-- Early Germanic history, culture, and language (Emphasis on Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Studies).
-- Classical Culture; Greece & Rome
-- Indo-European, Comparative and Historical Linguistics
-- Instrument making
-- Non-Highland piping.
-- Early and traditional music and instruments from all around the world.
I'd like to meet:
Anders Norudde
Daffo Trendafilov
Music:
Traditional, sometimes Classical
Anders Rosen, Anders Norudde, Alban Faust, Per Gudmundson, Olle Gällmo, Corvus Corax, Stary Olsa Hedningarna, Garmarna, Sequentia, Julian Goodacre and his Brothers John and Pete, Sven Nyus, Knut Buen, Annbjorg Lien, Anna Rynefors & Erik Ask Upmark, Leo Rowsome. Daffo Trendafilov, Ivan Balabanov, Pece Atanasovski,
Johan Sebastian Bach, Richard Wagner, Beethoven, Edvard Grieg, Gustav Mahler, Petrovich Mussorgsky, Peter Tchaikovsky, Gustav Holst.
Movies:
The Lion in Winter, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Amelie, Immortal Beloved, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Enemy at the Gates, Braveheart, Ghost in the Shell, Ninja Scroll, Bubba Ho-Tep, Shawn of the Dead, Braindead (or Dead Alive in the U.S.), Any of the Star Trek Movies, The Emperor and the Assassin, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Erik The Viking, The Virgin Spring, The Seventh Seal, The Machinist, Rear Window, Vertigo and a lot of others.
Television:
Battlestar Galactica
Books:
Fiction: The Hammer and the Cross (Harry Harrison deserves a medal for that trilogy), The Long Ships, Gates of Fire, The Ten Thousand, Eagle of the Ninth.
Non-Fiction and Literature: Beowulf, Heimskringla, Gisli's Saga, Grettis Saga, Egil's Saga (yeah you probably get it by now, I'm into Icelandic saga literature in general... NEXT) Teutonic Mythology by Jacob Grimm, Tain Bo Cuailnge, Snorra Edda, The Poetic Edda, The Iliad, The Odyssey. The works of Tacitus, Livy, Atistotle, Plato, Thucydides, Herodotus, Marcus Aurelius, Amianus Marcellinus, Suetonius etc, etc, etc.
Academia (You can skip this if you like): Soldiers and Ghosts by J.E. Lendon. Anything about classical culture written by Victor Davis Hanson, Italy and Her Invaders (8 vols.) by Thomas Hodgkin, Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Byzantium by John Julius Norwich, All of Hilda Ellis-Davidson's works on Northern European myth and religion, A History of the Goths and The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples by Herwig Wolfram, Language and History in the Early Germanic World by D.H. Green...which brings me to Linguistics (Don't worry I won't list historical grammars and etymological dictionaries!) J.P. Mallory and Douglas Adams' Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture, J.P. Mallory's In Search of the Indo-Europeans, How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics By Calvert Watkins, Indo-European Language and Culture by Benjamin W. Fortson.
