{"id":18614,"date":"2023-08-21T20:16:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T00:16:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18614"},"modified":"2023-08-21T20:16:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T00:16:22","slug":"the-battle-of-holy-river-youtube-and-seraffyns-european-adventure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18614","title":{"rendered":"The Battle of Holy River, YouTube, and &#8216;Seraffyn&#8217;s European Adventure&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"A Huge Adventure: Sailing NORTH to SCANDINAVIA\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/3pHDnhnaosU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>There\u2019s a sort of a book review<\/strong> hidden in this rambling post, somewhere further on, but to start with I just want to bellyache a little about how much I\u2019m suffering my art. Which is writing novels, in case you\u2019ve forgotten due to all the time I take between publications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m happy to say that, to my own surprise, I\u2019ve been keeping up my new regimen of getting up at 6:30 a.m. to write. My goal, nothing superhuman, is 1,000 words a day, and most days I do at least that much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But right now I\u2019ve been slowed down a little. From time to time my story runs up against actual historical events and real locations, and that calls for research. Stuck in the 20<sup>th<\/sup> Century though I am in spirit, I have to admit that the internet provides opportunities that weren\u2019t available back when I wrote <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Year-Warrior-Lars-Walker-ebook\/dp\/B00BXKFXI0\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=33FHNWIZ0X6TV&amp;keywords=the+year+of+the+warrior+walker&amp;qid=1692662824&amp;sprefix=the+year+of+the+warrior+walker%2Caps%2C247&amp;sr=8-1&amp;tag=brandbooks-20\">The Year of the Warrior<\/a><\/em> (which, if you don\u2019t recall, was only about twenty years after the events in the story).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My challenge is to describe a voyage by Erling Skjalgsson, under the leadership of King Knut of Denmark\/England, to the Baltic Sea to attack King Olaf Haraldsson (St. Olaf) of Norway. I have to get them through the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, the entrances to the Baltic, and into the Limfjord, where the saga says Knut gathered his fleet. And then over to present-day Sweden (the border of Sk\u00e5ne, which was Danish at the time) to fight the Battle of <em>Helge \u00e5<\/em> (Holy River). There Olaf pulls off a clever (but slightly confusing) stratagem that I\u2019ll have to work out too. I might mention that historians disagree about the actual location of the battle \u2013 there are two Holy Rivers in Sweden, and a third site has also been proposed (purely, I think, out of meanness). I believe I\u2019m going to stay with the traditional site unless somebody makes a strong argument to change my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, the great thing I\u2019ve \u201cdiscovered\u201d (and by discovered I mean figured out long after all the other writers did) is YouTube videos. The best resource I found is a series of videos called <em>Sailing Magic Carpet<\/em> (Episode 1 above), produced by a young couple (I think they might actually be married, which is nice) taking a sailboat into the Baltic. They sail the Limfjord the wrong way for my purposes (it had no western mouth during the Viking Age), but they still provide a lot of vicarious experience with sailing conditions and topography. Unfortunately, they sail up the wrong coast of Sweden for my purposes, but still the videos were useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They also recommended a book called <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Seraffyns-European-Adventure\/dp\/B00R1WR59O\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=319J3BIPI1W7O&amp;keywords=seraffyn%27s+european+adventure&amp;qid=1692659873&amp;sprefix=seraffyn%2Caps%2C498&amp;sr=8-1&amp;tag=brandbooks-20\">Seraffyn\u2019s European Adventure,<\/a><\/em> by Lin and Larry Pardey. This book describes a similar voyage made back in the late 1970s by the Pardeys, in a pilot boat built by Larry himself. Lin was a very good writer, and she does an excellent job describing a simpler \u2013 but more dangerous \u2013 voyage, back before satellite navigation. Recommended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think I may be able to get back to 1,000 words a day tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s a sort of a book review hidden in this rambling post, somewhere further on, but to start with I just want to bellyache a little about how much I\u2019m suffering my art. Which is writing novels, in case you\u2019ve forgotten due to all the time I take between publications. I\u2019m happy to say that, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=18614\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Battle of Holy River, YouTube, and &#8216;Seraffyn&#8217;s European Adventure&#8217;<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,1,17],"tags":[4850,4849,4851,4414,4853,4852],"class_list":["post-18614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-larry-pardey","tag-lin-pardey","tag-sailing-magic-carpet","tag-the-baldur-game","tag-the-baltic-sea","tag-the-battle-of-holy-river"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18616,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18614\/revisions\/18616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}