i'm off to visit my son Alof in Greenland. Busla and her husband have come to Iceland from Greenland. i asked them what it was like there. the biggest problem was no woodland which makes it nigh impossible to build housing. pretty good source of food with caribou and fish, whales, seals, and warlrus. Alof apparently is the Law-Speaker so he's done well in life. well its been a month now and we still haven't found Greenland. for the past week we haven't found land either. this doesn't bode well.

Amma and I have set out to settle Iceland i couldn't even begin to tell you why. i will say i am enjoying the hot springs and the forests make it estremely easy to build a new house for ourselves. i don't know what the explorers problem with this place was theres a lake nearby that is an abundant source of salmon and trout. and the land were on will work perfectly for rye and barley so we should not be lacking for foodstuffs thats for sure. one very strange thing is it seems the only indigenous mammal is the arctic fox. well i'm sure Amma and I will be happy here

My neighbor Vali just got back from raiding Brittany. he's very puzzled as to why people aren't settling there. Vali also went to Scotland apparently the Picts are completely gone now whether we killed them all or drove them away Vali couldn't tell me. unfortunately Vali's wife died during the crossing. my son Alof also headed out to Jarlshof. i belive he's actually part of the assembly there.

i've grown restless here so i've decided to go out to sea again. i've heard some talk about this city called York from my brother Asgaut. i figure its time to expand my horizons and try my hand at purely trading with no raiding. i have a large amount of amber to use for trading. since Amber is one of the three primary luxury goods there I should be in good shape. the other two being Byzantine silkes and german wines.
i'm here in York now and its very interesting, the houses here are very different than the house i'm used too. however i can completely understand the necessity of two story houses versus the one story houses to save space. another interesting thing is Erik Bloodaxe died the day after i arrived and yet nothing is changing or will change it seems.

Asgaut has become quite the warrior. he recently came back a few days ago from wintering in the east with the huge network of t rivers to go up. he met up with a group of fellow traders at Staraja Ladoga. though i imagine he probably went to Kiev soon after to meet up with other raiders and try to find other good areas in the east to raid. he did bring my son Alof back with him. Alof was beyond exhausted from his travels so he's been reccuperating in peace. although i'm eager to hear of his travels. i'm especially interested in hearing about Constantinople from what Asgaut has told me it sounds like an ideal city to live in. i may have to go wintering in the East next year to see it!

I fear my son Alof is dead. He was heading out to the Mediterranean to raid, if i remember correctly he was off to France to find others for his first raid however i've heard rumors that many of our ships have been sunken by an enemy fleet. This makes returning home from successful raids extremely difficult if not impossible. Asgaut is in Camarague i've received a few letters from him. Raiding in Iberia appears to be an impossibility. My wife Amma refuses to accept that he is dead. i doubt we'll ever know the truth.

My neighbor Vali has just gotten back from a raid on Ireland. it seems the one monastery we generally raid is still there unlike the majority of the other ones we repeatedly raid over the years. it must be at least 6 years now that we've gone to raid them. we'll see how much longer they stay there. Apparently there is this trade that insisted on us giving them some of our trade goods?! can you imagine just giving away things. makes absolutely no sense. well Vali showed him what he thought of that you can be sure. It appears Vali is now in a feud with Sigurd so i'm off to help him and get Geir to come help us too. it seems Sigurd killed Vali's son.

My brother Agaut came back asking if i'd like to go on a raid of some monastery's off the coast of europe. of course i said yes after all what self respecting viking warrior could say no to an opportunity like that. Apparently Agaut's discovered a monastery near by that will be even more lucrative than the other monasteries we've seen so we should be able to get a much greater haul.

well were back turns out the "monastery" was a heavily defended fort. we ended up trading with them and continuing to the monastery's we knew were there already still a success

Bjorg here, my brother Agaut finally left for Birka and i wish him luck and safe travels.
i can't help but wonder if he'll be forced to stay there and just work or will he fullfill his dream and get to travel and trade all over the world. especially that strange place.... i think its called the silk road? strange things though the silk and spice we get from them are quite nice. my youngest sister Gudrun broke 2 of our glass cups this morning my father was not pleased it took quite a bit of bargaining and trade to get our luxury items like the cups. i managed to get my sister some nice actual fitted silk clothing thanks to using my runic knowledge on two runestones for my neightbors.
well life calls so till next time.

its Bjorg again, it seems my younger brother Asgaut has his heart set on becoming a trader and he's going to be a crewman on Alriks vessel i wish him the best. my brother Assur has some real skill with leatherworking our shoes are the envy of our neightbors for sure. luckily for him we have enough cows that he has plenty of material to work with. he's always on the look out for walrus hides. the farm a few miles down the road has quite the skilled blacksmith as well so coming to some sort of arrangement with them would be quite useful for my family
well thats it for now till next time

Hello again, this is just Bjorg talking about my life again. i've decided to marry Amma daughter of Sigurd. of course she agreed as our marriage will benefit our families greatly. later this week i shall go sacrifice to Freyja to bless our union. yesterday i used some runes to help my sister Busla recover from her illness. i've been making a decent amount of money carving runestones for people. although to tell you the truth i've been making a few mistakes on them. Then again who ever noticed mistakes on runestones?

My name is Bjorg, son of Holm. Holm was the son of Thora who was the daughter of Alof. Alof greatly expanded our farming land borders. Alof was the son of Valie. Vali was the son of Vott won my family's first acre of land near the Renträsket lake. my family has been farming our land for over 100 years. i am 22 years old. my farm's primary crop is oats. my family's Farmhouse is of the Trelleborg type. as of last week i am officially trained in Runic Magic. i was apprenticed to Gorm. the family that lived near mine became our slaves when i was 16 due to a series of bad harvests on their part.