In his new book Gods and Worshippers, Norse scholar Thor Ewing turns our view of Viking religion upside down, suggesting that for pagan believers, mythical beings could be embodied in real people. Not only valkyries, but elves and even gods like Odin and Freyja had a double existence as both spirits and real people, he says. And these earthly divinities lived as wayfarers with their own laws and bizarre moral code.

Ewing also argues that the links between sacred and secular worlds were much closer than previously thought, with warlords doubling as priests, and criminals offered as sacrifices.

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She freely admits that her seven-year-old daughter was sent to school sporting a swastika — the emblem of Nazi Germany that has since been adopted as a symbol of racially motivated hate groups.

She says she is not a neo-Nazi, just proud of her northern European heritage.

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A team of forensic scientists at the University of Copenhagen has studied human remains found in two ancient Danish burial grounds dating back to the iron age, and discovered a man who appears to be of arabian origin. The findings suggest that human beings were as genetically diverse 2000 years ago as they are today and indicate greater mobility among iron age populations than was previously thought. The findings also suggest that people in the Danish iron age did not live and die in small, isolated villages but, on the contrary, were in constant contact with the wider world.

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English Heritage has been accused of wasting public money by putting a majestic 15th century property on the market for £4.5 million after spending more than £7 million to save it for the nation.

Apethorpe Hall is one of the country’s finest Elizabethan and Jacobean houses. It was bought by the Government for more than £3 million. Over the past two years, English Heritage has spent £4 million on its restoration.

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What causes prehistoric burial mounds gradually to disappear? What makes ruined castles and abbeys crumble? What constitutes a serious threat to a historic park or the site of a 17th century shipwreck?English Heritage is sharpening its tools for the protection of England’s heritage at risk. It is creating the first all-encompassing register of the country’s neglected or decaying historic treasures and introducing new ways to save them. Its Heritage At Risk project, to be launched on Tuesday 8 July 2008, will make England the only country in Europe to have a comprehensive knowledge of the state of its protected heritage and the analysis to save this precious and finite resource for the future.More…

For more than a century, the inhabitants of Hatfield Broad Oak have marked their special occasions with strings of bunting.

In recent decades, the colourful flags have become an integral part of the annual village festival.

But from this year, they will flutter no more.

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Orkney Islanders are more closely related to people in Siberia and in Pakistan than those in Africa and the near East, according to a novel method to chart human migrations.

The surprising findings come from a new way to infer ancient human movements from the variation of DNA in people today, conducted by a team from the University of Oxford and University College Cork, which has pioneered a technique that analyses the entire human genetic makeup, or genome.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/05/23/sciorkney123.xml

A TEENAGE motorist was told to remove an England flag from his car by a police officer because it could be offensive to immigrants.

Ben Smith, 18, was driving back home to Ingram Road in Melksham on Thursday evening after filling up with petrol, when the officer stopped him on a routine patrol.

He checked the tax disc and tyres on his Vauxhall Corsa but when he noticed the flag of St George on the parcel shelf he told Mr Smith to take it down.

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SCOTLAND’S history is weaved from a “fraudulent” fabric of “myths and falsehoods”, according to an explosive new study by one of the world’s most eminent historians.

The Invention of Scotland: Myth and History, is the last book, and one of the most controversial, written by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Now, five years after his death, the book is to be published at one of the most pivotal periods in Scottish political history.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article3954008.ece