I’m going to be speaking up in Fargo, North Dakota next Saturday. I’ll be giving a PowerPoint presentation to the annual meeting of the Georg Sverdrup Society. G. Sverdrup was a prominent Norwegian Lutheran educator around the turn of the 20th Century. He was the chief intellectual of the Lutheran Free Church movement, a (pretty small) movement to merge Lutheran theology with congregational church government.

Only a small portion of his writings have been translated into English, and a major purpose of our little society is to translate his collected works. I’m editor of the journal, and I’ve been asked to do a talk on the subject, “Problems in Translating Georg Sverdrup.”

I like to use a lot of pictures in my PowerPoints, and here’s one I’m using to illustrate a point I won’t bore you with just now:

This is John B. Johnson, one of my maternal great-grandfathers. He came (I’m pretty sure) from northern Norway, and labored on the restoration of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim. He was also a cook on a whaler, and is said to have once swum back to shore from a sinking ship, towing two men behind him. He was a man of prodigious appetites and vices, who liked to take a bite out of a porcelain plate when he was drunk, just to show he could do it.

When I look at his face I can see something of my own appearance in it.

This is not a good thing.

Nevertheless, I’m impressed with this picture. (I’m not sure who the child he’s holding is—one of his grandchildren, I suppose, but honestly he/she/it looks awfully blonde for that side of the family.) You’ll note that even though he’s on the farm, and seems to be dressed for work, he’s wearing a homburg hat.

Because, back in those days, a fellow didn’t want to go around looking like a bum.

Nowadays, men go out of their ways to look like bums. Chin stubble and a torn tee-shirt are supposed to be manly.

In my opinion these new men manage to look a whole lot less masculine than old John B., even in his homburg.