Runestone Red

There is a danger that this blog is just turning into free advertising for variously more or less vaguely Norse and Viking-related products. I'll try to get more serious next time...promise. But I can't resist providing a link to this article in the San Luis Obispo Tribune, celebrating their local Claiborne and Churchill winery. The Tribune is not my regular rag, I have to confess, but clearly a noteworthy organ in the Californian media landscape.
Claiborne Thompson was once upon a time a runologist in Michigan, but gave it all up 30 years ago to become a vintner in California (quite a choice, eh?). At the Seventh International Runic Symposium in Oslo last year, we all had the pleasure, not only of meeting Clay and Federicka, but of drinking their fine 'Runestone Red' (actually a Pinot Noir) at the final banquet. Many persons younger and more susceptible than I had very sore heads the next day (they know who they are), pretty much as if a rune stone had fallen on them (it's a 13.9% wine).
As for myself, I do hope one day to drink another bottle, and to be able to keep the empty bottle in my special Viking wine holder.

Viking Wine

I've just been given this splendid present, a Viking wine holder (wine bottles fit perfectly, but in the picture I used some jiggery-pokery to put a more appropriate bottle into the holder). His name is Thorfinn Blast, and he is every inch the Viking warrior. Note his lack of horns, which is pretty good, especially if you compare him to my other two Vikings, Einar Rope-Arms (the brown one) and Brusi Bubble (the rather silly one with a moustache and ears [EARS?]).

Einar is an old Danish Viking, probably from the 1960s when such things were very popular, while Brusi was acquired only a week or two ago from the German Christmas market in The Square in Nottingham. Every year they have a stall with fun wooden figures, and this one was irresistible, though not terribly Viking. He can, however, cleverly move his mouth... As to Thorfinn, well I don't know where he came from, do I, as he was a present!

In case you were wondering, the ladybirds don't have names.