There are LFG forums here on Steam and also on the official Valheim Discord. They work. I've spent time just chatting it up on the discord and jumped in groups with people. If you have RL friends that are willing to play it's much easier. I started this game on release with 3 RL friends, and it was quite the experience. Then I ran it solo, then ran a game with family. Then jumped back in with the OG crew.

It's easy to set up a dedicated server , either hosted or just on a spare box. I started with a spare box server and now currently run a hosted. The sub just auto re-upped for 3 more months, despite the fact that I haven't been playing a lot recently...