I am now officially on my own again, work-wise. For the last few weeks I’ve been working on the magazine I edit for the Valdres Samband (an organization of descendants from a particular region of Norway), but I sent that to the printers yesterday. This means I can devote my powers once again to my Work In Progress, my novel about King Haakon the Good of Norway. That’s him on top of the column in the picture above. I’m on the ground, on your right, while my friend Einar is on the left. The photo was taken on my last trip to the Center of the Universe, at Fitjar, where Haakon died.
I’m still mostly doing research, going through books and noting down ideas and intriguing facts. For instance, I discovered in Bishop Fridtjof Birkeli’s book, Tolv År Hadde Kristendommen Vært i Norge (Twelve Years Had Christianity been in Norway, sadly out of print now, but I have a copy), that Haakon had a heathen wife, according to one very old source.
This is great. There’s all sorts of things I can do with the situation of a Christian king married to a heathen. It also addresses the issue of Haakon’s sexuality, which was insulted by Poul Anderson in his novel, Mother of Kings (which I do not choose to link). Anderson made Haakon a homosexual — one assumes because Haakon left no heir, and the sagas don’t mention his marriage. Needless to say, I don’t intend to take Anderson’s lead.
I came up with a great scene, pleasingly offensive, which I plan to incorporate somewhere in my account of Haakon’s childhood. It’ll be something like this:
“Let me tell you something about women, lad. Something you’ll need to understand. You should listen to women when they talk. Listen carefully. Give them your full attention. Then do the exact other way round from what they say. If she says she wants to be handled roughly, to be grabbed up, carried off and ravished, then pick flowers for her. Sing her songs of love. Tickle her knees like a little girl.
“And if she says she wants a kind man in whom she can confide her deepest thoughts and hopes, well, then take hold of her, push her up against a wall, and hump her on the spot.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because none of them knows what she wants. We men are always complaining that we don’t understand women. Let me tell you – they don’t understand themselves any better.”
“So they always say they want what they don’t really want?”
“Always. Most of the time. Seven times out of ten. Or six. Maybe five. As often as not, anyway.”
My working title at the moment is That Was a Good King, a quotation from Beowulf. But I’m not married to it.
Presumably Good King Haakon would have had access to the Vulgate text of 1 Corinthians 12-16, which includes the striking language of verses 14 – “sanctificatus est enim vir infidelis per mulierem fidelem, et sanctificata est mulier infidelis per virum fidelem : alioquin filii vestri immundi essent, nunc autem sancti sunt” – and 16 – “Unde enim scis mulier, si virum salvum facies? aut unde scis vir, si mulierem salvam facies?” Does that point to one of the things you may want to “do with the situation of a Christian king married to a heathen”?
Having no Latin and less Greek, I was stumped for a bit, until I found that you were quoting Chapter 7. Yes, I would certainly make reference to that passage, except that my approach is more convoluted. My Haakon will not actually be a believer. He will promote Christianity on purely pragmatic grounds. I find that an intriguing approach.
I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this next novel, Lars. What non-scholarly reading in original sources might add to my enjoyment when it comes out? I have access to an excellent interlibrary loan librarian here (and I would be happy to get hold of things for you if you can’t get them on your own).
Thanks, Dale. The book I’d recommend most is The Vikings, From Odin to Christ, by Martyn and Hannah Whittock.
I’ll leap in to say I’ve recently enjoyed the Monsen (and however much Smith) Heimskringla ‘Hacon the Good’ saga translation (as owned and read by Lewis) – and see how far Lars agrees, disagrees, or withholds judgement!
And to thank Lars for the reply! That does sound an intriguing approach (and makes me think I should reread around in the Heismkringla – and maybe use its excellent index for any later references to ‘Hacon the Good’). With apologies for omitting the chapter number – and I thought for once I was proofreading more carefully!
You might check out The Vikings: From Odin to Christ, by Hannah and Martyn Whittock, which I recommended to Dale. The sagas have it as a major objective to glorify St. Olaf Haraldsson. This entailed (it is argued, and I tend to agree) denigrating Haakon. In particular, his peaceful evangelistic strategy had to be disapproved, to justify Olaf’s violence.
Thank you! If Snorri Sturluson is trying to give a good impression of St. Olaf’s policies, it’s not working with me, so far (!) On the other hand, in the Monsen translation I seem to be getting an idea of real dilemmas for various levels of ‘rulers’ (so to generalize).
By the way, I just watched a video of the baptism of the son of some traditional Reformed friends of a younger generation as ‘David Odin’ – but have not yet talked to them about the name-choice. Back when the Dutch protractedly-Napoleonically required the birth-registration of only approved names, helpful books were published – in one we have (a 1972 revised eighth impression of a 1949 edition) “Odin” is included as a Norse name – with the variants “Odhinn, Wodan”. The book regularly gives examples of names being Saints’ names, but not here. My first quick further check online finds only Oddino – or Oddin – Barrotti of Fossano in the Piedmont, a Franciscan Tertiary and parish priest (and sometime prisoner of the Turks during a 1381 pilgrimage to the Holy Land!) who died in 1400 while helping those suffering from the plague, whose local cultus was officially confirmed by Pope Pius VII in 1808 as ‘Beatus’ (“Blessed’).
Interesting. I don’t really approve of using Norse gods’ names for Christian children, though I know of several Christian Thors and Thorfinns, so I guess usage and history matter. Dionysius (Dennis), for instance, was a classical god’s name that got entrance through a martyr having it. No doubt there are many such I’m not aware of.
I always think of the martyrs Sts. Bacchus and Nymphodora (I wonder if J.K. Rowling was deliberately playing with that as a saint’s name – I suspect she did a bit of that in her Potter books, e.g., St. Hermione is reported as the name of one of St. Philip’s daughters, another martyr.)
Funnily enough we were enjoying Pamela Nagami’s LibriVox audiobook of Oscar Browning’s The Age of the Condottieri: A Short History of Mediaeval Italy from 1409-1530 (1895) today – and ran into the account that what was eventually the Council of Florence (after moving from Ferrara, where it opened in 1438) might have been the Council of Udine (p. 44) – after the other day reading in the Italian Wikipedia article, “Udine”, the suggestion that its name might derive from that of Odin (Lombard ‘Guodan’ or ‘Godan’, Saxon ‘Uoden’).
My goodness! I wonder why Odin offends me more than Thor. Maybe because the mythical Odin is a more explicitly demonic intelligence.