Last night one blogger on TMS wrote

‘baa, baa, ponting have you any wool, no sir sir, been fleeced by the poms’,

but today it is quite a different story – at the moment England are 186-8, and might not even make 200! The Aussies in the pub around the corner will be happy.

Today I draw my keys and pass for the last time at the Nationalmusset (must remember to hand them back, must remember to hand them back…, apparently you get shot if you forget). I hope to finish looking at those type 11A stirrup-strap mounts on the museum database, and then I’ll need to work out the significance of the distribution. There doesn’t seem to be too many of this type found here, so they could be ‘English’ imports.

At noon we headed off to the Medieval Department’s Christmas party, which was not expected to end before midnight! I had been given a small slip of paper which said ’21.  AEbleskiven bliver flittig vendt’ and a song sheet with lines numbered 1-37! My fear of having to sing solo in Danish was not in fact realised –  I was only required to sit at my place when ’my line’ was sung. I soon realised that Danish Christmas meals involve the consumption of vast amounts of dead animals and fish (mostly herring) – thankfully some vegetables - and alcohol. Between each course an event/activity took place. One of these was a song about various alcoholic beverages in realtion to the museum’s activities, created by the museum’s own wordsmith – Poul – which included a verse in English: ‘No-one thought of meat balls / in Anglo-Saxon mead halls / They drank mead. We know it’s true / from a recent beer-review / of the paper Mead Calls.

Danish fact: contrary to popular belief ‘skal’ (skol) means ‘bowl’! – to which the obvious reply seems to be ‘no! that’s a glass’. Intermittently (though quite regularly) during the Christmas feast someone would shout skal and everyone was obliged to drink, which seemed to be a good way of getting people drunk (and getting the Government good tax revenues) very quickly.

I had to leave the Christmas party early to catch my flight to London. I had been told there were problems on the railways because of snow in Sweden – pity we can’t use that excuse in London when it snows ![:)] 

During my flight home I finished reading Beowulf. Beowulf, now king of the Geats, eventually perished whilst overcoming a dragon that had been awaken when someone (accidentally) stumbled across the beast’s Treasure hoard. Was this significant I thought, as I left Danefae-land for the warmer climate of Angle-land…