“Studies of the Sagas invariably focus upon the events conveyed in Havamal as either a supernatural occurrence, a construct devoid of historical facts, or, as an historical piece separated from magical elements. Óðinn’s association with the gallows is well attested, equally so, his mastery of the runes. However, so much is taken for granted, and repeated as if written in stone. The Viking World and its peoples and their beliefs have been grossly underestimated and misrepresented. This is partially due to media hype and partially due to lazy scholarship. Largely, it is due to blinkered analysis that fails to apply lateral inclusions. Academia isolates subject matter, dissects it and presents dry reports on its findings. It does not consider context and ignores anomalies.
For example, it is commonly said that the Sagas offer only the briefest glimpse into their world, and that there are so many (impossible) gaps within them, a composite perspective eludes us. But this is not true. There is a wealth of knowledge and information ‘hidden in plain sight.’ Recognising this takes more than a trained eye, it requires a unique understanding that comes only from living those traditions and customs in a truly holistic way. In this way, insight and experience en-flesh and explain the literature and artefacts available to us.
One other major problem with mainstream works is a propensity to take everything ‘as read,’ Nothing is questioned or checked for accuracy or authenticity. Far too many mistakes are repeated verbatim. Popular publishing is concerned with glamour and image above content. It appeals to the lowest common denominator. Brief summaries or abbreviated works, simplified for mass consumption severely restrict content to the extent that superficiality is the mainstay, and this decreases exponentially any opportunity for detailed explanations. This facilitates plagiarism. Not only does this perpetuate the circulation of poor or incorrect information, it fails to provide reliable source material that is often crucial to unlocking clues scattered throughout the Sagas.
Beyond this general overview of the issues of academia and mainstream publishing, there are very specific matters regarding this particular monograph. Etymology is a vital aid to how we process information, not as a cold science of words, but as voices hidden in the text that offer full insight, often revealing an entirely new understanding of intent and purpose.
There is a real dearth of approachable works that ford the resources and research academia has in plenitude. I feel very strongly therefore, that this work is singularly unique in is approach and its conclusions. It is not an easy read; it is not meant for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. It is not written as an introduction to ‘—‘, nor is it a ‘how to—‘ . There is already a plethora of books in circulation that do this, and they all repeat the same material – only the authors change.
In contra-distinction to this, my work offers suggestions, insights, revelations, even challenges for those well-versed in these histories and traditions, who are already familiar with the sagas and skaldic traditions, and who like myself, crave works that advance our knowledge of them even further. This work offers them an opportunity to consider a pioneering, extensively researched concept piece that suggests a very credible and plausible explanation of events, not in isolation, but as contextual, linked aspects of one complex story spread across numerous historical works. As a multi-disciplinary approach is provides new ideas that can be discussed and explored by smaller interest groups who are poorly served by modern publishers.
“The discovery of the stone quarrying tools, which date to the approximate time of the construction of the first stone phase of the monument (c 2900BC), proves beyond reasonable doubt for the first time that Neolithic people quarried the Welsh stones that ended up being used to build the world’s most famous prehistoric temple.
But why did the builders of Stonehenge want to get their standing stones from 175 miles away when they could have used perfectly good local stones from Salisbury Plain?
“FDA officially warns against buying young blood. There is truly no data that says it’s helpful for humans” — Angela Chen, The Verge; from the Not-With-That-Attitude dept.
“Cognitive decline prevented in old mice with a dose of young bone marrow” — Rich Hardy, New Atlas; from the Red-Red-Wine dept.
“Tar for Mortar offers an in-depth exploration of one of literature’s greatest tricksters, Jorge Luis Borges. His short story ‘The Library of Babel’ is a signature examplar of this playfulness, though not merely for the inverted world it imagines, where a library thought to contain all possible permutations of all letters and words and books is plumbed by pious librarians looking for divinely pre-fabricated truths. One must grapple as well with the irony of Borges’s narration, which undermines at every turn its narrator’s claims of the library’s universality, including the very possibility of exhausting meaning through combinatory processing.
Borges directed readers to his non-fiction to discover the true author of the idea of the universal library. But his supposedly historical essays are notoriously riddled with false references and self-contradictions. Whether in truth or in fiction, Borges never reaches a stable conclusion about the atomic premises of the universal library — is it possible to find a character set capable of expressing all possible meaning, or do these letters, like his stories and essays, divide from themselves in a restless incompletion?
Tarot Goblinko by Sean Äaberg, from Goblinko; is a Dark Fantasy Medieval Punk Tarot Deck successfully crowdfunded [also], is currently sold out in pre-order on the Goblinko site, but pre-orders appear to still be available over on Backerkit; however, the deck may be on hold indefinitely whilst the artist recovers from a severe cerebellar stroke back in September 2018.