We’re leaping across time and space! Right now, we’re creating digital avatars that can actually talk to each other.

One embodies a Viking chieftain from Borg in Lofoten. The other portrays a merchant from sun-soaked Coimbra. Two worlds, one conversation, inspired by a recent demo video, echoing the long-distance trade networks that connected Europe over a thousand years ago.

The project builds on the Lofotr Viking Museum’s AR prototype: a location-based experience that brings the Viking Age and early Middle Ages to life through your mobile camera on the Borg plateau.

Our test participant moves through the reconstructed landscape as three longhouses rise around them, artifacts reappear in the spots where they were originally found, and digital people and animals animate the environment as if time had never passed.

Fig. 1. The figure is a screenshot from Unity, the game engine we use to develop the simulation. It shows a typical avatar in our system. These avatars can speak, walk, and perform specific tasks. Their actions run in loops, so if you watch them long enough, you’ll see the sequence repeat. The same characters are also used to create the dialogue between the chieftain and the merchant.

The inspired dialogue comes from this short film: