{"id":12701,"date":"2019-08-12T20:16:17","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T00:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12701"},"modified":"2019-08-12T20:16:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T00:16:17","slug":"alexandria-the-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=12701","title":{"rendered":"Alexandria the Great"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo credit: Chris Falteisek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a few days<\/strong> I was a rock star. Granted, I was a rock star with \u201cselective appeal,\u201d but a couple hundred people in Alexandria, Minnesota treated me like a celebrity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The event was the Tre Lag Stevne<\/em>. The Bygdelags <\/em>(as I explained last week) are organizations composed of descendants of immigrants from various Norwegian regions. The three \u201clags<\/em>\u201d who met for the stevne<\/em> (gathering) were groups from Gudbrandsdal, Hedemark, and Trondelag. They invited me to lecture twice on Thursday \u2013 once on the Lindisfarne raid in 793 AD, and again on the book Viking Legacy<\/a><\/em> (which I translated; might not have mentioned that to you before).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The audience was attentive, smart (they laughed at my jokes) and appreciative. They descended on my book table like a flock of seagulls and snatched up every copy of Viking Legacy<\/em> I brought. On top of the sales, I got an honorarium which was generous by my standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no complaints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day I had to be in a meeting in Fergus Falls, just a little up the road, so I stayed a second night. I had some free time \u2013 and when Walker has free time in Alexandria, he can\u2019t resist visiting the Kensington Rune Stone Museum. I\u2019ve been there before, but I heard they\u2019d made some changes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Lars Walker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This is the stone itself. I have grave reservations about its authenticity, but you can\u2019t deny it\u2019s become a part of history in its own right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Lars Walker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This display is the main thing I came to see. They did an upgrade to the museum a few years back, and decided to include a tableau about the real Vikings (even if the stone is genuine, it\u2019s not a Viking artifact. Its date is 14th<\/sup> Century, long after the Viking Age ended). The person the museum hired to make costumes for the Viking family was my friend Kelsey Patton \u2013 who also made the Viking trousers and summer tunic I\u2019m wearing in the top picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Lars Walker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a surprise \u2013 the museum has a Viking ship, in a barn outside. It\u2019s a \u00be scale replica of a Viking knarr<\/em> (a cargo ship), which was built as a project some years ago by the American Museum of Natural History. Somehow it ended up here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An interesting and profitable few days. Thanks to everyone\nwho made it possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a few days I was a rock star. Granted, I was a rock star with \u201cselective appeal,\u201d but a couple hundred people in Alexandria, Minnesota treated me like a celebrity. The event was the Tre Lag Stevne. The Bygdelags (as I explained last week) are organizations composed of descendants of immigrants from various Norwegian … Continue reading Alexandria the Great<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[140,429,1562,3190,3272],"class_list":["post-12701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookselling","category-uncategorized","tag-alexandria-mn","tag-bygdelags","tag-kensington-rune-stone","tag-tre-lag-stevne","tag-vikings"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}