The plan of releasing monthly development blogs was never scrapped. The devs are just on vacation; They're back soon and then you'll also get a new blog post (probably like max. in 2 weeks, but don't count on that).
The Midsummer Crown only provides 1 armor and has no additional effect. Every 46 minutes there is a 20% chance for a random event; So you just were very lucky!
Backups are generated automatically, even if you use Steam Cloud (worldname.db.old). Please read the guide Nefrarya linked and try recovering your savefile.
Threads are being created suggesting the addition of NPCs "for hire" (similar to the Villagers in Minecraft).
There will not be NPCs "for hire" in Valheim.
In regards to quest giving NPCs: Hildir's Quest will be added in the future, confirming the addition of another quest giving NPC similar to Haldor and Hugin.
Feel free to speculate, share your expectations and discuss about the content of the Mistlands update. But please remember to stay on this particular topic. Thank you!