Everyone Loves Vikings: Four Years with Nordic Tales, Byzantine Paths

What was originally conceived as a physical exhibition for the 2021 Byzantine congress in Istanbul, “The Nordic Tale of Byzantine Coins,” became a digital exhibition and online learning resource in collaboration between Koç University and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul: “Nordic Tales, Byzantine Paths,” financially supported by the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, Yapi Kredi Kültür Sanat Yayincilik and the Retracing Connections project. First launched and presented in Venice in 2022, the site has kept growing, attracting new partners and target groups, and generated a number of spin-offs, including two conferences and a PhD course which ran simultaneously in three different countries (Turkey, Greece, and Sweden). A collaboration with the ongoing project “A Viking in the Sun” at Edinburgh University and Snorrastofa, Iceland, has put particular focus on the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada in history and legend, whereas the website’s social media presence on Instagram has closely followed the Swedish comic artist Per Demervall as his and Patric Nyström's “Adventures of Siri” have been further developed and translated in a number of other languages. This presentation will discuss the slow emergence of a virtual “Nordic-Byzantine Empire”, underlined by the same question: why does everyone seem to love the Vikings so much?