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…”

One of my mental hobbies, one I’ve been carrying on for years, is to close one eye, peer along the line of recent social trends, and to predict, on that basis, what will come in the future. I built much of Wolf Time on that exercise and, although things have certainly happened since I wrote that book that I didn’t expect, I don’t think any of the things I actually predicted have failed to appear, either as political causes or actual laws (one exception would be the re-legalization of smoking, but that was a metaphor for Something Else. And no, I won’t tell you what).

So I thought that tonight I’d just save us all a lot of time, and pre-transcribe the arguments I expect to hear, not too far down the line, for a number of further changes to law and the social order. Continue reading Change I don’t want to believe in →

Here’s the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem with a great Irish song that you may have heard a piece of on Hugh Hewitt this evening.

I used to do that. Not Irish music, but standing behind mikes with several friends, some of whom were playing guitars, singing for the crowd. Not in a famous way, but it was a good time in my life. Couldn’t do it anymore. My voice is gone.

I’m not sure when or how I got interested in Irish music, but it grew on me, like a potato fungus. I believe my interest in the music is what provoked me to make the narrator of my Viking books an Irishman. It was, I think, one of the few excellent choices I’ve made in my career. Father Ailill brings the novels to life in a way that would be impossible without him.

Having spent so much time “in an Irishman’s skin,” often listening to Irish music while writing, I’ve actually had moments when I found myself thinking reflexively that I was Irish. Which I’m not. Except for the (strong) likelihood that some of my ancestors were Irish slaves brought home to Norway by Vikings.

For you real Irish, have a good day, and

“May those that love us, love us.

And those that love us not, may the Lord turn their hearts.

And if He turn not their hearts, may he turn their ankles,

So we’ll know them by their limping.”