You've reached the home of Neil and Karen, and their companion, Leif the Licky.
Treheima (old Norse for "tree home", or "house
with lots of trees", or maybe even "tree house") is the name
we chose when we bought our current home. One-third of an acre, including 4
hard maples, an ash, an elm (askr and embla), a pine, a mulberry, a cherry, chokecherry,
cranberry, and one apricot (not counting various yearling cherry and chestnut
trees that seem to be squirreled into our yard). There's also a HUGE Chinese
elm that is, not surprisingly, dying from its own growth. We'll have to take
it down soon and replace it with another tree.
We also have all kinds of gardens - Karen and Neil both spend a huge amount of time in the garden. Neil facilitates the addition of new plantings, and Karen cuts the lawn and photographs the results. You can follow the progress of the gardens on her blog - Karen's Home on the Blog.
When we're not at work or in the backyard, you can often find us hanging out with the folks in the Dark Ages Recreation Company. DARC does research and historical re-enactment for both pleasure and educational purposes.
Karen and Neil both had well developed personal pages at one point -
Karen's Home on the Web and Neil's
Personal Pages - but like many, updates have suffered with the influences of blogging and Facebook. Karen has a blog and you can find both of us on Facebook.
Neil Peterson is a certified project management professional at BlueCoat Systems. In his spare time, he is working on an Archaeology degree at Wilfrid Laurier University and works with many groups to promote
an appreciation of Norse history. Museums looking for help with project planning
are welcome to have a look at his museum resume.
Ragnarr Thorbergsson is a tired old ex-viking who is
now mostly settled in Iceland with his ambatt, Kaðlín. Sometimes Ragnarr
gets a few friends together to go trading around the globe.
Karen is a library clerk at the University of Waterloo.
When
not at work, she takes care of / plays with / pets (as appropriate) Leif the
Licky, her husband Neil, and their home and gardens in the quiet
town of St.Agatha. Karen's hobbies are many and varied. They include: drop spinning, weaving on a warp-weighted
loom, natural dyeing, naalbinding, crocheting, knitting, photography, reading, playing mindless computer games, lampworking, Facebook and blogging. Karen is also becoming a bit of a foodie - although there's a strong interest in the local food movement and learning old ways to cook, she also enjoys finding new high end restaurants in which to savour the delights of good service, artistically presented and tasty foods. Once in awhile, she's even been known to whine
and moan about her sinuses or research, whichever is less appealing at the time.
Karen also enjoys sitting around a fire pit and just soaking in
the heat and relaxation of being with good friends.
Kaðlín Ragnarrsambatt was a small town girl living on the shores
of Scotland in the mid 800s when Vikings raided the shores of Scotland and stole some of the women folk away. She was promptly renamed by her Viking
captor, Ragnarr, who says he can't pronounce "that pig grunt language the Scots
use" anyway. She now lives with Ragnarr in Iceland as his ambatt (personal body
slave).
Karen and Neil are settling nicely into becoming old married phartes, but Ragnarr just growls at Kaðlín when he wants her company.
We are fans of travelling but are pretty bad about writing it up later. In 2008 we made a trip to Scotland and Iceland. In July 2009, we returned to Iceland and travelled around the whole island.
