The Old English poem Beowulf is set in Denmark and Sweden, and a surprising number of its kings, battles and halls turn up in Scandinavian sources and in the ground. Follow the hero from his Geatish homeland to Hrothgar's hall, then to the raid in Frisia, the royal mounds at Uppsala, and the English ship burial and library shelf where the poem survived.
Most identifications here are traditional rather than proven, and the pins say so.
A peasant girl from a Meuse valley village persuades a doubting captain, then a doubting prince, to give her an army. Within weeks of reaching Orléans in 1429 she has lifted a siege, and by July she stands beside Charles at his coronation. Barely a year later she is a prisoner, and by May 1431 she is dead.
The route follows her through nine places, from her family's house in Domrémy to the square in Rouen where she was burned. Where a building was rebuilt or the exact spot is unrecorded, the stop says so.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla brings the Viking Eivor and their clan to Anglo-Saxon England, where Hytham asks for help ridding the land of the Order of the Ancients. Following tip-offs from an informant who signs himself the "Poor Fellow-Soldier of Christ", Eivor hunts Order members from Grantebridge to Jorvik and Wincestre.
The route visits the real places behind the game's: Cambridge, where the jarlskona Soma takes back her town; York, the capital of Viking Britain; the docks of Repton, where the Great Heathen Army wintered; Alfred's Winchester; the battle at Chippenham in 878; and Athelney, where the informant's identity is finally revealed. All six can be visited today.
