Author’s Profile And His Personal Story

The webmaster of The Dockyards

My name is Victor Rouă and, as of mid 2024, I’m the webmaster and single author on The Dockyards. I have been constantly writing articles for The Dockyards since the autumn of 2014, when it was only a WordPress-powered blog with little notoriety or very few public views. In the spring of the following year, I decided to turn it into a proper domain of its own in the prospect of developing it into a useful digital teaching tool for like-minded people interested in general knowledge and, more specifically, universal history (my main field of interest here and in general).

At Copenhagen Central Station, shortly before commencing my BSc studies in Medialogy at Aalborg University (AAU) in Aalborg, North Jutland, Denmark (August 2017).

With respect to my personal story, I was born and raised in the middle-sized town of Suceava, in the historical Romanian province of Bukovina (Romanian: Bucovina), northeastern Romania. Bukovina (or Bukowina/Buchenland as it is alternatively known in German) is a historical region situated at the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe which previously belonged to the Habsburgs, the Austrian Empire, and Austria-Hungary (more specifically to the Austrian side of the former dual monarchy) before uniting with the Kingdom of Romania in 1918, in the wake of World War I.

Since its annexation by the Habsburg/Austrian Empire, Bukovina was initially granted the title of crownland (i.e., kronland in German) and, later on, became a duchy (i.e., herzogtum in German). All throughout this period of time, the region received a large influx of German-speaking settlers, a historical community henceforth known as Bukovina Germans (German: Buchenlanddeutsche) which has nowadays dwindled to a very feeble number both in the town of Suceava as well as in the countryside of the Suceava County (as of the cause of both World War II and the Cold War, which also involved several historical population exchanges between the Kingdom of Romania and Nazi Germany and subsequent large immigration afterwards).

Heading back to my personal story, I spent the first 7 years of my life in Bukovina before I moved with my parents to Bucharest, the capital of Romania, in order to pursue my early schooling there (which consisted of elementary school, secondary school, high school, and a technical college between the years 2004 and 2017).

In 2017, I was admitted at one of the four most prestigious Danish public institutions of higher education, more specifically Aalborg University (often abbreviated to AAU), on a heavily technical bachelor’s degree programme entitled ‘Medialogy’, which focused on human-computer interaction, programming, virtual reality, video games, computer graphics, and many more.

Consequently, I spent the next 3 years of my life in Aalborg, one of the four largest cities in Denmark, close by the Limfjorden and the North Sea, with the good and the bad (in each and every possible regard; that is, according to my subjective system of principles and values).

Near Aalborg’s train station, North Jutland, Denmark (August 2017)

Due to a series of noteworthy personal and external reasons, I decided to return to my home country in the summer of 2020, back to my ancestral roots in Bukovina, and start studying on a similar bachelor’s degree programme called ‘Digital Media’ at Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava (USV). I graduated in 2023 as BSc in digital media and communication sciences (subsequently, I decided to continue studying at the local university in my hometown for two more years on the MA study programme British culture and civlisation).

Throughout this period of time, I also made certain to maintain and improve The Dockyards all by myself, so that it would fit the demands of an ever more knowledge-seeking readership, from content creation and organisation or e-mail campaigns for the subscribers to the dutiful SEO settings for all previously published articles.

Bearing in mind these tasks, I’m very satisfied that The Dockyards proved to be one of my most successful personal and professional projects thus far, reaching an approximate 2.7 million recorded views for as many as 220 live articles (as of July 2020). As of November 2023, the website has approximately 3.7 million recorded views, registering as such an increase of one million views from 2020.

Witnessing this success (and the fact that a lot of hard work eventually paid off), I intend to turn The Dockyards into one of the most important independent projects on universal history on the world wide web during the upcoming years by planning to write a wide variety of new articles concerning the rise and fall of lost civilisations and continents (e.g. Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu, or the Native Americans) to the expansion of one of Europe’s greatest ancient tribes, more specifically the Celts (which I am very interested about, from personal reasons).

Image source: www.pixabay.com

Educational training: certificates

In terms of educational training, I have a DELF B2 certificate of proficiency in French and an IELTS certificate in English (graded C1 overall and C2 in terms of speaking which makes me a near-native speaker). As of November 2023, I intend to prepare and subsequently pass a Cambridge test as well at some point in the future. At the same time, I am still interested to study several Celtic languages, at my own pace and independently, that is in my spare time (most notably Welsh).

Image source: www.pixabay.com

Professional experience

Working as a radio man at Radio USV in Suceava, Romania (November 2020)

In terms of professional experience, I have been blogging since I was a little kid, namely from 2008 onwards, firstly on Yahoo 360° (at that time aged only 11), then switching to Blogger one year later in 2009, before ultimately landing on WordPress roughly two years later in 2010.

Since then, I have been writing for other projects of mine, including two personal websites (one of which acted more like a personal blog and the other one which solely focused on rock music, between 2011 and 2012).

Between 2016 and 2020, I was a frequent author on the Steemit blockchain before migrating to its fork, HIVE, in July 2020 (due to personal reasons, I decided to withdraw from HIVE but continue to blog on Steemit during late 2023). Moreover, I’m also a self-published author on Amazon since 2016, having published two volumes there so far(one of them, a poetry volume, was eventually unpublished but I intend to re-publish it later at some point in the future).

One of the volumes was conceived in an effort to dismiss and debunk the many myths and misconceptions regarding the Viking Age, with substantial material that I previously published from The Dockyards.

At Radio USV in Suceava, Romania (December 2020), while still practising the D chord on a Harley Benton electric six string.

That being said, if you would like to collaborate with me or send me any work-related inquiries, you are welcome to do so via my LinkedIn profile. Thank you very much for your time and dedicated readership!

Additionally, between November 2020 and October 2021, I had been working as a radio man (host, DJ, and live presenter) at the local student radio station from Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava (USV). I used to have a Friday 1 hour show on the history of rock music, from 1960s onwards. During late 2020, I focused, most notably, on Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, Simon & Garfunkel, or Sting and The Police.

As of early 2021, when I was still working at the USV student radio station, I prepared special editions on Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, and many more. As part of my duties, I was also interviewing local and national musical personalities from Romania, the United States, England, and Germany.

In addition, since April 2021 (and up until 2023, with a few pauses here and there), I also had a short TV show entitled ‘Musical Book Lovers’ (subsequently ‘Book Collector’) at Digital Media Center (DMC) which belongs to the Students’ House of Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava (USV). Other TV shows of mine there have been ‘Music Collector’ and ‘Musical Instrument of the Day’ (still in preparation for publishing).

For ‘Musical Book Lovers’, I have focused so far on the biographies of several famous rock musicians and bands as well as on other musical-related novels pertaining to the rock genre. For example, in 2021, I presented two poetry volumes by Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan as well as, most notably among others, the biographies of Pink Floyd, AC/DC, or Jimi Hendrix. The first season of ‘Musical Book Lovers’ aired during the spring of 2021. I hereby invite you to stay tuned for more! Thank you very much for your readership, attention, and support! All the best!

At Digital Media Center (DMC), the studio of the student TV channel of Ștefan cel Mare University of Suceava (USV), presenting the first episode of Musical Book Lovers (April 2021).

My genetic story

Last but not least, I am very interested in genetics (as you might already know from the about page here on The Dockyards). During early 2023, I decided to take a genetic test and I found out that I am quite multicultural. It turned out that my ancestors originally came from England and Germany to Romania back in the 19th century, initially in Transylvania, more specifically in Mediaș/Mediasch and Cluj/Klausenburg before arriving in Suceava. Part of them were Transylvanian Saxons (which I blogged about extensively here on The Dockyards).

In addition, I was very surprised to find out the fact that, by descent, I am a bit Finnish as well. According to the same genetic test, some of my ancestors previously lived in Sweden and Norway (and on the website on which I did the test I seem to be very related to many Swedes and Norwegians). This explains and supports the fact that my blood type is A2 and that this blood type/group has ancient historical roots in Scandinavia (source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3972556/).

Below you can take a look at the video evidences for the personal claims above revolving around the aforementioned genetic test which I did in early 2023 (please note the fact that ‘Balcanic’ there is a misleading geographic marker and a rather genetic misnomer as you can further see in the additional, more detailed videos below):