The Viking stTORries, technology and football teams

Remember the Viking stTORries? About Björn Ironside, about Harald? Here is another story in memory of the Swedish and Danish Vikings and in honor of their modern football teames.

After our victory in a football match, we will say thank you to the Swedes and respectfully look at the Dane.

He was Bjorn again. Not really reincarnated, but rather revolutionary Nils Rydbeck, the CTO at Ericsson Mobile in Sweden in 1989 initiated the development of a short-link radio technology that would later become Bluetooth. The purpose of this new technology was to develop wireless headsets. Sven Mathesson from Ericsson, another Sweden guy, then presented this technology at a meeting in Toronto, Canada. It didn’t go well someone says. At that same meeting, Jim Kardach from Intel, who later became the founding chairman of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), was presenting Home RF, his own solution for different usage models in wireless technology. His presentation didn’t go well either. When the meeting was over, the two men decided to go on a pub crawl.

On their pub crawl, they also discussed history, of which Kardach is a fan. Mathesson pointed out that he’d read ‘The Long Ships’, an adventure novel about Vikings. The king in the book was named Harald Blåtand. Harald Blåtand (Danish for Harald Bluetooth) was an actual king that ruled Denmark and part of Sweden from 958 to 986. He was best known for connecting different tribes together. The two men felt that was the essence of their technologies and in a moment of inspiration Kardach proposed they name their similar wireless solutions: Bluetooth. So the name of the project was created, and then the technology – many people know it. But this is how the sign appeared – the symbol of Bluetooth – paraphrase the runic combination of the initials of the ancient Viking king H+V, which also united the Swedes.

We have already thanked the Swedes. twice. The Danes, other descendants of Harald, are still playing and fighting for the Semi-Finals of the Euro football Cup today. Anyway, thanks to them for a good game. Or maybe we’ll meet them in the semi-finals? Bluetooth will help not to make noise, but to listen and watch the late matches of Danes and Ukrainians.