Norse Code: Bluetooth is a Viking

Bluetooth is a Viking.

Harald Gormsson succeeded his father Gorm as king of Denmark around 958 and also ruled Norway for a time. Around 965 he raised Jelling's great stone, naming Denmark and Norway and carrying Scandinavia's oldest image of Christ; Danes call it the country's birth certificate, although Gorm's smaller stone is the first surviving use of Denmark's name inside Denmark. Intel, Ericsson and Nokia began work on one short-range wireless standard in 1996. In 1997 Ericsson's Sven Mattisson, who had been reading Frans G. Bengtsson's The Long Ships, told Intel engineer Jim Kardach about Harald; Kardach proposed Bluetooth as a placeholder. PAN could not be protected as a trademark and RadioWire was not ready, so the placeholder stayed. The logo binds the runes for Harald's initials, Hagall and Bjarkan. Nobody knows why he was called Bluetooth; a dead or darkened tooth is the usual guess.

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