“A Might Fortress Is Our God” performed by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
We needed a battle hymn this weekend, and there isn’t a better one than this by Dr. Martin Luther, a little known professor at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, in the 1500s.
1 A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing; our helper he, amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing: for still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe; his craft and power are great, and, armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal.
2 Did we in our strength confide, our striving would be losing; were not the right man on our side, the man of God’s own choosing: dost ask who that may be? Christ Jesus, it is he; Lord Sabbaoth, his Name, from age to age the same, and he must win the battle.
Poet George Herbert reminds us, “That all things were more ours by being His; What Adam had, and forfeited for all, Christ keepeth now, who cannot fail or fall.”
Everything I naturally think as mine is Christ’s–my time, my skills, my ambitions, even my sin.
It’s been hard to pull my eyes away from the news since Thursday. I have sought more information than prayer, but my prayers are completed with just a few words. Lord, have mercy on both Ukrainians and Russians, and break of the arms of evil men. Call them to account for their deeds.
God save Ukraine: Before the invasion, many Ukrainians knew what to expect. “Ukraine has been prepared through this crucible of constant pressure that it’s much stronger than people think.”
At 3:03 a.m. Saturday morning, the valiant Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recorded himself in Kyiv again, saying they would not lay down their arms. This Twitter threads has that video translated as well as the news that Melitopol had fallen. That report is being countered as I write this.
🔴🇺🇦 After Ukrainian forces said they had repulsed a Russian attack on #Kyiv during the night, President Volodymyr #Zelensky shot a selfie-style video to vow to stay and fight on.
Black History Month: Here’s a book I’ve been wanting take up for a few years, because the author is a wise disciplemaker who knows his subject. Free at Last? The Gospel in the African-American Experience by Dr. Carl Ellis has been rereleased as a classic in cross-ethnic, gospel-centered reading.
Jazz Organist: This is not the way I’m used to thinking of organ music. LeDonne remembers jazz organist Dr. Lonnie Smith, who passed away last September. “Is this Mike LeDonne? This is Lonnie Smith and I’m playing at the Village Vanguard with Lou Donaldson and he tells me you have a nice B-3.”
It was a relatively quiet day. Warmer than yesterday and clear outside. I had to do some shoveling again. Not much.
Hey, it’s almost March. In March, you can start hoping for spring. You’ll be bitterly disappointed, but you can hope. At least the sunlight comes in larger packages now, which is nice in a time of inflation.
As I’ve mentioned, I like to have the TV on while I’m doing translation. Especially old B-westerns. I very much enjoy B-westerns. They’re cheaply done and obviously so, but they fill the silence demand little of the viewer. They were a comfort in my childhood, and they still make me feel good. Especially when they’ve aged badly.
Whenever I watch a Gene Autrey movie, I wonder, “How did this guy get to be a movie star?” He was not tall, not particularly handsome, and a little tubby. The answer, of course, is his singing. He started as a singer, and moved into the movies. Little boys loved him. Because, what do little boys know?
Today I watched Riders of the Whistling Pines, which I found notable for several reasons. It’s actually a more serious movie than Gene’s usual line – no comic sidekick, and some rather tragic themes. Gene plays a guy trying to establish a forest camp in an area where there’s an infestation of tree-killing moths. The local logger is rooting for the moths, because if the trees die, he can legally harvest them all. Gene is involved with trying to get the forest sprayed with – wait for it – DDT. The nasty logging baron spreads false rumors about the dangers of DDT to wildlife and human life, and deliberately causes some poisoning.
Yessiree, we’ve got a pro-DDT movie here. It was 1949, long before Rachel Carson. Trust the science!
Actually, I personally think DDT needs to come back, under controls, so I’m cool with it. Your mileage, as I persist in saying, may vary.
A second surprise was that I recognized one of the evil henchmen – by his voice. It was Clayton Moore, who in a few years would become immortal as the Lone Ranger. (I know a guy who knew him, when he lived in these parts.) In this film, he doesn’t even get a cool cowboy hat.
And finally, on a couple occasions one of the characters, a struggling alcoholic, fishes out a photo of his wife, who died while he was away in the war. She’s pretty. She’s a blonde.
She’s Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn was an unknown contract player for Columbia at the time, and this was a Columbia production, so they just picked her picture off a pile as an example of a girl a guy might pine for.
Illustration of the Battle of Hafrsfjord by Erik Werenskiold, from Heimskringla.
Big day today, in the saga of Lars Walker. I got one item I’d been unsure of confirmed, so I feel I’m in a position to announce that I’m definitely planning to attend the celebration of the 1150th anniversary of the Battle of Hafrsfjord on Karmøy Island and in Stavanger, in June of this summer.
I haven’t reached the point of no return yet. Haven’t booked the tickets – I’m still not entirely sure when I should leave and return. And I could still suffer some financial disaster that forces me to cancel the whole thing. But all things being relatively equal, at least I feel able to go public.
The festival takes place in Erling Skjalgsson’s neighborhood, but the battle under consideration was well before his time. King Harald Halvdansson, known as “Fairhair” (or “Finehair”), is said to have fought a great sea battle there in the year 872 (perhaps). He is said to have defeated a coalition of petty kings on the waters of the fjord, cementing his control over at least part of what would become the Kingdom of Norway. This has always been considered the founding of the nation. Even historians who believe Harald actually existed (and not all of them do) disagree on how much territory he actually controlled. My personal suspicion is that it was more than the historians think, because, let’s face it, historians enjoy tearing down legends. (Cue a dozen cable channel documentaries.) Until some genius comes along and finds evidence for the legend. (Cue a dozen more cable documentaries.)
Frankly, the idea of taking this trip scares me a little. I’m no longer a young, or a thin, man – and let me tell you, there’s no way you travel in Norway without doing a lot of walking.
But if I don’t do it now, I probably never will. And I’ll never get a better chance to see a fleet of Viking ships in real life. If I overdo it and have a fatal heart attack surrounded by Viking ships, it would be kind of cool, don’t you think?
The translation work keeps coming in. I groan under the load, but I am a man of iron, capable of enduring great hardships.
Speaking of hard ships, the short video above is of a Viking ship replica called Saga Farmann(Saga Merchant Traveler; link in Norwegian). It was launched in Tunsberg, Norway (a place that features in my Novel in Progress) in 2018, and is particularly interesting because it’s a copy of a knarr (specifically the Klåstad Ship). If you’ve been reading my novels, you know that a knarr is a Viking merchant ship. In the Viking Age these broad, deep ships were doubtless far more common than the fighting dragons (though knarrs were used in war too). But today the great interest is in the dragons, so you don’t often see a nice knarr.
Knarrs generally had rather small crews. Though they carried oars, those were only for emergencies. Knarrs sailed most places they went. What did they do when the wind was calm, or contrary? They waited. You arrived when you arrived.
If my hopes are fulfilled, I might get the chance to see this ship this summer. Plus a bunch of others. If I’m a good boy and say my prayers and eat my vegetables.
It started snowing last night, and it’s still snowing now. It’s supposed to keep snowing till sometime overnight. I’m not even going to shovel the steps tonight. Tomorrow will do. No point doing it twice.
This is the time of year when cabin fever sets in. Winter’s fun right up until Christmas. After Christmas it becomes a thing to endure, except for the hearty Nordic types who love to tug on their multiple layers and strap on their skis and make for the blustery, aerobic slopes. They exude a moral and physical superiority that annoys me, frankly. The fact that they are in fact morally and physically superior to me is beside the point.
But by mid-February, even the Chilblain Brigade starts dreaming of beaches and barbecues. No, thank you, we won’t have another helping. We’ve enjoyed as much of this as we can stand. Wake us when the robins show up.
Yesterday I had a day without translation work, but I’d been told more was coming, so I figured relaxing a bit was okay, as I’ll be at it pretty hard in the days to come. At this point, it feels as if people are clamoring for me to take their money. I like this. It makes me feel morally and physically superior.
But I didn’t loaf all day. I went back to working on the new novel, and I made a fateful determination – my work habits have grown shoddy.
I’ve often mentioned that I like to write with the TV on. And I do. It works fine when I’m on a first draft, because first drafts are mostly sitting and thinking anyway. A TV distracts my mind just enough to keep it sparking. Or so I tell myself.
But when I’m doing revisions, as I have been for some time now, I need to concentrate more. Instead, I’ve been doing it over TV, and I think that’s why I’ve been moving so slowly.
So last night I put on music (Bach, mainly), and yes, it works better.
From time to time I run across a mystery related to the Vikings or the sagas. Usually I am disappointed. The research tends to be cursory, and I find many historical nits to pick.
Michael Ridpath’s The Wanderer was different. I have a few criticisms, but they don’t fall on the research side.
The book is part of a series about an Icelandic-American detective named Magnus (one of the things you need to get used to – accurately – is the general use of first names where we’d use last names. This is due to Icelandic patronymic naming conventions. Our hero’s full name is Magnus Jonson, but the Jonson part is rarely used. Magnus was born in Iceland but raised in the US, where he was a policeman in Boston for some years. But now he’s home in Iceland and is a police detective there. He doesn’t really feel at home in either place.
There’s a young female historian named Eyglo, who made an international name for herself with a documentary about Viking women. Now she’s working with a British crew on a documentary about Gudrid the Far-Traveled, Erik the Red’s daughter-in-law who made it both to America and to Rome during her lifetime. They’re particularly excited about a couple new discoveries they’ll be highlighting. One is a letter from Columbus himself, recently discovered in the Vatican library, that details a trip to Iceland where he acquired sailing directions for a land to the west. The other is a string of wampum – shells used by Native Americans for money – found in an archaeological dig at Gudrid’s farm in Iceland. The shells have been sourced to Nantucket, which indicates that Nantucket must have been the site of a Viking settlement.
Then a young Italian woman, also an archaeologist, is murdered near Gudrid’s farm. Murder is rare in Iceland, and Magnus is assigned to this important case. He will learn that archaeologists don’t just dig things up – sometimes they bury them.
First of all, The Wanderer was well-written. The dialogue was good; the story moved right along. My main quibble was a flavor of political correctness, which is not surprising in our time. It wasn’t preachy, just present in the background. Some of the characters’ actions, it seemed to me, were only plausible on the basis of pop gender dogma.
I wouldn’t call this book Scandinavian Noir. It lacked that suicidal, Kierkegaardian tang. Which is all to the good, in my opinion.
All in all, I found The Wanderer surprisingly good, and I recommend it.
U.S. Presidential favorite “Hail to the Chief” has its origin in Sir Walter Scott’s popular narrative poem, The Lady of the Lake. Here’s an image of the page with words put to song by James Sanderson for a 1812 stage adaptation of the book.
Posted to YourClassical.com, “Given its sheer availability and rousing pomp, it was only a matter of time before U.S. presidents became the ‘chief’ in the title. ‘Hail to the Chief’ was first associated with a chief executive on Feb. 22, 1815, … to honor George Washington.”
“The God of Abraham Praise” is attributed to 14th century Italian poet Daniel ben Judah. The Trinity Psalter Hymnal adds two more verses (#4-5) that I haven’t seen before and are not recorded above.
1 The God of Abraham praise, who reigns enthroned above, Ancient of everlasting days and God of love. Jehovah! Great I AM! by earth and heav’n confessed; I bow and bless the sacred name, forever blest.
2 The God of Abraham praise, at whose supreme command from earth I rise and seek the joys at his right hand. I all on earth forsake, its wisdom, fame, and pow’r, and him my only portion make, my shield and tow’r.
When people give detailed definitions of the normal Christian life, I feel something like bumping into a soapbox. Not standing on it yet, but kicking it as if accidentally, not knowing it was next to my foot. When we say all Christians should be doing something, like Bible reading and prayer, we should consider how our recommendations would be applied by different people past and present.
If you take a verse like Psalm 5:3, “O Lord, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch,” and recommend a morning routine to all believers, consider how the field hand and the factory worker would be able to apply it. How would it work for the tired, young mother or the single mother with a couple jobs?
If our view of the normal Christian life fits mainly a middle class, white-collar lifestyle, we need to broaden our scope, so that our intended encouragement comes through and we don’t drive away those believers who aren’t like us. This goes for our definitions of manhood, womanhood, and modesty, to name a few hot topics.
Ordinary Life: Matt Rhoades writes about the Holy Spirit working in ordinary life. “We live day to day, not miracle to miracle. And there’s something wonderful about these ordinary days and years spent between the high points. “
Kindness: Jared Wilson says kindness promotes the Gospel. “When was the last time you classified preaching as kind? Do you think, by and large, preaching today could be characterized by kindness?”
Generations: Min Jin Lee talks about many things in this New Yorker interview, including generational differences particularly among immigrants. “The real disconnect is between the first and second or third generation, especially if the second or third generation has done sufficiently well. We’re not interested in just survival anymore. We’re interested in meaning, and that quest for meaning has just as many difficulties, if not more intangible difficulties, than just survival.”
Photo: Post Office, New Ulm, Minnesota. 1981. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
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