Using Bavaria as a pilot-site, German police forces are gauging whether adopt a software platform, with a virtual nod, wink, bow and kow-tow to the dystopia concept of pre-crime, as first suggested by writer Philip K. Dick and adapted into the disturbing film Minority Report.
In a delightful little holiday safari called Searching for Krampus, one of Boing Boing’s happy mutants covers the slow and careful cultivation of an old Germanic tradition transported to Hollywood.
The old masters from Austria (though similar devils haunt a broad swath of Europe) that ultimately helped realise a Krampus festival were skeptical at first, worried that without proper guidance that the custom would become mere cos-play and horror-camp but there seems to be a genuine fascination for this demonic foil—that’s maybe reflective of broader laments over the over-commercialisation of the season. This is always a sore topic and all chime-in when it comes to Christmas-Creep, but I can imagine that the Celts, the ancient Germanic tribes, and the ancient Roman were feeling pretty much the same way when they saw their mistletoe, Yuletide and Saturnalia taken over by Christian rites. Knecht Ruprecht is a related but non-demonic companion of Saint Nicholas, meaning Farmhand Rupert, who threatens disobedient children and hashes out appropriately wretched presents—and although maybe not enjoying the same seasonal celebrity as the monstrous Krampus, Knecht Ruprecht is pretty famous in the Deutsche Sprachraum as the name of the Simpson family pet greyhound, Santa’s Little Helper, in the German version of the series.
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. The Norwegian edition of The Local features an interview with a publishing-professor from the University of Tromsรธ whose latest project is assaying the notion of happiness. Of course, happiness is more than just an emotional response and an outlook and code of behaviour, but not necessarily a dogmatic one, as the author suggests, insofar as permanence and aversion to change are not the metrics that happiness for most people are measured by.
Rather than the hedonistic notion of becoming the perpetually punch-drunk gadfly that first got the author interested in the question, happiness is also to be found in change and challenge—exemplified by the Scandinavian double-barreled question how are you doing/how are you coping, “Hvordan du hard et/hvordan du tar det?” That’s a very provoking parallel construction that is not just limited to these icy climes and six months of no sun—the campus being above the Arctic Circle. On the media’s role in shaping our feelings and stance, the author also makes a very poignant observation that sensational, responsible, impassioned or neutral alike, the news and the broader entertainment industry is propelled by sponsorship, whose purpose is either to validate and reinforce opinions, loyalties that one already shares or to make one feel inadequate and uncertain about present allegiances. Sometimes that may be a good thing but I don’t think most marketers are concerned about the examined life. While this manipulation and patronage is no doubt true and important—and the author does not pose a problem without offering at least the glimmer of a solution—that pronouncement does strike me as typical Norse.
