Name: Thomas Sneum
Tagline: A Danish airforce officer by the start of WWII, Sneum fled to England, and became an agent for the British in Denmark.
Claim to Fame: Mostly committing heroics that came to naught. Continue reading 21 December: Thomas Sneum
Name: Carsten Niebuhr
Tagline: As a young man with a knack for cartography, Niebuhr was selected for the Danish king’s expedition to the “Arabia Felix”. After his travelling companions died in the early stages of the trip, he travelled alone throughout the Middle East, returning to give the world a much better understanding of the Arabian Peninsula.
Claim to Fame: Literally writing the book on the “Happy Arabia”.
Carsten Niebuhr was born in 1733, Niebuhr was originally planning to become a surveyor, but attended university instead. He caught the eye of an academic, who recommended him as a participant for the Danish king Frederick V’s Danish Arabia Expedition.
The expedition set sail in January 1761, sailing first to Marseilles and Malta, before going to Istanbul and Alexandria. After arriving in Egypt, the expedition went to Cairo and to Sinai. Then they crossed the Red Sea and entered Mocha.
And this is where the story turns a bit bleak. Cause this is where the first member of the expedition died on May 25th, 1763. A month and a half, the next member died on the way to Sana, the capital of Yemen. After an audience with the Imam of Yemen, the remains of the expedition set off to sea towards Bombay. On the 29th and 30th of August, two more members of the expedition died at sea. And finally, shortly after the ship landed in Bombay, the second-to-last member of the expedition died.
Which left Niebuhr all alone. He spent 14 months in Bombay, before travelling home by land, visiting many countries and cities on his way.
On his way, Niebuhr spoke to many, many of the local people he met. Not only that, he dressed like them, ate with them, and integrated himself with them to a large extent.
And of course he brought home notes and samples of all kinds of things. Apparently, his drawings were essential to cracking the old Cuneiform script, and he is considered one of the founding fathers of Assyriology.
I would posit that he can also be considered a founding father of ethnography. He was a keen observer of people, and understood to describe them more or less on their own terms.
How would I use him: Niebuhr is a stellar example of an explorer. He goes around, meets people, has adventures, and reports it all to his home. Use him as a mold for a fantasy game about bold adventurers – or maybe try moving him into space.
The whole expedition also offers a great opportunity for a story of intrigue and politics on an expedition. There was a lot of drama connected with the beginning of the expedition, which I don’t have time to go into – and while it’s not such a mystery why so many of Niebuhr’s travelling companions died (they were ill adjusted to the climate, and didn’t have resistance to the many tropical diseases they encountered), it would be easy to make a mystery out of their deaths.
There is also a great case to be made for using Niebuhr as a precursor. In the Cthulhu game, he is the one who wrote the tome on the weird rituals of certain cults. Or maybe something followed him home, hidden in some object sent home to Copenhagen … getting ready to awaken …
Name: Odin, The Allfather. Woden, Wotan and similar variations. Also, more than 200 other names. Seriously, take a look at this list of his many different names!
Tagline: The ruler of Asgard, he sits in his tower in Valhalla, his keep, from whence he watches the world and lays plans for defeating the Giants of Jotunheim.
Claim to fame: Though he’s not quite as famous as some of his subordinate gods, like Thor, Loki and Freya, Odin is the chief of all the Norse gods. He is also one of the creators of mankind, and a powerful god of magic and wisdom. Continue reading 16 December: Odin
Name: Absalon
Tagline: Born into a famous Danish family, he became a powerful bishop and ally to the king.
Claim to Fame: Founded Copenhagen. Also, he paid the guy who wrote the first history of Denmark Continue reading 15 December: Bishop Absalon
Name: Saint Lucia, Lucia of Syracuse, Saint Lucy.
Tagline: Born to a wealthy roman family, Lucia swore herself to virginity, and gave her dowry to the poor, somewhat irking her prospective husband. In the end, she was executed by the governor of Syracuse.
Claim to Fame: Saint Lucy is venerated on the 13th of December in many places around the world, particularly in the Nordic Countries. Continue reading 13 December: Saint Lucy
Name: Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke, Karen Christenze Dinesen, Isak Dinesen.
Tagline: Born to a family of Danish nobles, with a soldiering father, she married a Swedish baron and moved to Kenya to start a coffee farm. When both the farm and the marriage fell apart, she moved home, and spent the rest of her life writing stories.
Claim to fame: Writing such that Ernest Hemmingway said in his Nobel Prize speech that he would have been happier if she’d been a recipient before him. Continue reading 12 December: Karen Blixen
Name: Corfitz Ulfeldt
Tagline: Starting out as the king’s valet, Ulfeldt was a rising star, but ended up as a hated man, exiled from two countries.
Claim to Fame: Ulfeldt is widely known as the greatest traitor Denmark has ever known. Continue reading [FTAWTTT] 10 December: Corfitz Ulfeldt
Name: Eric of Pomerania, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, the Wends and the Goths, Duke of Pomerania (Born Bogislav of Pomerania)
Tagline: Adopted by his aunt, Margaret I, he became king of the three Nordic kingdoms at an early age. He was a visionary, but also a stubborn and undiplomatic, ruler, and was eventually deposed as king – after which he made a living as a pirate in the Baltic sea.
Claim to fame: Apart from the fact that he went from being a king to being a pirate, he established the Sound Dues, providing a steady income for Denmark for years to come and sowing the seeds for the Elsinore of Hamlet, and he secured Copenhagen as the Danish capital. Continue reading [FTAWTTT] 3 December: King Eric of Pomerania
Name: Margrete Valdemarsdatter
Tagline: Married off as a political bargaining chip, she became a major political figure in her own right, uniting Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and earning herself the nickname “The Lady King”.
Claim to fame: In an extremely male-dominated society, she managed to rise to the top, just like she forged a union of three nations with a quarrelsome history, the remnants of which still existed some 450 years later. Continue reading 2 December: Queen Margaret I