Hello everyone and welcome back to a very special edition episode of the Viking Age

podcast. My name is still Lee and this is episode 32, the special anniversary question and answer episode.

At 2.43 p.m., it will be exactly one year since I clicked the publish button on our very first episode and we began this wonderful crazy journey.

32 episodes, 125,000 words, 19 hours of content, and over 400,000 downloads later. I am stunned and humbled to be behind the mic with you today.

None of this would have been possible without the feedback, support, and encouragement, which I've received

from our listeners. And yes, that means you. Thank you.

Thank you so, so much.

But really, it's easy for phrases like thank you to lose their meaning to lack a punch.

After all, we thank people all the time.

So let me try to put it another way. I am currently sitting in the living room of my apartment, reading words off of a monitor into a microphone.

And then, later today, or technically tomorrow morning,

I will put a recording of these words on the internet

and thousands of people including you are going to

listen to them.

What?

That still just boggles my mind.

And what this mind-boggling fact means

is that I get to spend hours and hours, thinking, reading, and writing about a topic which I find more fascinating

than just about any other. I get to learn about the history of Europe and to sift through

scattered hints and clues while trying to reconstruct the way that people may have

lived over a thousand years ago.

I get to learn about pagan religions and gain new appreciation for religions that I thought I was already familiar with.

...