Christina here. As I mentioned in a previous post I travelled in the footsteps of the Vikings during the summer and I thought I would tell you about the second part of our journey which proved very interesting indeed!
Vikings
Viking Traders
Christina here and I’ve been out and about following in the footsteps of the Vikings yet again. This time my travels took me to north-west Germany and Denmark, and it was a very successful trip in terms of research as I was lucky enough to see and experience everything I had wanted to.
In the UK, Ireland and the countries across the English Channel on the European mainland, the Vikings have long had a bad press. They are usually portrayed as ruthless marauders – raiding and pillaging their way along the coasts and further inland along any navigable rivers. As I am forever telling everyone, however, the men who took part in these piratical endeavours were a fairly small fraction of the entire Viking population. The vast majority were honest farmers or craftsmen/women who stayed at home minding their own business.
When Research is Fun!
Christina here. Research for historical novels can sometimes be very dry and boring, involving wading through pages and pages of facts trying to find the exact details you need. Fortunately, there is another kind of research that is much more fun – going out and about to look at things and experience them first-hand, which is what I did recently when I visited York for their annual Viking Festival.
York is an amazing town steeped in history. Wherever you go, there are old buildings and ruins, some going back all the way to Roman times. City walls surround the town, with a few gaps, and you can walk on them while imagining yourself as a defender looking out at the enemy – although if you’re short like me it’s a bit tricky to see out in places!
Poignant Inspiration
Christina here. Sometimes when you’re doing research you come across some incredibly poignant stories that really resonate with you and inspire you. That happened to me recently.
I read everything I come across about Viking age archaeological finds and I saw an article about something called the Salme ship burials. Salme is a small place on the Sörve peninsula, part of the island of Saaremaa, which in turn belongs to the Baltic state of Estonia. A thousand-or-so years ago, it wasn’t a peninsula but an island separated from the main part by a narrow strait (about 100 metres wide) which is now gone. In 2008 a ship burial was found there during construction work and archaeologists were called in to investigate. Two years later, they came across a second one nearby. Both were close to the coast, making it easy for those burying their dead to drag the ships onto land to use as a final resting place. Inside the two ships were found forty-one skeletons – seven in the smaller of the two vessels and thirty-four in the other.
New Release – RIPPLES THROUGH TIME!
Christina here and I’m very excited because it’s almost publication day for my new dual time historical romance, RIPPLES THROUGH TIME! It’s out in three days’ time – on 20th November – and it features Vikings, buried treasure and ghosts from the past.
The novel is loosely based on a real treasure, the so-called Herefordshire Hoard, which was found by metal detectorists near Leominster here in the UK. Among other things, the hoard included a fabulous rock crystal pendant and as soon as I saw a photo of it I knew I had to have one in my story. Luckily for me there are replica pendants that are very similar, like this one based on an archaeological find from the island of Gotland in Sweden. My two heroines (past and present) were connected by such a jewel and, of course, a little bit of magic.