By Osterby

When I started to look into the upcoming True Blood story lines mentioned on SVB blog, True Blood Underground and here at this blog, my chin hit my keyboard and my head began to swim. A map formed in my head and then I thought of all these vampires, werewolves, shifters, witches converging on Bon Temps, Louisana.

There is one area in Central Europe where all of the upcoming themes in True Blood seem to converge. Saxony.


Well, I’ll start with a little Scandinavian history of my own. Through the benefits of genetics my family has been able to trace our history back 50,000 years to when a male ancestor lived in the Persian Gulf while man developed the techniques to make flint into stone tools through the migration up into and back and forth along the rivers of central Europe following climates able to sustain their hunter/gatherer existence settling in Scandinavia along the coast of Norway becoming farmers as part of the people known as the Danes around 6,000 year ago. Many centuries later some ancestors became sailors and migrated to the Yorkshire area in Britain, and in the most recent 200 years, more migrated to the United States, Canada, Australia and Greenland. Stay with me here, there is actually a point to this.

My surname is derived from the Danish language of Scandinavia over 1,000 year ago.  It means ‘East Place’ in Danish as well as in English and is a name found in Denmark, Norway and Sweden today but spelled Österby or Østerby. This is my family’s link back to Scandinavia, and the first variant spelling of my last name on record was found in Yorkshire dates to 1040.

Ok, so why is this relevant you ask?

In 1948 a head was found wrapped in a deerskin cape in the Köhlmoor near Osterby, Schleswig-Holstein in Germany. Most remarkable is the man’s coiffure, known as a Swabian knot. The Roman author Tacitus gives a detailed description of this particular knot is his book Germania (A.D. 98). Osterby Man was decapitated between A.D. 70 and 220.

Now don’t get me wrong, I cannot claim this is a 2000 year old ancestor of mine. Just please note the name of the town and the German City of Schleswig-Holstein where this skull was found. This town is located in what is formerly known as Saxony. At the time of the Roman Empire, Scandinavia remained independent, the Germanic peoples south of Denmark acted as a buffer between the Danes and the Romans. Danish culture grew without ever being occupied, but assimilated what they had learned from other cultures in the seafarer activities.  They traded back as far as to the Middle East, traded and even settled as far east as Russia, along the coasts and rivers of Briton, Greenland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Newfoundland, Normandy, Saxony and Scotland. The rulers of Russia, the Russ, were of Scandinavian decent.  The only ruler currently on a throne in Europe that is not of Scandinavian decent is Queen Elizabeth II.

What ties could Godric from Gaul have to Saxony?

Pam relates Godric’s back story in S2, Ep 5: “Godric was captured as a small boy in the first century B.C. during one of Julius Caesar’s invasions of Gaul. He was brought back to Rome and sold as a slave to a Roman master who eventually revealed him self to be a vampire. Godric’s master was quite sadistic. He branded Godric, abused him and used him until he was 16. Then he finally turned him. Godric continued to serve his master-maker for a while until he got the vampire gifts down. He then murdered his maker. Exactly how he was able to do this, he’s never said, but I suspect decapitation. Very rare, that vampires kill their makers and understandably this got Godric in trouble with the ancient vampire community, so he went on the lam, traveling the world, hunting and feeding alone. Ever since his capture as a young boy by the Roman army he was fascinated by armies and often followed them to watch the battles or fought in the nighttime raids for fun. Then he would feed on and kill the wounded. He was wandering around the British coast when he saw Eric and his fellow soldiers in a raid. He was so impressed by Eric that he tracked him down and turned him when he was about to die. Now, he’s just the goddamn sheriff of Dallas. Talk about being overqualified.”

Could Godric have followed the Roman army to this area in pursuit of battles so he could feed on the leftovers while making his way back to Gaul?

What ties could the 1100 year old Scandinavian Eric Northman have to Saxony?

True Blood Wiki: Born in 1046, made vampire in 1077. As a teenager in ninth century Scandinavia, Eric joined with a rogue band of warriors who refused to swear allegiance to any kingdom because, in his own words, “My destiny is to answer to no man.” Eric quickly became the leader of the group, which was briefly infamous for marauding on what is now Germany and Poland, until they mysteriously vanished after a battle in 1077. Eric did not speak about how he was made vampire, or who made him, but has recently revealed that Godric is his Maker. Eric is of Norse “Viking” descent. He made Pam, and she has been his friend & coworker numerous times over the years. He owns the tourist-y, gothic vampire club called Fangtasia in Shreveport.

Why did the Vampire Pope in the Middle Ages have an interest in Saxony?

During the Holy Roman Empire, we have the parents of Catherine of Aragon, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile found the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. Catherine was the fist wife of Henry VIII of England who was from Yorkshire, the capital of Viking Britain.


In 1484 we have a pope who had a particular interest in Germany. Innocent VIII, in his papal bull Summis desiderantes (5 December, 1484) instigated severe measures against magicians and witches in Germany. The grip of freezing weather, failing of crops, rising crime, and mass starvation was blamed on witches. He issued the bull to inquisitors Heinrich Kramer and Jacobus Sprenger, to systemize the persecution of witches. “It has recently come to our ears, not without great pain to us, that in some parts of upper Germany, [...] Mainz, Koin, Trier, Salzburg, and Bremen, many persons of both sexes, heedless of their own salvation and forsaking the catholic faith, give themselves over to devils male and female, and by their incantations, charms, and conjurings, and by other abominable superstitions and sortileges, offences, crimes, and misdeeds, ruin and cause to perish the offspring of women, the foal of animals, the products of the earth, the grapes of vines, and the fruits of trees, as well as men and women, cattle and flocks and herds and animals of every kind, vineyards also and orchards, meadows, pastures, harvests, grains and other fruits of the earth; that they afflict and torture with dire pains and anguish, both internal and external, these men, women, cattle, flocks, herds, and animals, and hinder men from begetting [...].”  He had a penchant for slaves as well.  The position of Renaissance popes towards slavery, a common institution in contemporary cultures, varied. Those who allowed the slave trade did so in the hope of gaining converts to Christianity. In the case of Innocent he permitted trade with Barbary merchants in which foodstuffs would be given in exchange for slaves who could then be converted to Christianity.

Was the magister in True Blood in Saxony by appointment of the Vampire Pope?


Was he Heinrich Kramer or James Springer in his mortal life?

Who is the granddaughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabelle of Castile?


Which leads us to Pam’s history of Isabel: “I’ve always had a soft spot for Isabel. She’s got that Latin temperament. But with that comes emotion and sentimentality, which gets tedious fast. Good thing she’s smoking hot to compensate. She was born in Castile in 1551 the granddaughter of the great Queen Isabella of Castile. She had some pretty shitty luck in the marriage department. In order to strengthen Castilian power she was first married off to some duke in the Plantagenet line. He died, not six months after the wedding. Then came the king of Leon, a Flemish count and a Spanish prince, all dead within a year of saying their vows. Done with marriage and being treated as a pawn in her family’s royal chess game she asked her French vampire lover to turn her so she could live with him outside the parameters of the life she was given. She’s been doing so ever since but has always remained a sucker for love.”

Oh Pam, you aren’t very reliable, but I might get why you are confusing your dates. Isabella_I_of_Castile was born in 1451 and her granddaughter, Isabella of Burgundy, was born in 1515. She was also Queen of Denmark and Norway. Hmmmm. Does one queen know another? They sure dress alike.


Who are Ludis and Yvetta?

Terra Mariana was the official name for Medieval Livonia or Old Livonia which was formed in the aftermath of the Livonian Crusade in the territories comprising present day Estonia and Latvia. It was established on February 2, 1207 as a principality of the Holy Roman Empire but lost this status in 1215 when proclaimed by Pope Innocent III as a direct subject to the Holy See.

Yvetta hails from Estonia where the werewolf witch trials were held.

Ludis is where the Nazis come into the story,with the Latvian Holocaust.

What exactly is Operation Werewolf?


This has been explained over on SVB blog, but if your interested here’s more background information.

Who were the Forest Brothers?

Also similar to Werwolf were the Forest Brothers of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who continued to wage armed guerrilla resistance against the Soviet occupation of their nations from the end of the Second World War until as late as 1957. Although few Forest Brothers were of German ethnicity, many of them had originally served in military units which had been allied with the Third Reich. As with the resistance movement among ethnic Germans in eastern Europe, however, the Forest Brothers were only interested in the liberation of their lands from Soviet rule, rather than an attempted resurrection of Nazi war aims.

And just were does Lorena Krasiki fit into all of this?

Lorena hails from an area of Russia which was formally part of Germany. Settlement in Pomerania started by the end of the Vistula Glacial Stage, about 13,000 years ago. Archeological traces have been found of various cultures during the Stone and Bronze Age, of Veneti and Germanic peoples during the Iron Age and, in the Middle Ages, Slavic tribes and Vikings. Starting in the 10th century, early Polish dukes on several occasions subdued parts of the region from the southeast, while the Holy Roman Empire and Denmark augmented their territory from the west and north. This is becoming very incestuous!

Is there a crossroads in Saxony as there is in Bon Temps?

So if we know Eric and Godric are in Nazi Germany, I can only say that they both have long histories in the area. Lorena does too. Witches and werewolves are definitely in the area as well. So many themes, so many questions.

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