5x5

pachyderm: Icelandic cliff-face looks like an elephant

hello – you have found my shop of rare and wonderful things: Super Mario style map of Twin Peaks

glyph-list: latest issue of emojis to supplement your vocabulary, via Kottke’s quicklinks 

det var helt texas: in Norwegian vernacular, the state’s name signifies being unbalanced

hot or not: Canadian prime-ministers ranked

5x5

miss cellany: eccentric, vintage beauty titles

cross-over: bizarro universe celebrity guest stars

high-tension: creative engineers turn Iceland’s pylons into colossal works of art

letterbox format: French museum displays tiny, detailed recreations of movie sets

blue-light special: retail sound-track circa 1989-1993 preserved for posterity

fire and ice or fisher king

Vice magazine interviews a pair of questors, one Italian cryptographer and Dante Alighieri scholar and one British psychic, who’ve been inspired to seek out the Holy Grail in remote part of Iceland based on certain clues and allusions found in the epic poem the Divine Comedy and an entry in the national register that mentions a mysterious delegation who met with statesman and fellow poet, Snorri Sturluson. This meeting took place during the height of the Crusades in the Holy Land and it’s supposed that these uniformed strangers were the Knights Templar, guardians of the Grail, and hid this cache of knowledge on the island for safe-keeping. What an idea—though there are much stranger legends. Quests, of course, have established objectives but part of the adventure is in the journey and this sounds like one I’d like to tag along for.

five-by-five

huldufólk: elf-conservationists are stalling construction projects all over Iceland

pink punk: fun renditions of the theme from Blake Edwards’s Pink Panther

upstairs, downstairs: amazing and intricate stairwell concept models

the ballad of max headroom: rewritten by machine on new technology 

pick-ups, perfume and pasta: fifteen commercial ventures directed by David Lynch

five-by-five

píratar: Iceland’s dominant Pirate Party may extend shelter and citizenship to the Fugitive

kinematografii: a collection of vintage Czechoslovakian film posters

3 quarks for muster mark: some of the invented words of author James Joyce

birds’ eye: an eagle presents Dubai as he descends to his trainer below

be mine: camera embedded in a ring box captures marriage proposals from a face-forward perspective

afturköllun

The Foreign Ministry has informed the European Union that it will no longer be pursuing its bid of accession into the supranational monetary and trade pact.

The nation of just over three-hundred thousand residents made their bid to join the EU in 2009, just as the people were mounting a revolt, spurned by the global hedonism of speculation in investment markets that ravaged the otherwise sufficient and partaking economy that threatened to a generation without prospects and marginalise Iceland. This announcement, while doubtless a popular one and a decision to be respected by all sides ultimately, did however come from a minister who had tried before to unilaterally derail talks who committed his government without the clearance or consent of parliament. Though there is probably no chance that the minister will be made to eat his words, circumventing democratic processes does seem like rather a big deal, and though the EU remains outwardly chipper, I think it might be doing so through clenched-teeth.

bathwater or hearty and hale

A strange twaining of two articles that I read about cultural norms—well the first is more an ageless tradition while the second is maybe a marketing gimmick.

In Iceland, not even the most fretful first time parent would bat an eye about leaving their babies, safely cocooned out of doors to doze in sub-zero temperatures while at home or on the go, strollers left seemingly unattended, but the Icelanders and all the Nordic peoples having assuredly developed—out of custom, extra-sensory perception to know baby’s comfortable and safe, lining the sidewalks in front of shops and cafes. Of course, this fuss-adverse method and exposing the infants to the elements is happily spartan, better equipping them to handle the cold and dark winters through their lives. The other example, a US patent for a baby-cage, came at a time before helicopter-parenting, and while I suppose it never caught on, I bet home-makers liked the little bit of extra space. I imagine that the air outside, however, in the areas where high-rise apartment dwellers lived was not the best quality and nowadays only window unit air-conditioners are perched precariously on the sides of buildings.

lucas with the lid off or to speak franc

While I cannot say for certain if this studied, lucid article from Quartz transparently lays out absolutely everything one need know about the Swiss decision to untether its currency from the euro, but I believe it is a very good and accessible primer. With economic crises unsettled elsewhere in 2011, the CHF became quite an attractive berth for one’s cash—leading to weakened exports and relative, domestic inflation, and in order to hold the exchange rate at less seductive levels, the Swiss federal bank began printing more money to buy up foreign dollars, euros and roubles to keep matters in check.

That’s really the only way a nation can interview to control exchanges rights—it cannot issue a mandate for price controls but only act indirectly. Arguably, it is the same pyramid scheme that the US Federal Reserve is chancing to shore up the dollar—although America is doing so with the repurchase of its own debts rather than foreign currencies but both vehicles may fail to retain their worth meanwhile. The huge amount of Swiss wealth converted to euros, et al gives the franc grave exposure, meaning more deflation and trade problems, especially with the concession to standard operating procedures elsewhere that the European Union may allow for quantitative easing (printing money) itself in order to prevent an ailing Greece and a fit but scorned Iceland from leaving the Euro-zone.

small arms

A tragic break with tradition happened last year when for the first and only time in living-memory, possibly for the first time ever, police in Reykjavik were forced to shoot and kill a criminal after being fired upon themselves. Though the act of self-defense on the part of the officers was justifiable, an apology was subsequently issued to the family of the fugitive shooter. In a nation where weapons-ownership is relatively high so is mutual respect for human life, and I pray that is not just an aberration and that the same sense of peace can be fostered elsewhere. I think in general, though, that their guns ought to be taken away since we’re mostly capable of only treating them as play-things.

carolus simplex ou roman-savon

Meanwhile back in France, the hopes pinned to Charlemagne soon faded as his children and his children’s children began to squabble over the right to rule and supremacy.
The Carolingian dynasty, named not for Charlemagne but his line’s founder majordomo and usurper Charles Martel (Karl der Hammer) who persuaded the Pope in Rome, wrestled his blessing away from the Merovingians by primarily sending in an army to liberate Rome from the Lombards—and secondarily, rebuffing the advance of the Islamic Caliphate in the year 732 after the Sack of Bordeaux in the Battle of Tours, but I believe Charles the Great (Karl der Grosse) was an honorific earned by this descendant rather than just another choice epithet to distinguish him from a number of similarly named male heirs, whom by all accounts lived up to their sobriquets.
Though called the Father of Europe, as emperor of much of France, Germany and Italy and instituting many social and educational reforms, his offspring could not live up to those high standards, and regressing towards the old Gallic custom of dividing up a land among the children, the kingdoms soon splintered among the slow and doltish with no allegiance on the part of the aristocracy—returning the lands of the Franks to the fractured environment it had under the impotent Merovingian kings. Charles the Fat, Louis the Stammerer, Charles the Bald, Louis the Pious and Louis the Blind vied over successive generations over control of a divided western France, the Middle Kingdom of Lorraine and eastern German lands—the region still called Franconia.
The parallels to the Roman problems with succession and stability are interesting, and there be an opposite antagonizing principle at work here: the Romans restored to adult-adoption to pick their beneficiary—not out of noble illusions of meritocracy over family, but rather, for those hundreds of years, incredibly none fathered a son that survived to rule, and contrarily, it seemed that the Franks were too prolific and produced sons that divided and sub-divided the realms.  It was not until the summer of the year 911 that events started to coalesce and reunited the lands of Western Europe. After having paid-off the Viking raiders to leave Frankish cities and ports alone and take their pillaging elsewhere, they stuck to the English coasts for a time until Alfred’s fortified cities and policies that led to cultural inclusion again made France the more attractive target. This beggar-thy-neighbour and bribery exacerbated the situation and the Vikings became bolder and more demanding.
This was another worse-practise tactic that the Franks took from the Roman playbook. Desperate and bankrupt, the French watched in horror as a raiding party made its way down the Seine to sack Paris with their monarch unable to raise an army. The city, however, mounted its own defenses and eventually, miraculously beat back the invaders. The monarch nearly snatched defeat from the clutches of a hard-won and tense victory by refusing to negotiate with the Vikings and just offering some more silver to make themselves scarce. Outraged, the aristocracy deposed the monarch, electing to install the hero of the Siege of Paris, Odo, who made a truce with the Viking commander Rollo (Hrólfr) and allowed his tribe to settle (in exchange for fending off attacks by any Norse brethren) in the area that would be called Normandy. Rollo, converting, to Christianity, was styled Robert I, Duke of Normandy. After the nobles grew weary with the worshipful Odo, they elevated another Carolingian to the throne, a son of the previous monarch called Charles the Simple. In this context, simple meant guileless and a straight-shooter but the elite soon tired of this frankness as well.

troll the ancient yuletide carol

Mental Floss has an excellent, brief grammar lesson about the finer and arcane points of English syntax frozen as it were in the lines of traditional Christmas songs. It was certainly a fun and lively read and causes one to think of other examples, quirky little conventions that reveal how language evolves.

The etymological curiosity in the word troll, sometimes sung as toll or trawl, is especially interesting, as it reflects both Anglo-Saxon roots and the more familiar mage in later Norse influences. In the sense of the carol, it reflects Old English origins, prior to the arrival of the Vikings, to go about or to stroll. The connection with fishing, a drag-net, also extends from this source. The sense of a monstrous creature has old Germanic roots and though the English had their own words for native orcs and demons, they borrowed the word of the newcomer. Perhaps the two meanings again converge in the ultimate sense of a horrid individual who is trawling for attention with nasty comments. English did borrow a lot of basic vocabulary from the Scandinavian languages, and interestingly what’s been retained of—or edged out by—Norse terminology are words with an overwhelmingly negative connotations, which probably bespeaks their uneasy cohabitation: anger, awkward, blunder, bug, crook, cur, death, dirt, dregs, gawk, heathen, Hell, irk, mire, muck, muggy, odd, outlaw, rotten, skull, slaughter, thwart, ugly, weak and wrong—to name a few. Of course, there are numerous exceptions, too—like that word Yule, for the midwinter months and associated festivities, which was later appropriated by the Christians.

six-penny or landed-gentry

Absent Roman influence and insular trading practices, the British Isles were relative late-comers to fiat currency, which perpetuated the tradition role of kingship that had existed among the Germanic tribes even as kingdoms grew beyond the tribal clan. Essentially without coinage—though some charters did exist for so called moneyiers to produce crude blanks of specie for trading purposes, the old ways of the continental Saxons held with the king collecting tribute from peasants, whom were otherwise free, in the form of conscription and an annual food tax, figured on the size and arability of their parcel of land. Of course being a French term, the farmers in Britain did not pay taxes, though the concept is pretty universal, but rather a mol or male—which incidentally is the source of the idea of blackmail, given that there were bullying vigilantes who tried to supplement the king’s army and forced individuals to pay up for extra protection—blaichmol, protection rent, rather than the alledged latter day practise of posting letters of extortion in darkly coloured envelopes so the receiver did not know where the stamp was canceled. Matters, however, began to change for England with the Norman Invasion, who reintroduced economic policy and a currency over barter system that they had inherited from the Romans. The Normans, through the Franks, also employed some housekeeping methods that the Romans had failed to comprehend, which led to hyper-inflation and the eventual collapse of the Empire. Though Emperor Diocletian had made a good-faith effort to round up all the destructive and worthless currency he could managed, these gestures fell short.
The Franks and later the English, however, were more savvy about the face-value of coins, and began to issue legal-tender with an expiration date that better ensured that there would be no runaway inflation. Say shepherd Dagofirþ had earned sixty shillings—twelve pence (the penny being named for former uniting force Penda, with no relation to the Welsh dynasty of Pendragons from Arthurian lore) to a shilling and twenty shilling to a Pound (£ being a symbol for libre pondo from the Latins) having derived from the French style of twelve denier to the solidus (being the wage a soldier) and twenty of these to a livre—and in order to keep what he earned current, he must redeem his coins after three years at the counting-house of his liege, King Æþelƹorn. Dagofirþ, however, might be surprised to find he is only getting back, say, three-and-fifty shillings in the new, up-to-date coinage, minus some administrative costs of mining and minting the silver in Æþelƹorn’s good name, plus as a mechanism for market-corrections if, say, there had been a poor grain harvest or royal ransoms to pay. It was clever and responsible on the part of the government to cast such bounds over money, but after its introduction, matters escalated rather quickly. Pretty soon, Dagofirþ could not manage to keep up with his obligations to his family with his devalued coin, and so so luckier personage, a apiarist who had connections perhaps with that blackmailing crowd, named BeǷofief, graciously steps in and offers to help Dagofirþ in his plight. BeƐofief will be responsible for the shortcomings (and profit) in exchange for holding title to the land Dagofirþ was working for Æþelƹorn directly. Many of BeǷofief’s peers got keen to this scheme as well, and soon the an aristocratic class of landed-gentry was formed, that alienated the worker from his king and keep and came to be called the feudal system. A hierarchy of counts, dukes, earls, barons was soon established that all compounded this estranging effect and put more distance between the monarch and subject.  Rich with actual money that resembled coinage encountered elsewhere, England soon entered in the world stage as a trading partner, with suppliers pleased to receive legitimate-looking money in exchange instead of pledges, rough-hewn coins, or bushels of perishable turnips. This success, however, was also soon to attract the notice of their former neighbours, the Vikings occupying lands adjacent in Scandinavia, from whence the Anglo-Saxons vacated, and soon summoned raiding parties from across the seas, thinking these wealthy lands might be easy targets.

lycanthrope or heutoscopic

I had always thought that the majority of the corporeal menagerie of beastly creatures could be chalked-up to dull glances and keen imaginations, like witnessing the novelty of horseback riding and constructing the centaur—to be later embellished with a mythological pedigree and literary tradition.
I am learning, however, that chimera—and not just to philosophically quizzical kind from Greek lore (like our old friend, poor sad Cyclopes, whom was just a normal oafish giant until he traded one eye for the ability to see into the future—however, that gift of foresight was limited to being able to see his time of death), often carry a pretty heady cerebral burden as well, which may not have followed too long after or may well be the manifestations our mental-constructs were looking to project.  I had believed that werewolves and were-bears (Beowulf means bee-hunter or rather honey-bear) were frightened hearsay from survivors who had encountered fierce warriors who dressed in animal skins and head-dresses, and while that may be the original inspiration from an outside perspective, there was also something highly ritualistic and complex going on for those who donned and doffed the pelts themselves. Like the game-face of the brutal Achaean fighter Ajax, the ancient Vikings also had a tradition of working themselves into a frenzied rage before going into battle, making themselves berserk.

These possessed Berserkers were named after the bear-shirts that the wore and fought with super-human strength. From the psychological perspective of the Germanic peoples, however, the warrior was not transformed into an animal—at least not in a straightforward manner. These people put stock in the belief of out-of-body experiences and though the human soul, which was taken to be a shadow of its corporeal self—a Doppelgänger, would vacate the body to allow an animal spirit to inhabit it and the displaced human soul popped up somewhere else, usually as one of the relief crew sleeping through the first phase of the skirmish while its Berserker-self was engaged in the fight. Heutoscopy is the clinical term for seeing one’s divided self. It was a very bad omen to encounter one’s own evil twin, and usually the strength was sapped from both.

immrama or beyond the beyond

Though the Turkish president is facing some unfair ridicule for claiming that the relationship between the Islamic world and Latin America is a far more ancient one, Ireland stakes an even older title with the legendary voyages of Saint Brendan of Tralee.
Though the saint never stated that America was the Earthly Paradise (another candidate is La Palma in the Canaries), the Isles of the Blessed he was charged with finding by an angel for having been skeptical about an account of miracles and strange beings, Brendan does have a dedicated society of believer advocating his discovery preceded even that of Leif Erickson and the Vikings. Having embarked on this immram (the Irish word for a seafaring odyssey), the abbot assembled a cast of fellow monks (plus a few naysayers for good measure) may not have reached the Americas—though that is a matter of debate and faith—but came across many other curious places along the way. It is told that the adventures camped one evening on the back of a slumbering sea-monster, the aspidochelone, having mistook it for an island, make landfall on the island of the Birds of Paradise that sing like a choir of angels, encounter other monastic communities—including a hermit who has lived in the elements for sixty years draped only in his own hair and taken care of by an otter, a fiery land of blacksmiths that cast molten slag at the visitors (possibly a reference to volcanic Iceland) and crystal pillars in the sea (maybe icebergs) and the lonely skerry where Judas gets his respite from Hell on Sundays and holidays.

phylogenetic or langue et parole

Via the ever-engrossing Mental Floss comes an beautifully illustrated diagram that charts the development and relationships of Old World languages by Minna Sundberg. A graphic artist Ana a story-teller by trade, Sundberg also applies her craft to linguistic and other academic interests. The style of her art, this tree in particular, and curiosity remind me a bit of JRR Tolkien. Check out more of Sundberg’s work at the link to her blog.

ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay

I certainly hope there is not another massive volcanic eruption in Iceland that will disrupt air-transportation, like in years past.
There is little solace in such disasters, even when far away from civilisation, but it turned out to be a big consolation for us when Eyjafjallajökull (pronounced Kajagoogoo in my head) erupted, and anticipating endless problems with flying, it inspired us to get Old Lady. The volcano in question this time is called Bárðarbunga, which is easier to say and sounds pretty melodious too. It wouldn’t sound really that close to “cowabunga,” owing to the th- sound—which entered American English as the trademark greeting of Chief Thunderthud on the Howdy Doody Show in the 1950s.

með lögum skal land byggja

As Scotland is herself poised for a referendum on whether to secede from the United Kingdom, the archipelago stretching to the ends of the Earth of the Shetlands, Orkney and the Western Isles also wants the question of its independence to be brought to a vote. The constituency’s motto is an Icelandic phrase, “with the law shall this land be embiggened,” and reflects historic and cultural ties to Scandinavian countries, especially Norway—having not become a part of the UK until the fifteenth century (actually as a dowry for the union of the Norwegian and British royal houses). The petition to instigate the plebiscite has already been signed by around ten percent of the population and if the measure is passed, the residents could then choose to rejoin Norway.

völva

The fantastic site of strange and curious travel destinations, Atlas Obscura, is hosting a week dedicated to some of the celebrated and unknown marvels of Iceland. There are quite a lot sights to see on the remote island, both awe-inspiring or odd—or just plain inspired like the pictured on-going construction of the massive “Arctic Henge” monument in the aura of the aurora near the northern village of Raufarhöfn, whose layout is not only the cycles of sagas and epic poems expressed in monolithic architecture but also aims to become a pilgrimage sight for neo-pagan practitioners.

rassgat: a term of endearment

Spiegel's international desk has an interesting and humourous postcard on the character, economic collapse taken in stride and subsequent recovery of Iceland. The nation's attitude and come-back certainly makes amends for the past gambling that lead to the crisis—responding in a model-fashion, allowing its banks to fail and political reforms, plus a return to core-competencies and capitalising on native ingenuity that is worthy of precedence. There are also a lot of bonus items contained in this missive: Icelanders are spoilt with geo-thermal energy (also a promising natural resource for future export) to the extent that they can heat their sidewalks with subterranean pipes to prevent them from freezing and water from the tap needs to be cooled below scalding before it can be used and the saying Petta reddast—the mantra that everything will work out.

happy new year

Dear Readers,
Best wishes for an auspicious and healthy new year. Thanks for visiting and party on.