Music, Religion

The strange journey of ‘O Store Gud’

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Another cold day, into which I did not venture out at all. This is one of the marks of prudence and maturity. (I’ve been prudent and mature on winter days since I was about nine years old). I had translation work to do, and that’s what I did. I’m not yet half-way through reading Nansen’s book (the thing is long, I tell you. Conveys the true polar night experience).

So what shall I post? I noodled around on YouTube and discovered the clip above. It’s Sissel, of course, with the Heretic Tabernacle Choir, doing the first verse of the original version of a hymn I expect you know – “How Great Thou Art.” It started out as “O Store Gud” (O Great God) in Swedish. The writer was Carl Boberg, a lay minister in the Mission Covenant Church of Sweden. He wrote it in 1885, after watching a storm and its aftermath. Later he sold the rights to his church body.

In 1930, Stuart K. Hine, a British Methodist missionary in the Ukraine, heard a Russian version (translated from a German version) of the hymn being sung. He started using it in his services, then began composing a free English paraphrase of this translation of a translation. He also began adding verses of his own, in response to needs he discerned among the people he worked with.

During the winter of 1932-33, the Hines were forced to leave Ukraine because of Stalin’s diabolical Holodomor forced famine (one hopes some of the millions of victims found comfort in his hymn as they died). In 1939, World War II forced the Hines to return to England, where they settled in Somerset and ministered to Polish refugees. It was at that stage that his final verse, “When Christ shall come….”, was added.

The song in his version (Swedish-Americans already had their own, less singable translation) was apparently first introduced to the United States at a conference in Stony Brook, New York, in 1951. But J. Edwin Orr of Fuller Seminary discovered it being sung by a choir in India. He introduced it at a conference in San Bernadino, California in 1953. Manna Music bought the rights, and George Beverly Shea started singing it at Billy Graham’s crusade in Harringay, England, in 1954. And the rest is hymnody.

What do I think of Hines’ translation? I’ve got to say, I do a fair amount of song translation in my script work. And I’ve learned to kiss literal sense goodbye. If you can transpose some of the original images and turns of phrase, you’re doing great. For the rest, always prefer rhyme, meter, and singability to literal faithfulness. What you need to try to do is convey the subjective experience. That’s the best you can do. More than that is madness.

I’ve sung more faithful translations of this hymn once or twice. I must confess, they did not move my heart.

Wikipedia has the whole story of “How Great Thou Art” here.

Goofing, Uncategorized

Annals of arctic shopping

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Fridtjof Nansen and crew members download Windows 1 from the Cloud, 1894.

A notable day this was. Finally got something done I’d been wanting to do all week. It cost me money, but if ‘twere done, then ‘twere best ‘twere done quickly, as the bald guy said.

I decided I needed a new laptop on Monday. The keys on the old one were stuttering, doubling random letters, which means your work load rises about 50% when you subsist by the keyboard as I do. But I got sick, as I’ve mentioned, and languished at home, doomed to work (work still came in) on my desktop computer, which really isn’t that bad. But I hate messing up my procedures, you know? It’s one of the perquisites of old age, being stuck in your ways.

Today I felt better, and decided this would be it. It was one of the coldest days of the year (the year being six days old), but I figured that would keep the other shoppers at home (I was mistaken, of course. This is Minnesota, where people jump in icy lakes for fun). My reading of Fridtjof Nansen seemed fitting, because just getting ready to leave the house on a day like this is a little like outfitting an Arctic expedition. (OK, just a little, but sometimes our temperatures are comparable to temps Nansen saw in the pack ice. In summer.)

The Norwegians have a saying – “Det finnes ingen dårlig vær, bare dårlig klær” (“There is no bad weather, just bad clothing”). This is one of the reasons I expected to find non-Scandinavian DNA when I joined an ancestry site. The fact that I found almost none indicates I must be a mutation – my father did visit Hiroshima while in the army in 1946, after all.

But at last I reached my favored computer store, eventually attracting a salesman’s attention. My plan was to spend a certain amount on a refurbished one, which has been my custom for a while. The salesman persuaded me I could get a new one for the same money that would be much more powerful and have a much longer life expectancy. It meant buying a brand I’d planned to avoid, but I saw reason at last. (Update: I’m working on it now, and I’m actually quite pleased. The keyboard action is good, and I haven’t had trouble with any apps [yet]). I notice, looking around, that I actually have a fairly tall stack of crashed laptops sitting around the house, so maybe the refurb strategy wasn’t as shrewd as I thought.

It did come with Windows 11. No doubt I’ll live to regret that, but what’s done is done, as the bald guy also said.

At least I didn’t have to retype half my words on this post.

Uncategorized

Boom in Antiquity discoveries during 2020

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Detectorists for the win!

In England, people had more time to putter around the garden in the last couple years, and guess what? They uncovered old stuff. For example, Bob Greenaway from Oswestry in Shropshire found the Bulla sun pendant. “The retired engineer found the intricate piece while metal detecting in the Marches, unearthing one of the most significant pieces of metalwork ever discovered in Britain – around 3,000 years old.”

Loads and loads of stuff–one might even say hoards–have been found over the last few years.

But wait, there’s more. Two shipwrecks were uncovered off the coast of Israel and many coins, figurines, and other antiquities were recovered, including a gemstone with an image of the Good Shepherd on it.

Authors

More Fridtjof stuff

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Late posting today. I’ve been busy. Also not feeling real well. Not awful, just a little under the weather. And the work has started trickling in again, which is great. Left to my own devices, I’d probably be spending more time in bed, but money’s a good thing too.

Above is a little film about Fridtjof Nansen, about whom I posted last night. Thought it would be interesting to see him in motion, if only in old age. It feels odd to be hyping this guy, whom I don’t even like that much. Aside from his marital infidelities, he was one of those 19th Century scientific types who thought they’d figured everything out and transcended the need for God. He did some good stuff, too. But I get the sense he was always playing to the audience. In private, he felt free to be a jackass.

As do many of us.

As an aside, Fridtjof was never a common name, but it had a vogue in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. This was due to a very popular translation of a Norse poem, which I discuss in this old post.

Authors

Fridtjof Nansen, hero

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Fridtjof Nansen in the personal uniform he designed and wore everywhere.
Olaf Trygvesson, with Nansen’s face, in Heimskringla

It’s one of those awkward moments in the course of my blogging. I’ve embarked on reading quite a long book, so I won’t have a review ready for a few days. And yet I must post something, to assuage my crippling sense of obligation. So I’ll talk about the book’s author, in general terms.

If you weigh your scoring in terms of the availability and ubiquity of various media through the course of history, you can make a strong case that Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930) was the greatest celebrity Norway ever produced (though St. Olaf is a strong contender).

Nansen was a noted zoologist before he started doing Arctic exploration. And when he ventured into the far north, it was into terra still incognita. Nobody knew what was up there. Land? Pack ice? Open sea? These were among the things he set out to learn. And he did it in a bold, groundbreaking, hands-on way. Later, he became a diplomat (he had a lot to do with Norwegian independence from Sweden and the decision to become a monarchy). Then, as a League of Nations official entrusted with the relief of hundreds of thousands of people displaced and orphaned by World War I, he saved countless lives. Remember Young Frankenstein, where Igor breaks a jar containing the brain of “Hans Dalbruck, Scientist & Saint?” It might have been a description of Nansen, as he was perceived in the public mind.

When the artist Erik Werenskiold set out to illustrate the saga of Olaf Trygvesson in the classic edition of Heimskringla, the Sagas of the Kings of Norway, he put Nansen’s face on the ancient national hero.

But Nansen had a very dark side. When he left the ship Fram to attempt to ski to the North Pole with one companion, the two men spent four months living in close quarters, utterly dependent on one another. They became close friends. But once they returned to civilization, Nansen reasserted his rank. They’d been addressing one another with the intimate pronoun, “du” (thee). But now he went back to “de” (you), as befitted men of different social classes.

He was an international sex symbol, handsome and athletic. Wherever he traveled, the most desirable women (often married women) threw themselves at him. He did not resist, though he was a husband and a father. Eventually he commenced an affair with the wife of his neighbor, the artist Gerhard Munthe. They divorced their spouses and married one another, something Nansen’s children never forgave.

So he was no Hans Dalbruck. I remind myself, however, that I’ve been protected from fornication all my life by shyness and lack of opportunity. If I’d looked like Nansen, what would I have done? Best to contemplate the log in my own eye.

One interesting sidelight must be mentioned. In his international relief work, Nansen had a faithful right hand man, a young fellow named Vidkun Abraham Lauritz Jonsson Quisling. Quisling would later achieve dark immortality, and give us a new word for traitor, when he led the Norwegian Nazi Party during the Occupation.

Life, as you’ve probably noticed, is messy.

Authors, Music, Religion

‘The Sands of Time Are Sinking,’ and a glass is raised

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As the new year begins, the great Presbyterian hymn, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking,” has been in my mind. It’s not a hymn I grew up with, but one I learned to appreciate as an adult. It’s about time, and our ultimate hopes as believers. Suitable, I think. The hymnwriter Anne R. Cousin based it on something the Scottish Presbyterian divine Samuel Rutherford said on his deathbed.

I heard somewhere, once, that this was Moody’s favorite hymn, and that they sang it at all his rallies.

Or it may have been Spurgeon. I wasn’t there.

Today, it should be noted, is J. R. R. Tolkien’s birthday. It is the custom for every Tolkien fan to take a moment tonight at 9:00 p.m. local time, stand, raise their beverage of choice, and say, “The Professor!”

I doubt the Professor would have approved of the orange soda I plan to drink, but I do what I can within my personal limitations.

Music

Sunday Singing: Amazing Grace

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Amazing Grace, sung by Carl Ellis with over 200 bagpipes

John Newton’s 1779 hymn is sung the world over. I believe some congregations sing it every Sunday. My congregation sings it after every communion, which we celebrate on the first Sunday of each month. Despite all of that singing, it’s still a good hymn for the new year.

The Hartford Selection of Hymns (1799) offers these three verses as 4-6, which may be where the most of the variations come in (they are not in the video above either).

The Lord has promis’d good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease;
I shall possess within the vzil,
A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cold Sanctuary,’ by David J. Gatward

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I’ve been following, and generally enjoying, David J. Gatward’s Inspector Grimm mystery series, about a war-scarred police detective in rural Yorkshire. But I have to say I found Cold Sanctuary, the eighth volume, something of a disappointment.

The book opens in a memorable and – I must say – heartbreaking manner. On a beautiful morning, Bill Dinsdale, a Yorkshire farmer, bids goodbye to his loving wife and sets out to do one of his favorite jobs, baling hay. But we are warned from the start that this is the last day of his life. The dramatic tension builds to a shocking murder scene.

When Inspector Grimm comes to investigate with his team, they are quickly convinced that what looks like an accident is murder. In a particularly cruel form. Who would want to do this to Bill, a cheerful and popular member of the community? Could the murderer possibly be Bill’s son, who recently fought with him and is acting suspiciously? Or the mysterious person who’s been sending him threatening notes?

There were two elements of Cold Sanctuary that displeased me. One was a scene where Grimm makes an arrest, rather callously, which is treated as important – and yet turns out to be a mistake. A mistake for which Grimm does not apologize. Nor does he seem much concerned about the distress he caused.

The other element was the final solution. The puzzle all through the book was “Why would anyone kill Bill Dinsdale?” The problem is treated as mysterious and baffling. But it didn’t baffle me at all. It was plain as a pikestaff, based on the evidence. Not only was it obvious, it was actually a common trope. We’ve all seen it a hundred times before in novels, TV shows, and movies.

There’s the lesbian cop married to an Anglican woman priest, too. But when a novelist only inflicts lesbians on you these days, it’s a mercy.

I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the Inspector Grimm books or not. I came away kind of annoyed this time.

Non-fiction

I, Citizen, for the New Year

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I have a lot of respect for Tony Woodlief, so I’m going to share his book promo video with no more knowledge of the book than what you see here. It’s probably a darn good book.

Uncategorized

‘Auld Lang Syne’

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It’s almost New Year’s Eve, and I think I’ll alter my usual habit of posting holiday stuff on the holiday itself (which means most readers don’t find it until too late). Instead I’ll post this New Year’s song today. It’s Sissel Kyrkjebø, Charles Aznavour, and Placido Domingo doing Auld Lang Syne. Not as much Sissel as I might wish, but the other version I considered was in Norwegian. I figured you’d understand this one better.

“Auld Lang Syne” means “old long since,” or “old times.” If you’re a close reader, you may have noticed that I tend to use “long since” instead of “long ago” in my Erling books. It’s one of the archaisms I employ (lightly, I hope) to add a feeling of the past to the prose.

I bear an irrational grudge against Robert Burns, as you may recall. But according to Wikipedia, he seems to have adapted Auld Lang Syne from an old Scottish folk song. The melody is beautiful too.

A happy and blessed New Year to you, from the worldwide empire of Brandywine Books. I have some hopes for 2022. A book to release, a long trip I just might take, “tomorrow when the world is free,” as another old song goes.

I picked up a shovel in my garage today. Used it to clear some snow from in front of the door. I looked at the thing, an old sand shovel, and remembered how it had been around forever on the farm where I grew up. My dad gave it to me once, long ago, for my first car. “You should always carry a shovel in your car in the winter,” he said. Which is prudent advice in Minnesota. (Especially when you drive a Gremlin, which was what I did at the time.) I got to thinking how old that shovel is. I know it goes back to my dad’s time. Very likely my grandfather’s. Possibly even my great-grandfather’s. The rusty old thing is likely over a hundred years old.

Time passes, but we survive, so long as the Lord wills.

Book Reviews, Creative Culture