No, not that Lewis



Photo credit: Library of Congress.

Dale Nelson sends this link from Sacnoth’s Scriptorium, discussing J. R. R. Tolkien’s familiarity with, and appreciation of, Minnesota-born author Sinclair Lewis. “…Tolkien immediately segues into saying that he is now inclined to think that the word hobbit owes something to Lewis’s BABBITT.”

Minnesota — an inexhaustible font of inspiration.

Murder Cop and How the South Was Ruint

Betsy Childs says Mark Bertrand (who does not go by Russell, if you happened to pick up that nasty rumor) doesn’t write Christian Fiction. “Bertrand’s allegiance is to his genre, characters, and plot, not to a fictional conversion narrative or religious epiphany. He’s just writing good crime fiction.”

That very author is taking issue with another author, Mark Twain, who charges Sir Walter Scott with laying the groundwork for the American Civil War. “… when Twain decided to take up the mantle of Cervantes and skewer medieval chivalry, it was a Connecticut Yankee and not a Southern Gentleman he had to send back in time. The Southerner, presumably, would have been right at home and all too pleased to leave things as he found them.”

That seems simplistic to me, but books do condition minds. Perhaps Twain’s argument is a good one to some extent. Many other ideas bore their fruit in this time as well. Scott didn’t dehumanize people, did he? That idea came from outside Ivanhoe.

The Vikings: A History, by Robert Ferguson

But, while all of these [various morally relative assessments of the Viking Age] are entirely valid perspectives, the pendulum may have swung too far: as one modern historian puts it, the revisionist view has come close to giving us an image of the Vikings as a group of ‘long-haired tourists who roughed up the locals a bit.’ Among the aims of this book is to restore the violence to the Viking Age, and to try to show why our understanding is incomplete without it.

I’ve already referred to Robert Ferguson’s The Vikings: A History twice on this blog, here and here, having found it an informative and instructive book. If I’d been disappointed or offended, I’d have more to say. As it is, I’ll offer a short review of quite a good general history of the Viking Age.
Why a new history of the Vikings? Because we keep learning stuff. You’ve got to run to keep pace with our knowledge of the early middle ages nowadays. People like me, especially, who take it upon ourselves to lecture on the subject, need to take the initiative to keep our reading up. I thought what I learned about the Oseberg ship, linked above, was worth the price in itself.
Author Ferguson makes the considerable contribution of including something I’ve written about here before, and which was perhaps introduced in English-language history books by my friend Prof. Torgrim Titlestad, in a work that didn’t get the attention it should have – the new (actually old) theory that the Viking raids were initially sparked by Charlemagne’s brutalities against the Saxons. Having shared that useful idea, Ferguson does little more with it, which I think is appropriate. It seems to me that, even if the original spark was religious, the Viking raids continued for plain reasons of profit. There are no images of peace-loving, put-upon Viking victims here, and that suits me just fine.
Ferguson spends what seems to me adequate time, within the limits of a single (if long) volume, following the activities of the Norse through all their major fields of activity around the world, and through the three centuries of that activity. I caught one or two small errors of fact, ones I knew to be fact, but that’s inevitable in a work of this scope.
Highly recommended for all who are interested in the subject, and especially for curious newcomers.

E.B. White on Charlotte's Web

E.B. White explains to his publisher why he wrote his book, Charlotte’s Web. In short, he likes animals. It’s amazing that he did something like what he describes in the book with a spider’s egg sac. He discovered it, watched it, and when he had to return to New York, he cut it all down and took it with him in a candy box. The baby spiders emerged and spread out on his NY apartment dresser!

Spider's Nursery

Monotheistic meditations



Thor as C. S. Lewis fell in love with him. Arthur Rackham illustration from The Rhinegold and the Valkyrie, 1910.

A disagreement arose today, on a Facebook page where I participate, about modern heathenism – particularly the adoption of the old Norse gods by modern people, most of whom were raised Christian. I’m reluctant to argue these things in public, but here – just between you and me – I’ll share my thoughts.

I first encountered Thor in the pages of some kind of anthology in an elementary school classroom. I found a story called “How Thor Lost His Hammer,” read it, and found it a lot of fun. When the teacher called for volunteers to read a story to the class, I volunteered to read that one. But I told my fellow students that Thor was a Greek god, because the Greek ones were the only small “g” gods I’d ever heard of.

Later I discovered that Thor and company were in fact the gods of the Norse, my ancestors. I borrowed Padraic Colum’s The Children of Odin from the library and was fascinated (Willy Pogany’s excellent stylized illustrations didn’t hurt). As the years passed, my interest expanded to include the whole Viking world, and (as C. S. Lewis said) “I reveled in my Nibelungs.”

I’m one of those who believe that Norse mythology beats Classical mythology like a rug. I’ll grant that, simply because of longevity, the Greek and Roman gods informed more – and greater – works of art. But in themselves the Mediterranean gods are kind of second (or third) rate. They start out interestingly enough, with Chronos eating his children and the wars with the Titans, but then the gods just settle down to meddling in mortal affairs and catering dei ex machina.

The Norse gods, on the other hand, have a story arc. Their myths actually improve as they go along, until in the end they achieve the level of the tragic and the epic. Ragnarok, the fall of the gods, is one of the most romantic themes in the world. Richard Wagner, in spite of his many personal sins, recognized this and did it something like justice. Wagner’s music swept the young C. S. Lewis away and inspired his creativity and (eventually) his Christian faith. Continue reading Monotheistic meditations

From our agricultural desk

For a guy who grew up on a farm, I’m eminently clueless about actual farm work and technology. The farm sections of Troll Valley involved a lot of research on my part, even to the point of (horrors!) asking people questions. Still, I moved the family to town as soon as I decently could.

I was on the farm but not of it as a boy. I don’t mean that in a superior sense; I’m deeply ashamed of my ignorance and inexperience. Due to a deal my parents cut with each other, my brothers and I were mostly left with the housework, while Dad continued to care for the animals and till the fields as he had since boyhood. On top of that, farm work just never engaged my interest. Dad would be fixing up a planter or a rake, and I would be thinking about Vikings or Abraham Lincoln.

But I learned something this weekend. It was actually a thing that went obsolete before my time. But God insisted on bringing it forcefully to my attention, so I figure I’d better write about it.

On our way to the family reunion on Sunday, as we drove between the cornfields on Highway 60 between Faribault and Kenyon, my uncle from Maryland started reminiscing about something called “check-row planting.” It was a way of planting corn back in the days before chemical herbicides. This system made it possible (if done right) to run the cultivator in both directions (north-south and east-west), better removing weeds between the stalks. It involved stringing wires, with knots at set intervals, across the fields. When the check-row planters were in use, the wires ran through them, the knots would trip the mechanism, and seeds would be deposited at precise points. The result was that each plant stood in the center of an exact square, with four other plants at each corner. “Dad said the trick was to set the tension on the wires exactly the same for every row,” my uncle said.

OK. A few hours later we’re at the reunion, standing around the tent and talking. Along comes cousin John from Iowa (who’s actually a descendant, not of my great-grandfather, but of my great-grandfather’s brother), and he starts telling me about this method of corn planting they used to have, called “check-row planting.”

Make of it what you will. I never heard of the practice in eighteen years living on the farm, and I heard about it twice on Sunday.

They call me the Highwayman

Nobody who drives the car I drive should spend as much time on the road as I have in the last couple days.

Yesterday I picked up my uncle and aunt, who’d flown in from Maryland, and took them down to Kenyon for the family reunion. They asked me to do this even after I explained the true condition of Mrs. Hermanson, my Chevy Tracker. I can only give them credit for a level of trust equal to that of the centurion of whom the Lord said, “Not even in Israel have I seen such faith.”

As it turned out, we made the trip without incident, except for one of those incidents specially planned by the professionals at our state Department of Transportation. Those dedicated public servants believe in doing a job right, so once they had closed off the most direct route to Kenyon (Highways 55 and 56 by way of Hampton), they finished off the job neatly by also closing the southbound lanes on I35, the second best route, sending us off into the wilds of Burnsville without a marked detour. This forced me to perform the Extreme Act of stopping at a gas station for directions.

The reunion was great. We’ve had nicer weather (it was overcast but didn’t actually rain on us), but the company was good, and I had a better time than at any reunion in some years. Especially nice to see Cousin Tom from Kansas. And of course the road time with my uncle and aunt was precious. They don’t get up this way much anymore.

Today I drove up to Fergus Falls (which is just short of Moorhead) for a meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society Board. 2 1/2 hours each way. Mrs. Hermanson again made it there and back without a tantrum.

This weekend, back to Kenyon for my high school class reunion.

I think it’s best described as vehicular Russian roulette.

What's the Point of Christian Fiction?

Readers IV: sleeper, reader, reader, sleeper

E. Stephen Burnett picks up on the discussion over comments made regarding the stories told by J. Mark Bertrand (“Russell” to his friends), asking an insightful question: “According to the Bible, what is the ‘chief end’ of story? Is it evangelism? Gritty realism? Entertainment? Or a higher goal?”

I chafe at the idea of everything we do in the world being evangelism or pre-evangelism, though perhaps it’s true. I like to think of life being more multifaceted than that. We delight in God our Father. We make disciples of his people. We fight for justice and work in mercy. What are the themes Jesus addressed in his Sermon on the Mount? Who are the blessed of God, being a life witness, the place of the law, the nature of sin (anger, lust, divorce, promises, retribution), loving one’s enemies and neighbors, mercy, prayer and more. Is all of this meant to be seen in the colors of evangelism?

No. A story may witness the glory of God to an unbeliever without having evangelism as its goal, and perhaps that’s the answer. Glory. I want to write to magnify God’s glory, to color myself and everything I see with it.

Still waters


Vikings feast at Ravensborg, Knox City, Mo.
I’ve already savaged the History Channel Vikings TV series in this space, but I have something new to say about it today. I think I may have found the source of one of its (many) errors.
Watching the two episodes I endured, I got the impression that the script writers had blocked out their story first of all, based on their preconceptions of what Viking life was like, and then went hunting through history books for authentic details to sprinkle around, sometimes without any understanding of context.
One of the many moments I disliked in the series was when, on the eve of a voyage, the Vikings brought out a ceremonial bowl of water and passed it around, splashing it on their faces and blowing their noses into it, as a sort of corporate team building exercise.
I knew where this idea came from – the 921 AD account of Norsemen in Russia by the Muslim diplomat Ibn Fadlan (whose account formed the basis for Michael Crichton’s novel Eaters of the Dead, on which the movie The Thirteenth Warrior was based). Ibn Fadlan describes, with palpable disgust, how the Viking company washed up this way in the morning. There’s no suggestion of any greater purpose; it’s just the northerners’ culturally inferior standard of hygiene.
I’m still reading Robert Ferguson’s The Vikings: A History (almost half way through; enjoying it), and I found there the following passage:

With the Volga flowing by outside, the economy would seem unnecessary. Perhaps some bonding ritual was involved that reinforced the group identity and strengthened its internal loyalty.

It would appear that Ferguson’s book was one of the sources the TV writers skimmed, and they grabbed up this bit of speculation as just the kind of gross-out detail they were looking for. But Ferguson doesn’t footnote the sentence. It’s just a guess.
My own guess, based on a conversation with author Michael Z. Williamson, who’s a Middle East war veteran and has some familiarity with Islamic customs, is that what offended Ibn Fadlan was simply the fact that the Norsemen washed in still water in a bowl. Under Islamic law, true washing always requires running water. Still water is unclean. Even if the thralls refilled the bowl for each man, it would still be a pollution in Ibn Fadlan’s eyes.
He was also, in the opinion of most historians, not beyond exaggerating from time to time.

'Who' is a hero

The big news items of the past week, to judge from the comments of my Facebook friends, was the choice of actor Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor Who. I’m fairly unmoved myself, as I stopped watching that series around the time of the Great Hiatus (though I’ve seen most of older episodes). I don’t trust the new production team; the people who produce it are prominent promoters of the Gay Movement, as Torchwood demonstrates.

But the name Peter Capaldi rang a bell. Couldn’t place it at first. Then I remembered. He played Johnny Oldsen, the geeky young Scots linguist, in one of my very favorite movies, Local Hero. It was, I am informed, his first major movie role.



Capaldi (right) with fisherman Alan Mowat in “Local Hero.”



Local Hero is a Bill Forsyth movie. Forsyth was a rising star back in the early ‘80s. He made several well-received comedies about the lives of urban young people in Scotland. His success got him the opportunity to work with Warner Brothers, and so he wrote and directed what I consider his best film (though Anthony Sacramone prefers Gregory’s Girl. What does he know?)

The main character in Local Hero is “Mac” MacIntyre (Peter Riegert), who works for Knox Oil, a major corporation in Houston. His life is all about communications at a distance (“I’m really a telex man”) and shallow or broken relationships close at hand. He gets chosen to go to Scotland and negotiate the purchase of an entire fishing village, along with its bay and adjacent acreage, for a refinery and storage facility, because he has a Scottish name – even though he’s actually of Hungarian descent. Admitted to the other-worldly Presence of his boss, Mr. Happer (Burt Lancaster) he finds that the old man doesn’t actually care much about the acquisition at all, but is insistent that he keep his eyes on the sky – his real dream is to discover a comet he can name after himself. Continue reading 'Who' is a hero