I had to laugh when you described An Tir as "beginning to have lots of Vikings, as well" in 2003. I lived in (then region of) the Summits from 1991 to 1994, and my memory of the time was that the single most popular persona was Viking. In fact my knight, Paul of Somerton, whose persona was born in 1361 in England, and was Oxford educated, and who kept track of what year it was now for his persona (1391 when we met), and thus who his pope was, and which major historical events had happened) used to joke "I used to be Viking, but then I grew up and got a real persona", just to watch the Vikings twitch. In those days there was at least one Crown Tournament wherein a viking-persona King declared that in order to enter Crown to be his heir you needed to fight with a center-grip round shield.

However, while I was really fascinated by Viking age Scandinavian history, culture, art, etc. I didn't have a persona at all. I wasn't interested in wearing beads and the girl clothes from that era didn't speak to me. It wasn't till after I moved to Drachenwald, in 2011 that it finally occurred to me that since I loved the Viking boy clothes, I could just make myself some of them... But I may never get around to actually getting a<</b persona, since it isn't the only time period/culture I enjoy learning about.