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Religion, Uncategorized

Personal drivel, plus Cain & Abel

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William Blake’s “Cain and Abel,” 1826

First I’ll tell you what’ s going on in my thrill-packed life. Then I’ll tell you about one of my cosmic revelations. Those are always good for a chuckle.

There’s a shrink-wrapped pile of roofing material sitting in the driveway behind my house. I had hail damage last year and my insurance company authorized a full replacement. But one complication after another has delayed the actual job. First it was supposed to happen today. Then tomorrow. Now it’s all in flux – it may or may not happen tomorrow, like Schroedinger’s Shingles. What makes it annoying is that the contractors are going to be parking a dumpster in front of my garage when finally they get to work, which means I have to park on the street tonight on the possibility that work will start tomorrow.

Even more annoying, my air conditioning is out, and has been for about three weeks now. I have a sort of insurance for that, too – a home warranty. The HVAC tech who autopsied my unit said the compressor had burned out, and it couldn’t be replaced. A new AC unit would have to come in. And that shouldn’t take long.

The warranty company, however, has ideas of its own. They opted to replace the compressor. They have a source for replacements which (apparently) they get at a discount. But that source is not a fast source. So we’re still waiting for the part to be delivered.

Thankfully, we’ve had relatively cool weather recently.

Which is supposed to end tomorrow.

Ah, well. I grew up without air conditioning. And hey, it keeps my electric bills down.

A pack of blessings lie on my head, as the Friar said to Romeo (not long before Romeo killed himself).

And what is my revelation?

It wasn’t a full-fledged revelation, of course. Just one of those moments when two ideas inhabiting separate pigeonholes in my brain suddenly link, and I have an ah ha! moment.

It started out with Jordan Peterson. I’ve grown quite taken with Jordan Peterson videos. He’s not right about everything, but he can see correctly what the problems are. He exhorts me to do things I don’t want to do, which is generally a mark of truth.

Anyway, Peterson was talking about Cain in Genesis 4. Peterson’s interpretation of the story of Cain and Abel is that it represents the Easy Way and the Hard Way in life. Cain sacrificed vegetables, which were (as Peterson sees it) an easy sacrifice. Abel sacrificed animals, which means blood and pain. God was pleased with Abel because he took the Hard Way. The right thing in life almost always means blood and pain.

The spark, the circuit that closed, for me was a comparison to the parable of the talents, of which I think I’ve written here before. There are two versions of the parable. In Matthew 25, the master gives talents (sums of money) to three servants – five to one, two to another, and one to the last. In Luke 19, he calls ten servants and gives them ten talents each. In each case, the servants are told to do business with (invest) the money for him while he’s away. In each case, only one servant fails – the one who, instead of investing the money, hides it safely. He returns the full amount to his master, and his master is furious. He didn’t want security. He expected a profit.

The point in both stories – looking at it this way – is that God expects his servants to stretch their horizons. Do bigger things. Move outside their comfort zones. Break new ground, at least personally.

This isn’t about salvation, of course. Salvation is by grace. This is about our earthly lives – what God expects us to do with the talents He bestowed. We’re not here just to wait passively for Heaven. We’ve been given gifts – for the sake of our families, for our neighbors, and (especially) for the church.

And always God expects the bloody sacrifice, the dying to the self. Taking up the cross.

It all makes me feel tremendously guilty. But even I can recognize the truth of it.

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A day with the Samband

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I’m late posting tonight, because I got in late, and anyway it felt like a Saturday  to me. I was doing a Saturday thing, in my subjective world.

I think I’ve mentioned that I’m now editing the magazine of the Valdres Samband, one of many US organizations composed of descendants of immigrants from various regions of Norway (I’m not a Valdres descendant myself, which will tell you how desperate they were for an editor). Today, in that capacity, I attended their annual Stevne, which means their annual get-together, in Minneapolis. I also delivered my world-renowned lecture on Viking Legacy, and sold some books.

The video above does not represent what we were actually doing today. There was no dancing, though I’m sure it would have been welcome. But we did have a fiddler entertaining us during dinner on a Hardanger Fiddle, the instrument being played in the video, which (appropriately) was actually posted by the Valdres Samband several years back.

If the tones of the Hardanger Fiddle sound vaguely familiar, that may be because (at least according to what I was told) one was used for the theme music of the Riders of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings movies.

The Hardanger Fiddle is a uniquely Norwegian instrument. Below the usual four strings, it is strung with four or five more. These lower strings are not played directly, but resonate harmonically with the main notes, producing a weird, haunting droning sound sometimes compared to the bagpipes.

My Haugean pietist ancestors, by the way, would have been shocked by this, and might have smashed the fiddle if they could get their hands on it. They believed that dancing was bad in itself, but that Hardanger Fiddle music was positively demonic. Master fiddlers were regarded as a kind of wizard.

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Memories of wartime

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My great-grandfather Lars Swelland and his wife Martha, in happier times.

I didn’t post anything in remembrance of the 80th anniversary of D-Day yesterday, for which I apologize. It’s not that I wasn’t thinking of the observance. I flew the flag at my house. It’s just that I didn’t know what to say about it – and still don’t. The scope of the sacrifice overwhelms me. It’s not enough to say that we need to be worthy of it all – the fact is, we’re not worthy, and as a civilization we’ve stopped trying to be. If those boys (most were just boys), European and American, could have seen what their children and grandchildren would do with the world they saved for us, they’d have turned back in disgust.

Instead, purely for the sake of my sanity, I’ll turn to smaller-scale matters. I’ve often written here of the occupation of Norway. It ended in 1945 – there’s a year yet to go before they celebrate the 80th anniversary of their liberation. Which they’ll do on May 8, 2025.

My own family has little to report (that I know of) in the whole story of the war. My dad served in the Japan occupation forces, and saw no action. One uncle on my mother’s side was a Marine in the Pacific — I know nothing about his service. One of Dad’s cousins was killed in the war (more about that later), but I never heard much about him. I believe one of my cousins on Karmøy Island was a War Sailor, a merchantman under military command. If you saw the miniseries War Sailor (which I helped translate), you know about that perilous service.

And then there was my great-grandfather Lars Swelland, of whom I’ve written here before – but that was in the days of the old blog host, and the post seems to have disappeared when we migrated. I’ll just recap his story briefly; perhaps I’ll flesh it out at another time.

In brief, Great-grandfather Lars lost his heart for America after his wife died and the Great Depression hit. Having missed one mortgage payment on his farm, and getting a single dunning letter from the company holding the note, he packed up, boarded a train, and traveled to New York, where he got on a ship back to Norway, ignoring all telegraphic pleas from his family and the mortgage company, who tried to tell him it wasn’t as bad as he thought. (The family lost the farm.) In Norway he did not return to his home farm, but settled in another town – Tysness, near Bergen, to live the rest of his life in poverty. He died during the war, out of communication with his children. I have a letter his landlady sent to my grandmother once the war was over, and I’ve translated it thus:

Tvedt,  6 February, 1946

Dear Sofie!

[I] can easily understand that you will wonder who is sending you this letter. It was here at my home that your father Lars Svelland lived. I have thought so often about sending you a letter, but somehow it never happened. As you have probably heard from your sister Millie, your father is dead. He died 14 August, at 1:00 midday, 1942. He asked me to greet you all, but we were caught up in all the worst of wartime, and were unable to send letters.

Your father died of a stroke, bleeding on the brain. He lay [in bed] 3 weeks, and was very sick, but he was so thankful; never a complaining word. It was his right side that was completely paralyzed, and he had so much trouble speaking. But after he had lain there 2 weeks, it happened that he got his voice again, and I was so happy, believing he had come back again, but God had other ideas.

And I thank God that he got his voice again. Then he was able to thank Jesus, and then he prayed the Our Father, the Lord’s prayer, and that is the holiest prayer we can pray. He had several times when he felt poorly, when he was plagued by the spirit of doubt, but at the end he was quite all right.

But in 1940 he [had] had a hemorrhage; it came on so suddenly. He spit up a great mass of blood. He recovered somewhat after that turn, so that he was up [and about], but never got his strength [back]. But remarkably, his weakness got better after he’d had the hemorrhage, so that he could eat more ordinary food.

The day he had his fatal attack he had been out fishing a little, and he ate so well at supper with fresh fish.

But Sofie, you would never believe how glad I am that God ordained it so that he was able to come home again and die at home, so that I could care for him. It would have been so terrible to think of if he had fallen into the sea. Now God was so kind that he came home again, and [I] was able to hear him thank Jesus, so that if you are not able to see your father again in this life, you will meet him at home with Jesus.

And he lived as a Christian and died in faith in the completed work that Jesus has done for all who receive Him in faith.

Your father sang so often the song, “I Know a Rest So Fair and Long in David’s city afar; there I will rest from the press of time, and shine myself like a star.” Yes, now he has [gone?; hard to translate] out, and he is shining like a star.

Sofie, I have found a letter which you sent your father, dated 1934, and that letter was so beautifully written that I wept happy tears, and among other things, you ask whether he has forgotten you [all]. But he thought much about all of you, so you were not forgotten by him, and especially when the war broke out with America, you were even more in his thoughts. As long as there was a radio in the parish, he walked a long way to hear how it was going. But then the Germans came and everyone had to turn their radios in. Yes, that was a hard time, when the war was going on, a hard time for Norway, but like a miracle it is over. But now it has come about that we have gotten more food, so the people are so thankful. The Germans took everything from us, so that if the war had been any longer, there would have been genuine famine, and not a little of it. You can judge whether we were in want. People around the countryside are directed to use [oil] lamps. This past winter we got 1 liter of oil per month. There was nothing for lighting; now we get 25 liters, and before the war people could get as much oil as they wanted. Yes, it was cruel to be without any light [over] the long winter nights.

But in 3 years there will be electric light here, and also for cooking. But it has been a difficult time. That can be forgotten, but what the many prisoners have had to endure, that is completely horrible; [they] were tortured to death and the poor mothers who grieve the loss of their boys. It is only God who can comfort the many who sit longing for their loved ones. I see from Millie’s letter that your sister has lost her boy; may God give comfort and help her in her sorrow. Your father always believed that the young sons of his children would have to go out, and spoke and thought so [much] about them; now he was not able to live to see the peace for which he longed so much. It would have been so precious if he had lived, but the Lord’s ways are not ours.

[I] hope you are able to understand my letter, even if it is not so well written.

[I] enclose a little picture which is a passport photo we all had to have when the war came.

So in conclusion,

                Hearty greetings,

                Yanette Tvedt Nymark

                Tysnes Bergen

                Norway

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Memoir of decline: My strenuous weekend

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Old Man In an Armchair, by Rembrandt, 1652.

I just received a postcard. It was mailed to me from Spring Grove, Minnesota (in the southeastern corner of the state) on May 17 last, and it arrived here in Robbinsdale today. That’s nearly three weeks to travel 161 miles. I could wax indignant about the way the mail service has deteriorated, harkening back to the gilded days of my youth when such a missive would have arrived the following day, or at most in two days.

But at this point, I just sympathize with the postal service. It must be feeling pretty much like I was feeling after this weekend.

Don’t get me wrong. It was a good weekend. Met a number of nice people, and sold a reasonable amount of my books.

But it was hard on me. This was one of those watershed moments in a man’s life (if it’s a man; sometimes it’s a woman but I know nothing about that. I only assume their experience is similar) when he’s forced to face the fact that he’s gotten bloody old. I drove home Sunday afternoon, left all my Viking junk in my car, and collapsed on the sofa. I spent Monday recovering; I accomplished nothing except for posting a book review. I had “run out of sand,” to employ a metaphor from my green years.

Having rested up now and thought it over, I realize the situation may not be as bad as I thought. This weekend was unusual in that it involved two consecutive Viking events on two consecutive days. That meant two setups and two teardowns, plus packing and unpacking my car. That’s a lot of barges toted and bales lifted. Thank God for the young people in our group – we’ve had a gratifying influx of promising youngsters recently, and they are generous in helping me lift and carry and strap things down. I couldn’t manage without them.

But I think I probably need to cut back a little. I’m considering selling my Viking tent. I can get by with a sun shade/awning, as I used to, which is a lot lighter. I said goodbye to steel combat a few years ago, and now I think I may need to say goodbye to the care and feeding of my tent. I stand before the crowd like Lou Gehrig in “Pride of the Yankees,” and say I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Lugging my Viking chest in and out of my house (it involves steps) is the single hardest part of managing my reenactment impedimenta, though. I think I’m going to experiment with just leaving the blasted thing in my car all summer. Heat may be an issue in the sunshine, but the only thing I can think of inside the chest that’s likely to melt is a little lump of beeswax in my leather sewing kit. And that’s in a plastic container, so I think it’ll be all right.

I’ll be thinking more about efficiency and downsizing. That’s part of the aging process generally. I must resign myself, I think, to being prized for my wisdom rather than my strong back.

Come to think of it, I was never much prized for my strong back. If I was considered wiser than I was strong, that was mostly because I wasn’t very strong.

What, you ask, were these two exhausting events? Saturday was the annual Nordic Music Fest in Burnsville, Minnesota. It’s held at Buck Hill, a commercial ski hill that’s been around forever, right next to the highway. In the non-snow months, they host other events, of which this was one. The day started rainy (not predicted by the weather man), then turned sunny and humid. The featured music was an ABBA cover band, and our young Vikings did a couple combat shows. I had several interesting conversations with people who came by my sales table, and I sold a fair number of books. It was comparable to last year.

Sunday was Danish Day at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis, something our group participates in every year. The weather was nice, though it was starting to spit rain by the time we tore the camp down. Attendance was better than it’s been in a while – I had to wait in line a long time to buy my food. (I got aebelskivers – a spherical Danish pancake served with strawberry jam and powdered sugar, a Danish hot dog, and layer cake.) My book sales were small, but they always are at Danish Day – I sold three books, which is actually good for that event. I don’t know why the Danes seem to be less interested in books than Norwegians – possibly it has to do with the fact that my books are Norway-oriented.

One of our new members has a pair of Norwegian Elk Hounds, named Odin and Freya, which he brought. They are astonishingly mellow and easygoing – I joked with the owner that the dog treats he fed them must be CBD gummies. (This breed is not usually known for its placidity. They’re strong dogs, and generally they like to romp.)

It was a good weekend.

But it seemed to me it was no country for old men. Or so I felt Sunday evening.

I didn’t take any pictures. Sorry.

Music, Uncategorized, Writing

17 May

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It is my custom, every May 17, to make some kind of mention of Norway’s Constitution Day, celebrated each year on this date. I’ve told the story of the holiday many times – this year I’ll restrict myself to saying that Norway celebrates its Constitution Day as its major national holiday because of a historical anomaly – we had a constitution for almost a century before we got independence. So Constitution Day became the traditional patriotic holiday.

The video above is rather nice – lots of natural beauty, in which Norway is excessively rich. If you’d like a translation of the lyrics, you can find it here.

The Syttende Mai present I received today was a good writing session. I actually gave myself the shivers reading the current draft of The Baldur Game. I suppose that’s insufferable, like comedians who laugh at their own jokes. But writing at my level offers few tangible rewards. And finding the same exhilaration in your own writing that you get from your favorite authors’ is as delicious as it is rare.

To make things even better, I had a thought today – not as common an occurrence as you might imagine. (G. B. Shaw once said that he’d made an international reputation by thinking once or twice a month.) I can’t remember what provoked the thought (perhaps it was the creative thrill I described above, but I’m not sure). But it suddenly appeared, fully formed in my head, and even after several hours I can find no fault with it. It goes like this:

No work of art is ever fully original, nor should it be. Art is a multimedia matrix of interactive themes and influences — all hyperlinked, in a sense. Taken all together, great art participates in an infinitely greater tapestry.

I think I’ll stand by that.

Have a good weekend.

Authors, Uncategorized

Belated R.I.P, Joss Ackland

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Tonight, like your high school teacher when he had a hangover and couldn’t face the prospect of lecturing, and so rolled out the old film projector, I once again fall back on video, bereft of useful ideas. I happened to be watching one of the old Inspector Dalgliesh mysteries with Roy Marsden, and Joss Ackland showed up in the cast. That always reminds me of his tour de force performance as C. S. Lewis in the original 1985 BBC television film of Shadowlands – which in my opinion remains the only watchable version. The travesty Richard Attenborough foisted on the public in 1993 was not actually about C. S. Lewis, but about some imaginary scholar Attenborough made up, who was emotionally stunted until being saved by True Love. (I’ll stipulate that Debra Winger was better as Joy Davidman than Claire Bloom was – purely because she was more abrasive. That is, in my opinion, almost the theatrical film’s only virtue.)

You can view the 1985 version here.

This version, excerpted above, is much closer to the original events, and to Lewis’ personality. Douglas Gresham praised Joss Ackland’s performance as his stepfather. Ackland didn’t much resemble Lewis, except in physical bulk, but he had a similar booming voice, and he seems to have sought out ways to make his performance authentic.

The clip above dramatizes the critical point in the plot where Joy, stricken with cancer and newly married to Jack Lewis, experiences a remission and goes home to the Kilns to live with Jack, his brother, and her two sons (there were, in fact, two boys – one got cut in the transition from small to large screen).

Joss Ackland usually played villains or rather nasty people (one exception was a cameo as D’Artagnan’s father in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers). I would pay considerable money (if I had any) for a voice like his. I looked him up on Wikipedia, and found that he died last November. 95 years old, which is a good run.

Poetry, Uncategorized

On the Discovery of Old Things

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To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost
Which blamed the living man.

Matthew Arnold, “Growing Old”

Matthew Arnold captures something in his 1867 poem “Growing Old.” I don’t know what is exactly. Seems a bit obtuse to a spry Gen-Xer like me. But I was thinking of old things today, because I’ve caught wind of many recent archeological finds and thought I’d share them with you today.

Vikings: Let’s start with the unearthing of over a couple thousand fragments of combs and brooches, some “carved from the antlers of red deer, and a few were made of bones from animals like whales.”

Ice Skating: Archeologists with the Comenius Museum in Přerov, the Czech Republic’s Moravia region, discovered a 1,000-year-old ice skate. “It dates back to the time when there was a very important fortress in the area of the Upper Square. It served as a stronghold for Polish King Boleslav the Brave, who occupied Moravia at the time and had his soldiers stationed there.”

Greeks and Romans: Pompeii got even more impressive with the discovery of gorgeous frescos depicting Helen of Troy and Cassandra

Caesar: A team from the University of Tokyo have found an ancient villa that they believe to have been owned by Caesar Augustus.

And researchers working in the area of Rome’s Colosseum have uncovered a home with an exceptional mural showing “weapons and musical instruments as well as ships and tridents.” The director general of museums at the Italian culture ministry said, “There is nothing else like it from this period in Rome. There is nothing like it even at Pompeii.”

Swedish Longsword: And finally, the grave of a tall Swedish man with an impressive longsword was violated by the Halland Cultural Environment in their unrestrained excavations of the Franciscan friary in Halmstad. I fear for the townspeople who will be troubled by his vengeful ghost.

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Spring achieved, and a ‘writing’ update

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Photo credit: Matt Botsford. Unsplash license.

Before I get to my tale of angst, I feel I ought to note that today was beautiful in terms of weather. Nearly 70 degrees. It was the first day of the year I slid the screens down in a couple windows and opened them for fresh air. I always feel an easing of the soul when this happens. The dark time is ended. We’ve made it through alive.

I have another ‘writing’ update – and the collective holds its collective breath. (No breath for you! Your social credit score has fallen below permissible levels!)

As I’ve told you before, I’ve been plugging along, trying to learn Audacity, the free recording software that most aspiring book narrators seem to start with. Audacity is quite sophisticated, really, which is part of what scares me.

Thinking back to radio school (Brown Institute, Minneapolis, 1980), I enjoyed a peculiar place in my class. Aside from being one of the oldest students, I was generally considered (or so I remember it) the best copy reader and the worst engineer. A popular, oft-repeated story told of how I panicked in the control room one day, reached desperately for some dial or other, and went over backward in my chair (it had casters), so that I presented the spectacle, through the control booth window, of my feet waving in the air.

This story was completely true.

The disconnect I seem to have with my hands – sort of like a seven-second delay – has always prevented me from handling any mechanical device with confidence, from a can opener to an automobile. Also, I seem to lack the common male aptitude for spatial visualization. So I’m clumsy with any kind of equipment. Typing is a repetitive and minimalistic task, so I can handle that. I’m not much good for anything more demanding.

But today, my drilling with Audacity – just recording and playing and editing a little, throwing my work away at the end of each session – seems to have begun to bear fruit. I’m feeling a little more confident with it. Not a master, but not a stranger in town anymore. That’s gratifying.

One of my major regrets in my life comes from those radio school days. One of my instructors, a professional broadcaster who taught as a side gig, offered to help me get into voiceover work. He considered me talented enough to make it in that business. I was flattered, and made a preliminary demo reel, just for his critique.

He critiqued it. Suggested some improvements.

I was embarrassed that it wasn’t perfect, and I gave up.

This was stupid. I had a chance to get into a field where I could have prospered. But that never-silenced Voice In My Head argued me out of trying any more. My whole life could have been different if I’d accepted the criticism, made improvements, and kept at it until I made the thing work.

The Voice In My Head, I realized recently, doesn’t really hate me. It’s just terrified of failure. It’s trying to protect me from getting hurt. It fails proactively, because it’s less painful to just surrender at the start, rather than trying and falling on my face.

This book narration thing, it seems to me, is a second chance. This time I’m going to try. This time I’m going to take the risk.

Honestly, what do I have to lose?

Uncategorized, Writing

Superfluous is suspicious

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Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, and Barbara Hale as Della Street, in Perry Mason.

Just yesterday I was talking to someone about recent reports that the most popular content on video streaming services is old, not new entertainment. This article from Screenrant lists 7 suggested reasons for this phenomenon. All of them may have validity, but I wonder if there might be one more – the fact that the older the show, the less woke it’s likely to be. The less likely it will be to try to stuff some fashionable new moral imperative down the viewer’s throat.

In my own case, I’ve been spending my evenings of late with Amazon Prime, working my way through the Perry Mason series (1957-1966). There’s some irony in this – next to Lawrence Welk, there was no show I hated more than Perry Mason when I was a kid. I found it dull – few fisticuffs or gunfights, and half the show was people blabbing in a courtroom. But my mother loved it. Today, there’s almost nothing on television I enjoy watching more than Perry Mason. I guess that means that – despite all appearances – I may have matured a little.

Something else that’s changed about me is that I’ve become a writer. Therefore, I watch for plot mechanisms. And I’ve noticed something – something that’s probably been obvious to more perceptive viewers for a long time.

I’ve figured out how to guess whodunnit in a lot of the episodes – not all of them, but many.

Watch for the superfluous character.

The thing to bear in mind is that – especially in television – especially in the old days – budgets were tight. The revision process in script development often involved finding ways to cut locations (if you can find a way to repeat shooting locations and sets you can save a lot of money) and cut characters (speaking actors are an expense. Make two characters into one whenever you can.)

So if you’re watching an episode of an old series like Perry Mason (or Murder She Wrote, or Columbo, etc.), and you notice a character who has lines (not a non-speaking extra) but seems to be there for no other reason than to make conversation, they’re not there by accident. If you can think of no other reason for the producers to pay them, they’re probably the murderer.

This goes double if the superfluous character is a familiar actor whom you’re used to seeing in bigger roles.

Written fiction is easier. You can deploy a cast of thousands at no additional cost.

Uncategorized, Writing

King Knut and the tide

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I wracked the aging remnants of my brain tonight to think of something to post. Oh, how I’d like to be one of those writers who can turn up topics to riff off at the shortest notice. James Lileks writes 5 blog posts a week, plus several columns, at the least. I can only gape like the village idiot.

Anyway, I finally found the little clip above. It comes from the BBC, and a documentary done by the Icelandic/British scholar Magnus Magnusson in 1980. It’s about the famous story of King Canute (or Cnut, or Knut) and the tides. It’s often been remembered as an example of royal hubris, but Magnusson explains the context. In the original story, it was Canute’s (or Cnut’s, or Knut’s) purpose to teach humility to his courtiers, who’d been flattering him excessively.

I personally doubt the whole story, especially the part at the end where Canute (or Cnut, or… oh, forget it) gives up wearing a crown.

Canute plays a significant role in The Baldur Game, my work in progress, and the picture I get of him from the sagas doesn’t at all comport with a story like that. I actually tried to like Canute, since he was one of the most successful Vikings ever, and ruled England quite effectively by all accounts.

But the man was treacherous. Not somebody to turn your back on.

I hope that’s not too much of a spoiler for the book.

Have a good weekend, and leave the tides alone, unless you’re surfing.