Hello everyone and welcome back to the Viking Age podcast.

My name is Lee and this is episode 29, Denmark at the dawn of the Viking Age.

This is part two of our series on Viking Worlds.

Now, before we get started, I need to make a couple of corrections to our last episode.

First off, I stated that Midgard translated to Middle Earth, and indeed, that is one translation,

and the one which inspired J.R.R. Tolkien. However, a closer translation of the Old

Norse word, guard, the second part of Midgard, is enclosure, and many modern scholars of Old

Norse feel a closer translation of Midgard is something like middle fortress.

My remaining corrections have to do with pronunciation.

In our last episode, I referred to the first of the frost giants as Umir, which is the German

pronunciation of that name. In Old Norse, this name was probably

pronounced Emir, and I'll be using that pronunciation going forward. Similarly, I referred to the

poetic Edda and Snorries Edda, where I should have actually pronounced these

Eta, which might mean great-grandmother in Old Icelandic. I apologize for mucking these up.

I did a little bit of research into pronunciation before the episode, but obviously I made a

couple of mistakes, and I would obviously I made a couple of mistakes.

And I would like to extend a huge thank you to our wonderful listeners for pointing these out

and helping me correct them up for you. I really appreciate it.

Now, while we're on the topic of choosing words and pronunciations, I want to quickly note a slight change that some listeners might notice in this episode.

Up until today, I have generally chosen to refer to geographic areas with their anglicized terms when they exist.

For instance, I've called the main Danish peninsula, Jutland.

Starting today, I'm going to be switching this up a little bit,

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