Destination Viking – Living History aims at sponsoring community development through increased access to knowledge of history to local people and tourists. A special emphasis is on childrens participation in Viking village activities. The projects partners are Viking villages that use reconstructions of Viking Age houses as the setting of presenting living history to visitors, using re-enactors. The living history experience includes story telling and Viking lore, demonstrations and active participation in Viking crafts and household activities. A vital aim of the project is to ensure quality throughout the presentation of history. Quality of reconstructions and replicas, and quality of activities and of presentation have all been addressed in the project, and quality assessment and development manuals have been produced.Destination Viking – Living History comprises 10 partners from 4 countries. The partners co-operate in improving the quality aspects of living history, as well as exchanges best practice and experiences. The partners meet once every six months to develop the project and discuss the vital issues of the project. Every partner meeting includes a public seminar on a theme vital to the development of the project, and a study visit to a partner site. So far, ordinary partner meetings have been held at Foteviken Museum in Scania (Sweden), Ukranenland in Torgelow, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany), in Trelleborg on Zeeland (Denmark) and in Ale close to Gothenburg (Sweden) St Petersburg, (Russia). Additional, shorter meetings have been held at Avaldsnäs in Rogaland (Norway) and in Stockholm (Sweden). An extra production-planning meeting took place in Foteviken (Sweden) in the autumn of 2004. The last meeting was on Gotland (Sweden) Themes that have been discussed at the partner meetings include reconstructions (of Viking houses), replicas (of Viking artefacts), The guidebook, SWOT, Viking music and poetry, and re-enactment and visitors. Achievements: Destination Viking – Baltic Stories has organised five ordinary partner meetings, each including an open seminar on a specific theme and a study visit to one or more Viking sites and villages. One additional meeting to update partners on project activities have also been organised. About 30 people have participated in the partner meetings. Reports from all meetings have been published in the Viking Heritage Magazine. The themes of the seminars so far have been: 1.Turism developing 2. Marketing strategies 3. Re-enactment, including the inclusion of children in Viking village activities 4. House reconstruction. Quality assessment and development manuals have been produced for reconstructions, replicas and re-enactments. These will be presented on the web site and in separate articles in the Viking Heritage Magazine. A large-scale test of these manuals has been undertaken by Ale at their reconstruction work for a Viking village.The project has been co-publisher of 8 issues of the Viking Heritage Magazine. The project has opened a web site: www.destinationviking.com A mobile exhibition consisting of textile posters has been produced and been sent around. The Destination Viking logo has been patented. Signs have been produced and also put up at the partners establishments in order to guarantee good quality of these living history museums. A small brochure presenting the project has been produced and can now be printed from the web page in pdf. Press material is currently being prepared. There is a close co-operation between Destination Viking – Living History and Destination Viking – Saga lands; an Interreg IIIB Northern Periphery project, and one partner, Karmøy municipality from Norway is a partner of both projects.The two projects also share the web site and the co-financing of the Viking Heritage Magazine. Making history remains visible as reconstructions and adopting them for sustainable community development based on tourism. Quality improvement of existing and planning of a number of new Viking Age building reconstructions, thereby making new tourism attractions available for tourism and local development. A close cooperation has been developed with other establishments and living history museums, where the results of Destination Viking also have been implemented thanks to that the project manager for Destination Viking Björn M Jakobsen appointed president of the Exarc – the European network organization of Living History museums and experimental archaeology. He is also vice president of the Network Swedens Living Prehistory NSLF, which is the corresponding Swedish organization. The meeting on Gotland was successful and interesting and have resulted in plans of further meetings to discuss the future. In July Storholmen, Ukranenland and Trelleborg participated with music, storytelling, dancing, games, sports and musical seminars and workshops for 500 Viking re-enactors at Foteviken. The Museum of Foteviken arranged a Viking market, where the main theme was Viking Age games, music, singing and storytelling.The knowledge, which was gained at the seminars, was used for the visiting tourists. This will most likely be a part of most future Viking markets. This is an clear result, developed within the projectRKKs contribution to the project was the establishment of communication channels and the use of modern methods including the Internet, videoconferencing and other relevant media.RKK was also tasked with conducting a survey of participants use of ICT and proposing recommendations for application in other projects. Two different systems were used for filing, discussion etc. (Web Office initially and Its: learning for the last two years). Extensive use was also made of e-mail and an interesting aspect of the project is to learn why the different tools were used. Courses were held for participants in the use of relevant methods and tools. Web pages were also developed for the project and this will also be followed up later, after the project period.A site has been established. It does the job of promoting Viking tourism by adapting known principles of gaining attention, offering factual information to sustain interest as well as conveying ideas of experiences one can make and hence hopefully a desire to take action and just go there. It is now at the end of the project period entering a third stage of maintenance after being developed to its current state as part of the project. It is only in its beginning to be an instrument for the common benefit and its effects are yet to be assessed. Partner of the project has in total been publishing articles in 12 number of the Viking Heritage Magazine. In all, 40 articles have been published. Each number of the magazine is holding between 8 and 14 pages out of 40 pages concerns Destination Viking Living History and the project. The guidebook is now printed and distributed among the partners in a number according to economical part in the project.