Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Should a Christian be Cremated?

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“And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16-18 ESV).

Encourage one another with the truth that those who die in faith will rise in faith. They have not been lost because they died before Christ’s return. These believers (including Paul, I presume) did not imagine it would be at least a couple thousand years before that return. Christ had ascended in their lifetime; why wouldn’t he come back in just a few years? Not matter when it happens, Christ’s physical resurrection and ascension is the reason we believe the dead in Christ will physically rise again.

The question for some of us is what state the body should be in for the resurrection. I heard a pastor on the radio this weekend claim the faithful would be raised from their graves as is. Of course, he said, God can reassemble any body from any state of decay, but why force him to do more than he needs to do. Why usher along the decay by cremating a family member? He asked, do you know Christ will not return a few days after your death? What if he does and there you are, a pile of ashes?

I can understand personal arguments for burial over cremation. Christian tradition leans that way. I’ve read that Christianized countries tend to bury the dead, and countries will little Christian influence tend to cremate. That’s not what we have here. The Bible does not imply we will be raised like zombies in whatever nasty state our bodies are in. Most of us (99.999% of us) will have no bodies in our graves, if we still have graves. Within a month of our interment, the best of us will not be presentable.

The Bible does tell us to respect our bodies. Our funeral services should be exercises in hope that honor the one who departed and those left behind. And since the Bible does not command Christians to bury the dead, some of us are asking whether the economic choice of cremation would show the proper respect.

That’s what it comes down to for me. In the past, burial would have been the cheapest, most natural option. Years ago when we talked to someone about buying grave plots, it was several thousands of dollars to be buried but only a few thousand, maybe only several hundred, to be cremated. I can understand how funeral and burial costs add up. When I buried my parents, I helped reduce those costs by buying caskets online. The cemetery part was already covered.

Covering a couple burials myself worries me a bit. It’s the kind of thing you can’t look up online because they won’t tell you the costs up front. You have to talk to a salesman. Hiding the price before you talk to a salesman is how they tell you it costs more than you want. They want a chance at talking you into it.

To the guy who thinks the Lord will raise the dead like zombies, come on. Even Lazarus came out of the tomb in better shape than his body had been that morning.

What do you think about burial and cremation for low-income believers?

Authors, Uncategorized

They Drag Us into Trouble, But What Can We Do?

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No one believes he is living by lies. We think a particular disagreement is inconsequential or that it isn’t our issue. We think we aren’t the ones to speak out, because reasons.

A voice from 1974 calls to us and everyone in our century:

There was a time when we dared not rustle a whisper. But now we write and read samizdat [banned literature distributed in secret] and, congregating in the smoking rooms of research institutes, heartily complain to each other of all they are muddling up, of all they are dragging us into! There’s that unnecessary bravado around our ventures into space, against the backdrop of ruin and poverty at home; and the buttressing of distant savage regimes; and the kindling of civil wars; and the ill-thought-out cultivation of Mao Zedong (at our expense to boot)—in the end we’ll be the ones sent out against him, and we’ll have to go, what other option will there be? And they put whomever they want on trial, and brand the healthy as mentally ill—and it is always “they,” while we are—helpless.

This is how Solzhenitsyn begins “Live Not by Lies,” which he released the day he was arrested, a day before his exile. “We are approaching the brink,” he says, “already a universal spiritual demise is upon us; a physical one is about to flare up and engulf us and our children, while we continue to smile sheepishly and babble:

‘But what can we do to stop it? We haven’t the strength.’”

He says maybe civil disobedience is beyond us. Maybe how the Czechs stood up to their government is too much. What we can do, at the very least, is to reject lies.

“Even if all is covered by lies, even if all is under their rule, let us resist in the smallest way: Let their rule hold not through me!”

Uncategorized, Writing

Olaf in eclipse

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Painting of the Battle of Stiklestad by Peter Nikolai Arbo

I must be working on the novel, because I’m not progressing very fast in my reading of Caimh McDonnell’s latest book (which is great, by the way; it’s not for lack of interest). In case you’re losing sleep over my car repair problems, I learned today that the ETA for the replacement part is now June 30. This was, as you might expect, no surprise to me at all at this point.

What shall I write about? How about something I learned from John Marsden’s Harald Hardrada book (favorably reviewed a few inches down)?

It has to do with King Olaf Haraldsson, Saint Olaf (or Olav) of Norway. He appeared in my latest book, The Elder King, and also has a major role in the one I’m working on, King of Rogaland.

I do not like this man. He emerges as a recognizable character in the sagas, and although those sagas are generally intended to promote his sainthood, the writers often had the insight to “paint him warts and all.” And this was a guy with a lot of warts.

Marsden’s book includes an interesting discussion of the date of the Battle of Stiklestad, where Olaf was killed. (Incidentally, I recently learned that one of my great-grandfathers was born on the island of Ytterøy, which is located in a fjord and almost in walking distance of the battlefield [once you get out of the water]).

There’s an anomaly in the standard accounts of the battle. The very first skaldic poems celebrating it (written by Sigvat the Skald, who also appears in The Elder King), tell how a solar eclipse occurred in the very midst of the battle. The problem is, the traditional date for the battle is July 29, but the eclipse occurred August 31. I’ve always inclined to the view that people remembered the battle and the eclipse as extraordinary events, and eventually conflated them. But Marsden points out that Sigvat (who wasn’t in the battle; he was on a pilgrimage to Rome at the time) would have been well-informed about the battle at a very early date. Also, the time of day given for the eclipse in the sagas is spot on.

Marsden passes on a possible explanation, suggested by “the editor of a long-respected English translation of Olaf the Saint’s saga.” This theory involves an error in interpreting a theoretical lost document (which I always consider a tenuous stratagem for scholars), but it works out quite neatly. If the original text of this X Document said that the battle occurred “1029 years and two-hundred and nine days since Christ’s birth,” and you reckon hundreds in the customary way, figuring January 1 as the first day of the year, you get July 29.

However – the Vikings counted in what are called “long hundreds.” When they said 100, they actually meant 120. All figures in the sagas need to be adjusted for that.

If you convert “1029 years and two-hundred and nine days” to long hundreds, and start your count at December 25 (a common date for figuring New Year’s Day at the time), you get the precise date of August 31.

That’s pretty neat, it seems to me. My plan, if I live so long, is to write a book about Olaf and Stiklestad a couple books from now, as a sort of sequel to Erling’s Saga. I think I’ll use this date for it, because that eclipse is a really cool bit of atmospheric staging.

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Could Old English and Old Norse Speakers Understand Each Other?

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Jackson Crawford and Simon Roper tackle this question and talk for an hour about languages at a far deeper level than I can follow. Believing our readers will take interest in this, I share it in ignorance.

Religion, Uncategorized

In praise of virtue I do not possess

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Photo credit: Jeff Ochoa@jeffochoa, Unsplash

No book to review tonight. So, you’re stuck with my deep thoughts. “I got a million of ‘em,” as Jimmy Durante (or somebody) used to say.

Back on Memorial Day I was talking about how young men are (usually) risk-takers. I got to wondering, “What’s the survival value of youthful risk-taking?” Its value would seem to be the opposite of survival.

(I don’t want to get into the Creation vs. Evolution thing here. I think survival value is a real thing, created by God. It’s just the way He designed things to work.)

One would assume that Nature (whether intelligently designed or not) would want young people to stay safe until they grew up. So they’d go on to produce further offspring.

But in fact, Nature drives young men (typically) to go out and try to kill themselves. Drag-racing. Sky diving. Rock climbing. Joining gangs or (sometimes more responsibly) armies. Experimenting with drugs. Asking cheerleaders out on dates.

(I, of course, never did any of these things myself. But there were consequences to playing it safe.)

The point, I think, is that Nature is wise, and under God’s governance. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that God is a storyteller. His book of Nature is not an equation or formula. It’s partly about science, but it’s also about love and hate and ideals and passions. And one of the things storytelling tells us is that safety is not first. “Who dares wins.” “Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.” “Do not take counsel of your fears.”

Both in the spiritual and the physical worlds, too much caution is fatal, at least in the aggregate. Cowardice would appear to have survival value, but it doesn’t. Cowardly communities do not thrive. Courage kills off some of its acolytes, but those who survive end up running things and making progress.

I think churches often work too hard to produce guys like me. The Kingdom is for risk-takers – “Men of violence take it by force.” (Matthew 11:12) In a feminizing world, we need to provide a place where risks can still be taken, wounds bound up, and locker room speeches delivered. To young men with skinned knees and black eyes.

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Helmet awareness

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The Danish Road Safety Council has come up with a very clever commercial to promote the use of bike helmets. I’m not sure I agree with the safety uber alles fetish of the helmet purists, but the commercial is fun. And, as somebody said, probably the most interesting Viking film made since the 1960s.

Also, it pokes subtle fun at the History Channel series, it seems to me.

As for me, I am up to my aventail in translation work right now. For a while I thought I’d promised to deliver it sooner than I ought to, but now I think it will be OK.

Uncategorized, Writing

The transmission lockdown, continued

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I’m reading a book right now that I’m enjoying very much. But it’s long. Looooooooong. So the stream of consciousness blogging must continue, regardless of the cost in pain and suffering to our audience.

On the automobile front, my car, Miss Ingebretsen, yet languishes in durance vile, in the transmission shop. I learned today that the transmission itself is all right. It’s the shifter that’s broken. They’re trying to find me a used shifter, and I guess those things must be harder to find than you’d expect. Maybe tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll have to use Door Dash for groceries again.

If you skipped the video above, take a minute to watch it. It’s not much longer than that. It’s the Dragon Harald Fairhair, the big Viking ship I hoped to see in Duluth a few years back, but was disappointed. Seriously, was anything ever more romantic than that graceful ship cutting through a stormy sea? That (or the idea of it, anyway) was what surprised me by joy nearly 60 years ago, making me a lifelong Viking nut, and pointing me to my destiny, as a highly peripheral figure in the world of Norwegian history, literature, and entertainment. And, oh yes, a novelist.

I can report that I’m still working on the new Erling book, King of Rogaland. Its current status hovers in a weird space where the book is essentially written, but far from finished. We speak of “polishing” a manuscript, and that’s what it is. Very like sanding wood. Going over the same surface again and again, smoothing out the rough spots. I’ve got a few passages where I’ve left out place names I still need to select, with a map. And there are joints that aren’t tight. Once this current pass is finished, working onscreen, I think I need to print the next draft out, and labor over it on paper. Some things work better with a red pen and notes and swoopy arrows. Especially when you need to hunt through the pages multiple times.

Also, I’ve never gotten a splinter polishing a manuscript.

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After-inaction report

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[Imagine a picture of Saturday’s events here. I neglected to take one. My brain was overheated, I think.]

It is one of the anomalies (I think that’s the word for it) of historical reenactment, that many of us impersonate people from the history of northern Europe, where it’s cool most of the year and most people historically wore wool. But we do it at events in America in the summer, where big wool costumes with cloaks are borderline dangerous if you don’t keep carefully hydrated. (And those who don’t reenact European stuff generally do the Revolutionary or Civil Wars, where wool is also de rigeur.)

Minnesota Military History Days, an annual event held in Dundas Minnesota (where my grandfather was once town constable for a year, as I kept telling people), was originally scheduled for May. But the weather was cold and wet in May, so they rescheduled for the first weekend in June. June is usually real nice in Minnesota.

This year the temperature hovered up just below 100˚. If I can trust my car’s thermometer, it actually hit 100 in the Cities. (Another thing I often tell people, whether they like it or not, is that I spent 11 years on the east coast of Florida, and never saw 100˚, but I’ve been through many such days in the North Star State.) I figured that after the long lockdown, people would want to come out to a public event in spite of the heat – but that was not the case. Attendance was sparse, much below normal levels, according to the old hands.

This was the first year anybody from The Viking Age Club & Society of the Sons of Norway had been to the event. (It was a three-day event, but we only did Saturday.) It’s what’s called a timeline event, where reenactors from various periods all come together to provide a walking (and camping) history lesson. There was a big World War II battle in the afternoon (America won again, I’m proud to report), but our Vikings did a couple combat shows too (I left that to others). And we had a good turnout of members, all of them young people – except, of course, for me.

I brought my tent and awning shade (we did need the shade), and it was good to have a lot of youthful free labor to do the bulk of the putting up and tearing down. Even so, I had occasion to ponder the fact that it had been more than a year since I’d done this stuff, and in the interim I’ve arguably become too old for it. Especially on really hot days.

I comfort myself with the thought that it will be better if I lose some weight. (Though that’s less comfortable when I remember that losing weight requires effort and self-control.) I got a fair amount of exercise in, though, walking back and forth to the water tap.

It was a fun event in spite of the sparse crowds. We (by which I mean mainly the other Vikings) made a lot of contacts. Invitations to other events and possible new group members came up. It was a good time.

In which I didn’t sell a single book, because we weren’t allowed to display any modern stuff.

However, another event was coming Sunday. Danish Day at the Danish-American Center in Minneapolis. Granted, I almost never sell any books at that event, but at least I’d be able to display them, and who knows?

As an added attraction, the temperature would be about the same as Saturday.

However, I was denied the joys of another tropical set-up and tear-down, when I went into my garage to start my car on Sunday morning, and the transmission wouldn’t function. Bummer. I unloaded my car and spent the day rehydrating and recovering from Saturday.

This morning I got AAA to tow my car to my regular transmission place (I have a regular transmission place because – as I have learned to my chagrin – PT Cruisers are prone to those kinds of problems.) If it’s the same thing it was the last time, it’ll be easily fixed. But they haven’t gotten back to me yet. Which leads me to worry.

On the high spiritual plane which I inhabit, we call this “opportunities to increase our faith.”

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Breakout week

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A past Viking event. My tent is in the background. This madness is about to resume.

Mystery solved. Dentally speaking.

As I told you yesterday, I went to the dentist, pleading emergency, because I was having intermittent tooth pains. The dentist, finding nothing amiss, asked if I was experiencing stress. Might be grinding my teeth at night, for instance.

Last night, after midnight, I was on the couch finishing up the translation of a script, due today (Oslo time). And I noticed that my teeth were clenched like an alligator’s. (Did you ever read the tip I saw somewhere when I was a kid? About how if you find yourself wrestling an alligator – which would generally be an involuntary arrangement, I’d imagine – you should grab his jaws while his mouth is closed, and just hold them closed. Because an alligator has tremendous power to bite down, but his mouth-opening muscles are relatively weak. This, of course, still leaves you with the problem of the alligator’s tail, which is also very powerful (according to what I’ve read. I have no personal experience in the area). And I don’t think there are any tricks to restrain an alligator’s tail. (Personally, I wouldn’t chance it. One of the reasons I moved out of Florida.)

So it was the stress of the deadline and the late hours that had me wound up. I hope I didn’t convey the wrong idea yesterday. I’m happy about all the things I’ve had to do this week. It’s just their coming all at once that keyed me up. I really liked the script I was working on, and I enjoyed being interviewed on the radio. And I’m looking forward to stretching my Viking muscles again (probably pulling some while I’m at it) in the two events I’ll be doing this weekend.

Part of the pressure, I just realized, comes from the end of the lockdown. Going out in public and interacting with genuine human beings has been a challenge for me ever since I was a kid. I do the Viking events because a) it’s fun to dress up and play, and pretend to be an expert, and b) it’s a good way to sell books. But it’s also a challenge. Essentially, I see people as dangerous animals. Going to a public event is equivalent to visiting one of those wildlife safari parks. If you don’t stay in the jeep, the management cannot be responsible for your safety.

This past year has been a guilty pleasure for me. I began to suspect some time ago that I’ve got some agoraphobic tendencies, and those tendencies got coddled like an egg all through 2020. I grew a whole new shell. Now I’ve got to break out of that shell again, and it’s got me a little nervy.

But being a Viking is all about courage. Even if you’re only battling yourself.

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Taking care of business

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Weird week. Good, but weird. I am a dull man leading a dull life, but occasionally things pick up. They’re up right now.

Saturday I’ll be doing the first actual Viking event I’ve done in over a year – not strictly a Viking event, but a military history timeline thing at Dundas, Minnesota: Minnesota Military History Days. I’ll only be there Saturday. But it’s an event, and I’ll be setting up the tent, so I’m feeling the “tension.” (“Tent,” “tension,” get it? They actually do come from the same root.) Sunday is another event, but that’s not open to the public, so I won’t tease you with it.

(I probably won’t be posting anything Friday, because it takes me at least a day to do anything.)

And then translation work showed up. Fairly big project, fairly tight deadline. On top of that, it’s got a subject that really appeals to me (can’t tell you what). So I’m busy with that right now (should be working on it this minute, in fact).

And I got an invitation to be interviewed on a talk show a good friend does on a station in Des Moines (Truth 99.3). I can’t find a way to link to the recorded interview yet, except through Facebook. I’ll let you know if I find it (or, more likely, if somebody points it out to me, as one directs an elderly tourist to local points of interest).

Last night, I got a toothache. Went in to the dentist today on an emergency basis. He looked inside my maw and found nothing. He asked, “Have you been tense lately?”

I hadn’t thought I had, but maybe I have.