More Viking news tonight. I know this is a book blog, but by thunder I write books about Vikings.

Does Phil write books about coffee? No, he does not. And yet he blogs about coffee.

So I blog about Vikings. Not because I think you want to read about Vikings, but simply in order to bug Phil.

Because it’s really fun to see how coffee drinkers twitch when they’re bugged.

Anyway, my favorite photoblog, Haugelandet.net in Norway, just posted a link to a spanking new web site devoted to the history center at Avaldsnes, Karmøy island.

Avaldsnes, Karmøy island, Norway, is (as you doubtless recall) the home community of my great-grandfather Walker. It was also, for many centuries, a Norwegian royal farm, and is the site of several stirring events in the sagas.

Since the last time I’ve been to Avaldsnes, they’ve opened this history center, concentrating on the importance of that area in the Viking Age, most especially in King Harald Finehair’s (or Fairhair’s) enterprise of beginning the unification of Norway as a single country.

The site is offered in Norwegian and English, although the English section isn’t yet completed. However, if you go to the “News” section, you can read about the big project they’re planning, to build the longest (114 feet) Viking ship replica in the world. Its name is to be “The Dragon Harald Fairhair.”

They plan to have the ship finished and ready for its maiden voyage by May, 2013, at which time they hope to sail it to Paris. (Paris? They hate Vikings in Paris. France is probably the most Viking-unfriendly country in Europe, from all I hear. Ah well. Not up to me.)

Now, if I can just succeed in becoming world-famous as a Viking novelist by 2013, maybe they’ll want me to go along. I’ll only be 62—prime of my life.

It would be physically miserable and also dangerous. But I’d do it in a minute.

Heck, if I died on a Viking ship, I’d go out thinking, “Wow, it doesn’t get any cooler than this…”