Sublime

For the Viking-Age Scandinavians, fate did not represent the absence of choice but rather the manifestation of a pre-existing truth. Free will existed, but exercising it inevitably led to becoming the person you always, really, had been.

The prize included 750,000 kroner and a LEGO model of Yggdrasil, the tree of life from Nordic mythology.

In a different context again, in 1962 an innovative coffer-dam excavation revealed five ships that had been deliberately scuttled in the eleventh century to form part of a sunken blockade controlling access to the Roskilde fjord in Denmark. They proved to be of types that had not been seen before in the archaeology, but which expanded the typology

The Vikings were back the following year, and they knew what they liked: isolated, undefended, but very rich monastic houses. They were probably well familiar with them from trading ventures, as markets were sometimes held near such institutions. Any Scandinavian entering a church of this kind—rather drab on the outside and served by