The Iranian government has intervened to try to stop the screening of a film in the Netherlands about the Koran. The Iranians say that the film, by the Dutch member of parliament Geert Wilders, is offensive. The Iranian justice minister, Gholam Hussein Elham, wrote to his Dutch counterpart, Ernst Hirsch Ballin, calling for a ban.
A series of graves found in a gravel quarry at Stanway near Colchester, Essex, have been dated to 40-60 A.D. At least one of the burials, it appears, may have been that of a Druid, according to a report published in British Archaeology.
THE OLDEST cross-Channel ferry in the world will set sail again in 2010, giving archaeologists a glimpse into the lives of Bronze Age seafarers.
Based on the 3,550-year-old vessel discovered beneath Dover town centre 16 years ago, the replica boat, lashed together from planks of wood, waterproofed with beeswax and moss, will carry up to ten men to France.
Senior police officers today said they are struggling to cope with a whopping 800 per cent rise in crimes committed by Romanians in this country.Top officers spoke to respected force magazine Police Review to express their fears after an unprecedented rise in offences by the east Europeans.
The book is the first part of Rosalind’s Grim Gruesome series, seven children’s books about a Viking villain called Grim Gruesome, which will be launched at Jorvik Viking Festival on Thursday.
“Vikings are something that I have always been interested in and I wanted to try to find a really exciting, accessible way of trying to tell the story about them to children,” she said. “I know from reading to children that children love hearing about sword fighting and treasure. You only have to mention sword fighting and they all shout out cool’.
Icelandic-Swedish Viking film Embla (2007), directed by Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, will have its US debut at a student conference hosted by the German and Scandinavian studies division at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass) on February 15.
Embla is the director’s cut of Gunnlaugsson’s 1991 The White Viking, the last film of his “Raven Triology,” starring young Swedish actress Marie Bonnevie as Embla. The film features the struggle between followers of the Norse Viking religion and Christianity.
Women who lived in the major Viking settlement called Birka in the 9th and 10th centuries dressed in a much more provocative manner than previously believed.
A Muslim woman suing a salon owner for refusing her a hairdressing job because of her headscarf has more than doubled her claim for damages, after allegedly receiving hate mail.