Perhaps in an alternate world, you'd find it both eerily similar, and yet totally different. When a new power seeks to replace the old gods, those who still practice the traditional ways must find a new home. They seek one across the ocean, far out of the reach of their enemies, and find a whole different world opening itself up to them. This is the story of the first settlement in Vi'nland, and the first interactions between the newcomers and the old inhabitants: a saga of love and hate, of harmony and violence.

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Hello there, I'm back from my hiatus to bring you to this story from the Great Dome, a world my brother and I have been working on. It's a world that includes both fantasy and alternate history, but I stress that it's a fantasy story first and foremost. Now I'm going to talk about the choices I made regarding the cultures in the story, so if you find that boring, skip this and go read chapter 1.

Although the two main cultures in the story are both inspired by real-world cultures and borrow extensively from the cultures of their real-world cousins, they're not meant to be %100 accurate representations of reality.

The Holtma ðar in particular were tricky to deal with, as I wanted them to have an authentic feel to them, but this wasn't entirely possible. I read every scrap of information I could find on the Internet about their real-world counterpart, the Innu, but everything I could find about them is from modern times. I realise it's highly anachronistic to insert a modern version of Innu culture into the 11 th century alongside 11 th century vikings, but since I don't have a time machine, I don't have the means to research 11 th century Innu culture and language properly. There were also some gaps that I had to fill with tidbits from similar cultures, such as the Cree, and a few things about how they're represented in my book I either extrapolated or made up on my own.

Viking culture, or Old Norse culture, or whatever you want to call it, is also largely true to what I could find on the Internet. However, I've also been reading the Icelandic family sagas, and while they may not necessarily be entirely accurate representations of Norse culture, they're more fun. In many ways, the behaviour of Norse characters is modelled more after Norse culture according to the sagas than Norse culture according to ethnohistory.

Overall, I tried to maintain an authentic feel to reality, but I tweaked things here and there to suit my purposes for the story I wanted to tell. Again, this is a fantasy story first and foremost, alternate history and real-world accuracy are a distant second and third.