AN INTERLUDE OF RUNES AND SHIELDMAIDENS

In the first and second installment of the Ringstetten series, runes feature prominently. The few literate Swedish peasants would rather use them than Latin letters. The encampment school teaches both Latin and Runic literacy (reading/writing), secret messages are written in runes (for the Catholics not to understand), and these signs are thought to have magical powers. All of that is true (note that this was the seventeenth century, with all its religious wars, sorcery and superstition), and it puts some of the "magical" in the "magical realism" label I brand the series with.
Most funnily, the training snowman our young warriors use to exercise themselves during the "Rhineland winter" (1631-32) is an effigy of the enemy generalissimo, dressed in a green doublet and scarlet plume, with a rosary, a long rapier, and prominent handlebars and goatee. To use the snowman as a lifesize voodoo doll, a message has been written on the nape of "his" neck, in runes. Transliterated into Latin letters, it reads "Johan Tilly, son till en sköka" (Swedish for "Johan Tilly, son of a harlot").
Another prominent theme is wartime crossdressing and shieldmaidens: Germanic and Viking women went to war, joined armies, fought the enemy... unlike women in the Southern empires of yore (Tacitus even stated that equal rights among the Germans, like their proximity to nature, made them a purer and more innocent people than those of the corrupt Roman Empire).
Liselotte is more than a mere camp follower and regimental nurse: she aspires to be a shieldmaiden, and takes thus part in most of the skirmishes (not in epic battles like Breitenfeld and Lützen). As a highwaygirl, she is as skilled a markswench and fighter as her beau Gerhard. Against Liselotte is Croatian Natasha, taken prisoner at Breitenfeld: a more feminine and mature, sexier camp follower... who has an affair with His Majesty Gustavus Adolphus in Eleanor's absence. This femme fatale, widowed with twin children, will lose them to Wallenstein's entourage, and then sacrifice herself during the hard years, in a way that will brand all of the rebels forever.