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The Green Bay mayor is asking the public for suggestions to "tastefully" welcome back Vikings quarterback Brett Favre when he returns for a Nov. 1 game against the Packers. According to the city's Web site, Mayor Jim Schmitt is asking fans to send in ideas and he'll select his four favorite ideas. The site says one suggestion calls for making the world's largest waffle in the shape of No. 4, Favre's jersey number. It's a playful jab at Favre's indecisive approach to retirement.

What a game! The Vikes win it as the Ravens kicker pulls the ball just wide left of the goal post with 2 ticks left on the clock. 33-31

A 40-year-old in pink cleats was good enough to beat the St. Louis Rams. OK, so maybe it wasn’t any 40-year-old. It was Brett Favre, and it doesn’t seem to matter what color his cleats are. Favre threw for 232 yards and a touchdown a day after a milestone birthday, leading the undefeated Minnesota Vikings to a 38-10 rout over the hapless and helpless Rams on Sunday.

WASHINGTON – Congress plans to conduct a hearing next month on two professional football players whose suspensions were blocked by a federal appeals court. Two people with knowledge of the plans tell The Associated Press that the a House subcommittee will delve into the issue. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because lawmakers have yet to announce the hearing.

Couples struggling to have a baby in the UK are turning to Danish sperm donors, after the removal of anonymity halved the number of British contributors. The world's largest sperm bank, Cryos Denmark, has targeted IVF clinics in Britain where top quality sperm can be sold for as much as £1,000. The company has 50 non-anonymous donors whose sperm has been frozen and will be ready for shipping over the next few months. A spokesman said Danish men would be ideal donors because they share genetic heritage due to three centuries of Viking raids and settlements along the east coast...

Vikings 'were warned to avoid Scotland' Scotland is full of dangerous natives who speak an incomprehensible language and the is weather awful. That was the verdict of a series of 13th century Viking travel guides that warned voyagers to visit at their peril.

FURIOUS debate has erupted in Sweden about a former beauty queen’s attack on the country’s drive for a genderless society, which she claims has turned men into “nappy-changing” sissies and women into frumps who “neglect their husbands’ needs”. Comments posted on the internet by Anna Anka, a former Miss Sweden living in California with her husband Paul Anka, the singer and songwriter, provoked howls of outrage from women. There were also cheers from men who agreed that the Scandinavian push for gender equality had gone too far with the recent emergence of males wishing to breastfeed their babies. Paul Anka...

Vikings visited Canadian Arctic, research suggests Artifacts suggest Norse settlement in Nunavut BY RANDY BOSWELL, CANWEST NEWS SERVICEMAY 27, 2009 This May 26 handout photo shows a Nanook archeological site on Baffin Island. Traces of a stone-and-sod wall found at the site, if confirmed, would represent only the second location in the New World where Norse seafarers -- popularly known as Vikings -- built a dwelling. Photograph by: P. Sutherland, Canadian Museum of Civilization, Canwest News Service One of Canada's top Arctic archeologists says the remnants of a stone-and-sod wall unearthed on southern Baffin Island may be traces of a...

MINNEAPOLIS – A federal appeals court on Friday cleared the way for Minnesota Vikings Pat Williams and Kevin Williams to play all season, despite the NFL's attempts to suspend them for violating the league's anti-doping policy. The NFL had already said the two defensive tackles could play in Sunday's season-opener at Cleveland because their court fight over the suspensions would not be decided in time. "It's a big sigh of relief to know we're going to get to play the whole season," Kevin Williams said. "We were looking forward to Cleveland not knowing what the future may hold. But it's...

Reliant Stadium - It took Adrian Peterson just under eight seconds to scamper 75 yards on the game’s first play to put Minnesota up 7-0. It also took just under eight seconds for the NFL’s best running back to leave the Texan’s coaching staff with a pounding headache as they frantically search for answers as to how best shore up their porous defensive. The only good thing about Monday’s 17-10 lost to the Vikings is the fact that it is still only the preseason. Granted, the hysteria surrounding the Brett Favre circus provided the ambiance of a playoff-type atmosphere at...

<p>Football season is right around the corner, and two big stories have dominated the run-up to it: The return of Brett Favre and Michael Vick.</p> <p>Vick, of course, is returning to football after serving a prison sentence for a dog-fighting conviction. Favre is an aging legend destined for the Hall of Fame, so his coming out of retirement (again) would be notable under any circumstances. But his return this year is especially noteworthy because of the team he has chosen to play for. The Minnesota Vikings, of course, are the dreaded and hated arch-enemies of his old team, the Green Bay Packers.</p>

A woman on her way to St. Paul really got the goat of auto repairman James Prusci. She went to Tires Plus in Winona Friday, wanting a belt replaced on her Chevy Malibu. While he was doing paperwork, she said she had a goat in her trunk. "A what?" he asked. She told him she planned to butcher it. It was painted Minnesota Viking colors - purple and gold - with Brett Favre's No. 4 shaved on its side. Favre made his Vikings debut Friday in a preseason game.

Brett Favre will be a Viking after all. Three weeks after the future Hall of Fame quarterback told the Vikings he had decided to remain retired, a top Vikings official confirmed this morning that Favre is en route to the Twin Cities and is on board one of owner Zygi Wilf's plane. Favre might even practice with the Vikings today and is expected to start in Friday's home preseason game against the Kansas City Chiefs.

Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men -- their heads stacked neatly to the side -- have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month. The mass burial took place at a time when the English were battling Viking invaders, say archaeologists who are now trying to verify the identity of the slain. The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes... Many of the skeletons have deep cut marks to the skull and jaw as well...

Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men—their heads stacked neatly to the side—have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month. The mass burial took place at a time when the English were battling Viking invaders, say archaeologists who are now trying to verify the identity of the slain. The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes, according to excavation leader David Score of Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological-services company. Announced in June, the pit discovery took...

A Danish art conservator claims that the controversial Vinland Map of America, published prior to Christopher Columbus's landfall, may not be a forgery after all. "We have so far found no reason to believe that the Vinland Map is the result of a modern forgery," says Renè Larsen of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Reuters first publicized his results last week but provided none of the skepticism being voiced by veterans in the field. The map mysteriously emerged in a Geneva bookshop in 1957 depicting a "new" and "fertile" land to the west that Viking explorer Leif Eriksson...

Will he or won't he? Football fans waiting to hear whether Brett Favre will join the Vikings may soon get an answer. According to ESPN, Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress has set a deadline for Favre. He wants Favre to decide by the end of this week whether he'll commit to playing the 2009 season. The network reported that Favre may be reluctant to sign on for his 19th NFL season without knowing the results of the arthroscopic surgery recently performed on his throwing shoulder.

A report by Yahoo! Sports says Brett Favre will stay retired, according to their source close to the team. The source tells Yahoo! that Favre told Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress that he wanted to remain retired in a phone call that took place sometime in the last day. Favre is expected to publicly explain his decision soon. Rumors had swirled after the former Green Bay Packer and Childress were scheduled to meet for dinner Wednesday evening in Mississippi. 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS spotted Childress at the Viking's training facility, Winter Park, in Eden Prairie early Thursday. Favre's agent Bus Cook...

An archaeologist says a rock used to mark a parking lot at a church in Sweden is actually a 1,000-year-old runestone. Stockholm County Museum runic expert Lars Andersson said a rock used to help mark the lot's boundaries is thought to date back to the Viking Age in Sweden, The Local said Friday. Andersson said in a museum statement the discovery of runic inscriptions on the rock thanks to rainy weather was akin to a "religious experience." "To read something that nobody else has read for 1,000 years is almost a religious experience," he said. The rock was found last...

Championships. Money. Fame. Competition. Those are the things that drive most quarterbacks. Not Brett Favre though; he's more interested in revenge. According to a New York Daily News column by Gary Myers, a(nother) Favre return to the NFL would be motivated by his desire to get revenge on the Packers, the team that kicked him to the curb last spring in favor of Aaron Rodgers.

Brett Favre eventually will go back to Green Bay, make peace with the organization that humiliated him when it didn't want him back last summer and traded him to the Jets, and retire as a Packer. But he didn't need the Jets to release him last week from the last two years of his contract for that to happen. So, let's connect the dots and see where they lead: • Favre retired in February, but the Jets refused his request to release him, wanting to keep his rights in the event he changed his mind and wanted to play again...

Scientific evidence of an ancient invasion of Scotland from Ireland may have been uncovered by DNA techniques. Researchers from Edinburgh University said studies of Scots living on Islay, Lewis, Harris and Skye found strong links with Irish people. Early historical sources recount how the Gaels came from Ireland about 500 AD and conquered the Picts in Argyll. Scientists said the study was the first demonstration of a significant Irish genetics component in Scots' ancestry. The research, which features work by geneticist Dr Jim Wilson, a specialist in population genetics, is being featured in programmes on Gaelic television channel BBC Alba....

OLD Kveldulf knew it was time to get out of Norway. He had pushed his luck by refusing to swear allegiance to Harald Tanglehair - a king not to be trifled with. When the king slew his son Thorolf, Kveldulf went berserk. He and his surviving son Skallagrim ambushed two of the king's emissaries, killing them and 50 companions, and fled to sea. Luckily, safer shores awaited them. This was the 9th century and Norsemen had lately begun to settle Iceland, a thousand kilometres to the west. As they sailed, though, father and son's ships became separated. Exhausted by his...

From the moment that they ransacked a remote priory at Lindisfarne in 793, the Vikings have had a bad press. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s entry for the year says that the raiders made “lamentable havoc in the church of God in Holy-island, by rapine and slaughter”, fixing the popular image of the Vikings for the next 1,200 years. New evidence suggests that many of the Norse invaders were in fact model immigrants. Historians will try to redress the balance today at a conference at the University of Cambridge and show that the Vikings who settled in Britain and Ireland were technologically...

Pat Grant, 81, wife of legendary Minnesota Vikings coach Bud Grant and mother of Eden Prairie High School football coach and athletic director Mike Grant, died Wednesday in Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina of complications from Parkinson's disease. She volunteered for 30 years at Fairview Southdale, where she ran errands and delivered supplies. She spent most of her time in the Family Lounge, where she comforted families who had loved ones in the Intensive Care Unit. She logged more than 6,000 hours of volunteer service from October 1973 to May 2003, said Pamela Mills, manager of Volunteer Services. "She was...

Bouncing-bomb boffins probe ancient weapons trade Boffins at the UK's famous National Physical Laboratory (NPL) - birthplace of the Dambusters' bouncing bomb and perhaps the internet - say they have used an electron microscope to analyse Viking swords. In a surprise twist, it turns out that the old-time Scandinavian pests, many of whom moved to England to become our ancestors, actually imported their best steel from Afghanistan. "Sword making in Viking times was important work," says Dr Alan Williams, a top archaeometallurgist at the Wallace Collection, a London-based museum of objets d'art which has a massive array of old arms...

All-permeating "white-guilt" did not appear out of thin air. It has taken a sustained propaganda effort, a wide-ranging mobilization of education and culture, to inculcate and sustain self-loathing among American Caucasians. Like the Coca-Cola TM brand, white-guilt needs endless repetition to remain struck in the thought and behavioral processes of the masses. The movie Pathfinder, which I saw on cable, offers a vivid example of the sort of brainwashing intended to refresh the white-guilt TM brand in the thinking habits of young people in particular. Set around 900 AD, the film deals with Viking incursions into North America.  The Vikings...

NEW YORK (AP) _ Unless the courts intervene, the Minnesota Vikings will have to make their stretch run at the NFC North title without their two stalwart defensive tackles. Kevin and Pat Williams, who have anchored a Minnesota defense ranked second in the NFL against the run, were among six players suspended by the league on Tuesday for violating the league's anti-doping policy. New Orleans Saints Deuce McAllister, Charles Grant and Will Smith also were suspended along with Bryan Pittman, the Houston Texans' long snapper.

The average Viking lived a life in which spirituality and thoughts of immortality played a far more important part than the rape and pillage more usually associated with his violent race, according to new research. A study of thousands of excavated Viking graves suggests that rituals were performed at the graveside in which stories about life and death were presented as theatre, with live performances designed to help the passage of the deceased from this world into the next... Detailed analysis of the burials revealed a remarkable variety of objects found alongside the bodies - from everyday items to great...

Scientists say that studying the genes of mice will reveal new information about patterns of human migration. They say the rodents have often been fellow travellers when populations set off in search of new places to live - and the details can be recovered. A paper published in a Royal Society journal analyses the genetic make-up of house mice from more than 100 locations across the UK. It shows that one distinct strain most probably arrived with the Vikings.

Vikings - or perhaps other Europeans - may have set up housekeeping and traded with Inuit 1,000 years ago near today's community of Kimmirut. That's the picture of the past emerging from ancient artifacts found near Kimmirut, where someone collected Arctic hare fur and spun the fur into yarn and someone else carved notches into a wooden stick to record trading transactions. Dorset Inuit probably didn't make the yarn and tally sticks because yarn and wood weren't part of Inuit culture at that time, said Patricia Sutherland, an archeologist with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Other artifacts from the area,...

June 20 | Majority of Icelanders favor cancelling defense agreement with US Several |Icelandic news organizations report the results of a new poll conducted by Gallup and commissioned by Helgi Hjörvar, Member of Parliament for the Social Democrats. The poll asked participants if they were for or against cancelling the defense agreement with the US. 33.2 per cent were "strongly in favor" of cancelling the agreement, 20.6 per cent "moderately in favor"; 9.4 per cent were "strongly against" cancelling the agreement and 15.4 per cent " moderately against". Overall, 53.8 per cent were in favor of cancelling the defense agreement and 24.8...

An ancient Viking burial stone kept in a south Wirral church... the Church of St Mary and St Helen, in Neston town centre... has been broken over time prior to its discovery, clearly depicts a man and a woman with an angel flying overhead... The stone depicts a warrior and a woman who -- say orthodox archaeological interpretations -- are a couple, with the stone possibly marking their joint burial site. But Mr Olly insists the woman depicted on the ornately carved stone is actually a Valkyrie, which would make this already unique artefact even more intriguing... Wirral Viking specialist...

Raiders or Traders?A replica Viking vessel plying the North Sea this month is part of an effort to learn more about what the Norsemen were really up to By Andrew Curry Photographs by Carsten Snejbjerg Smithsonian magazine, July 2008Werner Karrasch / The Viking Ship Museum, Denmark From his bench toward the stern of the Sea Stallion From Glendalough, Erik Nielsen could see his crewmates' stricken faces peeping out of bright-red survival suits. A few feet behind him, the leather straps holding the ship's rudder to its side had snapped. The 98-foot vessel, a nearly $2.5 million replica of a thousand-year-old...

Viking Farms Tell Cautionary Climate Tale Boundary walls built by Iceland's Viking farmers run through Unnsteinn Ingason's land. At some point, farmers stopped repairing the walls, and a climate change may help explain why. Ingason's land had been farmed for hundreds of years prior to his family's ownership. Here, ruins of a stone farm house with a turf roof on a hill behind Ingason's home. Archaeologist Adolf Fridriksson stands near the ruins of an early Viking farm. The farm was long ago abandoned, and its soil heavily eroded. Icelandic farmers bring their sheep down from the hills for the winter....

Every nation could be described as a manifestation of a unique trait of character and most countries furthermore nurture, give emphasize to and celebrate this national identity of theirs. Some examples of such key national characters (please DO comment if you feel inclined to); USA: Liberty Italy: Creativity France: Refinement India: Spirituality Germany: Self-discipline Finland: "Sisu" (a Finnish term meaning "To have guts") Britain: Elevatedness Denmark: "Hygge" (a Danish word meaning "Good-naturedness", of mind as well as of deed) Spain: Passion China: Cultivation Russia: Chaos - just joking, I would actually say "Heart" (in the sense of having a big...

Former Minnesota Vikings great Carl Eller was jailed Wednesday after allegedly fighting with police after being stopped for possible drunken driving. Eller was held on suspicion of driving while intoxicated, fleeing police and assaulting a police officer ----------------------------------------------- Police used a Taser, but Martin said it had no effect and called for backup.

A car exploded Sunday evening while parked outside a block of flats in the Århus suburb of Åbyhøj, reports DR public broadcaster. The force of the explosion shattered six windows and one of the car doors was flung 15 metres from the car itself. Police are at a loss as to the motive of the bombing but have issued a warrant for a 25-35-year-old man seen leaving the scene of the crime. Two other cars were set on fire in the city of Århus, but police believe the episodes are unrelated. (LYT)

Vikings did not dress the way we thought Swedish viking men's fashions were modeled on styles in Russia to the east. Archeological finds from the 900s uncovered in Lake Malaren Valley accord with contemporary depictions of clothing the Vikings wore on their travels along eastern trade routes to the Silk Road. The outfit in the picture is on display at Museum Gustavianum, Uppsala University. Photo: Annika Larsson Vivid colors, flowing silk ribbons, and glittering bits of mirrors - the Vikings dressed with considerably more panache than we previously thought. The men were especially vain, and the women dressed provocatively, but...

The Vikings are unstoppable in Afghanistan. The All Terrain Protected Vehicles' arrival at a scene of conflict will instil relief in the British Troops engaged there, confidence for the local population and, perhaps most importantly, fear from the Taliban. In the barren dusty desert landscape of Helmand, the Vikings' two squat shaped square hunks of metal that trundle along on tank like tracks look like something from the apocalypse. The protection from the hell outside that the vehicles offer though is making them one of the British Forces most popular bits of war fighting kit. Originally deployed with the Royal...

Gutefar - The Bronze Age Sheep of Gotland This article claims sheep of the British Isles descended from sheep from Gotland, an Island in the Baltic "...arriving in Britain between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago, doubtless traveling along with the same Viking raiders that brought sheep originally to Gotland." She also claims Vikings are the ANCESTORS of the Visigoths. Only problems is that the Visigoths preceded the Vikings by about 400 years. The Visigoths sacked Rome in 451 AD and the first recorded Viking raid on the British Isles happened around 800 AD with the raid on the monastery at...

The discovery of two massive Viking halls in Borre in Vestfold County gives archeologists reason to reassess the distribution of power in Viking Norway. Vestfold County archeologists presented finds on Wednesday that show there are two great hall buildings underneath the ground about 100 meters from the major burial mounds at Borre.

Ancient Greenland mystery has a simple answer, it seemsFirst: A reproduction of Tjodhilde's Church stands in Brattahlid, Greenland. It was the first Christian church in North America. Colin Woodard Did the Norse colonists starve? Were they wiped out by the Inuit – or did they intermarry? No. Things got colder and they left. By Colin Woodard | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor from the November 28, 2007 edition Reporter Colin Woodard describes an ecumenical service at a Greenland church built by legendary Norseman "Erik the Red."QASSIARSUK, Greenland - A shipload of visitors arrived in the fjord overnight, so Ingibjorg...

Soldiers from 1st Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment (The Vikings) have received their campaign medals today, Thursday 15 November 2007, following their return from what was a gruelling six-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. Just weeks after returning home from the dust and heat the soldiers were honoured in front of proud families and friends. More than 500 soldiers marched onto the parade square at Elizabeth Barracks, in Pirbright, to be awarded their Operation Herrick campaign medals. The soldiers were presented their campaign medals by the Colonel The Royal Anglian Regiment Major General John Sutherell CB CBE DL, assisted by four...

Dating Swedish men: bring your own beers Dating in Sweden: When Isabel March arrived in Sweden from America, she set out to find her own blond bombshell. But dating US-style left her ill-prepared for dealing with the strong, silent types she found in Scandinavia. Many people who move to Sweden – especially those relocating to small villages in Lappland – are beguiled by a strong, silent Nordic type or one of the members of the Swedish Bikini Team. But despite the hordes of love immigrants who have been caught in the net of a blond bombshell, it often seems easier...

When Stockholm's Mayor donned a t-shirt proclaiming the city 'Capital of Scandinavia', the reaction from the neighbours was predictably indignant. Dan Boman looks at how Stockholm and Copenhagen are battling to prove who's biggest and best. For two years Stockholm has busily been marketing itself as the 'Capital of Scandinavia', in a campaign intended to mark the city out as the natural destination for foreign investment in the Nordic region. Yet not everyone has been pleased by this promotional wheeze - particularly not neighbouring Scandinavians. Now Copenhagen has upped the ante, claiming to be the Real Capital of Scandinavia.

An armada of companies has descended on New York to brand Denmark as a hotbed of creativity When Denmark’s Crown Prince Frederik rings the bell to start trading at Wall Street on Wednesday morning, he will also be making a symbolic wake-up call to America. As part of the Creative Nation trade delegation visiting the United States the Crown Prince and his wife, Crown Princess Mary, will spend the next week telling the Eastern Seaboard that there is more to Denmark than butter cookies and the Little Mermaid. Looking for an elegant evening gown? Danish design can be found at...

Rain uncovers Viking treasure trove Published: 14th September 2007 08:30 CET A bout of torrential rain left a surprising legacy in the garden of one Swede: a Viking treasure trove. Two coins were uncovered by the rain on the lawn of farmer Tage Pettersson, on the island of Gotland, in early August. He called in Gotland's archaeologists, who last week found a further 52 coins on the site. Most of the coins are German, English and Arabic currency from the late 900s and early 1000s. But archaeologists are most excited about the presence of six very rare Swedish coins, from...

September 10, 2007 Builder found Vikings washed up at pubJack Malvern Archaeologists believe they have found the only intact Viking boat in Britain beneath the patio of a Merseyside pub. The 10th-century vessel was discovered in the 1930s by builders excavating the basement of the Railway Inn on the Wirral peninsula, but they covered it up because they feared an archaeological dig would disrupt their work. The boat would have been forgotten had one of the builders not reported his discovery to his son, who passed the information on to academics at Nottingham University. Stephen Harding, of the university’s archaeology...

The Minnesota Vikings on Wednesday canceled a $45 million deal to buy Star Tribune property near the Metrodome, a move that could complicate the team's effort to build a new stadium at the site. Team officials blamed the deal's collapse on turmoil in the nation's credit markets, which have made it difficult for even blue-chip companies to obtain loans. At the same time, the Vikings said they remain committed to building a stadium on the Metrodome site and are continuing negotiations for other nearby parcels. Lester Bagley, the Vikings' vice president of public affairs and stadium development, said there is...