Hey, Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow our mind - all the way back to the Dark Ages. Walt Disney's cartoon rodent may trace his origins to the 1920s but the discovery of a bronze brooch at a site called Uppkra, in southern Sweden, ages him a further 1000 years. Archaeologists at Sweden's Lund Historical Museum dated the brooch to the Viking period (AD900). Not one to miss an opportunity, the Walt Disney Company issued a statement: "Mickey has always been a timeless Sydney Morning Herald - Disney character with universal appeal across the generations. This certainly reinforces that notion in a way we never expected." But Jerry Rosengren, an archaeologist at Lund University, says the brooch is probably a bad likeness of a lion, an important symbol to Scandinavian warlords. "Similar-shaped jewellery representing lions originated in France around AD700," he said. "After 200 years some French artist, who probably never saw a lion in his entire life, came up with this fantasy version."
