Today in the library I was cataloging a set of books by a friend, Dr. John Eidsmoe – Historical and Theological Foundations of Law. Out of curiosity I checked the second volume to see what he’d written about Viking elements in our English tradition. And behold, he has good things to say. Even better, he mentions me in a footnote.
I’ve joked about being a scholarly citation before, since Prof. Torgrim Titlestad of the University of Stavanger has mentioned my Erling novels in a couple of his books on the Viking Age. But this is a genuine footnote. In a passage about Erling Skjalgsson he inserts the following note:
…Lars Walker, a friend of this author, has recently published an engrossing and well-researched novel that portrays Erling Skjalgson as a Christian ruler who desires his kingdom to be a free republic under God’s law. Lars Walker, West Oversea: A Norse Saga of Mystery, Adventure and Faith (Nordskog, 2009).
He makes a couple small errors, calling Erling a jarl (he seems to think jarl is a generic term like chieftain), and talking about Erling’s “kingdom,” which was the last thing Erling wanted. Nevertheless, it’s nice to be a citation.
I wonder if I can get credit for it in graduate school.
Something tells me the answer is no.
Congratulations! You can absolutely get credit for it. It’s just that the credit for a single citation is pretty minimal. Still, citation count +1. It’s more than I presently have and I’ve been in grad school a lot longer than you.
It’s more impressive to me because the book is fiction. You need to be really confident to cite fiction in a scholarly work.
When I saw the headline, “Citation Sighted,” my first thought was of someone seeing an early 80’s GM X-car. They rusted and fell apart so quickly that sighting one in the wild is rare indeed. I’m glad the post turned out to be about a novel cited rather than a novel sight.