During the closing ceremony of last year’s Fanfest, CCP CEO Hilmar Pétursson walked onto the stage with a very real sword and began slicing melons like a Viking reenactment gone slightly corporate. Somewhere between the laughter and the applause, he casually dropped an idea.
At the next Fanfest, capsuleers could donate blood, which would be infused into a special ink used to begin writing a saga of New Eden as part of the EVE Forever legacy. The halls of Harpa responded exactly how you’d expect: a roar of approval from several hundred capsuleers.
Standing nearby, a few CCP employees exchanged looks. “Is he actually going to do this?” one asked. “I really hope legal was consulted before that announcement,” another replied. A third simply shrugged: “It’ll be fine. This is Iceland. We do things like this.”
CCP’s Culture of Bold Experiments
Moments like this capture something very particular about CCP’s culture — something I’ve encountered many times during interviews with developers like CCP Burger or CCP Rattati. When asked how some of EVE Online’s most unusual ideas are born, the answer is often surprisingly simple:
“It sounded fun. So we tried it.”
That willingness to experiment, adapt, and try again has shaped New Eden for more than two decades. But the calm confidence of that third CCP employee wasn’t entirely misplaced either. Because Iceland really does have a long tradition of preserving its cultural memory in physical form.
Iceland’s Saga Tradition
Long before digital worlds and internet spaceships existed, Iceland was already recording its history through handwritten manuscripts. Texts like the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda preserved mythology, heroic tales, and the early cultural memory of the Norse world. These works were written on vellum (carefully prepared animal skin), a material capable of surviving for centuries when properly preserved. Many of these manuscripts still exist today in Icelandic archives and museums, accessible to scholars and visitors alike. As one Icelandic speaker joked during a past Fanfest panel, most of them survived perfectly well — except for the ones eaten during the really bad winters.
The Capsuleer Edda
At Fanfest 2026, CCP plans to create a new chapter in that tradition: the Capsuleer Edda.
The project aims to translate the history of EVE Online, which is a player-driven digital civilization spanning more than two decades, into a physical manuscript designed to last for centuries. Visitors attending Fanfest will have the opportunity to contribute a single drop of blood, which will be infused into a historically based 17th century ink formula. The final ink will pool contributions from many capsuleers into one symbolic material used to write the manuscript.
The tome itself will be produced on vellum and written by a professional calligrapher, intentionally unsigned in keeping with medieval manuscript traditions.
The literary work will be created by Icelandic authors Andri Snær Magnason and Jónas Reynir Gunnarsson, who have been interviewing members of the EVE community and exploring the player-driven history of New Eden as inspiration for their epic poetry.
The result is intended not as a strict historical record, but as something closer to a modern saga, a cultural reflection of the world capsuleers built together. Preserving that culture in a physical manuscript might sound unusual. Then again, so is New Eden.
Only EVE Would Do This
CCP’s official announcement goes deeper into the process and the safety / handling details. Some of the finer points — including how participation will work on-site — will be shared later with registered contributors.
If you want to take part, there’s a registration form open until 2 April at 15:00 UTC.
Participation is voluntary, and you’ll need a valid Fanfest ticket — which CCP says is close to selling out.
This isn’t even the first time EVE tried to preserve its culture in something physical. Back in 2012, CCP sent a capsule replica into stratosphere with player names aboard. In 2014, they unveiled the Worlds Within A World monument in Reykjavík — a time capsule intended to be opened on May 6, 2039. And now we’re here: a vellum manuscript, written like a saga, infused with a symbolic trace of the people who actually lived this universe. I mean… come on. What other game does this?
If New Eden has taught us anything over the past two decades, it’s that the stories of capsuleers tend to outlive the ships they undock. This time, a tiny piece of those stories might end up preserved for centuries.
Eat healthy, capsuleers. History might need a drop of your blood.
o7
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