Apparently, the subject of The Bookseller of Kabul doesn’t like the story as written, saying it has fabricated stories and recorded private conversations.

It happened today. The Devil’s Confetti. The Pillow Fight Aftermath From H*ll.

It snowed.

Not much. Just for a few minutes. But I looked out the window and the white stuff was whirling in a vortex of low pressure in the parking lot. If this were a zombie movie, this would be the scene where the chicken is found nailed to the door, sending the symbolic message, “We know where you live, and your feeble science has no power to save you from our malice.”

Every year that passes, the summer seems shorter.

Fortunately, the winters seem shorter too.

But not as short as the summers.

Thanks to Phil for forwarding the news to me: The Chicago Viking Ship, for which I agitated in this space a while back, has won a preservation grant, thanks in part to your votes. The site is a little vague as to exactly how much money will be forked over, but the ship project is in the top tier.

I don’t often see good news from Denmark, but I’m happy to report that a center-right coalition won the parliamentary elections there Tuesday. “Center-right” doesn’t mean quite the same thing in Denmark as it does in America, but it’s still good news, from my slanted perspective.

I’ve largely written off Europe. I’ve come to terms with the fact that the old Europe, the one we loved from the movies, is gone forever. But perhaps a few things can be saved. Perhaps it won’t become an Islamic continent. Perhaps the Europeans are beginning to notice that the wonderful new world they’ve been promised doesn’t match the reality developing around them. “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” after all, is a Danish story.

What they really need, in my opinion, is a return to Christ. But, as the Lord Himself noted, it’s harder for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. Prosperity, it seems to me, is Europe’s big problem.

America’s too.

Madeleine L’Engle inspires a bit of thought at A Circle of Quiet.

To all veterans and those currently in military service:

Thank you for all you have suffered and sacrificed for us.

Ken Myers and Alan Jacobs talk about Philip Pullman’s books, which sound worse the more I hear about them. Beautifully imagined, but unfulfilling and not so much fantasy as argument for religious anarchy. Whether The Golden Compass is toned down or spun out enough to be acceptable to most audiences, it sounds as if the two sequels will have to depart from the books a great deal, especially the third.

I don’t think I can avoid it. Lileks noted this morning, on The Buzz, that today is the anniversary of the discovery of the Kensington Runestone in 1898. If anything comes within the parameters of my “beat,” I guess it would be the Runestone.

But I don’t really want to. It’s a subject that can make me no friends.

If you don’t know anything about the stone (which means you’ve never read my novel Wolf Time, and shame on you), it’s a piece of blackish stone, about a yard high (I’ve seen it in Alexandria, Minnesota, several times, and I also drove out to the discovery site once), carved with runes, an alphabet that began among the Germanic peoples in antiquity, flourished in the Viking Age, and actually survived in remote parts of Scandinavia into the 18th Century (if I remember correctly).

It tells the story of a Gothic (Swedish) and Norwegian expedition to America in the 14th Century, and notes that some of the men went out fishing, and came back to camp to find ten of their company “red with blood and dead.”

The stone was found by a Swedish immigrant farmer named Olof Ohman. He exhibited it at the local bank, and it attracted attention from a few American scholars, who rejected it as a fraud. At that point, it seems that Ohman dropped the subject (as well as the stone), turning it over on its face to serve as a step into his cattle barn. In 1907 he sold it for ten bucks to a Norwegian-American student named Hjalmar Holand, and then things started happening.

Holand became a prominent ethnic historian and a major booster of Scandinavian culture in America. For a man like Holand, the runestone constituted proof positive that Scandinavians were not Johnny-come-latelies in this country, but the original discoverers (it was much the same impulse that made Columbus so important to Italian immigrants around the same time). Holand wrote several books about the stone, and was a tireless advocate for its authenticity for the rest of his life.

Scandinavian runologists have pretty consistently rejected the stone as a hoax, and I don’t believe that opinion has changed with time. The argument about the “idiosyncratic” runes included in the inscription goes on to this day, and it goes on at a level far above my head.

A new wrinkle in the argument involves a geological analysis of the stone published in 2000. The author, Scott F. Wolter, is a highly regarded forensic geologist, who has testified as an expert in a number of legal cases. He believes that the inscribed stone was buried in the ground no less than fifty years, which would mean it had to have been carved well before Ohman’s time, and probably before there was white settlement in the neighborhood. Like every other opinion about the stone, Wolter’s has been challenged.

What do I think about the Kensington Runestone? I’ve learned to be cautious when expressing my opinion. I once told a group I spoke to in Moorhead, Minnesota that I didn’t believe in it, and the chairman, who had been very nice to me, replied with some disappointment that his grandfather had been a friend of Ohman’s.

I think Ohman (probably with the help of a friend; there was a deathbed confession by a neighbor who said he was part of the prank) carved the stone with the help of a history book he owned. I don’t think he intended to perpetrate a hoax. I think he was just interested in seeing how people would react (it has been noted by more than one scholar that Ohman never made any serious effort to make money off the thing). Then when it didn’t draw much attention, he set it aside. I think he was surprised by the notoriety that came from Holand’s books, and was afraid at that point to admit he had carved it, concerned he’d be called a liar and a hoaxter. I think the whole thing got out of hand for him, and he didn’t know what to do.

On the other hand, I’ve never seen a strong refutation of the geological analysis.

So my vote is no, but I reserve the right to change my mind.

Next question.

I can’t believe it. My side won in the school tax referendum. It seems like a very long time since I voted on the winning side in anything (although it’s not really that long. On the other hand, this is Minnesota, sometimes known as California Northeast).

Now comes the really ugly part—the part where the educational establishment takes its revenge. We know what they’ll do. They’ll do what all hostage-takers do. They’ll say, “We told you not to call the cops, but you had to go and call the cops. Now we’ll have to cut one of the kid’s ears off. We don’t want to cut his ear off. It breaks our hearts, frankly. But you’ve made the choice. It’s out of our hands. You forced us to do this.”

I’m not feeling terribly well tonight. I think I may have a cold. Or perhaps I’m coming down with the flu. I never get flu shots. I prefer the thrill of danger. And let’s face it, even the worst case consequence isn’t that bad. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not really very well gifted for this living business. I’d probably employ my time better in some other form of activity.



News From Norway: According to the November issue of Viking Magazine, the publication of the Sons of Norway, McDonald’s of Norway added a new menu item last August. It’s called the McSalmon, and is a fish filet wrap available “in honey and wasabi” (what the heck is “wasabi?”). At the present time it’s only available in God’s Country, but it may go global if it’s a success.



Here’s an idea I came up with today for a bumper sticker. I give it to you at no charge:



“IF YOU’RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION, YOU’RE PROBABLY MINDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS. THANKS FOR THAT.”

Sherwood Forest is now 450 acres, down from 100,000, and come Britons are concerned, saying the forest is one of England’s essential features. Only 450 ancient oaks are still alive. I wonder what that ancient shepherd of trees, Treebeard, would say about this.

“To wake the sleepers high and low,

And rouse them to the urgent hour!”

Daylight Saving Time ends tonight, so if you are affected by the time change, turn your clocks back one hour. By way of encouragement, I pass on this news:

Pedestrians walking during the evening rush hour are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, two scientists calculate. Ending daylight saving time translates into about 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October, the researchers report.

Have a good weekend.

Just a couple links tonight, I’m afraid.

First of all, Phil drew my attention to this piece from the Tominthebox website. I’ve never seen this site before, but it seems to specialize in the kind of sophisticated, subtle satire that I confuse so many people with myself, in some of my columns at The American Spectator Online.

Luther’s body found lying on its face? It could happen.

Dave Lull sent me a link to this piece from Pajamas Media, about Hege Storhaug, a brave Norwegian woman who’s challenging the multiculturalist blitzkrieg.

There are, in fact, a few brave, freedom-loving Norwegians left. I’m in the process of interviewing another myself, and the results should be visible eventually at the Spectator site. I’ll tell you more when I know more.

Have a great weekend!