Category Archives: Reading

Authors, Reading

From Undset to Valhalla

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At sunset Kristin was sitting up on the hill north of the manor.

She had never before seen the sky so red and gold. Above the opposite ridge stretched an enormous cloud; it was shaped like a bird’s wing, glowing from within like iron in the forge, and gleaming brightly like amber. Small golden shreds like feathers tore away and floated into the air. And far below, on the lake at the bottom of the valley, spread a mirror image of the sky and the cloud and the ridge. Down in the depths the radiant blaze was flaring upward, covering everything in sight.

Just a passage from my reading in Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter today. I thought it was rather nice. I’m nearing the end of the second book, having watched Kristin’s half-smart husband gradually weave the rope that will hang him in the end – in terms of his ambitions, at least.

I’ve also, of course, been watching “Vikings: Valhalla.” And simple justice demands that I admit that it surprised me – I like it better than I expected. Though my expectations, as you probably guessed, were pretty low.

But the fact is that the writers and showrunners of “Vikings: Valhalla” seem to have made the decision to pull in their horns a bit. The “Vikings” series, especially in the later seasons, just went loopy. They let their freak flag fly, so to speak, to the point where it almost came loose from the flagpole. They produced the wildest fantasies and impossibilities and anachronisms, pinning them now and then to odd points of history or saga.

“Vikings: Valhalla” seems a little more controlled, at least as far as I’ve watched so far. Time is still compressed, but not as radically as it was in the first series. Instead of making the same man the attacker of both Lindisfarne (793 AD) and Paris (845), this story seems to be concentrating on the stories of Canute the Great, Saint Olaf, Harald Hardrada, and Leif Eriksson. In this series, all those men are involved in Canute’s conquest of England in 1016 – at which time the real-life Leif had already discovered America and had (I believe) settled down as chieftain of the Greenland Colony. And Harald Hardrada was an infant. Still, all these people could have conceivably met each other in real life.

Many of them show up in my Work In Progess, The Baldur Game. I doubt that Erling will show up here, for which I’m grateful.

The most audacious liberty taken is making Jarl Haakon a Strong Black Woman (and, of course, as is the custom in our times, she is the story’s great font of wisdom). Actually, she’s supposed to be Haakon’s widow, Estrid, who took his office over for him (women could not do that in real life – they could inherit a chieftainship, but needed to get a man to exercise it) and uses his name as her last name. The fact that the Vikings didn’t have last names in the sense we understand them seems to be outside the producers’ ken.

But the costumes (though not in the least authentic) are a little less radically imaginative than the ones in the previous series, and the haircuts are generally much better. I’m grateful for that.

As we age, we learn to be grateful for small mercies. And I’ve aged a decade watching these programs.

Reading

Kristin Lavransdatter’s Husaby

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The video above shows the farm and neighborhood landscape which Sigrid Undset appropriated for the setting of the second novel in her Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy — The Wife.

This is not the kind of Norwegian scenery that generally gets promoted in the world. This is in the Trondelag, one of Norway’s best agricultural areas. The Viking kings made the town of Nidaros in the Trondelag their capitol — today it’s called Trondheim. Stiklestad, where Saint Olaf was killed, is also in the Trondelag (that will be described in The Baldur Game, and I promise I’m working at it as fast as I can). I had some ancestors from that area myself.

The farm where Kristin and her husband Erlend live in the novel is called Husaby. This is a significant name — historians note that many farms belonging to kings were called Husaby (it means “house town,” I think). So when Erlend brought Kristin to a farm called Husaby, we’re meant to understand that it was a place that carried some prestige, regardless how poorly he’d been managing it.

Yes, thanks for asking, I am still reading The Wife. Got some distance to go.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Bookselling, Reading

Booklisti, and a reading report

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First of all, business. Feel free to check out the new listing I have on Booklisti. They asked me to make a list books of my own, and one of books that I wanted to recommend, for any reason. A fascinating look into my fascinating mind. For which the world, of course, has been eagerly waiting. Feel free to share it with seekers after truth and beauty.

Updating my personal situation, I’m delighted to report that my air conditioning is operative again – at last. (Just in time for a heat wave.) I haven’t checked precisely, but I think I was without it for about a month. Roughing it. Living as my ancestors did – or as I did when I was a kid, to tell the truth. I’m old enough to remember when air conditioning was still a luxury in northern states.

The problem, as I’ve explained, was that my home warranty company (which shall remain nameless) preferred to go the cheap-but-lengthy route of repair over replacement. I suppose there must be some way to register a complaint on their webside, but if there is, it’s pretty carefully concealed from the customers.

I’ve tackled another long book, which will delay my next review. I can give updates as I go, though. I’m reading The Wife, volume 2 of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter (I reviewed the first volume a little while back). A passage that caught my interest today was this one, involving a visit by Kristin’s father, Lavrans, to her and her husband Erlend’s new home at Husaby (near Trondheim):

…they were accompanied by two gentlemen whom Kristin didn’t know. But Erlend was very surprised to see his father-in-law in their company—they were Erling Vidkunsson from Giske and Bjarkøy, and Haftor Graut from Godøy.

Like any crank, I know things most people don’t – about matters of no interest to anyone else. What sparks my attention in this passage is the estates this Erling Vidkunsson owns. Giske was the home of Thorberg Arnesson, who married Erling Skjalgsson’s daughter Ragnfrid (as described in my novel King of Rogaland). And Bjarkøy was the home of Thore Thoresson (remembered by history as Thore Hund, Thore the Dog), whose brother Sigurd married Erling’s sister Sigrid. The fact that this man (who’s likely a documented historical character – there are plenty of them in these books) carries Erling’s name suggests he’s a descendent of these people, and thus a descendant of Erling himself.

That’s all. It just pleases me to discover Erling connections in my reading.

Blogs, Socials, Coffee, Tea, Drinks, Fiction, Non-fiction, Reading

Let The Words Wash Over You

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Reading Passively: “One of the problems of shouldering one’s way through books—worldview machete in hand—is that we become the kind of readers who get from a book only what we bring to it.” Professor Jermey Larson writes about reading for experience and enjoyment and letting active learning take a back seat. He leans on C.S. Lewis’s effort to equip readers of medieval literature to stay with the story instead of looking at commentaries every other page.

And the Gulag Remains: The Gulag Archipelago in English is 50 years old this year. Gary Saul Morson writes, “Before Solzhenitsyn, Western intellectuals of course knew that the Soviet regime had been ‘repressive,’ but for the most part they imagined that all that had ended decades ago. So it was shocking when the book described how it had to be written secretly, with parts scattered so that not everything could be seized in a single raid. Solzhenitsyn offered an apology for the work’s lack of polish: ‘I must explain that never once did this whole book . . . lie on the same desk at the same time!’ ‘The jerkiness of the book, its imperfections, are the true mark of our persecuted literature.’ Since this persecution is itself one of the work’s themes, its imperfections are strangely appropriate and so, perhaps, not imperfections at all.”

The Past that Binds: Gina Dalfanzo reviews The Blackbird & Other Stories by Sally Thomas. “Our pasts are always part of us, shaping who we are, and that includes the people in them.”

Remembering How We Cooked: Writer Megan Braden-Perry talks about authentic New Orleans gumbo and how strangers change historic recipes. “To me, the composition of gumbo is a topic serious enough to invade my dreams. Recently I had the most awful nightmare, that I made gumbo and forgot all the ingredients and spices. It was just a roux and broth.”

The Steel Man Cometh: How the music business can course correct on artificial intelligence. “I guess training AI to replace human musicians is evil—unless they can make a buck from it.”

Photo: John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Authors, Reading, Writing

Borges on the magic of English

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I need to read some Jorge Luis Borges. Pretty much all I know of him, I like. But I’ve only read one or two of his stories, and those in school. Pure laziness on my part – or a fear of finding myself out of my intellectual depth.

Anyway, this Argentine author has astonishing things to say about the English language in this little clip. He expresses an idea I first encountered years ago in Writer’s Digest magazine. It was in an article also written by a writer who used English as a second language. People learning English often – and very understandably – complain about the size of the vocabulary you need to learn. Which is fair enough. But, this author pointed out, once you’ve mastered it you’ve got an unparalleled instrument in your hands, like a huge organ with a hundred stops. You can get an infinity of subtle effects out of it.

Borges notes here that most every word in English has a light or a dark version, depending on whether you choose the Latin or the Germanic option. He also talks about combinations of verbs and prepositions, which I hadn’t been aware of before.

In my Erling books, I’ve tried to employ Germanic words as much as I could, for two reasons. First, when I was learning to write (I took a sort of correspondence course and studied Writer’s Digest religiously), I was instructed to generally choose the Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) word. Anglo-Saxon words, they said, are punchier, stronger. They make your writing more vivid and active.

I took that advice, and still believe in it (though I’m sure there’s an element of cultural bias involved. In the 18th Century, writers aspired to sound Classical, and always opted for the Latin word). But I had a further reason for going Anglo-Saxon. I was writing about Vikings, and I wanted to evoke a northern, Germanic mood. I like to think my diction contributes to a sense of place and time.

How do I master this vast English vocabulary, you ask? Read. Read a lot. Read above your comprehension level (authors like Borges, for instance). If you read on Kindle, they’ve got a neat feature where you can highlight a word right on the page and get a definition as if by sorcery.

Music, Reading

Getting into Classical Music, Reading

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Speaking of Norway, when I began earning spending money in my late teens, I agreed to receive the initial offer from The Musical Heritage Society. You could receive the monthly featured album (tape or CD) very naturally (they would just assume you wanted it) or refuse it. They sent a small musical review to let you know what you would receive with plenty of time to opt out. That’s how I was introduced to Camille Saint-Saëns’s Symphony No. 3 which added a pipe organ to orchestra. It’s how I fell in love with Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 (The New World Symphony) and judge every other recording of it by the one I played repeatedly in my 20s. I was familiar with “Flight of the Bumblebee” and Scheherazade from the radio, so I bought four tapes of Rimsky-Korsakov’s music, one with the Arabia Nights piece, the other three with several works I didn’t know, like the “Procession of the Nobles.”

The Musical Heritage Society is also how I purchased a tape of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt, recorded with full choir for The Hall of the Mountain King and a gorgeous soprano for Solvieg’s Song. This recording, which I think only had voices in these two pieces,

I listened to this music so much, I engrained it in my mind. Later I forgot where certain familiar melodies (one or two) came from. I remembered them casually, almost as if I’d made them up, and lo, they were from Peer Gynt. Moments like that make me think I haven’t had an original thought in my life. Maybe all of my ideas are just a snatch of something I heard in the past, ripped from its context, its source forgotten.

Anyway, what else do we have today?

Reading: A video reflection on reading carefully and how you evaluate your speed.

Is it real or is it math? Patrick Kurp offers this post about math, sort of, and poetry. I feel too dim-witted to get it, at least at the moment.

Poetry: Take a moment for this poem, “Shiloh” by Alyssa Souza

Fleeing the war Refugee Letters: At the height of World War II, three women flee Europe with the Bruderhof community for a pioneer life in South America

We had realized for many months the insecurity of our position in England as there was so much hate growing in the hearts of the general populace. This could be understood because we had many German members; also the pacifism of our English members roused a bitter spirit in nationalistic minds.

Photo: Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

Reading

Njal’s saga, on the ground

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Another post in between reviews. I searched for “Icelandic Sagas” on YouTube and came up with this video by Dr. Matthew Roby of the University of Iceland. I’ve posted one of his other videos, about Egil’s Saga, here before. What I like about these videos is that he describes the action on the actual historical sites.

This one is about Njal’s Saga, which may be the greatest of the genre. It certainly deserves the attention it’s gotten.

I’m bemused by the Icelandic pronunciations. I was never aware before that Icelandic words ending in “L” get a “K” sound added. That’s just the sort of thing you’d expect from the Icelanders, who do their best – it seems to me – to make their language as unlearnable as possible.

This situation creates a problem for people like me, who produce what is (laughingly, in my case) known as “popular” literature. I’ve maintained the custom of including a character list in my Erling novels. In that list, I include my suggested pronunciations. These pronunciations, you may have noted, bear no resemblance to how Dr. Roby pronounces them.

It’s essentially an insoluble problem from my point of view. If I went to the trouble of learning how to pronounce Old Norse as Dr. Roby does (something I’m not inclined to do in my limited time), I’d be offering pronunciations that a) nobody would bother with, b) listeners would not understand, and c) are not even precisely what the Vikings used, as scholars admit the language has changed somewhat in the last thousand years.

So I give my suggested pronunciations, based (more or less) on contemporary Norwegian speech. This is mostly the way English-speaking scholars pronounce them in lectures, and they’re more or less comprehensible to other English speakers.

It’s a makeshift.

So much of fiction is a makeshift.

So much of life is a makeshift too, if it comes to that.

Authors, Poetry, Reading

What’s in an Oscar?

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Tonight, because such exercises please me, I wish to discuss (which means I write, you read) the history of a name. The name is Oscar. Not a terribly common name, but it shows up now and then in unexpected places. Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple. Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop. Sylvester Stallone did a film called Oscar. And of course – speaking of films – there’s the famous statuette of the Academy Awards – said to have been informally named by Academy librarian and historian Margaret Herrick, who remarked that it reminded her of her uncle Oscar.

Also Oscar the Grouch.

The book I reviewed yesterday, Armored, featured a Mexican character named Oscar. But I think of it primarily as a Scandinavian name. So I wondered, where did it come from and what does it mean?

My finely honed librarian’s skills led me to an arcane scholarly source known to insiders as Wikipedia. There I learned the story of the name, which is not without points of interest.

What does Oscar mean? It actually comes (purely by chance) from two different languages. In Old English, it means “Spear of the Gods” (cognate with the Norse name Asgeir).

But its modern use springs from Old Irish, where it means “One Who Loves Deer.”

The name was one of those indigenous ones that turned out insufficiently popular to survive the coming of Christianity, with its multitude of saints’ names to hang on babies. So it went out of use and was largely forgotten.

Then along came a man named James MacPherson (1736-1796), a Scottish writer, politician, and all-around scoundrel. Though he sprang from an old Jacobite (Stuart-supporting) family, he jumped wholeheartedly over to the Hanoverians (the English conquerors) and profited thereby. He also participated in the Highland Clearances, evicting poor cotters from their homes so their lands could be repurposed for sheep grazing. Countless Scots were made homeless by this treacherous betrayal of ancient trust.

But McPherson is best remembered for a series of poems called the Ossian Cycle, which he claimed he collected from ancient Scottish lays he learned from simple bards. Most scholars and critics have long agreed that McPherson wrote them himself, throwing in a few borrowings from Scottish and Irish folklore.

Whatever their source, the published poems were a huge success with the reading public. The Romantic Movement was blossoming just then, and people were hungry for tales of high adventure in ancient times – tales that came from somewhere further north than Rome or Athens. I’ve written here before about the popularity of Tegner’s Saga of Frithjof. The Lay of the Nibelungs and the Icelandic sagas were also objects of fascination. The Ossian Cycle fit right in.

Three of the main characters in the Ossian poems are Fingal, the great hero, Ossian, his son, who is supposed to be the poet, and his son Oscar, now dead.

Among McPherson’s many admirers was no less a figure than Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France. He hung the name on his godson, Joseph Bernadotte, son of his marshal Charles Jean Bernadotte. Charles Jean would go on to become king of Sweden (later of Norway too), and Joseph was eventually crowned King Oscar I. Thus did Oscar become a popular name with Scandinavians.

So hail to you, if your name is Oscar. Or if you live in Ossian, Iowa (nice town; I’ ve been there).

Reading, Uncategorized

Kristin Lavransdatter clip

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I think the clip above is not an official trailer for the 1995 Norwegian film, “Kristin Lavransdatter,” directed by Liv Ullman. It’s something somebody put together themselves. But I think it’s nicely done, and it explicates the plot pretty well. I wasn’t over the moon about the film, but this clip pleases me.

Reading

Reading report 2: ‘Kristin Lavransdatter’ (Hubris alert!)

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I proceed with reading Tina Nunnally’s translation of Sigrid Undset’s Kristin Lavransdatter. It’s a very long work, but I’m not going to read the whole trilogy at once. After I’ve finished the current (first) volume, I’ll turn to other things for a while, getting back into my review schedule.

The thing that’s surprised me most, so far, is a subjective response of my own that will probably make me seem pretty arrogant. I believe I could have done a better job on the translation.

This is ridiculous on the face of it – Nunnally is a successful, established literary translator. I’m a low-paid screenplay translator with one large book under my belt, Viking Legacy. And VL has hardly made many waves in the publishing world.

Nevertheless, the conviction has grown on me as I read. I don’t like Tina Nunnally’s approach.

There’s an old proverb I like to quote, Italian or French in origin, I believe – “A translation is like a wife. If she is faithful, she’s probably not beautiful. And if she’s beautiful, she’s probably not faithful.”

Nunnally is a faithful translator.

She seems to be aiming at precise fidelity to the text, as in these sentences: “There is still so much between us, more than if a naked sword had been laid between you and me. Tell me, will you have affection for me after this night is over?”

That’s precisely faithful. But “laid between us” would sing better, and “feel affection for me” is an awkward construction. “Care for me,” or even “like me” would be more natural. I’d have translated it something like one of those.

A work of literature, especially a masterpiece like KL, is more than a series of bald statements. Considerations of pace and tone need to be taken into account. To borrow a term from biblical translating (without taking sides on the biblical issue), I’m an advocate of dynamic equivalence.

It’s good that an uncut version of KL is now available. But I think a more satisfying job could have been done by a more sensitive translator.

I’m available (cough, cough).