You have just a few more hours to enter to win my September Countdown to IMMORTAL CHAMPION contest. Find out Gunnar’s heroine’s name on the Books page, then click HERE to enter at Fresh Fiction.
Good luck!
Okay, perhaps not lifeblood, but certainly the stuff that give my blood life and fuels hours of writing. I think I have now tried coffee from every joint in town. I have places for my cheap cup, my best cup (always Melello’s—that’s a cup in the photo), my fast cup, my midnight cup. I have staked out the best places to write and drink (Good Beans or Melello’s or Shari’s at midnight, but *never* Starbucks which is always too noisy and too cold).
Why am I telling you this? Because…
Today is National Coffee Day. I shall celebrate the wet, warm brew that inspires, just as I do every day, by going out in search of a great cuppa joe and a congenial table. Would that M. Balzac could join me. We would understand each other.
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“Coffee falls into the stomach … ideas begin to move, things remembered arrive at full gallop … the shafts of wit start up like sharp-shooters, similes arise, the paper is covered with ink …” -Honoré de Balzac
This is an actual screenshot from the final (computer) pass of IMMORTAL CHAMPION, with Word’s “correct” suggestion in the lower box.
And that’s why you never trust computer grammar/spell check. Ever.
Every time I turn around, I see yet another Viking in a horned helmet. Movies, books, graphic novels, anime, football games, even Society for Creative Anachronism events and Renaissance Faire events, where the people should know better. And every time I see one, I want to explode. So let me be clear.
Vikings did not wear horned helmets. Ever. 
According to contemporary artwork and archeological findings, they went into battle either bareheaded or with the simple dome or cone helms that were common at the time (with or without nasal). Even their great chieftains/kings were buried with the same kind of simple helmets — some highly decorated and trimmed with precious metal. The helmet in the photo is that of a lesser chieftain, but shows the common shape (Photo credit: John Erling Blad, from Wikipedia Commons)
However, back in the 1800s, a thousand years after the fact, some fellow in Sweden illustrated a translation of an Icelandic saga and decorated the characters’ helmets with cow horns. And at about the same time, the image really took off in productions of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen. At least the image is justified for those operas: there is good evidence that pre-Viking era* Germanic and Celtic peoples used winged or horned helmets in rituals, and since Tristan is based on an ancient Celtic legend and Der Ring comes from equally ancient Germanic legends, wings or horns are fine. They belong there. Unfortunately, the combination of illustrations + operatic Valkyries fused horned helmets and Vikings in European and American imaginations
Horns do not belong on the Immortal Brotherhood or on any other Viking. Ever.
No horned Vikings.
Horny Vikings, though? Now that’s an entirely different matter….
* The Viking era runs 793-1066 A.D., or Lindisfarne to Hastings (when they conquered England — Norman = Northmen = Vikings — and settled down forever)
For more photos of Viking helmets, visit Hurstwic Viking Reenactors. There’s other terrific info in their history section, accessible from the bottom of their Home page.
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It’s contest time again! Check out the Books page to read about Immortal Champion and learn the name of Gunnar’s lady, then zip over to my contest page at Fresh Fiction to enter to win one of five prizes. First prize is Immortal Warrior and Immortal Outlaw, plus a box of delicious Harry & David truffles. Plus four more lucky folks will get their choice of either Warrior or Outlaw (Winners may substitute another of my backlist books if they already have both Immortal Brotherhood books).
Be sure to spread the word – the more the merrier!
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