Thursday, September 29, 2016

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe by H. R. Ellis Davidson

I'm assuming you're here for Viking Related Stuff, so, . . . if you're here looking for your Publisher's Clearing House check from Ed McMahon, good luck. I'm still waiting for mine too.




The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe by H.R. Ellis Davidson.



Oh, and BTW

For all of you pron sites who keep showing up in my stats counter as visitors, don't go away. Every visit counts in the search algorithms. Got something for you too.

WARNING: this content is not child safe. If you're a kid, keep your clicks off it. You'd probably find it a let down or a groaner anyway by today's standards. There are no pics or graphic representations but the content is not family dinner table approved. 

It's an old verse about Christianity's supplanting of an earlier phallic cult.

Think of it as a Viking Dirty Joke.

Volsa Thattur/The Story Of Volsi

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Njal's Saga, the George W. DaSent 1861 Translation

The capstone in the arch of Saga Literature, flanked on one side by Egil's Saga, and on the other by Laxdaela Saga.

One of the true all time treasures of literature.

Our ancestors hadn't our technological toys and labor savers, but they were every bit as sharp and often as not sharper than we are today.

If you've never experienced the originals I promise you're in for a surprise.

Via Northvegr.

Njal's Saga.

Here's a short from wikipedia on what you're in for.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Njáls_saga

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

The Road To Hel, A Study of The Conception of The Dead In Old Norse Literature by Hilda Roderick Ellis

http://www.germanicmythology.com/scholarship/road_to_hel.pdf

An in depth, extensively researched look into the subject.

Think you know what was what in Valhalla?

Valhalla is actually Valhol which translates as Carrion Hall. 

The Road To Hel sets the record straight, and does the record ever need to be set straight.

Marvel Comics Proudly Presents Thor, She, yes She, is now a woman.

Friday, September 16, 2016

Viking Names, Lists, Translations and More, the Nordiskt runnamnslexikon


Writing Viking Fiction?

How many more Ragnars and Ulfriks do readers need?

Again, thanks to Christie Ward at The Viking Answer Lady for her English translation.

You get to what's below from her bibliography


Nordiskt runnamnslexikon (rough English translation)
[A huge zipped PDF. You will need a utility to unzip the file -- for example, the shareware tool WinZip -- and you will need a copy of thefree Adobe Acrobat Reader.]


Viking names mean something. And since my main character's name - Jarnulf - isn't explained in Viking Hunter, Jarn means Iron and Ulf means Wolf. 

To Vikings steel was (improved) iron, the stuff weapons were made of. You can extrapolate from there.

Vikings In Minnesota? Real or Not? The Kensington Runestone

Unfortunately for America's northern midwest Vikings, the Kensington Runestone, no matter how appealing it may be, belongs on the shelf next to the party helmets sporting bulls horns.

Christie Ward - The Viking Answer Lady - has a well researched piece on its history.

Debunking The Kensington Stone

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Another Free Ebook of Writing Advice: Victoria Mixon's Art and Craft of Writing, Secret Advice For Writers

Price; $0.00

For now, here's my brief review at Amazon.

Brutally Frank and Fall Down Funny

While I can't get on board with all of her suggestions/exercises for writers, some, particularly on the laugh factor of non sequiturs where she recommends writing two unrelated dialogues between unrelated characters from unrelated works, and then interposing every other line from each into the other, . . . You will write laughs.

Another fine tool to have on your writer's shelf.

Impressed me enough to buy her Art and Craft of Writing Fiction.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Viking Rock Bands? Yes. It's A Thing. Tyr's 2011 Release Valkyrja

Anyone expecting acclaim for their scrivenings without the legwork of chasing it down with a club, is in for a rude awakening. If it takes rock/heavy metal to get folks attention, fine.

Great excuse to share out my favorite band of the Viking Metal scene.


Lyrics to the 1st song, Blood Of Heroes

http://www.songlyrics.com/tyr/blood-of-heroes-lyrics/

Fairest place upon this earth
Ours and all descendants right of birth
All we have of native soil
Owed to tears and sweat of forbears toil

Legends should recall their…

[Chorus:]
Iron will – warrior skill
And how far away they fought
Set us free – destiny
For the blood of heroes bought
Iron will – warrior skill
And how far away they fell
Set us free – destiny
For tonight we dine in Hel


He fell alone
And his name was carved upon a stone
Fire bade him last farewell
Wouldn't mind my name up there as well

Legends might recall my…

[Chorus]

[Guitar solo]

Legends should recall their…

[Chorus]
Read more at 

Saturday, September 10, 2016

A Free Thesaurus For Building Interesting, Believable Characters: Emotion Amplifiers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi

Picked this up at Amazon yesterday.

Emotion Amplifiers by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi


Price? $0.00.

Read it complete last night.

As writers we (supposedly) own a real dictionary, as in one from at least 60 or 70 years ago before political activists set to redefining words which have stood us in good stead for centuries to mean whatever their agenda wants it to mean, today. 

We also own thesauruses. (for when we run of out different speech tags to say "said" because we want to amplify an emotional state our character is stuck in. Emotion Amplifiers will be a God send in helping you avoid such tags and a whole lot more common failings.)

An analogy:

Imagine you're a painter with canvas, brushes, and tubes of paint. You struggle with proportion, even the basic anatomy of your subject, lights, shadows, and the million other issues painters deal with.

Now imagine some joker has invented a new paint and revolutionized the entire process because this new paint has an additional element: AI.(artificial intelligence).

Put the brush in the paint and its AI senses what you want and guides the brush strokes. 

The authors perceived a need, invented a concept, fleshed it out with a series of writing aid Thesauruses, and sell the series. 

What do other customers think?

Emotion Amplifiers was published Dec 4, 2014. As of today Sept 10, 2016 it has 197 reviews with an overall rank of 4.7 out of 5 stars.

81% 5 Stars. 
11% 4 Stars.

They have a website. Go look around. Live a little. Spend a couple of dollars. Sample chapters of other books in the series are included in Emotion Amplifiers.

These titles are not a temporary amusement or a here today gone tomorrow fad. 

They're real tools, (at only $5 and $6) and as an old gear head, burned and skinned knuckle wrench turner my experience taught me many years ago that Whatever I paid for a quality tool, I never missed the money after I'd spent it.

The satisfaction of using that tool every time I used it for years and years down the road made me glad I had spent that money. 

So, yeah. I will be buying more of their product.

http://writershelpingwriters.net

Very well done ladies. 

Friday, September 9, 2016

6 Essentials of Character Building

Do your characters make readers want to follow them through your writing?

Believable characters are not a gift from on high.

Just as a musician needs to know scales, time, and some basic harmony, writers need scales, timing, and harmony too. 

Here's an infographic. Click on it and put it in a notebook/folder.



I've already touched briefly on Dialogue and Body Language.

Life is A Fight And Then You Die/Conflict, Conflict and more Conflict.

And remember these Writing Scales apply not just to your main characters but your supporting cast as well.

What do your supporting characters think of your Hero/ine's actions, dialogue etc?

What does their Dialogue, Interior/Thoughts suggest they should or will do in response to your main characters behavior/plan.

Of course, these guidelines are stripped down to the barest essentials. Complete by no means.

More detail/examples coming in future posts.

Just remember that going back to basics, especially when your well seems dry, rarely hurts anyone.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

New Viking Graves Discovered In Denmark

from Science Nordic
August 31, 2016 - 06

A new archaeological excavation in Denmark reveals the remains of graves and buildings that span the Stone Age, Bronze Age, the Vikings, and right up to the Middle Ages.


Archaeologists are busy unearthing the traces of three thousand years of activity at Silkeborg, west Denmark.
Excavations have already revealed pit-houses, which were typically used as workshops during the Viking era, and residential homes in the so-called Trelleborg style (see Fact Box), together with several graves.
At least two of the graves could have accommodated high-status Vikings.
“There’s been activity here at least since the Stone Age,” says one of the archaeologists involved in the dig, Maria Thiemke, from the Silkeborg Museum, Denmark.
“There’s at least 14 houses and five graves from the Stone Age, Bronze Age, right up until the Middle Ages,” says Thiemke.
Even though she expected the site to reveal lots of archaeological finds, both Thiemke and her colleague, archaeologist Rikke Isler from Silkeborg Museum, were both surprised by the richness of the finds.
“The graves are located close to a church from the Middle Ages and that’s often an indication that there’s been activity on the site for a long time. But what we’ve found is a jigsaw puzzle with lots of pieces and probably from six, seven, or eight different games,” says Isler.
See some of the finds in the gallery above.
Burial site for a high-status lady
Earlier in the year, Thiemke and Isler unearthed the remains of posts from several houses at a test-site. So they sought funding to investigate further. They are now excavating five hectares of the site.
As they began to dig, they discovered two red patches of rusty soil in a corner of one of the graves.
“We could hear one of our colleagues shout “It’s metal!” and coincidentally one of our metal detectors was on site. He also found metal in the opposite corner of the grave, so we dug and found a klinker nail--a special type of nail,” says Thiemke.
A klinker nail indicates that the grave could have contained a wagon. This type of grave was usually reserved for women of high social status, nobility or great wealth.



Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Iceland Goose Hunt Turns Up 1,000 Year Old Viking Sword

BBC

A group of Icelandic goose hunters got more than they bargained for during a recent outing - they didn't catch a single bird, but stumbled upon a Viking sword thought to be more than 1,000 years old.

The five men were in Skaftarhreppur in southern Iceland when they found the sword, which they think may have washed up during a recent flood, the Visir news website reports. One of the men, Arni Bjorn Valdimarsson, shared a photo of it onhis Facebook page and swiftly received a call from Iceland's Cultural Heritage Agency, which took possession of the artefact on Monday morning.



Image copyright ARNI BJORN VALDIMARSSON

The sword is largely intact

The agency's director, Kristin Huld Sigurdardottir, says only 20 swords of this age have been discovered in Iceland before, making it a significant find. It didn't take much effort on the hunters' part, though. "It was just lying there, waiting to be picked up - it was obvious and just lying there on the ground," one of them, Runar Stanley Sighvatsson, tells Iceland Monitor. It's believed the sword dates back to at least the 10th Century, and may have been placed in a pagan grave, the website says.

The exact area where the sword was found hasn't been revealed, as the agency wants to do a little digging of its own to see what else is lying around there.

Featured Post

Viking Age Iceland, Privatization Run Amok or Libertarian Paradise?

If you didn't like the services your Chieftain charged you a nominal fee to provide, you could contract with another Chieftain on the ot...