Avaldsnes Church

Today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour is this interview at Fodder For Fiction. I think it’s a good one; maybe I bared my soul a little too much.

Sorry to go back to Viking news, but it’s all I’ve got today, and this is big stuff in my strange little world. This news item was recently published by the website forskning.no (“forskning” means research). The article is in Norwegian, but my translation follows:

During the summer of 2006 post holes from the Viking Age were found at Avaldsnes, near Karmsund.

In November of that year discoveries indicated that what had been found was the royal farm of King Harald Finehair.

But it took several years before the all clear for excavation came on Thursday, says Haugesunds Avis.

“The answer was the one we’d been hoping for. As I understand the response of the national antiquities authority, there will now be excavations, beginning next May. There are a number of conditions the antiquities authorities indicate, but I believe we can say that we have the go-ahead for excavations,” says project chief Dagfinn Skree, a professor at the University of Oslo.

National antiquarian Jørn Holme is also enthusiastic about the project getting under way.

“This is one of the most important projects we have in this country. At the same time I believe and hope that it will be an important event for the people of Karmøy and Haugesund,” says Holme.

The first thing that occurs to me on reading the above is that bureaucracies are the same everywhere. It would appear (unless my translation is way off) that the archaeologists got a reply from the government that seems to say they can go ahead, but they’re not entirely sure.

For those of you who missed your Norwegian history classes, King Harald Finehair (or Fairhair, depending on the translator) is the monarch traditionally credited with beginning the consolidation of Norway as a unified kingdom. Like all Viking kings, he lived a roving life, moving from one royal farm to another, at locations scattered strategically around the country. But his chief residence was Avaldsnes on Karmøy, near present-day Haugesund. This interests me particularly because my great-grandfather was baptized in Avaldsnes church, and several of my ancestors are buried there.

In related news, during the International Vinland Seminar in Chicago I met a gentleman from Stavanger who recently got funding to begin a general survey of Hafrsfjord (a body of water you will know about if you’ve read my Erling books. If you haven’t, do it now. I’ll wait). Hafrsfjord is the only Viking Age sea battle we can actually locate geographically with any precision, but nobody has ever looked for artifacts on the fjord bottom. Once they find something (assuming they do), they’ll have to evaluate whether to bring it up, or to leave it undisturbed in situ. It all depends on the condition of what they may find, and how much money they have to spend.

Today, I got my first old geezer’s perk, as a result of using my cane. I stopped for a couple things at my local bag-it-yourself grocery store. Without asking (I certainly wouldn’t have asked) the checkout lady bagged my few items for me. I can only assume it was a gesture of courtesy for the infirm.

I learned about cane technique last night, when I talked to my brother Moloch on the phone. He used to be a nurse once upon a time, and he told me there’s a right way to do this thing. I, needless to say, was doing it wrong.

Most people, he said, naturally assume you hold the cane in the hand on the same side as the leg you’re favoring. Bad left leg–use left hand. This is what I was doing. This is wrong.

Instead, you use the opposite hand. This technique has two benefits. One, it provides a broader base of support for your body weight, making a fall less likely. Two, it allows you to swing your arms in the natural fashion.

I tried it. He’s right.

I hate it when that happens.

One of my very favorite authors, Stephen Hunter, wrote this fascinating and (it seems to me) extremely insightful article on the movie-generated myth of Bonnie and Clyde in an article for Commentary back in 2009. Why The Culture Alliance linked to it today I have no idea, but it’s worth reading.

But taken together they make a point. That point is that the legendary Penn movie that invented the New Bonnie and Clyde was such a ideological crock that it deserves placement in that list of other leftist crocks mistaken by gullible critics and film lovers as somehow great: Beatty’s own Reds, the appalling JFK, and the toxic oeuvre of Michael Moore and his tribe of screwball clones in the documentary field, as well as the recent spate of angry, misguided Iraq war films.

My latest stop on the Virtual Book Tour is this interview at The Writer’s Life. Another interview less truncated than some I’ve done. I appreciate it.

Readers are catching on with book lovers. One woman says her iPod with a Kindle app is “so much easier to carry than a regular book.” She’s reading much more than she used to because it’s so much easier get the books. USA Today cites Forrester to say 4 million of us have e-book readers already, and 29 million will likely have them in 5 years. (via Literary Saloon)

Back to work, back to the regular schedule today. This is good. I’ll go no more a-roving so late into the night, at least for a while.

I’m learning the uses of a cane. It’s a bloody nuisance, for the most part. It would be handy to have one of those with a hooked handle that I could hang over my arm when I need both hands, but this one (like most contemporary models) has a mostly horizontal one. Makes a better grip that way, I guess, but tucking your cane under your arm isn’t nearly as neat a move in real life as in the movies. The thing has a way of poking things, and people.



I’ve got a link for yesterday’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour here (It’s the Virginia Beach Examiner. I get a little more print there than in the minimal treatment most of my interviews have been cut down to so far.) Today is a guest post at a blog called Authors and Appetizers. I’m kind of proud of this one, because I hadn’t the faintest idea what I’d write when the publicist pointed me there and told me to say something about food. I think what I finally produced isn’t half bad.



Here’s a scene I expect is going to be played out soon (if it hasn’t been already) in the offices of the leadership of a major political party.

Chairperson: “So we’re all agreed, we’re going to put all our influence behind the Goodness Act.”

Junior Senator: “What’s the Goodness Act?”

Vice Chairperson: “That’s the law that outlaws all evil, and requires everybody to be good.”

Junior Senator: “Is that constitutional?”

Vice Chairperson: “Are you saying you’re in favor of evil?”

Junior Senator: “No, no. I’m sure it must be constitutional. You’re right. Forget I said anything.”

Congressman From Eastern State: “Wait a minute. I’m a Satanist. We believe in evil. Our only law is do as thou wilt. Are you trying to infringe my right to construct my own personal code of morality?”

Chairperson: “No, no. We’ll carve out a religious exception.”

Congressman From Eastern State: “Well, I’m still a little offended. Better fund that new highway for my state while you’re at it, and I’ll feel better.”

Vice Chairperson: “No problem.”

Congressman From Western State: “Hey, what about me? I’ve got a large sociopathic constituency in my district. What am I gonna tell them?”

Chairperson: “Don’t worry about it. By the time this bill is done, nobody’ll have a clue what’s in it. It’ll tie up the courts for years.”

Congressman From Western State: “Great! The sociopaths and the lawyers will both love it!”

Vice Chairperson: “You’re repeating yourself. I like that.”

On Sunday morning we didn’t have to meet until 10:30, which was a gift more precious than gold to my battered body. It was also Sunday morning that I stopped at Walgreens and, bowing at last to the inevitable, purchased a cane. I’ve been having trouble with my left knee for about a week (I saw my doctor today, and she says it’s arthritis, possibly treatable with anti-inflammatories). The morning’s rest helped the leg, and also, incidentally, with another problem I had, that of of lack of sleep.

We met at the Norwegian Memorial Church in Chicago (Minnekirken). It was a gorgeous fall morning, and I wish I’d thought to take a picture of the building. The service consisted of a Norwegian liturgy and hymns, with the sermon in English. You know how I feel about mainline Lutheranism, but I found nothing whatever in the service to offend even my hypersensitivity. It was delightful to go through the readings and responses in Norwegian, and to sing the Norwegian hymns (most of which were unfamiliar). All in all, it was the most fun I’ve had in church in years. Continue reading International Vinland Seminar, Part 3 →

So it was recorded, so it was done. Lars’ tour continues at the L.A. Chronicle, if I tracked the bread crumbs properly, and somehow we missed a step over at the Hot Author. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I hope everything is okay behind the scenes.

That’s me. The drive to Chicago wasn’t actually that bad. Nice country, beautiful weather, and the 65 mph speed limit brings out the best in Mrs. Hermanson, miles-per-gallon-wise. But when I got to Chicago, my exit off Highway 90 was closed, and that was a harbinger of things to come. I couldn’t find my motel on the basis of my Yahoo map. I even invested in two cell phone calls to the manager before finally finding the place, about three hours after I should have. My searcing got me lost at one point, and I ended up in Skokie before I figured out I needed to turn around.

Also I accidentally drove past one of the toll stations (something that didn’t use to be possible, before electronic passes). But I saw a sign at a later station with a web site where you can go and do penance. So I think I won’t be getting one of those fine letters based on camera surveillance.

Managed to find the location for tonight’s opening reception. Finally met Prof. Torgrim Titlestad, and sat at his table. We chatted for a while. He’s excited that they’re about to start archaeological surveys for the site of the Battle of Hafrsfjord. That was a sea battle, but I guess they think they’ve found the location. If correct, that will be very exciting.

Also saw (but did not meet) Prof. Birgitta Wallace, former chief archaeologist at L’Anse Aux Meadows. I need to see if I can get her photo for my Vinland PowerPoint lecture. All told, I met three internet friends I’d never actually encountered in the flesh before.

I am bloody, but unbowed. What I am most is tired.

Anu Garg of Wordsmith.org has a fun list of color words this week: sienna, nankeen, gamboge, sinopia, and solferino.

Today someone came by my office in the library and informed me that he’d seen some of our books floating in a drainage pond behind the boys’ dorm.

I sent my assistant out to retrieve them, and he brought back about five soggy, ruined volumes from our Isaiah shelf. Someone, apparently, had swept the books off in a bunch, carried them out without checking them out, and deposited them in the water. There’s no way to tell how long ago this happened.

So our innocence quotient goes down a couple points.

We’re a family sort of operation. We have do-it-yourself checkout, and essentially no security, because our students have always been the sort of young people whose worst infractions are born of absent-mindedness or high-spiritedess, not malice.

I don’t suppose we’ll upgrade security over this one incident.

But the day is coming, no doubt. Security will cost money, and everybody will have to chip in to pay for it.

That’s the way of the world, even at a Bible school.



Today’s Virtual Book Tour stop is here, at The American Chronicle. Oddly, the article isn’t on their home page. I can make a guess as to why, but I’ll say nothing. Probably wrong anyway.