Anders Kaliff is professor of archaeology in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University. Kaliff's main academic expertise is Scandinavian Bronze and early Iron Age with special focus on interpretations of funerals, ritual practice and cosmology. He has a broad international experience with excavations and research projects, among other places, in Jordan and Estonia. Kaliff is a working member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy and the Nathan Söderblom Society.

Terje Oestigaard is Docent in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden. He started his early career with fieldworks in Nepal, India and Bangladesh before working with water, life and death along the Nile River for many years. Throughout his research, he has had a particular focus on funerals and rituals, in general, and cremations and sacrifices, in particular. In recent years, he has also focused on the rich Nordic ethnography and how this links to broader Indo-European questions and historic development processes.

1: Fire rituals and the Indo-European Heritage; 2: Hearts in hearths - ancestors and deities; 3: Seasonality and fire festivals; 4. Cremation and cultivation in the North; 5. Fires from heaven - The links between East and West; 6. The Indo-Iranian culture and its rituals of fire; 7. Cremation, sacrifice and cosmogony in Hinduism