Here's an 'earlier' version: it's supposedly from the days of Beowulf ...
Not that they were ever lost, mind you.
It's just that I've only discovered them.
I ask you: how is it that I could have lived so much of my life in North Dakota and Minnesota, where there are plenty of Swedes and Norwegians, and never once in all that time heard a single word about the Geats?
No, it had to wait until I get started on ALIANORA, which takes place during the time of the Vikings, and am in the middle of researching a long-standing trade (friendly) relationship between Dunnottar and Sweden (going back to previous research about the name itself and a possible connection to a Swedish king called Ottar and his ancestors) ... and there were the Geats, smack in the middle of good old Sweden.
Me being me, I saw that word and immediately thought, 'Hey, that's a lot like Getae - I'll make them related to Alaric, but not let on until later in the book!'
Right.
THEN I looked it up.
O_O
I had been getting a chuckle about the Getae of the North having an on-going trade thing with Dunnottar for a really long time without even knowing that they might be related ... and the chuckles went straight into outright laughter when I read about the logic of a serious argument some centuries back when some claimed that Sweden had defeated the Roman Empire.
Because the Geats were Getae (read Goth, read Celt, read Alaric) and a part of Sweden, therefore it was Sweden who triumphed over Rome. Apparently there was a big to-do about it between Swedes and Spaniards in the 1400s.
And I can't help thinking, 'Wouldn't our Alaric have gotten a laugh out of that!'
Yep, and me being me, what have I done, besides putting all of the above into a public blog?
You guessed it. Got the relationship between Alaric and the Geats into the story line first chance I got.
*sigh*
I never could keep a secret.
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