“Solveig Thorkildsen and Ingeborg Hornkjøl of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) found the objects—a bone featuring a Norse inscription and a rune stick with both Latin and Norse text—during ongoing excavations at the site. According to a statement, the rune bone is the first of its kind found in Norway’s capital in more than 30 years.”
Smithsonian Magazine describes their excitement over the discovery and preliminary translations of the runes. The stick may have a prayer written on it.
Here’s some film footage I’ll guarantee you’ve never seen before (unless you saw it on Facebook, where I posted it this morning).
My father was one of those 1950s dads who took home movies as a hobby. After his death I found myself with a large number of old 8mm reels, about which my feelings are ambivalent. In a way I’d like to look at them, but the projector is complicated to set up. And, frankly, my memory of those years isn’t the happiest.
But a while back a fellow I know offered to digitize them for me. I agreed, and presented him with a big box full (he was a bit surprised at the quantity). I figured it would take him a long time to work through them all, but surprisingly he’s got the job done now, and I’ll be picking the stuff up this weekend.
He was intrigued, as a church history buff, to see some footage Dad had taken of the centennial celebration of our home church, Hauge Lutheran of Kenyon, Minnesota, back in 1959. If you’re interested in old cars, at least, this might appeal to you. The building is the Old Stone Church, the original church building, built around 1878, as I recall. I’ve written about it here before. I’m sure I was there somewhere in that crowd, but I can’t find myself. Very likely I was standing next to Dad as he filmed. I have no recollection whatever of the day.
If you’ve read my novel Troll Valley, this church is the model for the original Nidaros Lutheran Church in the book. And the tree line you see in back is the model for Troll Valley — though in real life it’s known (for some unknown reason) as Monkey Valley.
I wondered about the white tabs on the left. My friend explained that in some of the old 8mm films, the manufacturers just punched the sprocket holes through the exposure area itself, and the left-hand side of the image was out of view when it was projected (other film brands had a black bar over there). So the ”data” on the left has actually never been seen before.
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.
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.
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.
So Christmas is done, and winter, as it always does, snuck in while we were distracted. Winter is no less annoying before Christmas day, but it always seems like part of the festival. As if God is setting up His holiday department store window display. But then the holiday ends (I know it goes on till Epiphany, and I electrify my tree accordingly. But you know what I mean) and winter remains, like Styrofoam peanuts from the box Christmas came in. We didn’t get a white covering until Dec. 26, but the snow is here to stay now (I believe) and I have the snow shoveling muscle aches to prove it.
I was able to gather with family (not the whole family, but some, which beats last year), and we had a low-key but pleasant holiday. As part of my duties as Weird Old Uncle at the celebration, I shared a story I’d gotten in a letter from a distant cousin in Norway. He’s been doing some research on family history, and he found a story worthy of Hollywood. I paraphrase it for you below:
On a warm summer day around the year 1800, a young man named Ola was watching his father’s cows on a hillside with a good view of the sea near Ogna, in southern Rogaland. He noticed a square-rigged ship becalmed offshore. On a whim, he left the cows behind, walked to shore, appropriated a boat, and rowed out to the ship. He then signed on to the crew. He left his lunch bag hanging from one of the cows’ horns, so his family would know he’d left voluntarily. (They also noticed a boat was missing.) He later wrote his parents from Amsterdam. As a merchant sailor, he sailed with his ship to the Mediterranean, where they were attacked and captured by Libyan pirates. They were taken to Tripoli as slaves. One dark night, along with a French boy, he escaped. They swam in the sea for a while, then went ashore, walking and running the 2,200 kilometer distance (something under 1,400 miles) to Alexandria, Egypt, eating whatever they could scrounge. They stowed away (I think that’s the meaning) on a ship to Istanbul. From there it was an 1,800 kilometer (a little over a thousand miles) walk back to Amsterdam. Ola went into the shipping transport business. When Napoleon blockaded European ports to British shipping, rates for cross-channel commerce skyrocketed, and Ola made a fortune in that business (smuggling, I guess you’d call it). He married a British woman and settled down in Bergen as the owner of a shipping company once the war was over. Around 1830 he went home to Ogna to visit his family. He gave his siblings, two sisters and a brother, what amounted to a small fortune at the time, enough to build a nice little house.
Some years later, his nephew Helge received a letter from him marked, “Do not open until my death.” After a few more years another letter arrived without any instructions outside. This document itemized his property. Ola had no children of his own, and he was concerned that his wife might conceal some of it when the estate was divided. Finally, in 1843, a letter came announcing Ola’s death. Helge the nephew then opened the first letter. It said that he and his sister had each been left $100,000. But they had to do a sort of treasure hunt to collect the money. The letter said the money was buried in two small pots concealed under flat stones beneath the kitchen floor of Ola’s house in Bergen. Being honest people, they went first to the Bergen police for permission, and then dug the floor up, found the flat stones, and discovered the pots, each with the amount of money promised. Helge also hired a lawyer in Bergen, to look after their interests until Ola’s widow died. In the end they got half the estate, worth about $600,000 in modern money.
I was quite excited to read this story, and wrote back to my cousin to ask if this adventure came from my side of the family. Sadly, no. All he could find about my side was that one of my ancestors was involved with the Moravian religious movement even before the Haugean revivals (which I’ve written about here often ), and that another was the last person to die of leprosy in Randaberg parish (near Stavanger).
My family history, so far as I’ve been able to learn it, has been relentlessly unromantic. But I still reckon I’m descended from Erling Skjalgsson. Prove me wrong.
The longest night of all the year, as the poet tell us. The winter solstice. St. Thomas’ Day. And the anniversary of the death of Erling Skjalgsson of Sola, hero of my Viking novels, at the Battle of Boknafjord. It’s a tribute to Erling that we know the precise day of his death, thanks to the saga writers. There are a lot of eminent medieval characters, especially that far back, whose dates are unknown or disputed (indeed, we can only guess when Erling was born).
Anyway, I like to honor the day.
In other news, after many months I finally have an essay in The American Spectator today. It’s often said that our times are beyond satire. In my case they seem to have overloaded my capacity for wry commentary. But I found one thing to write about at last: In Praise of Younger Sons.
Remember, after today the days get longer.
Colder, but longer.
Whenever I think about that paradox, it seems to me somebody didn’t read the small print.
I am doing my best to keep my Christmas spirit up. Watched a couple of Christmas videos yesterday, including A Christmas Carol (Alistair Sim) because I needed it. This big translating project I’m doing (for which I thank God, by the way) is, shall we say, about the farthest thing from Christmasy you can imagine. And I’ll say no more about that.
Above is something that feels like a Christmas gift to me. A trailer for an upcoming film called “The Northman” that looks like it might possibly not stink.
It looks like they made some effort to be authentic with costumes and props (there’s a horned helmet there, but it looks ceremonial, which is correct). It’s supposed to be a story about a prince named Amleth, who wants revenge for his father’s death. That suggests inspiration from Shakespeare’s Hamlet (see my novel Blood and Judgment. I wonder if I can sue them for plagiarism. Probably not).
I’m confused about setting. News reports talk about Iceland, but there are no forests in Iceland, and it’s never had a king. But I expect the story moves around some.
Looks like an R rating, and this article suggests elements of witchcraft, so be warned.
An old illustration of Thor, who made an unscheduled appearance last night. Based on our personal acquaintance, I don’t see much resemblance.
I have traveled relatively widely in this great country, and relatively narrowly in the world at large. But I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere where somebody didn’t tell me, “The thing about living around here is, if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute.”
We say it in Minnesota too, but the joke fits other places better. Southwestern Alaska, where I spent one summer back before the Civil War, was the place where I noticed it most. The Alaska sky never had just one weather going on. It was sunny over here, but stormy over there. And something different a half an hour later.
However, Alaska has no thunderstorms (this is odd but true). I’m not sure that doesn’t disqualify them on a technicality.
There are doubtless places where the old gag isn’t true. San Diego comes to mind. And no doubt sub-Saharan Africa is hot and dry for long stretches at a time.
I say all this as preface to my account of yesterday’s weather in Minnesota. It was scripted by Terry Gilliam, I think. He’s a Minnesotan, after all.
I told you about the snow storm we had last weekend. Nothing very odd about that – though the pattern in recent years has been for real winter weather to come on slow. The first few snowfalls of the years have under-delivered. But this one had reason to be proud of itself. It lived up to old men’s childhood memories.
The next few days were warmer, and quite a lot of the snow melted away, leaving the ground patterned like an Appaloosa’s hindquarters. The temperature soared into the 50s yesterday, and as night fell we heard thunder. A genuine thunderstorm, in the middle off December. A great writer (it was me) once wrote, in The Year of the Warrior, “We had thunderstorms in February, which is a joyless thing.” Or words to that effect. There was much profound truth in that line.
And then winter came rushing back. High winds had been promised, and they showed up on schedule, Temperatures plunged. This morning when I went to the gym, it was in the 20s. The glitch in the Matrix had passed. The rubber band had snapped back. Thor, disturbed from his sleep, had turned over and gone back to his snoring.
People to our southeast are still recovering from tornadoes the other day, so it would be ridiculous for me to complain. But the day was remarkable, memorable, and worth chronicling.
I’m writing it down here because I’m sure I’ll forget.
In other news, I got a nice translating job today, which should take maybe three days to finish and bring in a decent pay day.
But not if I don’t stop jawing about the weather and get back to work.
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