WHO IS OLAF?
![]() Oliver Dickinson, who lies
behind the character Olaf first named in the
original 1983 Pavis box (who should always be
referred to as Olaf The Storyteller), is a
well-known specialist
in Greek archaeology, especially the Greek
Bronze and early Iron Ages, who taught in the
Classics and Ancient History Department at
Durham University, U.K., from 1976 to 2005, and
lives in Haxby near York. Like most
archaeologists, he has continued his activities
after retirement, attending international
conferences and writing papers for these,
contributing to encyclopaedias (most recently The
Cambridge World Prehistory, 2014), etc.
His last book was published in
2006, but he has written various articles
and contributions to books since.
He has always been fond of
science fiction, fantasy (encountering The Lord Of
The Rings as a teenager), and complex
board games. His involvement with the fantasy
world of Glorantha began in 1979 when he was
introduced to the boardgame White Bear
and Red Moon by a colleague at Durham. He
swiftly began writing to Greg Stafford, bought
RuneQuest, and ran the RuneRites column in White Dwarf
in the years 1981-4, but had to give it up when
it was eating into time that should have been
spent on academic matters. He 'came out' in 1990
when he attended the Conjunction of the Million
Spheres fantasy con in Cambridge and did a
Griselda spot, reading a story and producing
other Griselda-related material, something which
he did at all the Convulsions (1992-2002) and
continued to do at Continuum from 2006; he also
attended Tentacles Untapped in 2007, where he
read the first version of The Lady of
Alone. He made a final appearance at
Continuum in 2014, where he read the last
Griselda story written, A Brief
Return to the Rubble. He has been actively
involved in preparing those stories not
published in The
Complete Griselda as chapbooks
by Tentacles Press; the first were sold in
aid of the The Kraken convention in late 2016.
Now in his eighth decade, he
may well be the oldest person interested in
Glorantha. He is very gratified that the
Griselda stories have proved so popular and have
interested players in Glorantha and particularly
in Pavis, and that Griselda plays a significant
role in Pavis:
Gateway to Adventure.
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© 2017 Oliver
Dickinson
"Glorantha,
RuneQuest and HeroQuest are trademarks of Moon Design
Publications and used with their permission."
updated 2nd October 2017