pBy day, a drab pole barn used as general store, post office and meeting place all-in-one by the people of Runde, Minnesota, a fishing village on the North Shore of Lake Superior.ppBy night, a Viking-style long house filled with tales and singing, roasting meat and flowing beer, and of course mead.ppIngrid Torfa can imagine no better place for a much-needed night of RR.ppThe mead hall run by her grandmother lies where modern small town life brushes up against the old world lifestyle of the people of Villmark, proud descendants of a lost tribe of Northmen. All of her friends mingle there from the server who works in the restaurant on the side of the highway to the guardians charged with protecting the sacred flame of their ancestors.ppThe spells that her grandmother casts over her mead hall nightly keep everyone within safe and harmonious.ppOr so everyone always believed. But when a murder interrupts Ingrid's night off, she finds herself questioning everything. Because her chief suspect