Wednesday 18 May 2016
rear window
Sunday 24 April 2016
lรจse-majestรฉ
The leader of the Berlin faction of the Pirate Party was detained by law enforcement for conducting a literary analysis of the infamous poem about the Turkish president on the street in front of that country’s embassy (the Turkish mission to German in der Tiergartenstraรe, Berlin, mind you, and not in Ankara) over the weekend.
This development comes just after the Chancellor expressed second-thoughts on her initial condemnation of the comedian’s satire though still feeling that the case of the prosecution should go forward. The last time paragraph 103 from the German book of criminal code (Strafegesetzbuch—essentially a left-over from the days of European monarchy, criminalising the insult to the dignity of a foreign head of state, lรจse-majestรฉ) was invoked was by the Shah of Iran in an attempt to muzzle the critiques among the Iranian diaspora settled in Germany, and perhaps the Chancellor, announcing the intent to sunset the antiquated law within two years, was quietly hoping that it would similarly backfire. Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, who have comparable laws in their penal codes (and constitutional monarchies all), announced that they would be repealing them post-haste.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐ณ๐ด, ๐น๐ท, foreign policy
Friday 11 March 2016
steeple bumpstead and chignal smeally
The always marvellous Nag on the Lake poses the question why many British toponyms are so odd, eliciting sniggering or a blush but also some really fascinating history of occupation, migration and conquest.
A Sunday drive through the Midlands connecting Wednesbury, Newton Burgoland and Ashby-de-la-Zouch also conveys one through ages from the Celts, the Romans, the arrival of the Scandinavians, through to Norman times. Despite all the diverse influences and upheavals, these place names are retain a certain Englishness whether or not original rooted in that language, which is just as adaptive and with the same pedigree. Many others, of course, are later Anglicisations of places on the peripheries of the isle. I recall when we were travelling in County Cork passing through a fine and picturesque village called in Irish Bรฉal รtha Leice (meaning the flat stone at the mouth of the bay) which was unfortunately transliterated as Ballylickey on the road signs. There is also a fun, interactive map that gives select etymologies of England’s town and villages.
Saturday 27 February 2016
yoiking and taxonomy
Recently, as the large settlement of Tromsรธ was anticipating the return of the sun after six weeks of perpetual night (surely an event to celebrate but it was not as if the locals were emerging from dread and depression after this long, dark, sacred night, though I can’t say I was not very relieved to see the days waxing longer) and heralded the first patch of daylight with song.
The city and region that’s traditionally Sร mi (the older and rather pejorative term for the people was Laplander) is a big music scene—including the for a sort of ancient tone-poem called a yoik or joik. These chants, though wordless, are very evocative and full of meaning, and it’s said that the Sร mi peoples were taught yoiking by the elves and fairies and at birth, a yoik is composed for an individual, this personal signature being as important as one’s name—admitting later improvisations, of course. Places, animals, plants and the elements have their own special tunes as well. As with many aboriginal customs, joiking was regarded with suspicion and condemned as spell-casting and suppressed (along with their language) for generations but both have seen a strong resurgence in recent years—migrant children hosted in these northern communities are excited to receive yoiks of their very own. A lot more than just a salutation of the sun, one can listen to a selection of yoiks here or by searching the internet for more of these hauntingly beautiful folk chants, perhaps even composing your own signature sound.
Tuesday 9 February 2016
6x6 link-roundup: after-school edition
puppet on a string: the laudable, laughable efforts of the FBI to steer youth away from being radicalized
mimir and vanir: some of the bizarre scenarios of Norse mythology
war on drugs: when defence-contractors try their hand at directing (anti-drugs) films
planned-parenthood: from Dangerous Minds’ extensive archives, Donald Duck lectures on contraception
gymnastique suรฉdoise: lovely illustrations from the 1920s for a domestic exercise routine
Saturday 6 February 2016
dander and demonisation
If it’s to be believed, the Norwegian Council of Heart and Lung Health is encouraging, as reported by the Norwegian edition of the Local, to get parents steaming mad at dirt and the threat of dust-bunnies by portraying Adolf Hitler, Kim Jong-il and Muammar Qaddafi as plush toys and uncuddly repositories of respiratory-ills. Not withstanding that over-sanitary conditions lead to over-sensitivity, lumping these characters together threatens to make a caricature of out of each of these tyrants and place them on the same level. While the government is not necessarily advocating the destruction of childhood familiars, but rather only regular and thorough washing of them, the retreat to allergic reactions and bespoke dietary sensitivities (whether real or imagined) has been fraught with vulnerabilities and fretful mothering. What would you think if your teddy suddenly was turned to a symbol of hate and evil? Does that make you a better house-keeper and less likely to sweep things under the rug?
catagories: ⚕️, ๐ณ๐ด, foreign policy, lifestyle
Tuesday 19 January 2016
quasi modo, desperado
Oslo’s City Hall (Olso rรฅdhus)—perhaps most recognisable as the venue for the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony—also boosts a grand carillon that’s been chiming away the hour with musical intermezzo for quite a few years already. Through the end of May, the belfry will ringing out David Bowie and Motรถrhead songs to be added to the daily performance. Sadly, one can be certain that more immortal classics, like Tequila Sunrise and Hotel California, will be forthcoming repertoire with the passing of Glenn Frey. This is a touching tribute on the part of the kingdom’s capital, but 2016 is starting to wear out its welcome and will have to really work in over-drive to make amends. RIP
Sunday 1 November 2015
arcana and hour-glass
The esoteric roots of the Third Reich—which misappropriated and ruined a lot of heretofore widespread symbolism—was based in a selective but seemingly innocent cultural revival and revanche of Germanic interest after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire that began with the folk- and linguistic studies of the Brothers Grimm. Once a lexical tradition—though borrowed and forced to fit a unified agenda, a practise perpetuated to awful extremes in just a short amount of time, other aspiring mystics found niches that could be capitalised upon in similar ways.
As nationalist sentiments simmered, parlour-games like astrology and divination seemed to be too entrenched with foreign influence and a domestic, German versions of the signs of the zodiac and tarot-readings (and the I-Ching) was readily adopted. The individual responsible for this new set of symbols was an Austrian occultist named Guido von List, who became obsessed with the cult of Odin. Stricken with cataracts, von List identified himself more and more with the Norse god, who had traded one eye for wisdom and insight, when a surgery left him temporarily blind for a period of almost year. During this time, von List found the meaning of the runic alphabet revealed to him and subsequently published his pamphlet on the Armanen Runen, which while based on the established signs, widely distorted their accepted meanings. Most familiar and infamous, the swastika was an international symbol, maybe one of the Indo-European people’s most ancient and enduring symbols, that meant “gift” or good-luck, almost universally. The English term for Hakenkreuz (the hooked cross or the cross with serifs) retains the original Sanskrit meaning of good fortune, which almost makes it seem as if the symbol were defamed twice over.
The dual lightening-bolts that came to represent the Schutzstaffel (the SS) singularly represented the sun and not victory (Sieg), as von List attributed being unable to foresee the consequences. The interpretation gets even more far-fetched with the Hagal rune—แผ being the sign for hail or a snowflake enlisted, strangely, as a mark of solidarity and faith. The rune for a yew-tree which originally connoted a measure of protection was somewhat sequitur associated with the pharmaceutical arts (as was displayed on the apothecary shingle for many years) but then แ (Algiz) was expanded as the Lebensrune to indicate life and parturition and its inverted form แฆ was forwarded to mean death. The sign was the badge of those charged with administering the Lebensborn programme and became a common way on headstones to indicate date of birth and date of death, instead of the traditional * and ✝. The above snowflake rune, Hagal, was accorded with the high-status of signifying fidelity because it contained both life and death. Despite the dubious and engineered heritage, masses of people took this home-spun fortune-telling and the trappings of new iconography very seriously and as a source of national identity, and once a new regime adopted these badges of power, they already had an air of legitimacy.
Saturday 24 October 2015
sentimental journey
Once Protestantism took hold in large swathes of northern Europe, particularly in England, the pilgrimage undertaken to exotic lands fell out of fashion, people of means needed to articulate another rite of passage that would fulfil this lost outlet. Almost immediately, the notion of the Grand Tour was invented as an authoritative substitute, since one could claim instant superiority in matters of taste and worldliness over one’s neighbours for having seen the masterpieces of the continent first-hand and having even brought back some art as souvenirs.
Thursday 22 October 2015
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
Monday 5 October 2015
vulgate or hashtag hastings
It strikes me as a little paradoxical that the claim to the Divine Right of Kings comes of the newer, reformed protestant tradition with monarchs dual-hatted as heads of state churches, the Church of England, the Church of Norway, et alia rather than from something more seeped in history. This political and religious creed, holds that the kings rules by God’s grace alone is not subject to any earthly estate or institution, including the will of the papacy. In other words, the monarchy was invested with both civic and spiritual powers, bucking ancient divisions of authority, which were nonetheless prone to overlap and currying favour or displeasure and later developments, revolts and the spread of democratic-thinking cut short the tenure of a monarch, but this doctrine. Prior to the Reformation—however, alliances were built and strengthened through military campaigns, persecuted under the papal banner, that continued nearly without interruption up until that schism for Western Christianity in the form of the Crusades, launched against whomever was deemed to be a heretic. The first instance of this type of campaigning on a grand scale had a different character than the retaking of the Holy Land but there are definitely parallels with the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 and the First Crusade that coalesced just three decades later.
catagories: ⛓️๐ฅ, ๐ซ๐ท, ๐ฌ๐ง, ๐ณ๐ด, ๐, foreign policy, language, Middle East, religion, Wikipedia
Thursday 1 October 2015
the devil and the deep blue sea
If you have not yet treated yourself to the absolutely edifying oblectation of Futility Closet series of podcasts, I strongly recommend you began with their latest instalment on the forgotten story of gentleman merchant raider of World War I, Felix Graf von Luckner. This swash-buckling villain has been overshadowed by other semi-legendary figures of the time—like the Red Baron, but was turned hero for his humanity and persecuting war without causalities. Posing as a Norwegian logging vessel, Luckner’s captained his crew of privateers in a somewhat anchronistic sailing ship called the Seeadler through the supply lines of the Atlantic, confounding materiel delivery and treating his hostages as friends—a sentiment that was reciprocated, but that’s only the barest outline of the tale. It’s definitely worth working backwards as well to catch up on all the engrossing episodes.
Monday 28 September 2015
world citizen
Perhaps a global crisis can only be solved by becoming more cosmopolitan, as this interesting article from Quartz suggests.
Faced with a comparable refugee situation in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution when all Russian expatriate were summarily stripped of their citizenship and made stateless—nearly a million diaspora and growing to include former residents of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations became the competent issuing authority for travel documents, realising that no one place could hope to absorb all the displaced. Bearers of the these passports, which were the laudable idea of Norwegian explorer Fritjof Nansen, included shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, artist Marc Chagall, author Vladimir Nabokov and composers Igor Stravinski and Sergei Rakhmaninov as well as hundreds of thousands of other souls, which entitled them to travel internationally and settle as appropriately. Such an elegant solution may need to be reinstated, with the reluctance national authorities have demonstrated for legitimising an undocumented refugee and much preferring to keep them in transit and making migrants seek out the help of smugglers rather than official channels and discard whatever official identity papers that they might have and preclude their chances of having a homeland to return to one day. Mindful that there is no place like Utopia, what do you think? Could such a scheme work again?
Saturday 5 September 2015
palisade-park or load-bearing
Wednesday 5 August 2015
slaget i hafrsfjord
The intrepid adventurers at Atlas Obscura sends a picture postcard from Stavanger of the monumental commission of Sverd i fjell, which was among some our parting shots from our extended Norwegian vacation a few years back.
The peace declared that united the three warring factions of the western reaches of the kingdom under the leadership of good King Harald the Fair Hair (Harald Hรฅrfagre) is really kind of obscured by the sheer scale and sight of three giant swords plunged into the beach of Madla—though the event is very much celebrated and romanticized in popular culture and stands just as large in the shared imagination. One thousand, one hundred eleven years after the decisive battle, King Olaf V degreed that this Viking victory be immortalised and it was wrought and wielded in 1983 by native sculptor Fritz Rรธed. One of these days, we’ll make it back to those shores and find those swords half buried regardless of how much time and tide has passed.
Tuesday 2 June 2015
five-by-five
cat fancy: collection of Wikipedia articles involving legendary felines
merry melodies: five bizarre Looney Tunes cartoons
honeycomb hideout: Oslo builds a bee highway through the city
vajen-bader: possible 1800s steampunk inspiration for Star Wars cast of characters
Monday 1 June 2015
sunday drive: gersfeld
The other day, however, I did decide to explore a little again off the main street. Despite being historically hemmed in by two more powerful municipalities of the region, Wรผrzburg and Fulda, a great fire that destroyed much of the medieval city, the Napoleonic Wars that made the property hotly contested and most recently the loss of its industrial importance and status as a transportation hub with the division of Germany, the little town was really able to hold its own. There’s an ensemble of castles confined within a spacious estate that climbs the rolling, manicured foothills to the Jugendstil Park Villa above.
The far end of this garden also contained an interesting water-feature in the form of a narrow wading pool (between the hedgerows) called a Kneipp Heilbad, part of a regiment of hydrotherapy devised by Priest Sebastian Kneipp that harnessed the healing properties of thermal waters by alternating temperature and pressure.
Father Kneipp’s methods are well known in Germany and has inspired many offshoot techniques but in Norway, he is better known for another invention—the recipe for what’s called Kneippbrรธt—a staple whole-wheat food and most consumed bread in Europe. I wasn’t expecting the spa-installation so was not properly attired but do certainly plan to stop in Gersfeld again soon.
Friday 29 May 2015
hirsute
Wednesday 20 May 2015
time-lapse or moraines and drumlins
catagories: ๐ณ๐ด, ๐ก️, ๐ช️, environment, travel
Thursday 7 May 2015
barnevernet
Though the comparison is surely disparaging, like the taint that clings to the Autobahnen, Volkswagen and Hugo Boss by dint of association, but the dispositioning of the Norwegian child welfare agency makes me think of the Nazi-era policy and programme called Lebensborn, the fount of life.
catagories: ๐ฉ๐ช, ๐ณ๐ด, ๐, foreign policy, transportation