Elsinore (and Saxo Grammaticus)

Two weeks after Elsinore and I'm still brooding over Saxo Grammaticus.

Have you reread Saxo lately (you never ask an intellectual if he has read anything; only if he has reread it lately)? Huh? Have you? Ah, I suspected as much. But you do recall that Saxo is recognized as the first Danish historian; his Gesta Danorum was completed early in the 13^th Century, and serves, inter alia, as the source of Shakespeare's Hamlet. This you knew; but have you ever actually paid attention to Saxo's telling of the Saxo tale,ever actually thought through what it was for Shakespeare to use it as a source?  No, me neither, at least not until this week when my mind ran aground on the topic. Now, this may be old stuff to the cognoscenti, but it just now sank in on me and I can't let go of it. The thing is—the thing is I think I said before that we can regard Shakespeare, without a particle of disrespect, as the world's greatest rewrite man. Almost everything he wrote was swiped from somebody else. But the point is that everything he swiped he made better; every time he looked at a potential source, you can hear him saying “I see possibilities here”--and finding them.

I remarked before how the Danish locale of Saxo's Hamlet (Saxo calls him “Amleth”) is enough in itself to add power to Shakespeare's theatre—the unsettling energy of English adversary and forebear. But now look at Saxo's text (there's a serviceable version here, though not the one Shakespeare used). But you take a look at the original, you can see it is far more than that. . You can see, first, that Saxo offered far more than the bare revenge plot. Rather, it appears that many, perhaps most, of the scenes we remember in the play are already adumbrated in the old narrative. But most important, you can see that everything Shakespeare took from Saxo, he made into something entirely his own. 

Or perhaps better, “our own.” Serious critics have remarked on the fact that Hamlet appeared just about half way through Shakespeare's public career. They've made the point that he seems to be telling us everything he has learned in the tumultuous stage decade that has gone before. Harold Bloom says (I quote from memory) that Hamlet/Shakespeare taught us what it was to be human. And it comes forth from the seed planted in the mists of time.

Bonus: you can also see, refreshingly, how interwoven Shakespeare's artistry is with the ordinary work of the stage. You can see that the “plot”of this masterpiece isn't that much: rather, what we have here is a series of scenes—scenes in most of which the actor gets to test his chops, and to assemble the first great modern sensibility. It all helps you to understand why they say that any actor who gets to play Hamlet goes into heaven by a separate door. Saxo himself seems to have anticipated the point:

O valiant Amleth, and worthy of immortal fame, who being shrewdly armed with a feint of folly, covered a wisdom too high for human wit under a marvelous disguise of silliness! and not only found in his subtlety means to protect his own safety, but also by its guidance found opportunity to avenge his father. By this skillful defense of himself, and strenuous revenge for his parent, he has left it doubtful whether we are to think more of his wit or his bravery.

You can say that again. Rather, Shakespeare did say it again, but with a force and insight that Saxo could barely have understood.

Back-of-the-Envelope on the Kroner

I did a bit of Googling last night and satisfied myself that the Norwegian kroner is indeed one of the most overvalued currencies in the world, perhaps to the tune of 80 percent--for ease of computation, assume 100 percent,  or a factor of two.  For the Norwegian Kroner, assume a price of five--lower than what Google says but rounded down for convenience and to take account of exchange rates.  Which is to say, if we got twice as many kroner for our dollar--say 10 instead of five. 

So: we just paid 180 kroner for an appealing but very modest lunch  At the going rate, that pencils out to about $26.  Divide by two and you get $13 which is more or less what you would expect at the Palookaville price..

Next question is, of course, what do these numbers mean for the ordinary Norwegian?   I suspect the answer is not very much    I'm having a tough time laying my hands on the data just now but I suspect the average Norwegian has more or less as easy a time buying Big Macs or Iphones as people in the US. 

So what has made the kroner so %^&$! expensive?  I want to say "oil"--money pouring in to finance the Norwegian oil boom  The objection to my suggestion is that Denmark and Sweden are pretty expensive too, and they don't have any oil.   In my favor I can say that Norway seems to be even more expensive than the other two.  This boils down to saying that they have exported the inflation you might expect from the oil boom to foreign investors (and tourists) in the form of higher exchange rates.

I really can't blame them for that but it does make me wonder--something of the same sort seems to have happened  to the Netherlands when they brought in their gusher.  The Netherlanders complain that the oil was a poisoned chalice in that the rising cost of Dutch investment sucked capital out of so many competing Dutch projects.  Yet I don't hear any similar complaint about Norway  Am I missing something?  Could it be that Norway just doesn't have that many competing projects to begin with?  Or--?

Longboats, etc.

I've spent a good bit of time these past few days admiring Viking longboats, warrior halls, stave churches and suchlike. It's a humbling exercise because you have to admit that along with rape and pillage—well, they also loot, but along with all of that, you would have to admit that by, say, 850 AD or so, these guys were by some measures among the most successful civilizations on the planet. Yes, I'm thinking about the longboat and its kin: these vessels really are marvels of engineering. They're seaworthy (of course) but beyond that, in various avatars they are swift and efficient. By “seaworthy,” I mean they can get you all the way to Newfoundland more times than not, and one has to marvel at the generations of evolving craftsmanship went into the final product.

Aside from the vessels, the most noteworthy avatar is the great hall—the place for warrior powwows. They look like upside down longboats and the resemblance may be more than accidental: my friend Ken says, “if you can build a longboat, you can build anything.” One is tempted to ask, which (great hall or longboat) came first. The answer may be “neither:” maybe they co-evolved, each one profiting from the other's technical advance.

The stave churches are a somewhat different matter. They're wood, and so terribly vulnerable to fire (the one I saw yesterday has discreetly placed 21C sprinklers). They're made to look like stone churches or cathedrals; the “staves” are the “columns.” As with any derivative architecture, you have to wonder how much of this product consists of design elements that once served a functional purpose, but serve one no longer. Specifically, the columns—are they weight-bearing or only decorative? On superficial appraisal, I couldn't tell.

But hang all that and let me tell you about what might be the coolest of northland inventions: the barrel. Recall how the ancients, notably the Phoenicians, carpet-bombed the Mediterranean with amphorae full of wine and olive oil and whatnot. But amphorae are heavy; they don't contain a lot and they are frustratingly vulnerable to breakage. Enter the barrel, which pips them on all counts.

And where do we get the barrel? Ha, compare the longboat. They're both made of planks, seasoned and sealed. The barrel is much more “seaworthy” than the amphora, in that they are capable of holding more, easier to move and much harder to break, but conceptually a longboat it is. 

 

Or maybe I have it backwards; maybe the barrel is really the father of them all.

 

Fn.: much as I admire the technical skill of the people who developed all this stuff, I must put in a good word for the adventurers who found the hulks on ocean bottoms and hoicked them to the surface and hauled them to a museum and reassembled them without losing the whole project to  heap of rubble.

Gutnish? (aka "Center and Periphery")

So we're checking in from Gotland off the Swedish coast, where they like to think they are not quite part of Sweden and that the language is not quite Swedish.  I was chatting with a long-timer (lifer?) and I asked:  When you do to Stockholm, do they know where you are from the moment you open your mouth.  His response

Well, you know, language changes in the center a lot faster than it does at the periphery.  What we speak here is closer to Old Norse, more or less what they still speak in Iceland.  When I go to Stockholm, I speak English.

Apparently there is a recognized local language, though whether that was what my host had in mind is perhaps a moot point. But that stuff about center and periphery--is it true, I wonder? Perhaps it is a corollary to the proposition that fringe populations are more severe in the politics than those at the center because they find themselves by a beleaguered frontier spirit.
 

Women, Viking and Others

Women in the Viking world,  how did they do?  Were they just chattels, baggage, or did they have a life of their own?

On the surface, you'd have to say they didn't have much.  Best   I can tell, there is none but the most trivial evidence of women in raiding parties and suchlikw; more, but not a lot, by way of female grave goods.  I don't hear of any important Viking-age queens, though I gather the royal line might descend through the female to her son.

But on closer scrutiny, there's more to the story.  The elephant in the room is that Vikings by nature were voyagers, which is to say "away from home."  Somebody--guess who--had to manage the home place: a job that must necessarily have accumulated some power and discretion.  And not just day-to-day, either: we're in a world of long frozen winters. Somebody had better see to it that the fish get salted, that the hay gets seasoned and stowed away (actually, it blows my mind that people developed an agricultural surplus as well as they did under such hostile conditions).

All that set my mind to wandering (Viking-style?) to other societies where men are absent.  Kerala, for example, famously low in wealth, high in social well-being--a place where men are off at sea most of the time and women run things at home.  Or Switzerland, where the relatively orderly settlement of social conflict may owe something to the fact that the testosterone-poisoned young bucks were off doing mercenary service in somebody else's army.  Contrast WWII Poland and Ukraine, where the Germans shot most of the middle-aged social glue, and left behind bands of youngsters whose skill set did not extend much beyond weaponry.

Which makes you understand why the Viking lands were such a peacef--oh, right,  strike that.  They certainly didn't look peaceful  when they showed up at Lindesfarne or the laid Siege to Paris.  And it seems that when they weren't looting and pillaging, they were whaling the tar out of each other.  Hm.  Well, maybe life on the home place was quiet even so.  Or maybe not.

The Thing

From a marker by a Swedish burial mound:

The Thing took place at Anundshög all through the Middle Ages.  This was a meting point for the local inhabitants.  The Thing settled legal disputes, e.g., concerning the ownership of land. or other property, and it sentenced criminals.  During the 1450s the Thing was moved to Badelunda Church, one kilometre further north.

Elevator music in a Stockholm hotel:

She had a dream 'bout the King o' Sweden
'Cos he had a Thing that she be needin.'

Up to now, the only Thing on my radar  was the giant carrot from outer space.

Instead of Smoking It?

Please walk on the grass.

For the "Chivalry" Page of your Underbelly Scrapbook

I know it is a total cheap shot to make fun of people's efforts with a language not their own but here is an item that deserves more honor than derision: a Swedish lady of my acquaintance referred to the "thug of war." Obviously she was thinking of the game you play with a dozen or so half-drunk partiers at opposite ends of a rope, but I want to take her locution more seriously.  "Thug of War."  Isn't that exactly the kind of item we ought to include int he annals of world Chivalry, alongside the Order of the Garter (say) or the Order of Polonia Restituta?  We could even strike off a little ribbon. The investiture ceremony could be carried out at The Hague.

[The same speaker mentioned "a chapel desecrated to the Virgin Mary."  Now that one takes more thought.]

Who Was that Masked Man, I Wanted to Thank Him....

I've spent more of my life than is entirely wholesome wandering around the interiors of Medieval European Cathedrals: on documents that ask me to declare a church preference, I tend to write “Gothic.” But here's a new one on me: Uppsala domkyrka, the Cathedral at Uppsala in Sweden, seat of the Archbishop-primate. From the outside, it's not especially to my taste: a bit too dour and overbearing, the result, perhaps of an aggressive, some might say “savage,” restoration in the 19th Century.

But the interior, particularly the shape of the interior—height, width and related dimensions: I'd say it's wonderful, right up there with the best of the best.

So necessarily the question arises: whom do we have to thank for this miracle? Who was the master builder, and where did he learn his trade?

And the answer, so I am told: we have no idea. Nlo bills no contracts, no lawsuits, nothing.  But think of all the detailed knowledge we have about so many of the great builders on the European landmass (or in England, for that matter). Then compare Uppsala: we have to file it a one more item on the asset ledger of ”anon.” Good work, anon. Thanks for leaving it to us.

Found in Translation

From the window display at the English language bookstore just a heartbeat away from the campus at Uppsala, Sweden's esteemed and venerable university.

Update: Oh, it's a joke, a bit of new-age marketing to which I gave unintentional free publicity. Apparently there is a whole line of them.  Ah well, funny anyway, IMO.

Swedish Miscellany

• My mother came from a Swedish family.  I took her back here for a brief visit when she was in her 70s--younger than am now, actually.  She kept remarking on how poor the Swedes were.  I can testify that this is a view that needs revision.

• Based on my experience with my mothers' family, I had thought that Swedes lived on coffee.   But I've seen more instant here this week than any place I've been in years.

• Best Swedish beer so far is from Prague, but I'm open to correction.

• I'm not tall but this week I feel short.

• Do Swedes own cars?  If so, where do they keep them?  If not, how do they get to their beloved country cottages?

• Almost the only Swedes I see smoking are women.  Coincidence?

• This really is a place where you see men doing solo care of small children. And apparently with success.

• Do Swedes commute by bikes in the winter?  If not, where are the car parking lots near the train station?    And where do they store the bikes?

• Why are there no Swedish laundromats?  Is it because they wear nothing but shorts and pullovers?  But then, what do they wear in the winter?

Followup note to the New York Crank: Grand Central is not a train station.  It is a high end food court with commuter service.  Penn is a train station.  And as the poet says, Lead us Not into Penn Station.

Not Bad Boys, Just Misunderstood

“Those Viking raids: I think they were misunderstood.” Sven—his name have to have been Sven—took another Swig on his Duges Perfect Idjit. “I think those Viking raids were misunderstood. First thing, they weren't 'raids.' We were just on—how you say--'flyttande år.'  We're on walkabout, on holiday, on spring break.   They'd show us their bowmen and we'd give em a look at a good Viking broadaxes--wonderful blade on those on those babies, could do some real harm if you ever got mad.  But no: we'd sample some of the local brews. We'd get acquainted with a few of the girls down there and if a few of them got, like, 'carried away,' why where's the harm in that? Kind of a cultural exchange. Bartender, another brewski, ja?”

 Vikings:  just misunderstood.