The character Joe Sullivan in not my own character but Hanna Lance and Mr Edward Johansen are.

It all began with a telegram, written as follows:

Dear Miss Hanna Lance stop

I have wonderful news stop I have found a deserted Viking village in a part of the island that I have not yet discovered stop I suggest that you get here as soon as possible as we want to beat the competition full stop

Best regards Mr Edward Johansen

The island was Iceland in the Atlantic sea and I went to the only person I knew who had flown a Tiger T-3A that far a distance. He was not up for it in the beginning since it was the second year of the Second World War and he felt that he had to defend his country, the lovely shores of Britain, but after some persuading, he came around and flew me to Iceland. We landed on a cold May morning and Mr Johansen was there to greet us.

"How do you know him again?" Joe asked Hanna as they walked to the car where the man was waiting.

"He wrote to me a few months ago and asked for my opinion on a find he had discovered. I don't know him personally, in fact this is the first time I have heard of him. He must have written a paper on Vikings but I haven't read it. Since we don't know him, you be nice this time."

"What do you mean "this time"? I was more than nice to that brat you where working with last year. It was he who couldn't take the ale, I only happened to help him into a police cell…"

"What do you mean by that?" Hanna wanted to know but before Joe could answer, they had reached the car and Mr Johansen.

"Welcome to Iceland, Miss Lance, it is a pleasure to have you here… and who is this?" he asked and as he turned to face Joe, he barely hid the expression of dislike that crossed his face.

"Captain Joe Sullivan and the feeling's mutual." Joe said and gave Mr Johansen a big cruel smile. "What you would want to do on this bit of ice is beyond me," he continued looking round, he eyed the scenery with its open landscape and the distant hills.

"We are looking for Viking artefacts that are said to be in the area. So if you would come this way Miss Lance, I will show you the dig and the Village".

"This is the village," Mr Johansen said spreading his arms wide to the wooden buildings that where raised there. The Longhouse, which was the main house, was about eight feet high and the houses looked like normal houses except from the way they were built; the structure was rectangular with only one room, the smallest house with the roof nearly touching the ground.

"The buildings are nearly new, that's the strange thing, it is as if they where built yesterday."

"But that is impossible!" Hanna exclaimed and started to inspect the wood on the closest house. They were built in the stile of the early Vikings but archaeologists do not know much about the period.

"Miss Lance, this is what you are here for, I need your expertise as a fellow archaeologist to decide the authenticity of these finds and to discover why they where not found before. I will leave you now, so look around and I will be by the dig which is to the north of here," he said and pointed to the left of the main building. When he had gone, Joe started to scrape on the wood with his penknife.

"That's odd; if you scrape of the surface-wood then it is new wood underneath not old and rotten as it should be if it was over a thousand years old."

"Let me see that," Hanna asked coming closer to see for herself. "Yes, your right. And now that I think about it, these are the wrong type of buildings for Iceland. The first Viking settlers didn't have much wood so they built parts of their houses into the earth in order to keep the warm air in. I wonder if Mr Johansen knows this?" Hanna was now getting puzzled. There had been a feeling of wrongness when she first landed on the island but she had dismissed it as nerves. Now she felt that the whole scene was wrong, the buildings and Mr Johansen. Why had she not heard of him before?

Since Hanna was preoccupied by her own thoughts, Joe started to wander. He walked round all the buildings but found nothing out of the ordinary, well it looked normal to him, he didn't know about Hanna. He never liked history when he was in school; he had always been planning a new prank. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. He liked Hanna but history seemed to come between them. She was from a richer family than Joe was and it seemed to matter to her parents, who had a firm grip on the girl, still, even if she had turned 26 and lived on her own. Joe stopped to tie his shoelace on his worn army boots when he noticed something on the ground. It was halfway out of the earth and covered with mud. He picked it up and cleaned it on his sleeve.

"Hanna, get over here! I've found something!" he shouted and she came running over. "Look at this, isn't it lovely?" he asked in amazement, the thing that he had found was a small silver figure of a woman.

"Well, that is neat; Joe Williams actually thinks something historical is "lovely". That is a silver pendent of the goddess Freya. She represents fertility but she was also the midwife's guardian. When there's a battle half of the amount of fallen go to her home, Folkvang, where it is supposed they live in happiness, and the other half to her husband Odin, who is the wisest and most powerful Asagod," Hanna said realising that she had talked without being interrupted, not even once by Joe, who did not like history. "What? Why are you so quiet?" she asked and blushed. He stared at her with a twinkle in his eyes. "You seem to know a lot about her," he commented, sending another blush to her cheeks.

"She is the topic of my paper which I'm writing at the moment. It is about whether she and Thor, the Thundergod, in an earlier period of the Viking era were real people who later became the gods we know today. Where did you find this?" she asked giving the pendent back to him. Joe showed her the place and described the way it had stuck out of the earth. "It looked nearly like as if it had been dropped and the trod on."

"Well, there doesn't seem to be any more finds here, this must have come from the dig but that is a few yards from here. It didn't just grow feet and walk here itself. Why would anyone be carrying this around?" Hanna asked, frowning.

Joe walked off to see if he could find more artefacts that someone might have left behind, when Hanna called out in rage. She had entered a house and found modern equipment and furniture inside. The walls were the kind that you built the modern houses with and the floor was not earth as she had expected but cement. When Joe came running to see what all the fuss was about, he found her going through the papers that were laid out on the table. "This is incredible!" she exclaimed, "This is a record of the area and it says here, that they haven't found any artefacts at all. That means that the dig is just a set up, a fake!"

"But why then have they brought us here?" Joe asked coming closer to stand next to her, "and why isn't the pendant recorded as a find?"

"Let's gather all the facts we know: the pendant is a real find, but they haven't recorded it in their logbook," he continued. "The village that they brought you here to inspect is a fake, and so is the dig. That leaves us with one question. Which side is this Mr Johansen on, is he a part of this or can we trust him?"

"No time to answer that, someone's coming. Quick, run!" Hanna whispered and they bolted for the door that was on the opposite side of the room. Joe closed the door at the same time as the person opened the door they first entered by. They were catching their breath when Mr Johansen came round the corner of the house and found them.

"Ah, there you are. I have been looking for you for some time. Find anything interesting?" he asked as he was walking towards them. "What is it you are holding, Captain Williams?" He had noticed the silver pendant that Joe now tried to hide but too late. He had to hand it over to Mr Johansen who looked shocked to see it, but then again tried to hide his true feeling without great success.

"Ah… I-I'd better take a closer look at this…. I'll keep it in my lab for the time being," he muttered and walked away, he had already forgotten about Hanna and Joe who took their chance and made their escape to the airfield.

Resting against Joe's plane Hanna closed her eyes and tried to stay calm. She could not bare that creep having the pendant of Freya.

"How are we to get it back?" She yelled to the distant hills as Joe climbed out of the cockpit.

"We need a plan, and I think I have got one. Let's call it operation Rescue Freya."