From my upcoming book, A Tale of Scorched Ash and Elm, here is the half-elf Balti and the Völva Glyrna. In researching for this book, I read a lot of the Icelandic sagas and ended up on a lot of archeological websites to fill in the gaps in understanding. A fun fact I learned about Viking-age courtship in Norse culture is the rules surrounding couples and premarital intimacy. A woman who had never been married before wouldn't be allowed to be alone with a man before marriage (even though it happened a lot), so one way a couple might be close to each other before marriage was to braid each other's hair. In one Saga, a man has his hair washed and cut, and braided by a woman he's got the hots for and swears an oath to her that she will be the only one ever allowed to cut his hair from then on.
With that in mind, I doodled up this little picture of Glyrna and Balti in a longhouse, just spending a little time together while she braids his hair.
