The lecture last night, I’m happy to report, was excellent. Truly memorable.

The speaker, Roar Moe (ROW-ar MOW-eh), as I remember the story he told, was an ordinary Norwegian guy who worked in an ordinary job. But he was concerned about all the things that were being lost as his country, in the short period since the oil fields were discovered around 1970, has gone from being a poor, largely rural country to a rich, largely urban country. He traveled around the west coast and was horrified by the houses and boathouses left to nature, the boats dragged ashore and left to rot. So he and some friends set about creating a center where the old skills could be preserved and passed on to young people.

The acquired a little farm on a small island and rebuilt the house, the boathouse, and the barn. They first repaired old boats, and then built one of their own (they learned what they could from the old boat builders themselves, but he says it was hard. Those guys don’t like to explain about building boats, they just do it, and expect their helpers to learn by doing. “The eye” is the most important instrument). They run camps for kids, where the kids learn about the old ways and the old skills.

Then they got more ambitious, and built a “jekt,” (yes, the word is related to our English “yacht,” which comes from the Dutch language, I believe) a copy of a small 17th Century cargo vessel. This forced them to learn the art of square sailing, which is tricky.

And that’s what got him involved in the Dragon Harald Fairhair project, which I’ve written about here before. This ship, when completed this summer, will be the largest replica Viking ship ever built, at 140 ft. Roar will be involved in training the crews. Part of the reason he’s here in America is to try to recruit crew members.

Wish I could afford to do that.

In any case, it was one of the most fascinating lectures I’ve ever heard. I got a chance to speak to Mr. Moe a little afterwards, but only a couple words.

Tennessee may pass a law that protects teachers if they allow or even encourage criticism of evolutionary theories. The governor says, “I think the one thing about that bill is this: Nothing about the curriculum of the state of Tennessee will change, and the scientific standards won’t change. So I think some of the discussion about its impact has probably been overblown.”

Just a quick wave as I sweep by tonight. I’m going to a lecture tonight (against my general principle of not going out on weeknights–or any night, come to think of it) to hear a lecture. A man from Norway will be speaking tonight at the University Club in St. Paul, and members of our Viking group were specifically invited. The speaker is an expert on Norwegian square-sailed boats, and is one of the trainers for the crew of the Dragon Harald Fairhair Viking ship project.

My Amazon sales of Troll Valley had a little spike yesterday, probably because of my column at The American Spectator Online. Yes, I watch the figures. And yes, I do esteem my personal worth on the basis of sales figures. Pray for me.

Originally broadcast on a Twin Cities TV station, this story comes from Neatorama. The McDonald’s in question is about three miles from my house.

Fifty years ago, then 16-year-old Steve Rydberg was working at a local

McDonald’s. Since he worked at the grill, his co-workers developed a code

to let him know whenever a cute girl walked in the restaurant.

Here’s a wonderful story of how Steve met his true love back then and

how he surprised his wife on her birthday fifty years later at the same

McDonald’s:

The verb unfriend was listed in the Oxford English Dictionary from 1659. I wonder what citizens of Jamestown, Virginia, 1659 AD, would have thought a facebook was.

Jirka Väätäinen, a student at Arts University College at Bournemouth, United Kingdom, is working on beautiful, realistic photos of women who resemble Disney princesses like Snow White and Tiana. These are photo manipulations. I haven’t read how much of these are the result of Photoshop work (or a comparable program, if there is one) or photo preparation with the model, clothing, etc.

Perhaps this is the key to understanding what’s been happening in the White House for the last several year.

For more on what’s in the White House library, which can only hold 2,500 books, read this.

“How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone ?”

When I wrote The Year of the Warrior, I took a historical gamble. I included among the buildings at Sola farm, where the hero lived, a heathen temple.

That may not sound too audacious, but in fact I was flying in the face of all the research I’d done on Viking life. In book after book, I’d read that historians believed there were no temples in the Norse religion; that religious ceremonies were performed either in the open air or in the chieftain’s home.

But Adam of Bremen, in his history of the bishops of Hamburg, insists that there was a temple at Uppsala, Sweden. And having a small shrine just seemed right to me, so I put one in the story.

And now this, from the Archaeology News Network:

Located at the site of Ranheim, about 10 kilometers north of the Norwegian city of Trondheim, the astonishing discovery was unearthed while excavating foundations for new houses and includes a “gudehovet” or “god temple.” Occupied from the 6th or 5th century BCE until the 10th century AD/CE, the site shows signs of usage for animal sacrifice, a common practice among different peoples in antiquity. Over 1,000 years ago, the site was dismantled and covered by a thick layer of peat, evidently to protect it from marauding Christian invaders. These native Norse religionists apparently then fled to other places, such as Iceland, where they could re-erect their altars and re-establish the old religion.

I love being right. It doesn’t happen very often.

One thing that puzzles me is that the article suggests that similar temples have been discovered outside of Norway. Why has no one told me about this?

Dystopia is that disturbing place where some of your friends say you are headed in a handbasket, and everyone’s talking about it with the movie debut of The Hunger Games this weekend. So what’s your favorite or most respected dystopia?

Robert Collins has a good list of ten in The Guardian.

Shane Dayton of Listverse has his own list of 12 (with some natural overlap).

What do you think?

Europeanne writes about her trip to Fort Breendonk, once a Nazi concentration camp north of Brussels. What will keep abuse like this from happening here? Are we at risk of entertaining ourselves into a stupor that will allow evil men to go unchecked in America?