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Most of what you know about Viking funerals is wrong

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It occurred to me this morning that (as far as I remember, in my increasing mental decrepitude), I’ve never yet inflicted on you my opinions on the subject of the Viking Funeral.

These opinions are strong.

The movie clip above, from the 1959 Kirk Douglas/Tony Curtis film, “The Vikings,” seems to have strongly influenced popular ideas about how the Vikings handled their dead. When I say, “Viking funeral,” that’s what people imagine. The corpse is placed on a pyre on the ship, the ship is launched out to sea, and the ship is set afire. The hero sails majestically off to Valhalla.

A few minutes’ critical thought will suggest to rational people that this is not a practical scheme.

First of all, you need a favorable wind. While you’re waiting for that (which could take a while) the corpse will be… ripening.

Secondly, the first thing to go up in flames would be the sail, which was generally made of wool impregnated with animal grease. That would go up like a match head. After which – oops! – the ship has no more wind power. Unless the wind is quite strong, the vessel will sit there burning down to the water line. What’s left will probably be left floating.

Or the wind may change and blow the whole thing back to shore and need to be dealt with all over again.

Finally, cremating a corpse is not as easy as most people think. You can’t just place a body on a pile of wood and expect it to be consumed. It takes very intense heat. Einar’s pyre in the movie doesn’t cut it.

In point of fact, we have no historical reports of such a funeral. There are legendary accounts – I know of two, one only similar. The first is in the myth of Baldur, where the god’s funeral ship is treated in just that way. The second is in the poem “Beowulf,” where the legendary Danish king Scyld Scefing is supposed to have been returned to the sea in a ship (he originally appears as a baby in a small boat, sort of like Moses). But that ship doesn’t burn. It just sails away into the other world. The idea is that Scyld came from the sea and is given back to it.

Both these accounts are legendary. The original listeners to the myth and the poem did not view them as how-to guides.

Archaeologists will tell you that there were two primary ways that high-status Vikings were sent off. The use of a ship or boat (or in some cases, an array of rocks placed in a ship shape) was common, and seems to suggest that the Norse believed that the afterlife involved some kind of voyage.

Depending on culture, historical period, and date, the bodies might be cremated before inhumation or not. Many believe that Christian influence was responsible for inhumation gaining popularity over time.

Grave goods were a necessity. The wealth of the family determined how much stuff would be buried with the dead – and there’s some evidence for a custom of ritually digging into graves and removing certain objects after a time.

Human sacrifice seems to have been common in elite funerals, and is attested by some excavated graves. There is no evidence whatever for the portrayal in the History Channel’s Vikings series showing sacrificial victims as free people who willingly volunteered for the job. The best account is the famous one from the Arab diplomat Ibn Fadlan (part of the basis for the movie, “The Thirteenth Warrior”), who described what seems to have been Vikings in Russia (though some historians dispute this identification). He describes the custom (in that particular setting) of a volunteer being called for (no doubt under considerable pressure) from among the slave girls, then being kept drunk (and likely drugged) through the days of the funeral feast, while being serially raped until she was finally stabbed and strangled. Horrific.

Call me narrow-minded, but I prefer the Christian way.

Authors, Non-fiction, Reading

When cultural worlds pass in the hallway

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Still from the trailer for the movie, ‘Bhowani.” Public domain. At least I didn’t post another cover of the Tolkien book.

I’m sorry, I’m going to borrow material from The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien again. Just one more anecdote, I promise you. I think it’s too good to keep to myself – but then I’m a pathetic name-dropper (when I have a name to drop, which is rarely).

Anyway, here’s an story Tolkien relates in a January 9, 1965 letter to his son Michael:

An amusing incident occurred in November, when I went as a courtesy to hear the last lecture of this series of his given by the Professor of Poetry: Robert Graves…. It was the most ludicrously bad lecture I have ever heard. After it he introduced me to a pleasant young woman who had attended it: well but quietly dressed, easy and agreeable, and we got on quite well. But Graves started to laugh; and he said: ‘it is obvious neither of you has ever heard of the other before’. Quite true. And I had not supposed that the lady would ever have heard of me. Her name was Ava Gardner, but it still meant nothing, till people more aware of the world informed me that she was a film-star of some magnitude; and that the press of pressmen and storm of flash-bulbs on the steps of the Schools were not directed at Graves (and cert. not at me) but at her….

Robert Graves was, of course, the author of I, Claudius and various other stuff. Tolkien doesn’t seem to have respected him much, but I’ve omitted his personal comments.

Fiction, Non-fiction

A Bad Star Wars Series Bites the Dust

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We learned this week The Acolyte, a Stars Wars television production, would not get a season two. The Telegraph claimed this shows the world is “bored” of Star Wars, noting fans had turned out for lousy movies in the past despite their later criticism. But there’s a big difference in The Rise of Skywalker (2019) making double its production budget in the US/Canada market and The Acolyte being a show fans refused to watch (if they had Disney+ subscriptions). That difference would be media context.

The Last Jedi (2017) was bad enough of a movie that I didn’t watch The Rise of Skywalker, but plenty of people did. It cost hundreds of thousands more to make and also earned double that in the US/Canada market. Fans hadn’t grown jaded, tired, wary–what’s the right word?–afraid that Disney-owned LucasFilms would deliver a sorry story. They learned to fear through years of disappointment with most of the TV series since. The Mandalorian began well-received, but someone took over season three and tanked it. Fans were hopeful for the 2022 series on Obi-Wan Kenobi and they were disappointed. (Earlier this year, news of the original concept came out and you have to wonder why such a good idea was ruined.) The Book of Boba Fett (2021) was dull. Ahsoka (2023) was poorly written. So it’s easy to understand how interested viewers may have little enthusiasm for The Acolyte before hearing reviews. They wouldn’t find their enthusiasm after hearing it was a such a bad show.

Now, some people are worried the show will be pulled from Disney+ all together.

In other news …

Non-fiction recs: Historian Thomas Kidd has top non-fiction and history books of the twenty-first century. Here’s just one interesting title.

Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England, by Timothy Larsen. “Those who lose their faith (then and now) get the headlines, but Larsen delightfully shows how common it was for English skeptics and freethinkers to come to orthodox Christian faith.”

Poetry: War poetry ‘Some Could, Some Could Not, Shake Off Misery’

Leaf art: Take a minute to browse the images this artist shares of his paper cutting designs applied to leaves. Lito’s (リト) work is incredible.

Authors, Non-fiction, Reading

Odd bits from Tolkien

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And it’s happy Friday to you again, dear Brandywinians. I hope my repeated posts about The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien this week  haven’t bored you – I know Tolkien himself isn’t boring, but my own penchant for finding parallels to my work might easily have become tedious.

As an antidote, I’ll just finish the week out with a few choice quotations from some of the letters:

In reference to a pair of reviews of The Hobbit by C. S. Lewis, published in 1937:

Also I must respect his opinion, as I believed him to be the best living critic until he turned his attention to me, and no degree of friendship would make him say what he does not mean: he is the most uncompromisingly honest man I have met….

From the same letter:

The presence (even if only on the borders) of the terrible is, I believe, what gives this imagined world its verisimilitude. A safe fairyland is untrue to all worlds.

From 1941:

Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the ‘real soul-mate’ is the one you are actually married to.

1943:

Anyway the proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men.

1944:

I should have hated the Roman Empire in its day (as I do), and remained a patriotic Roman citizen, while preferring a free Gaul and seeing good in Carthaginians.

1944:

The future is impenetrable especially to the wise; for what is really important is always hid from contemporaries, and the seeds of what is to be are quietly germinating in the dark in some forgotten corner….

1944:

…Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love.

I think these will do for tonight. Have a blessed weekend!

Non-fiction, Reviews

Review at last: ‘The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien’

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In no circumstances will I agree to being photographed again for such a purpose. I regard all such intrusions into my privacy as an impertinence, and I can no longer afford the time for it. The irritation it causes me spreads its influence over a far greater time than the actual intrusion occupies.

I have finished, at last, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. (I recommend this revised and expanded edition, not the one I read – which is marred by numerous typographical errors and wrongly hyperlinked notes. I found the book, nonetheless, informational, fascinating, and (occasionally) moving.

The main impression it leaves me with, though (I’m afraid), is that (having read this book as well as C. S. Lewis’ complete correspondence) all in all, I’d rather have spent time with “Jack” Lewis than with Tolkien. Lewis was – if only through self-discipline – a more easygoing man, more inclined to suffer fools (like me). This was indeed one of Tolkien’s criticisms of his friend – Lewis was always letting people take advantage of him.

Tolkien, on the other hand, seems to have been rather tetchy. He was thin-skinned and protective of his turf. I get the impression that he nursed a grudge all his life against the Protestants around him, despite having many Protestant friends. He blamed their persecutions, in part, for the early death of his mother, an RC convert. He resented being made to feel like an outsider in his own, beloved country.

Of course, knowing a man’s letters is different from knowing the man. Much of Tolkien’s correspondence deals with business – teaching at Oxford and communicating with his publishers. He was forever behind in his work – he spent decades finishing The Lord of the Rings, and further decades trying to put the Silmarillion in shape, promising his publisher all the way that he’d get back to them as soon as he was finished with grading essays or handling domestic emergencies. (The Silmarillion was finally published after his death.) No doubt the prolonged stress contributed to his occasional short temper.

I was, of course, intrigued by what we learn here of his relations with the other Inklings. I was especially surprised by his early references to Charles Williams, which were more positive than I’d expected. I’d understood that Tolkien mistrusted Williams, but he seems to have gotten along well with him. But he explains this in a long 1965 letter:

I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of C.S.L. whom I met in his company when, owing to the War, he spent much of his time in Oxford. We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels.

He goes on to say of “Jack” himself:

But Lewis was a very impressionable man, and this was abetted by his great generosity and capacity for friendship. The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not ‘influence’ as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby.

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien is well worth reading for any fan of The Lord of the Rings. It will take some time getting through it, but it’s worth it.

Authors, Fiction, Reading

Reading report: ‘The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien’

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Theologically (if the term is not too grandiose) I imagine the picture to be less dissonant from what some (including myself) believe to be the truth. But since I have deliberately written a tale, which is built on or out of certain ‘religious’ ideas, but is not an allegory of them (or anything else), and does not mention them overtly, still less preach them, I will not now depart from that mode, and venture on theological disquisition for which I am not fitted. But I might say that if the tale is ‘about’ anything (other than itself), it is not as seems widely supposed about ‘power.’ Power-seeking is only the motive-power that sets events going, and is relatively unimportant, I think. It is mainly concerned with Death, and Immortality; and the ‘escapes’: serial longevity, and hoarding memory.

(Letter, Oct. 14, 1958, from J. R. R. Tolkien to Rhona Beare)

I’ll have to admit that I’ve always thought that The Lord of the Rings was about the temptations of Power, but Tolkien himself says, in more than one letter in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (which I continue to read), that the story is about death.

Sauron (if I remember correctly) is a Valar, an incarnate angelic being (fallen in his case). He is not the equivalent of Satan, but of a powerful lesser demon. A creature like he (again, if I understand it right) would ordinarily live till the end of the world. But Sauron, as a repeated rebel, has been “killed” and reborn more than once. He knows, or suspects, that if he’s killed again, he’s not coming back in Middle Earth – and he has no reason for hope where his spirit is going after that. He’s struggling to stay alive, even in the hellscape he’s made for himself in Mordor.

Smeagol has been enslaved by the One Ring, and was given (or suffered) extended life thereby – but the life the Ring imparts is not wholesome. Bilbo, who experiences the same thing, says he feels “stretched.” It’s an addiction too – as the pleasure decreases, the craving grows.

Aragorn, on the other hand, who was granted a very long life through his Numenorean blood, will voluntarily lay down his life before it runs out completely. This is regarded as a noble act (not, I’m confident, comparable in any way with assisted suicide).

The elves regard human death as a gift. It’s a mystery to them, but they envy it in a curious way.

These are matters worth pondering, for a man who, like me, is growing old. I can’t say that my whole Erling Saga is about death, but The Baldur Game certainly is. And I was aware of that before I read these letters.

Authors, Fiction, Reading, Writing

Reading report: ‘The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien’

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J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1920s. Photo public domain.

I’m still working my way through The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. It’s quite a long book (though not nearly as long as the 3 volumes of C. S. Lewis’ letters. But this collection makes no claim to being complete).

In any case, the business takes time. So I hope you’ll forgive my giving the book my “reading report” treatment. I suspect there’s enough interest in Tolkien’s work among our readers to warrant multiple posts.

What may strain your tolerance more is my selection of passages from the letters that I relate to my own writing. I’m keenly aware that, even standing on the shoulders of authors like Tolkien and Lewis, I’m shorter than they are. But as I obsess my way through the final stages of producing The Baldur Game, I snatch at any straw of reassurance I can find – or imagine I find.

Anyway, here’s a nice one, from a September 30, 1955 letter to a reader (friend?) named Hugh Brogan. Brogan had written with a criticism of the archaic prose style Tolkien used in The Two Towers. The professor never actually sent this letter, but dispatched a note instead, saying “it would be too long to debate.” But he kept the letter in his files.

He agrees with Brogan’s rejection of what they called “tushery” – the use of archaic words in literature to give an impression of antiquity – words like “tush,” “forsooth,” and “eftsoons.” Victorian writers liked to toss such morsels into their dialogue, but they’re now considered an affectation.

However, Tolkien insists that he does not employ tushery:

But a real archaic English is far more terse than modern; also many of the things said could not be said in our slack and often frivolous idiom.

I jumped at this, because it relates to my own style (in my Viking books). I actually avoid archaic words, unless I can find no modern equivalent. (I’d love to use the word “leif” as an adjective, meaning “to wish to”, for instance. But I don’t think I ever have, because nobody knows the word anymore.)

I’ve actually chosen to simplify my word choices to achieve an antique effect in these books. The general modern writer’s rule, “Don’t use a Latin word when an Anglo-Saxon word will do,” is taken to an extreme. Rather than use a word derived from Latin or French, I’ll sometimes even invent a compound word (in the German fashion) made out of two simple English ones.

In addition, I make use of my knowledge of Norwegian. Norwegian sentences are often constructed differently from the English. I discovered that when I re-cast a sentence in Norwegian word order, I get an effect that “feels” like Old Norse.

I like to think it works. The most satisfying praise I ever got for my writing was back in the 1990s, when a reader told me he looked up from Erling’s Word and was surprised to find himself in the 20th Century.

Fiction, Reading

Reading report: ‘The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien’

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I picked up the first version of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, getting it a bargain rate that day. You, if you want the book, will probably prefer to get the Revised and expanded edition, which has the further advantage of being cheaper (in the Kindle edition) than the one I’m reading (which, aside from containing fewer letters, features an unfortunate number of typos – “orcs” often comes out as “ores,” for instance.

It is, for me, a somewhat emotional read. Though I am not such a coxcomb as to compare my own work to The Professor’s, I can certainly identify – within my limits – with the agonies he went through getting the whole thing written down and published – a process that took something in the neighborhood of two decades. (He openly admits that he probably wouldn’t have finished it without the encouragement, or even the nagging, of C. S. Lewis.)

His publishing history, at least, is almost as complicated as mine. George Allen & Unwin published The Hobbit. They very much wanted a sequel, but when Tolkien went to work, his story expanded in an alarming way. His correspondence with them, over many years, focused on his frequent excuses why he hadn’t been able to do much work, because of obligations at Oxford. Which was no doubt true, especially during the war years. He was also working on the Silmarillion, and he seems to have come to consider that work the real center of the project, with the Lord of the Rings a more peripheral matter. Allen & Unwin were interested in the “Hobbit sequel,” and happy enough to discuss that, whenever it would be finished at last. When they decided against publishing the Silmarillion, Tolkien clearly took offense. When another publisher (Collins) made noises of interest, Tolkien actually tried to push Allen & Unwin away. He says in one letter to them:

My work has escaped from my control, and I have produced a monster: an immensely long, complex, rather bitter, and very terrifying romance, quite unfit for children (if fit for anybody); and it is not really a sequel to The Hobbit, but to The Silmarillion.

But Allen & Unwin didn’t want the Silmarillion (at that point). Then the Collins editor changed his mind, and Tolkien seems to have despaired, having gone from a strong to a weak negotiating position. Eventually Rayner Unwin, his former student, reopened communications, and Tolkien – visibly humbled – agreed at last to let Allen & Unwin publish it without the Silmarillion, and (against his preferences) in three volumes.

The rest is history.

I too know the experience of wrong-footing it with a publisher – without quite so happy an outcome. But I could identify, certainly. One feels so attached to one’s own books that it’s hard to distinguish literary criticism from personal slight. No matter how you try to be objective, it’s hard to keep feelings leashed. The situation is too subjective; there are no landmarks to go by. Especially if you’re slightly unstable – and what author was ever very stable? Publishers must lead frustrating lives and require thick skin, dealing with us. Some of them are rumored to drink, and it’s hard to blame them.

As for my own delayed work The Baldur Game, I’ve got all the notes from my readers now, and am doing (what I hope is) the final read-through. Still waiting for my cover art, which I’m confident will be a masterpiece, and well worth the wait.

Reading, Writing

Swiveling the street signs

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Photo credit: Ernesto Brillo. Unsplash license.

I was reading this particular book, one of those free ones I pick up in promotions. The book had numerous flaws (such as you routinely find in self-published works), but it also showed signs of promise. Not enough research had been done on the historical period in which it was set, but the author seemed to do a good job establishing atmosphere. And I was interested in what would happen to the characters.

But I could not finish the book. I tried. I held out for about a third of its length, and then I had to give it up.

The main problem was punctuation. The author got punctuation wrong in various ways, but particularly in the area of quotation marks. Let me remind you of the rules:

“The rules for quotation marks in dialogue,” said the lecturer, “are as follows. First of all, you start all direct quotations with the aforementioned marks. If the speech involves more than one paragraph, the first paragraph will end with a simple period. The lack of ‘close quotes’ here signals to the reader that more of the same speech is coming up.

“Then you start the next paragraph, once again, with opening quotation marks,” he went on. “And when the speech is done, you finish with ‘close quotes’ to signal that fact.”

The author of this book did not understand these rules. In fact, he got them precisely backwards. It was like driving in a town where some trickster has turned all the street signs 90 degrees. In every patch of dialogue, I had to stop and figure out who was talking now. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to give up reading, even though the story interested me. The author was trying to make me do his work for him.

I don’t entirely blame him. No doubt he’s young and publicly educated, which means he’s been taught little about English. I salute the perseverance with which he must have struggled to do a job (writing a book) for which school had not prepared him in any way.

But it isn’t fair to the reader.

Punctuation has a bad reputation nowadays. It takes work to learn the rules. And rules are unpopular in their own right.

But like Chesterton’s Fence, rules exist for a reason. This author’s inability to deploy quotation marks in a useful way lost him, in my case, both a reader and a review.

This brings semicolons to mind. Semicolons aren’t as vital to comprehension as quotation marks, but they have their proper uses. They too are unpopular today. Many writers have sworn off them. They say that semicolons don’t do anything you can’t do with a period.

But that’s not true. As a reader with a history of reading aloud, radio announcing, and acting, I can tell you that a semicolon serves a subtle but useful purpose. A semicolon indicates a brief pause – perhaps a slight intake of breath — before the speaker goes on to a further – but related – thought.

A period indicates a full stop (indeed, they call them full stops in England). The speaker’s voice tone drops in a way that sounds final. A full breath may be taken.

For a writer, such distinctions can be very useful. I treasure my semicolons; you’ll have to pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Past Transgressions,’ by Dave Sinclair

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A thriller writer’s vocation, when it comes down to it, is simply to write exciting books. All the better if he can write a decent sentence. Any level of wit in the narrative is a definite plus.

So if I wasn’t entirely happy with Dave Sinclair’s Past Transgressions, you can mark it down to personal prejudice on my part. It says nothing about the quality of the work.

Mason Nash, our hero, is a former MI6 assassin who has retired to teach history in a small English town. He believes he has put his past behind him. He’s changed his name and adopted a low profile. He’s even become a Buddhist and sworn off all violence.

But a team of assassins shows up with guns (apparently) to kill him in the pub one evening, and he doesn’t know why. He has no choice but to drop his new life altogether and go on the run. His old habits reassert themselves quickly – and he discovers to his surprise that he’s enjoying it more than he cares to admit.

Past Transgressions soon takes us to South America, to a luxury yacht and to a secret mountain fortress. Nash learns that people from his past are hunting for him for a surprising reason, and he gets drawn into a high-level conspiracy.

As I mentioned above, Past Transgressions is a well-written novel, generally speaking. The prose and dialogue are good, and the characters are well-drawn, and there’s quiet humor here and there.

The plot is somewhat outlandish, in the way of thriller novels, but the action isn’t as over the top you see in many such books, so full marks for restraint there.

My petty personal objections were 1) that I found the hero’s persistent efforts to survive in a bullet-rich environment without killing anybody somewhat annoying. In that world, refusing to kill an attacker is unjust to one’s partners – you could easily get them killed themselves.

2) We have the requisite Girl Boss in the mix here – a gorgeous, deadlier-than-the-male female agent actually named “Eva Destruction.”

3) There’s a veiled political dig at one point, and I think I know where it’s directed. I suppose I should be grateful it wasn’t more explicit.

But mostly I think it was the pacifism that annoyed me. I’m probably prejudiced against Buddhists.

In short, I won’t be reading more books in this series, but I must concede that the author did a good job in terms of his own objectives.