Illustration: The Royal Mounds at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden

Here's a Postcrossing card that just arrived in my mailbox this week and seems like a great fit for Mild Fear 2015. It's a painting, titled "Uppsalahovet," that was made in the late 1850s by Swedish artist Carl Johan Billmark (1804–1870).

Gamla Uppsala ("Old Uppsala") is an ancient parish and a village in eastern Sweden. It was the home of the Yngling dynasty of Swedish kings (some of whom were real and some of whom were mythical).

The Royal Mounds date to the 5th or 6th century. Here's a bit more about them, from Wikipedia:

The Royal Mounds (Swedish: Kungshögarna) is the name for the three large barrows which are located in Gamla Uppsala. According to ancient mythology and folklore, it would be the three gods Thor, Odin and Freyr lying in Kungshögarna or Uppsala högar (from the Old Norse word Haugr meaning mound or barrow; cognate English Howe). In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were speculated to hold the remains of three kings of the legendary House of Ynglings and were thus known by the names Aun's Mound, Adil's Mound and Egil's Mound. Today their geographical locations are instead used and they are called the Eastern Mound, Middle Mound and Western Mound.

On the postcard, sender Natalia writes of Gamla Uppsala: "One can see these old mounds there and this beautiful medieval church. There is also a museum dedicated mostly to Vikings, it's very cool. There are also some buildings which form a small ethnographic museum."