of eyes." They all looked at him.

Fishlegs suddenly vividly remembered that first flight on Meatlug, to the Nest, and his first glance of the Green Death. Fishlegs, break it down!

Okay. He could do this.

"When I look at a dragon…" he started and swallowed. "When I look at a dragon, what I see tells me things. We all know dragons in here. Thinner teeth means cutting, thicker teeth means cruncher, wide wings for a glider, short wings for a dodger."

The other men nodded and looked at him to continue.

"So now I have to ask… what does a spy look like?"

"Aye. That's the question, boy," Spitelout said without rancor. "And they all look like spies."

"Well, what are they here to spy on?" Fishlegs said.

Everyone looked at each other across the table and said in unison, "The dragons."

"So see who will be close to the dragons, then?"

"Or the people working with them," Gobber said, nodding at Fishlegs.

Spitelout shook his head. "Nah, the girl I think is the least likely one. She's a distraction from the real spy, because she's too obvious. Given right to Fishlegs?" He shook his head with additional emphasis. "We're supposed to look at her. And give the real spy room to work." He grinned a bit at Fishlegs. "At least looking at her isn't hard, is it, boy?"

Fishlegs blushed. "Uh…"

Stoick rumbled. "Stop teasing the boy, Spitelout. I want that mind of his working, not tied up because you're taking up the slack for your boy."

Spitelout scowled and nodded. "Aye. Fine. I still think she's too young and too obvious. I tell you, it's either the brewer, Maghnus, or the smith, Murchadh. Getting eyes in your smithy would tell them much, given how often Hiccup is in there, and the brewer… drunk people talk."

"Aye. But Oisin and Seamus, as mason and carpenter, will be working closely with dragons for our construction, and will be all over the village, and won't be seen as unusual being seen anywhere."

They talked themselves round and round for another twenty minutes, and Fishlegs sensed that they had discussed this before he came. Bridget, as a tailor, would be talking with half the village as she fitted their clothes. Una the leatherworker would be right next to Hiccup helping him make saddles. Brogan would be making soap and candles, which, with winter coming on, would put him in the good graces of half of the village at least. Rathnait the baker would be in the mead hall and the center of gossip. All of them were too obvious, and they were talking round and round.

Getting frustrated as point, counter-point, and counter-counter-point were aired again and again, Fishlegs slammed the table with the palm of his hand.

Then he blinked at himself.

Clearly, the ale hadn't been a good idea.

The others were all looking at him, surprised.

"Okay! Clearly we don't know enough! Right now, we're just guessing what the dragon looks like when we only have a single scale to guess from! It's like trying to draw a picture of a Night Fury before Hiccup—" he vaguely made a motion indicating Toothless getting shot down, "yeah. We don't know enough about them, how they act, what they do…! Trying to guess now to write it down in the book will just result in us making the same kind of mistakes that are in the book that we took for generations as correct!"

Stoick blinked and nodded. "Aye. The boy's right. Look, we've been at this for hours. We've been arguing. We've been wasting time and effort." He shook his head. "We're all stubborn, bull-headed Vikings here. We're going to keep running round on this like a dog chasing its own tail. So, let's stop. We keep an eye on them. But like we'd keep an eye on anyone new. We've had new people before that were bad eggs that we had to banish, even when they were thralls before."

Spitelout and Gobber looked at each other and nodded.

"Aye," said Gobber.

"Aye. We've gotten so caught up in our own cleverness for having seen the trap," Spitelout said, "that we missed the second one underneath." He looked at Fishlegs. "You did well, son."

They rose from the table and saw themselves out.

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AN: I’m getting back ahead of the buffer, with the help of @animatedamerican doing a wonderful job as beta reader (seriously; she’s intimidating my other beta readers) and getting settled down here in Germany.

#httyd #httyd fanfiction #httyd fandom #a thing of vikings #how to train your dragon

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kazlifeadventures · 6 years

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Nutshell time.. Flåm, then Bergen.

I've decided one of the best places to spend a long train ride (when you are stuck next to a complete stranger for 4 hrs), is the kafe carriage. For starters there's coffee. And a better opportunity to take photos (aisle seat makes it hard). And you can just chill there...literally..for some reason its often way colder than the rest of the train. I was headed along the Bergen line, finally starting my 'Norway in a nutshell'. Its self guided, self planned, and you do as little or as much as you want (including stop overs). My plan included a night in Flåm, and a night in Bergen before returning to Oslo.

Back to the train..We stopped briefly 1220m above sea level at a little town called Finse. Apparently its a bit of a weather cauldron here, and you could tell, as it seemed very heavy with snow and very cold! The conductor advised that there was a Glacier nearby that was 1800m or so above sea level - alot of high ground here... Then on to Myrdal, where the famous Flåmsbana train awaited those of us who were heading to it. The Flåm Line is a 20.2-km long railway line built in 1893 that runs between Myrdal and Flåm in Aurland, Norway. It runs through the valley of Flåmsdalen. The journey takes you down (or up, depending which direction you are going!) 863m, and it has ten stations, twenty tunnels and one bridge. With 80% of the journey on a gradient of 5.5% it's apparently one of the steepest standard gauge railways in the world. Its a 40 min or so journey along one of the most amazingly picturesque train lines I've ever seen. About midway they do a 5 minute photo stop at Kjosfossen waterfall. It was so close to being totally frozen! But I am not sure that happens.. as it is used to generate power for the railway. For some reason I am finding the constant battle between water bodies and ice facinating. To see the chunks of ice/snow as the water fights back..incredible!

Flåm is beautiful. What a gorgeous little town. My hotel, via the nutshell site worked out cheaper than any of the other sites. It was such a picturesque area with a glorious sunset. The next door brewpub Ægir was offering craft beer tasting, so of course I signed up. All I can say is Australia what are you doing?? Our beer game is all wrong. I've learnt the importance of a good head on your beer, how to taste beer (and the physiology behind smell/ taste). As well as how its made and the importance of water quality/taste and serving temperature, as well as how you pour it...I'm no expert but I feel alot more educated! I also got to taste a variety of beers that they brew onsite here, amazing! There was only 4 of us at the tasting, 2 other Aussies, and Mikael from reception at the hotel. We ended up chatting for hours afterwards...eating an amazing dinner at the pub (yum), then being there until closing! A top night with some fantastic people. Learnt so much about Norway, its people and of course, the Vikings. Had a very tasty venison burger..with potatoes and a blueberry cheese dipping sauce...it tasted lovely (i know I thought blueberries weird as well). In Norse mythology, Ægir is a sea giant, often mistaken for a god, who lives in a hall beneath the sea that is home to the souls of everyone who drowns. He is said to brew the best beer in the Nine Worlds..

Up not so early the next day for the next leg of my trip, a Fjord cruise on the amazing carbon neutral, fully electric ship, 'Future of the Fjords'.

Stunning. Just stunning. At times cold, but gosh so worth it for the breathtaking views of the Fjords. Even the boat hitting ice at times was still cool, even after one of staff told me that if it had been thicker ice we may have been in trouble as they didn't have the ice breaking hull on... All too soon we arrived in the viking town of Gudvangen with only a short time to wait for the bus to take me to Voss. Even the bus ride had amazing views!

Voss is a very cute little town right on a gigantic lake. Mikael had told us it's the closest skiing for the locals. It currently seems to be undergoing a full remodel...jokes, but it does seem that way with roads closed and construction happening everywhere! Yes, the Voss water comes from nearby..

Then it was back on a train to get to Bergen. Wow. So pretty. I got here on a good day - no rain and only high clouds. I made it up the Fløibanen funicular to catch the gorgeous sunset from the top of mount Fløyen. Apparently it's a very rainy place, so I was lucky that it wasn't cloudy or raining!

Bergen is well known for Bryggen, a UNESCO world heritage docks area full of gorgeous colourful wooden houses. The area has had to be rebuilt many times due to fires. Each time they have followed old patterns and methods retaining and preserving the traditional structures that are so important to it's history.

Somehow my hotel is again awesome. With free coffee and fruit 24hrs .. and you can make yourself a fresh waffle from 4 - 6pm (with jam and cream) .. not as nice as the waffles I could make at the hotel in Hornberg, (Germany), but still tasty.

No cool beer tasting here but there is a wine bar downstairs 😁. The wine bar/restsurant is located on the site where the oldest restaurant in Bergen once stood 400 years ago, the cellar area of the hotel.. thats 2 cellars I've now eaten meals in within the last month. The weather the next day had turned to drizzly and foggy. Luckily all too soon it was back on the train for perhaps the longest train trip I've had in my life, 7hrs or so back to Oslo. I met some nice people on the train, through random ways. One girl accidentally hit me in the head with her aluminium drink bottle, another was a guy sitting nearby who (amongst other things) creates comic books for kids under educational grants. I finally felt like I was back to me fully and the universe obliged with bringing me interesting people to interact with. Late arrival 7pm ish in Oslo, then early start to head to Sweden tomorrow!

More photos from the Nutshell towns to come!

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hiddenbonesoflove-blog · 8 years

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Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?

*** This is a very long post. Longest I have ever posted. Prepare to scroll *** For more pictures please visit the http://www.smithsonianmag.com

On the grassy slope of a fjord near the southernmost tip of Greenland stand the ruins of a church built by Viking settlers more than a century before Columbus sailed to the Americas. The thick granite-block walls remain intact, as do the 20-foot-high gables. The wooden roof, rafters and doors collapsed and rotted away long ago. Now sheep come and go at will, munching wild thyme where devout Norse Christian converts once knelt in prayer. The Vikings called this fjord Hvalsey, which means “Whale Island” in Old Norse. It was here that Sigrid Bjornsdottir wed Thorstein Olafsson on Sunday, September 16, 1408. The couple had been sailing from Norway to Iceland when they were blown off course; they ended up settling in Greenland, which by then had been a Viking colony for some 400 years. Their marriage was mentioned in three letters written between 1409 and 1424, and was then recorded for posterity by medieval Icelandic scribes. Another record from the period noted that one person had been burned at the stake at Hvalsey for witchcraft.But the documents are most remarkable—and baffling—for what they don’t contain: any hint of hardship or imminent catastrophe for the Viking settlers in Greenland, who’d been living at the very edge of the known world ever since a renegade Icelander named Erik the Red arrived in a fleet of 14 longships in 985. For those letters were the last anyone ever heard from the Norse Greenlanders. They vanished from history.“If there was trouble, we might reasonably have thought that there would be some mention of it,” says Ian Simpson, an archaeologist at the University of Stirling, in Scotland. But according to the letters, he says, “it was just an ordinary wedding in an orderly community.”Europeans didn’t return to Greenland until the early 18th century. When they did, they found the ruins of the Viking settlements but no trace of the inhabitants. The fate of Greenland’s Vikings—who never numbered more than 2,500—has intrigued and confounded generations of archaeologists.Those tough seafaring warriors came to one of the world’s most formidable environments and made it their home. And they didn’t just get by: They built manor houses and hundreds of farms; they imported stained glass; they raised sheep, goats and cattle; they traded furs, walrus-tusk ivory, live polar bears and other exotic arctic goods with Europe. “These guys were really out on the frontier,” says Andrew Dugmore, a geographer at the University of Edinburgh. “They’re not just there for a few years. They’re there for generations—for centuries.”So what happened to them?

Thomas McGovern used to think he knew. An archaeologist at Hunter College of the City University of New York, McGovern has spent more than 40 years piecing together the history of the Norse settlements in Greenland. With his heavy white beard and thick build, he could pass for a Viking chieftain, albeit a bespectacled one. Over Skype, here’s how he summarized what had until recently been the consensus view, which he helped establish: “Dumb Norsemen go into the north outside the range of their economy, mess up the environment and then they all die when it gets cold.” Accordingly, the Vikings were not just dumb, they also had dumb luck: They discovered Greenland during a time known as the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from about 900 to 1300. Sea ice decreased during those centuries, so sailing from Scandinavia to Greenland became less hazardous. Longer growing seasons made it feasible to graze cattle, sheep and goats in the meadows along sheltered fjords on Greenland’s southwest coast. In short, the Vikings simply transplanted their medieval European lifestyle to an uninhabited new land, theirs for the taking. But eventually, the conventional narrative continues, they had problems. Overgrazing led to soil erosion. A lack of wood—Greenland has very few trees, mostly scrubby birch and willow in the southernmost fjords—prevented them from building new ships or repairing old ones. But the greatest challenge—and the coup de grâce—came when the climate began to cool, triggered by an event on the far side of the world. In 1257, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Lombok erupted. Geologists rank it as the most powerful eruption of the last 7,000 years. Climate scientists have found its ashy signature in ice cores drilled in Antarctica and in Greenland’s vast ice sheet, which covers some 80 percent of the country. Sulfur ejected from the volcano into the stratosphere reflected solar energy back into space, cooling Earth’s climate. “It had a global impact,” McGovern says. “Europeans had a long period of famine”—like Scotland’s infamous “seven ill years” in the 1690s, but worse. “The onset was somewhere just after 1300 and continued into the 1320s, 1340s. It was pretty grim. A lot of people starving to death.” Amid that calamity, so the story goes, Greenland’s Vikings—numbering 5,000 at their peak—never gave up their old ways. They failed to learn from the Inuit, who arrived in northern Greenland a century or two after the Vikings landed in the south. They kept their livestock, and when their animals starved, so did they. The more flexible Inuit, with a culture focused on hunting marine mammals, thrived. That is what archaeologists believed until a few years ago. McGovern’s own PhD dissertation made the same arguments. Jared Diamond, the UCLA geographer, showcased the idea in Collapse, his 2005 best seller about environmental catastrophes. “The Norse were undone by the same social glue that had enabled them to master Greenland’s difficulties,” Diamond wrote. “The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.” But over the last decade a radically different picture of Viking life in Greenland has started to emerge from the remains of the old settlements, and it has received scant coverage outside of academia. “It’s a good thing they can’t make you give your PhD back once you’ve got it,” McGovern jokes. He and the small community of scholars who study the Norse experience in Greenland no longer believe that the Vikings were ever so numerous, or heedlessly despoiled their new home, or failed to adapt when confronted with challenges that threatened them with annihilation. “It’s a very different story from my dissertation,” says McGovern. “It’s scarier. You can do a lot of things right—you can be highly adaptive; you can be very flexible; you can be resilient—and you go extinct anyway.” And according to other archaeologists, the plot thickens even more: It may be that Greenland’s Vikings didn’t vanish, at least not all of them. Lush grass now covers most of what was once the most important Viking settlement in Greenland. Gardar, as the Norse called it, was the official residence of their bishop. A few foundation stones are all that remain of Gardar’s cathedral, the pride of Norse Greenland, with stained glass and a heavy bronze bell. Far more impressive now are the nearby ruins of an enormous barn. Vikings from Sweden to Greenland measured their status by the cattle they owned, and the Greenlanders spared no effort to protect their livestock. The barn’s Stonehenge-like partition and the thick turf and stone walls that sheltered prized animals during brutal winters have endured longer than Gardar’s most sacred architecture.

Gardar’s ruins occupy a small fenced-in field abutting the backyards of Igaliku, an Inuit sheep-farming community of about 30 brightly painted wooden houses overlooking a fjord backed by 5,000-foot-high snowcapped mountains. No roads run between towns in Greenland—planes and boats are the only options for traversing a coastline corrugated by innumerable fjords and glacial tongues. On an uncommonly warm and bright August afternoon, I caught a boat from Igaliku with a Slovenian photographer named Ciril Jazbec and rode a few miles southwest on Aniaaq fjord, a region Erik the Red must have known well. Late in the afternoon, with the arctic summer sun still high in the sky, we got off at a rocky beach where an Inuit farmer named Magnus Hansen was waiting for us in his pickup truck. After we loaded the truck with our backpacks and essential supplies requested by the archaeologists—a case of beer, two bottles of Scotch, a carton of menthol cigarettes and some tins of snuff—Hansen drove us to our destination: a Viking homestead being excavated by Konrad Smiarowski, one of McGovern’s doctoral students.

The homestead lies at the end of a hilly dirt road a few miles inland on Hansen’s farm. It’s no accident that most modern Inuit farms in Greenland are found near Viking sites: On our trip down the fjord, we were told that every local farmer knows the Norse chose the best locations for their homesteads.

The Vikings established two outposts in Greenland: one along the fjords of the southwest coast, known historically as the Eastern Settlement, where Gardar is located, and a smaller colony about 240 miles north, called the Western Settlement. Nearly every summer for the last several years, Smiarowski has returned to various sites in the Eastern Settlement to understand how the Vikings managed to live here for so many centuries, and what happened to them in the end.

This season’s site, a thousand-year-old Norse homestead, was once part of a vital community. “Everyone was connected over this huge landscape,” Smiarowski says. “If we walked for a day we could visit probably 20 different farms.”

He and his team of seven students have spent several weeks digging into a midden—a trash heap—just below the homestead’s tumbled ruins. On a cold, damp morning, Cameron Turley, a PhD candidate at the City University of New York, stands in the ankle-deep water of a drainage ditch. He’ll spend most of the day here, a heavy hose draped over his shoulder, rinsing mud from artifacts collected in a wood-framed sieve held by Michalina Kardynal, an undergraduate from Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw. This morning they’ve found a delicate wooden comb, its teeth intact. They’re also finding seal bones. Lots of them.

“Probably about 50 percent of all bones at this site will be seal bones,” Smiarowski says as we stand by the drainage ditch in a light rain. He speaks from experience: Seal bones have been abundant at every site he has studied, and his findings have been pivotal in reassessing how the Norse adapted to life in Greenland. The ubiquity of seal bones is evidence that the Norse began hunting the animals “from the very beginning,” Smiarowski says. “We see harp and hooded seal bones from the earliest layers at all sites.”

A seal-based diet would have been a drastic shift from beef-and-dairy-centric Scandinavian fare. But a study of human skeletal remains from both the Eastern and Western settlements showed that the Vikings quickly adopted a new diet. Over time, the food we eat leaves a chemical stamp on our bones—marine-based diets mark us with different ratios of certain chemical elements than terrestrial foods do. Five years ago, researchers based in Scandinavia and Scotland analyzed the skeletons of 118 individuals from the earliest periods of settlement to the latest. The results perfectly complement Smiarowski’s fieldwork: Over time, people ate an increasingly marine diet, he says.

It’s raining heavily now, and we’re huddled beneath a blue tarp next to the midden, sipping coffee and ingesting some terrestrial chemical elements in the form of cookies. In the earliest days of the settlements, Smiarowski says, the study found that marine animals made up 30 to 40 percent of the Norse diet. The percentage steadily climbed, until, by the end of the settlement period, 80 percent of the Norse diet came from the sea. Beef eventually became a luxury, most likely because the volcano-induced climate change made it vastly more difficult to raise cattle in Greenland.

Judging from the bones Smiarowski has uncovered, most of the seafood consisted of seals—few fish bones have been found. Yet it appears the Norse were careful: They limited their hunting of the local harbor seal, Phoca vitulina, a species that raises its young on beaches, making it easy prey. (The harbor seal is critically endangered in Greenland today due to overhunting.) “They could have wiped them out, and they didn’t,” Smiarowski says. Instead, they pursued the more abundant—and more difficult to catch—harp seal, Phoca groenlandica, which migrates up the west coast of Greenland every spring on the way from Canada. Those hunts, he says, must have been well-organized communal affairs, with the meat distributed to the entire settlement—seal bones have been found at homestead sites even far inland. The regular arrival of the seals in the spring, just when the Vikings’ winter stores of cheese and meat were running low, would have been keenly anticipated.

“People came from different farms; some provided labor, some provided boats,” Smiarowski says, speculating. “Maybe there were several centers organizing things along the coast of the Eastern Settlement. Then the catch was divided among the farms, I would assume according to how much each farm contributed to the hunt.” The annual spring seal hunt might have resembled communal whale hunts practiced to this day by the Faroe Islanders, who are the descendants of Vikings.

The Norse harnessed their organizational energy for an even more important task: annual walrus hunts. Smiarowski, McGovern and other archaeologists now suspect that the Vikings first traveled to Greenland not in search of new land to farm—a motive mentioned in some of the old sagas—but to acquire walrus-tusk ivory, one of medieval Europe’s most valuable trade items. Who, they ask, would risk crossing hundreds of miles of arctic seas just to farm in conditions far worse than those at home? As a low-bulk, high-value item, ivory would have been an irresistible lure for seafaring traders.

Many ivory artifacts from the Middle Ages, whether religious or secular, were carved from walrus tusks, and the Vikings, with their ships and far-flung trading networks, monopolized the commodity in Northern Europe. After hunting walruses to extinction in Iceland, the Norse must have sought them out in Greenland. They found large herds in Disko Bay, about 600 miles north of the Eastern Settlement and 300 miles north of the Western Settlement. “The sagas would have us believe that it was Erik the Red who went out and explored [Greenland],” says Jette Arneborg, a senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark, who, like McGovern, has studied the Norse settlements for decades. “But the initiative might have been from elite farmers in Iceland who wanted to keep up the ivory trade—it might have been in an attempt to continue this trade that they went farther west.”

Smiarowski and other archaeologists have unearthed ivory fragments at nearly every site they’ve studied. It seems the Eastern and Western settlements may have pooled their resources in an annual walrus hunt, sending out parties of young men every summer. “An individual farm couldn’t do it,” he says. “You would need a really good boat and a crew. And you need to get there. It’s far away.” Written records from the period mention sailing times of 27 days to the hunting grounds from the Eastern Settlement and 15 days from the Western Settlement.

To maximize cargo space, the walrus hunters would have returned home with only the most valuable parts of the animal—the hides, which were fashioned into ships’ rigging, and parts of the animals’ skulls. “They did the extraction of the ivory here on-site,” Smiarowski says. “Not that many actually on this site here, but on most other sites you have these chips of walrus maxilla [the upper jaw]—very dense bone. It’s quite distinct from other bones. It’s almost like rock—very hard.”

How profitable was the ivory trade? Every six years, the Norse in Greenland and Iceland paid a tithe to the Norwegian king. A document from 1327, recording the shipment of a single boatload of tusks to Bergen, Norway, shows that that boatload, with tusks from 260 walruses, was worth more than all the woolen cloth sent to the king by nearly 4,000 Icelandic farms for one six-year period.

Archaeologists once assumed that the Norse in Greenland were primarily farmers who did some hunting on the side. Now it seems clear that the reverse was true. They were ivory hunters first and foremost, their farms only a means to an end. Why else would ivory fragments be so prevalent among the excavated sites? And why else would the Vikings send so many able-bodied men on hunting expeditions to the far north at the height of the farming season? “There was a huge potential for ivory export,” says Smiarowski, “and they set up farms to support that.” Ivory drew them to Greenland, ivory kept them there, and their attachment to that toothy trove may be what eventually doomed them.

When the Norse arrived in Greenland, there were no locals to teach them how to live. “The Scandinavians had this remarkable ability to colonize these high-latitude islands,” says Andrew Dugmore. “You have to be able to hunt wild animals; you have to build up your livestock; you have to work hard to exist in these areas....This is about as far as you can push the farming system in the Northern Hemisphere.”

And push it they did. The growing season was short, and the land vulnerable to overgrazing. Ian Simpson has spent many seasons in Greenland studying soil layers where the Vikings farmed. The strata, he says, clearly show the impact of their arrival: The earliest layers are thinner, with less organic material, but within a generation or two the layers stabilized and the organic matter built up as the Norse farmwomen manured and improved their fields while the men were out hunting. “You can interpret that as being a sign of adaptation, of them getting used to the landscape and being able to read it a little better,” Simpson says.

For all their intrepidness, though, the Norse were far from self-sufficient, and imported grains, iron, wine and other essentials. Ivory was their currency. “Norse society in Greenland couldn’t survive without trade with Europe,” says Arneborg, “and that’s from day one.”

Then, in the 13th century, after three centuries, their world changed profoundly. First, the climate cooled because of the volcanic eruption in Indonesia. Sea ice increased, and so did ocean storms—ice cores from that period contain more salt from oceanic winds that blew over the ice sheet. Second, the market for walrus ivory collapsed, partly because Portugal and other countries started to open trade routes into sub-Saharan Africa, which brought elephant ivory to the European market. “The fashion for ivory began to wane,” says Dugmore, “and there was also the competition with elephant ivory, which was much better quality.” And finally, the Black Death devastated Europe. There is no evidence that the plague ever reached Greenland, but half the population of Norway—which was Greenland’s lifeline to the civilized world—perished.

The Norse probably could have survived any one of those calamities separately. After all, they remained in Greenland for at least a century after the climate changed, so the onset of colder conditions alone wasn’t enough to undo them. Moreover, they were still building new churches—like the one at Hvalsey—in the 14th century. But all three blows must have left them reeling. With nothing to exchange for European goods—and with fewer Europeans left—their way of life would have been impossible to maintain. The Greenland Vikings were essentially victims of globalization and a pandemic.

“If you consider the world today, many communities will face exposure to climate change,” says Dugmore. “They’ll also face issues of globalization. The really difficult bit is when you have exposure to both.”

So what was the endgame like in Greenland? Although archaeologists now agree that the Norse did about as well as any society could in confronting existential threats, they remain divided over how the Vikings’ last days played out. Some believe that the Norse, faced with the triple threat of economic collapse, pandemic and climate change, simply packed up and left. Others say the Norse, despite their adaptive ingenuity, met a far grimmer fate.

For McGovern, the answer is clear. “I think in the end this was a real tragedy. This was the loss of a small community, a thousand people maybe at the end. This was extinction.”

The Norse, he says, were especially vulnerable to sudden death at sea. Revised population estimates, based on more accurate tallies of the number of farms and graves, put the Norse Greenlanders at no more than 2,500 at their peak—less than half the conventional figure. Every spring and summer, nearly all the men would be far from home, hunting. As conditions for raising cattle worsened, the seal hunts would have been ever more vital—and more hazardous. Despite the decline of the ivory trade, the Norse apparently continued to hunt walrus until the very end. So a single storm at sea could have wiped out a substantial number of Greenland’s men—and by the 14th century the weather was increasingly stormy. “You see similar things happening at other places and other times,” McGovern says. “In 1881, there was a catastrophic storm when the Shetland fishing fleet was out in these little boats. In one afternoon about 80 percent of the men and boys of the Shetlands drowned. A whole bunch of little communities never recovered.”

Norse society itself comprised two very small communities: the Eastern and Western settlements. With such a sparse population, any loss—whether from death or emigration—would have placed an enormous strain on the survivors. “If there weren’t enough of them, the seal hunt would not be successful,” says Smiarowski. “And if it was not successful for a couple of years in a row, then it would be devastating.”

McGovern thinks a few people might have migrated out, but he rules out any sort of exodus. If Greenlanders had emigrated en masse to Iceland or Norway, surely there would have been a record of such an event. Both countries were literate societies, with a penchant for writing down important news. “If you had hundreds or a thousand people coming out of Greenland,” McGovern says, “someone would have noticed.”

Niels Lynnerup, a forensic anthropologist at the University of Copenhagen who has studied Viking burial sites in Greenland, isn’t so sure. “I think in Greenland it happened very gradually and undramatically,” he tells me as we sit in his office, beneath a poster of the Belgian cartoon character Tintin. “Maybe it’s the usual human story. People move to where there are resources. And they move away when something doesn’t work for them.” As for the silence of the historical record, he says, a gradual departure might not have attracted much attention.

The ruins themselves hint at an orderly departure. There is no evidence of conflict with the Inuit or of any intentional damage to homesteads. And aside from a gold ring found on the skeletal finger of a bishop at Gardar, and his narwhal-tusk staff, no items of real value have been found at any sites in Greenland. “When you abandon a small settlement, what do you take with you? The valuables, the family jewelry,” says Lynnerup. “You don’t leave your sword or your good metal knife....You don’t abandon Christ on his crucifix. You take that along. I’m sure the cathedral would have had some paraphernalia—cups, candelabras—which we know medieval churches have, but which have never been found in Greenland.”

Jette Arneborg and her colleagues found evidence of a tidy leave-taking at a Western Settlement homestead known as the Farm Beneath the Sands. The doors on all but one of the rooms had rotted away, and there were signs that abandoned sheep had entered those doorless rooms. But one room retained a door, and it was closed. “It was totally clean. No sheep had been in that room,” says Arneborg. For her, the implications are obvious. “They cleaned up, took what they wanted, and left. They even closed the doors.”

Perhaps the Norse could have toughed it out in Greenland by fully adopting the ways of the Inuit. But that would have meant a complete surrender of their identity. They were civilized Europeans—not skraelings, or wretches, as they called the Inuit. “Why didn’t the Norse just go native?” Lynnerup asks. “Why didn’t the Puritans just go native? But of course they didn’t. There was never any question of the Europeans who came to America becoming nomadic and living off buffalo.”

We do know that at least two people made it out of Greenland alive: Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Thorstein Olafsson, the couple who married at Hvalsey’s church. They eventually settled in Iceland, and in 1424, for reasons lost to history, they needed to provide letters and witnesses proving that they had been married in Greenland. Whether they were among a lucky few survivors or part of a larger immigrant community may remain unknown. But there’s a chance that Greenland’s Vikings never vanished, that their descendants are with us still.

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