Three weeks ago I came home from a wonderful month traveling nine Southern states in the US. We got to enjoy so many places, listen to a lot of great music, eat amazing food and – last, but certainly not least – meet a lot of wonderful people.
What I really enjoyed was how friendly people were. I know a lot of you follow this blog because you`re interested in Scandinavia and some of you may have a romantic image of this area and the people living here. Let me tell you – there is absolutely no need to be romantic about us because we`re a bunch of insufferable, ill-mannered grouches.
I just love your pink hat
On our vacation total strangers would come over to talk to us, ask us where we came from or just make conversation. A lady in Savannah shouted at me from her house across the street, “I just LOVE your pink hat,” and she wasn`t even being sarcastic (I loved my pink hat too and that woman just made my day 🙂 ). We had great conversations with a lot of interesting people who would tell us about their lives, their neighbors or just little things like where we could find the best clarinetist in the streets of New Orleans.
And in the shops and restaurants; it was a dream. They would joke with us, give us great advice and generally treat us like people. We`re just not used to that and now I find myself missing it.
I`ve been asked a lot about how our Summer nights are. We live too far to the south in Norway to actually have the sun up at midnight but that doesn`t mean it gets dark. Now that it`s just a little over a week until Midsummer, our nights are pretty light.
My husband made a time-lapse of a night at our cabin close to Lillehammer this weekend so you can see for yourself. At around four the fog rolled in but it was still light. You can follow the time down at the left corner.
On my current trip through Denmark I visited Odense – Denmark`s third largest city and also the birth town of Hans Christian Andersen. Or H.C. Andersen, as he is known as in Denmark.
Hans Christian Andersen
You may not immediately know who Hans Christian Andersen is, but I`m sure it`ll ring a few bells if I mention The Little Mermaid, The Ugly Duckling, The Little Match Girl, The Princess on the Pea and The Emperor`s New Clothes. These are just a few of the huge amount of fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen wrote.
The city of Odense has made a museum for Hans Christian Andersen, using his childhood home as part of that museum. If you ever go to Odense, I can really recommend that you visit this museum. It tells the amazing tale of Hans Christian Andersen`s life and that life will take your breath away. The beginning of his life is sad like The Ugly Duckling but the in the end he was acknowledged like the swan who grew up in the duck`s nest.
Hans Christian Andersen`s childhood home in Odense, Denmark
Today Hans Christian Andersen`s childhood home looks cozy and charming but when he grew up there, his family was only one of five families residing in this house situated in the poor part of town – a part of town where 30 percent of all the children were born out of wedlock; a huge sin back then. The house had dirt floors and Hans Christian Andersen`s family had just one room in the house.
Hans Christian Andersen`s parents were married but his mother was an illegitimate child and she had a daughter out of wedlock when she married Hans Andersen, Hans Christian Andersen`s father. Hans Andersen was a poor shoemaker who gave up his trade to become a soldier. Unfortunately soldiering ruined his health and he died fairly young. Hans Christian Andersen`s mother was a washer woman, taking clothes from the rich people of Odense down to the stream to wash them. At some point her life became to harsh for her and she turned to alcohol.
Widow next door
Hans Christian Andersen`s life could have turned as ugly as the life of most of the children he grew up with if it hadn`t been for his neighbor, the widow Mrs. Bunkeflod. She was not a rich woman but she was learned and had been married to a priest and poet. Therefor she had a small library in her house and she invited the young Hans Christian into her home to read. He soon spent most of his days in her library, reading everything he could, and he was also invited into intellectual discussions with the widow and her sister-in-law.
Rich citizens of Odense saw Hans Christian`s talent and paid for his education which took him away from his childhood city, but he never forgot Mrs. Bunkeflod. His very first fairy tale was dedicated to this widow who was so valuable to his finding his way to becoming a famous fairy tale author.
Ugly duckling
Hans Christian Andersen wasn`t just born into a duck`s nest, he was also physically an ugly duckling. Letters written by people who`d met him usually mentioned his physical appearance and it was only people who really knew him, who talked about his appearance in nice terms. Most people mentioned how extraordinarily tall he was – he was 185 centimeters tall, which was around 20 centimeters taller than his contemporary men (and about average of Danish men of today) – how thin he was, his huge nose and his strange facial features.
Apparently he was very vain and when he started earning money from his fairy tales, he spent quite a bit on clothes and hats. He was sometimes referred to as a dandy.
Hans Christian Andersen, the dandy
His fairy tales
Hans Christian Andersen wrote a ton of fairy tales and so many of them have received international fame. His fairy tales are extraordinary because they can be read by a child (or to a child) and the child will immediately fall in love with the tale because of the drama or the characters. But when you read his fairy tales as an adult – and I would recommend that you do just that if you haven`t already – his fairy tales offer a rather complicated moral which shows how Hans Christian Andersen looked at the world and the people he met.
It`s been discussed if Hans Christian Andersen`s father was really the king of Denmark because of the fairy tale The Ugly Duckling. Was Hans Christian Andersen truly a swan (a prince of sorts) that grew up in the duck`s nest? It`s a huge discussion but I must admit that I don`t like it much. It`s as if some people can`t fathom that the son of a poor shoemaker and an alcoholic washer woman can have talent – he must be the son of the king. I say that talent can grow anywhere, especially if you have a neighbor like Mrs. Bunkeflod.
Hans Christian Andersen`s fairy tales. How many do you recognize?
Disney ruined The Little Mermaid
One of the things I`m truly angry about is how Disney ruined The Little Mermaid. Hans Christian Andersen was very careful about the moral in his stories and in this story the moral (in my very simplified interpretation – there is much more depth to the tale than this) is how you should never change to be attractive to another person. That doesn`t fit with the story of The Little Mermaid, you say? No, it doesn`t fit with Disney`s version of The Little Mermaid because in that version The Little Mermaid gets her prince after having suffered and gone through a lot.
This was most certainly not the way the original story ended. In Hans Christian Andersen`s The Little Mermaid, the mermaid never managed to attract the prince. She was mute since the Sea Witch`s price for giving the mermaid legs was her voice. And without her voice she could never talk to the prince. He acknowledged how beautiful and devoted she was but since he never got to know her as a person, he never fell in love with her. Unfortunately for the mermaid, the prince ended up marrying someone else and the little mermaid died. Or “became foam on the water” as Hans Christian Andersen calls it.
I`m spending parts of Easter in the second largest town in Denmark, Århus. Århus had her city rights in 1441 but one can trace back the city to the 8th century. Århus, or Aros, as they believe the city was called back then, is celebrating her Viking history my inviting all visitors to their Viking museum. This museum is tiny but it was free and it offered some interesting information.
Long houses and pit houses
In most Viking museums and village reconstructions they`ve rebuilt the typical Viking long houses where 20-30 people lived and slept in one large (long) room. I`ve already visited plenty of those places and have also posted about them here. But the museum in Århus has reconstructed a different kind of house – a pit house. Apparently this was a type of house for the poorer and less well connected people.
The museum was dark so my pictures of the reconstruction weren`t very good but here`s a picture of their drawing of a larger house and a pit house. The museum dated these houses to around year 1000:
Small Viking pit house situated below ground level.
The pit houses were situated about one meter below ground level to keep them warm in the winter and, as you can see from the picture, they were really tiny.
So with this small tale of pit houses I`ll let the Vikings of Aros bid you goodnight 🙂
Viking museum in Århus – Aros – Viking family greeting visitors at the door.
I know it must come as a huge shock to have another chapter to this story since it`s been hibernating since last summer. But I`ve had so many people asking me about whether or not I would continue writing and it was also nominated for several prizes at the Fangreader`s annual award so I just had to come back and write more. This story is very close to my heart so it`s been a joy to be back with Sookie the Shieldmaiden and I can promise you that it won`t go back into hibernation. I`m very close to having written the full story and I`m planning on posting about once a week or so.
I want to thank Suki59 for nudging me into writing again and for taking the time to beta this chapter not only once, but twice, since I sent her the wrong version first.
Charlaine Harris owns all the characters. I`ve just given them a sword and some chainmail.
~§§§~
“Rasul told you not to help Queen Sophie-Anne?” I asked Alcide. “Didn`t you find that a little strange,given that Rasul is Queen Sophie-Anne`s man?”
My question made an interesting change to Alcide`s smile. It had been an open and happy smile and now it was more sinister. Alcide hadn`t found it strange at all. He`d made plans with Rasul. Plans that somehow included me but I couldn`t figure out how. Alcide apparently wanted to marry me but Rasul had put me in mortal danger.
“Is your allegiance still with Sophie-Anne, Sookie?” Alcide asked. “After what happened, I mean?”
“Did you know about Rasul abducting me?” I asked. My hand was on my sword just in case.
“Rasul?” Alcide frowned and from what I could see he was genuinely surprised. “I thought Felipe did that. I pressed my army forward when my scouts told me what had happened to you but you`d escaped before we could come to your rescue.” He took one step forward and I grasped my sword hilt even harder on my sword hilt. “My scouts told me you made a daring escape.”
“You came to … save me?” I could hear how my voice was full of doubt but Alcide didn`t seem to notice.
Several people have asked me about what I think of the new series The Vikings (History channel). I`ve only seen two episodes but I will tell you my opinion if you`ll me yours 😉
History channel series Vikings. Ragnar Logbrog
First what I like about the series:
The shieldmaiden. I truly loved her and I loved how we were told that she`d saved her husband`s life and fought side-by-side with him. I also loved how she was able to protect her family and I do like the actress portraying her.
The actor portraying Ragnar Lodbrog is pretty cool too. Okay, he`s hot and I may have to try and talk my husband into getting a hair cut (and some hair extensions) to copy that amazing braid.
The fact that they made a series about Vikings at all. My eyes can never be tired of looking at Viking clothes, houses, ships, weapons etc etc.
What I don`t like about the series:
They are pretending this is a portrayal of historical facts and it isn`t. They are telling us the story about Ragnar Lodbrog (a figure from the myths but one they are fairly sure has lived even if they aren`t sure about the details – he was claimed to have taken Paris, for instance) – who was Danish and yet they let him live in a country with high mountains and deep fjords. Most of us would think Norway (though it`s filmed in Ireland) and not flat-as-a-pancake Denmark when we see the topography sorrounding Ragnar`s home. The story of Ragnar would have been SO much better if they`d made him just any old Viking Ragnar and not Ragnar Lodbrog, the (probably) historical figure.
What is with Gabriel Byrne as a Viking earl? It rubs me the wrong way. Probably because he doesn`t look Norse at all and the accent is horrible. Was he the only famous actor they could find? I also missed more Nordic actors.
Which brings me to the next point: What is it with the silly accents? They are speaking freaking English – not Norse. They won`t seem any more Norse just because the English is broken. They just seem stupid. Especially since the accents are different from scene to scene. Even the names are pronounced differently from scene to scene.
The portrayal of the Vikings – Rollo especially. They are dirty, blood thirsty, raping killers with no sense at all when really the Vikings had a weekly washday (Saturday) and there was a death sentence for rape.
The use of all “knowledge” about Vikings in one great mixture. The scene in episode two where all the Vikings washed and blew their noses in the same water was so silly. This is a description used by Ibn Fadlan about the “Vikings” living in Russia/Belorus – not about the Vikings in the Nordic countries. Since this is one of the few descriptions about a people that may or may not have been similar to the Vikings, it was long considered a “fact” that Vikings washed themselves like that. But we don`t know that they did this and it seems silly to have it as a part of this series unless it was the people behind the series trying to tell us that “yes, we have read about the Vikings – truly we have.” I would have been more happy if they`d used their imagination instead.
And even if they try to add all the “knowledge” we have about the Vikings, they still mess up. Like making Rollo use an ax when axes were probably mainly used by poor warriors who couldn`t afford a sword. Or making Floke make a boat just my snapping his fingers. Or mixing up 300 years of Viking age – imagine if we mixed up something from 1713 in how we portrayed the present.
The Vikings and the Christian monks. Arrrgh, that meeting was annoying. Yes, I realize that the writers of this series probably grew up in a Christian country but do they have to be so obvious about how nice and sweet and gentle and brainy the monks were and how blood thirsty and cruel the Vikings were just because they “get” the Christians better than the Vikings? The cruelest of the Vikings – Rollo – (we just saw him rape a girl, we know he`s baaaad) was the one who destroyed the cross with Jesus on it. Oh, the shock. Really, the Vikings were curious about this new religion and they accepted Christians into their countries. They stole from the monks, of course, but the hatred against their religion portrayed in this series has no basis in what we know about the Vikings. At least not until the Christians tried to forcefully baptize the Vikings.
“There is no land to the West”. This is repeated on and on in the series and is really silly since the Vikings traded with the people on the other side of the North Sea way before they started raiding them. They knew they were there, they (probably) just didn`t raid them until the late 8th century (Lindisfarne being the first known raid in the west).
The general red thread in the series (well, the first two episodes, at least) about the Vikings being so strange and brutal and weird. I`d hoped for a series about the life of the Vikings that went behind the myths and prejudice – not one that added to them.
I have to watch the series on a crappy online channel provided by HBONordic. They aren`t showing it on any television channels here in Scandinavia but an online channel will never be as good as the real thing – especially not the sorry excuse for an online channel HBONordic are forcing us to pay for.
My verdict
The series has a kick-ass shieldmaiden. I`m sold and I`ll keep watching no matter how crappy it turns out if she stays alive and fighting.
It`s very short and it only shows Vikings running around with axes and swords – the Viking myth, if you like – but there was one detail which made me jump for joy: They`ve included a female warrior – a shieldmaiden – in the series. Shieldmaidens have become almost invisible until recently. The archaeologists of the 19th and 20th century were too colored by the time they lived in and the gender roles they lived by to be able to see that women had to fight too in the Viking age. Some to defend their villages but some also went abroad to find riches – just like their male counterparts.
So March can`t come soon enough for me. Maybe more people will realize that Vikings weren`t just men. They were women too!
A lot of people struggle with the Danish pronunciations. Most of what Danes say sounds like mumbling to foreigners and nothing resembles the written language. Listen to these Danes and tell me if you think what they are saying is the same as what you can read they are saying:
This might not be a big problem if you`re a tourist in Denmark since most Danes speak English fairly fluently. Except for one thing: When you want to ask for directions. Or when you want to tell a taxi driver where to take you. You have the address written down, or you remember it by heart, but no one understands what you mean – simply because you can`t pronounce it right.
Well, a couple of foreign design students in Copenhagen have solved this problem for you. They`ve made talking street signs:
For decades now the streets around here have looked like this on March 8th – the international women`s day. I know because I`ve been out there banging the drums quite a few times over the years.
a
Today is the international man`s day – the day men cry out against discrimination and maltreatment.
But men aren`t discriminated, you say. And you may be right to a degree. Men aren`t being treated like some women are in some countries. They aren`t killed before they are born because they are of the wrong gender. They aren`t held back from school or given less food because they are boys and not girls. They can have an education and a job – they can even drive a car, if they have the money and the talent. For a lot of women, this is not their reality.
I love football. Not the American kind – no, I love the kind which is actually played with your feet. There`s a reason why I dedicated a fanfiction to football: Dead on the Football Field.
Wednesday I had a jaw dropping experience: Swedish footballer Zlatan Ibrahimowich scored an incredible goal against England. Lean back and enjoy!
a
