Today somebody on Facebook referred me to a new blog which will have, I expect, a selective appeal – Sveyn Forkblog. The author, an Englishman named Chris Tuckley, has decided to start a blog to celebrate the millennium of one of England’s most obscure kings – Sveyn (or Svein, or Sven, or Svend – the options are many) Forkbeard, the Viking Dane who conquered England, then promptly died, leaving the whole thing for his son Canute the Great to conquer over again.

This interests me, of course, because it’s in my line and precisely in my period. Svein was an ally of King Olaf Tryggveson of Norway, whom you’ll remember from The Year of the Warrior, but turned against him (actually it was more the other way around; Olaf switched sides on Svein) and led the coalition that defeated and killed Olaf at the Battle of Svold.

If you read West Oversea, you’ll recall how news came of the massacre of the Danes in England by King Aethelred the Unrede. One of the victims was said to be Svein’s own sister, which gave him both a personal reason and a political excuse for returning to England with fire and sword, and subduing the whole place.

He also appears in the classic novel The Long Ships (not the movie), but does not come off very well there.

Joel Friedlander shares some thoughts on the problems and benefits of blogging for fiction authors, particularly unpublished ones.

Photo credit: Inverclyde Views

It appears that the first victim of Hurricane Sandy is a sailor from the replica sailing ship Bounty, built in 1960 for the 1962 movie, “Mutiny On the Bounty,” starring Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard. The ship herself, God rest her, went to the bottom off the North Carolina coast. Twelve sailors were rescued by Coast Guard helicopters, and one further missing sailor was found floating in a life jacket, and has been rushed to a hospital.

This is only the beginning of sorrows, as Revelation says, but it’s a particularly bitter one for me. I love those old sailing ships. Viking ships are in a class by themselves, of course, but all the tall ladies move me to the depths of my Scandinavian soul.

At first I assumed this was the ship built for the 1984 Mel Gibson/Anthony Hopkins film, “The Bounty,” my personal favorite of the Bounty movies. But this goes back to the 1962 film. However, it was also used for another movie I love, the Charlton Heston/Christian Bale “Treasure Island” (1990), by far the best dramatization of the story I’ve ever seen. I see by its Wikipedia entry that it was finally released on DVD last year. I’ve got to get a copy.

Anthony Esolen, over at Front Porch, has posted a profound meditation on freedom and despotism, drawing on an obscure book (which I haven’t read, I confess) by the great Sigrid Undset.