Which is saying a lot.

I’m just getting going on a reeeeeally long book to review, so I’ll be posting oddments here for a few days. And Friday is a day I often do musical posts.

But I didn’t have this in mind, I swear to you. I was looking for some kind of hymn in Old Norse, and stumbled on this… thing.

I guess it’s kind of amusing. In Simon & Garfunkle style, they tell how the Vikings settled in Britain and assimilated. And they list some of the Viking contributions to British culture. I got a giggle or two out of it.

You’ll notice, if you’ve read my novel The Elder King, that they repeat the story that the nursery rhyme, “London Bridge Is Falling Down” refers to King Olaf Haraldsson (later Saint Olaf) pulling down London Bridge during his time as a mercenary in England. I use that legend in my book, but integrity forced me to confess in the Afterword that there’s no genuine historical basis for it. One translation of Heimskringla includes a skaldic poem with the lines, “London bridge is falling down / Gold is won and bright renown.” But that line was a whimsy of the translator’s. It doesn’t appear that way in the original poem. Scholars are confident that the nursery rhyme commemorates a much later occurrence.

Have a good weekend, if you can handle that disappointment.