Your speaker spent two years at the Bear Island weather station in the Norwegian Arctic. He endured some of the worst storms known to man, one of which sank the Hull trawler "Gaul". Dag (pron. "darg") escaped being eaten alive by a starved polar bear by oversleeping. He made a television documentary about Bear Island and written two books about his two winterings.
45-60 minutes, photos and props
Your speaker is a fully dressed and equipped time-warped Viking straight from the 1066 lost Battle of Stamford Bridge outside York. He took part in the sacking of Scarborough and the bloody Battle of Fulford, after which the Vikings could walk across the river on dead bodies without getting their feet wet.
Dag has studied the Viking Period at Oslo University, taken part in the York Viking Festival and other re-enactments and lectured about the Vikings in schools and societies.
45-60 minutes, photos and props
Your speaker started Norway's first hands-on science centre with no experience and an empty bank account. After thirteen years Dag had 9000 square metres of workshop, planetarium, library, traveling science circus, discovery room, stage and one hundred interactive experiments. Up to 140,000 visitors arrived annually. in 1999 he gave it all up, put his original ideas in his pocket and moved to England to marry his first love. In Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast he started from scratch and has again created a science centre of one hundred experiments, popular with families and school groups.
45-60 minutes, photos and props
Your speaker passed his flying tests at American Aviation Corp. flying school on Tamiami airport in Miami. Then he started his own illegal flying school in the Virgin Islands. Dag had several near death experiences, for example by almost flying through an airship at night, by nearly landing on top of another aeroplane which he had not seen in the dark and by having his engine quit in a snowstorm. He was arrested by the British occupation forces in Anguilla and a furious airline employee tried to run him down with an aeroplane tow-truck in St. Thomas. in a wild chase across the apron. When the locals slit the throat of a goat and left a one foot long poisonous centipede he got a hunch that he was not welcome.
30 minutes, no photos
Your speaker is fascinated by the Egyptian after-life and the gods who protected the dead Egyptians in their amazing tombs. The jackal-headed Anubis, the god of death and embalming, followed Tutankhamon into his tomb but could not protect his against the archaeologists who came to rob the king of everything including his dignity. The mighty Pharoah Ramses is being ridiculed on a daily basis by nervous tourists at the Cairo Museum, but one day he raised his arm in protest...
45-60 minutes, photos and props
Dag H.-Kjelldahl, 14 The Carrs, Briggswath, Whitby, N.Yorkshire, YO21 1RR