Norway Road Ways - TRAVEL PREP - Research and history. Two Still Here

Kristin Lavransdatter: Sigrid Undset, 1928 Nobel Prize

2011-11-11T07:43:00.000-08:00

Most of us in American schools had little of Scandinavian history in our texts: the focus was on sudden and supposedly unwarranted Viking raids on nice monasteries; and equally sudden disappearance from the Events pages after a few hundred years of raids.

Enter Sigrid Undset, Norwegian author born in Kalundborg, Denmark, who wrote the novel Kristin Lavransdatter and won the Nobel Prize for Literature for it in 1928. It was translated into English in the 1950's, and is a tome worth every word on the 1069 pages of it. See a 1995 film, Liv Ullman directing, http://www.filmvault.com/filmvault/boston/k/kristinlavransdat2.html; and at http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1800395840/info. Most reviews, however, are as adequate as saying Moby Dick is about a man trying to kill a whale and dies trying. Have to get the film, but from the trailer, I am not optimistic that it grasps more than the medieval scenery and stereotypes, Liv Ullman or no Liv Ullman directing. Penguin came out with a paperback, see that at http://www.amazon.com/Kristin-Lavransdatter-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0143039164

Frame the tale as Womansaga: not a woman's book, because the male characters are developed and as fascinating as the main female character herself; but finally a saga that puts her at the forefront, rather than trailing dutifully and decoratively behind. For medieval life of the time, start at her beginning at http://denmarkroadways.blogspot.com/#!/2011/11/kalundborg-womansaga-birthplace-sigrid.html.

The Ullman film also covers only the first of the three books. It needs sequels, just as Harry Potter needed its sequels.

Do not use an electronic reader. Until those come out with "finds" for reviewing who characters are, the name forms are too unfamiliar to be absorbed in one contact, and until there is a way to jump from the footnotes at the very end, back into each chapter, time and again, the readers are uselessly small-screened.

How accurate is this? Not completely because lives of women were not recorded, and they did not record; so the woman's thoughts are probably projected, but ring true for today -- engaging beginning to end, and full of aha moments. Then participate with her in the plague, the church morphing from a meditative collective through the Roman branch militarist, administrative and rules-driven takeover (think Cistercians and hierarchies accountable only to the Pope), were there miracles nonetheless, by which in the institutions, who falls as today into the church as moneymaker for the church, the origins of female denigration through the church, its impact on woman's life-force -- see it and stamp it out, is that it? Sin, sin, wonderful sin. Makes churches rich, so force them all in. Even in the 13th Century.

Look up the lemming years, cloister life, men's and women's, Scandinavian history, the experiment of one king for Norway and Sweden, that one failed, the use of compensation and outlawry largely rather than imprisonment, until the church came in with its inquisition-racks and changed the ballgame. And women's property rights and rights of inheritance (extensive), housing arrangements, herb remedies and healing simples, old ways persisting, nature there and its mosses, trees, scents, racing rivers, animals, childbirth, chivalric kurteis or courtesy, courtship, bastardy (abstention did not work then, either), shame as death-tool, political intrigue, revenge, redemption, fostering, social strata, fates and great shifts of plot, guilds,

Viking History and Women: Sweden and Denmark finds lead naturally to Norway

2010-09-25T10:02:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows the Volvo. But who knows Volva? No, not a misspelling of our anatomical term, but the goddess, the "great sibyl: (see New York Times January 6, 1987 in critiquing Prime Minister woman Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway.

Women in the old Viking culture.Women in the new Norway. At least in teh 1980's, she was joined by 7 other women cabinet members of a total 17. It was not easy. There remained the bridle that demands that a woman not lead because a woman should not be like a leader in what she says and does. That has not changed here. What was it in Viking culture?

Viking culture has been redefined and scrubbed, and conjectured to death in order for other Europeans to feel justified in conquering it with their Christian forced conversions. Is that so? Whatever the reason, we found it hard to get at verifiable facts about the place of women.

Our sources so far:

We are just back from a regional trip to Scandinavia and the North Sea area, that did not allow for Norway this time. But issues of Viking world view, cultural organization, cosmology arise from seeing Denmark ; and Northern Germany, second trip to Germany; and Sweden. Norwegian roots and figures blend in with histories of now-other countries.

So we use this Norway Road Ways as our own clearinghouse for information we do not want to lose as we research other countries.

Of particular interest is the book, The Vikings, A History, by Robert Ferguson, Penguin Group 2009. And the arrangement of deities, creation accounts, stories, that cross the boundaries we have now.

Meanwhile: Volva. Viking history.

She is the wise-woman who tells Odin, one of the three most major deities of the Norse. The Vikings lays out the three as Freya, the seer, deity for the female power; Odin, deity for poetry, warfare, storms, courage and something to be researched further, the hanged man; and Thor, deity for the farmer and the common man.

Volva, in The Poetic Edda, about creation, the first human man and women, the great tree Yggdrasil, the "world-ash", battles among gods and goddesses and giants, and prophesies about seeking knowledge and the ultimate death of the gods. See ://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe03.htm/

Sorting out the Christian, the more mainland Celtic and other influences, is a challenge, but the poem is generally agreed to mostly predate Christianity in the form that the militant Roman church brought. She is said to be of the race of giants, and yet reduced to a mere "prophetess" in this site, ://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15507a.htm/

Is Norway not for Driving? Say it isn't so.

2010-06-18T08:11:00.000-07:00

Driving we love. But are we being warned away from Norway. Are the scenic portions of roads so unconnected that people get exhausted with the traffic and slow in between.

We've been to Romania, Slovakia, many places where roads were in transition. No problem. We wanted to drive in Norway because there is a lovely Atlantic Road, but it is only 8.72 km long. See ://www.visitnorway.com/en/Articles/Theme/What-to-do/Tour-suggestions/The-Atlantic-road/ There are also tempting tourist trails in the works, see ://www.nordicroads.com/website/index.asp?pageID=237; see also ://www.turistveg.no/.

Now, however, we find sites that advise not to drive in Norway at all. Norway?

We enjoyed mountains in Switzerland, Italy and Austria, and those roads were fine even in the high Alps, even with traffic, but not apparently in Norway. Do we have to stick with Denmark and Sweden this trip. The post at the site says stay with the cruise ships, and that is not good news for us. Too much food, we prefer doing to viewing. See ://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Europe/Norway/Tourist_Traps-Norway-BR-1.html/

There is also a site, trying to backtrack now, claiming that travel independently - we improvise, no reservations - is not suggested, and not safe.

What is this about? Should we pay attention? Email - we do not post many of the emails we get, but do need more info here.

Skarf, Skarfjellet, Scharfe - Norse Surname Roots. Imaginations Wander Like People.

2010-06-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

History in itself is dry. Start to learn about a country with something perhaps personal, like a name with echoes to your own.

Here: Linguistics FN 1

Otkell, Son of Skarf. Looked after himself.

Linguistics give clues to roots. Find and interpret, search linguistics, fact-check, follow ideas, cultural migrations, and exploring theories. Vikings - See overview of language clusters at http://odin.bio.miami.edu/norse/. Did the Norse begin their attacks on Europe's monasteries in response to the militance of Charlemagne in forcing Christianity north, the slaughter of the Saxons in 782, not far.

a. Norway was not so far away as to be unaffected by Christian incursions ot the south. Old Norse: Guide to the pronunciation of the name Skarf and its variations and movement, see Scandinavian Influence on Southern Lowland Scotch, by George Tobias Flom 1900, reprint 1966, at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14604/14604-h/ScandLatin.html#III-2a - fair use snippet --

f.
O. N. f initially always remains.
Medially and finally f remains in cloff, nefe, lufe, laif.
Medially and finally f > v in: nieve, nevin, rive, lave, crave.
O. N. f > th in scarth (O. N. skarfr).
An epenthetic f appears in unrufe (v?).

b. Follow the SkarfRWe may have gone as far as we can go with this SkarfR, word, or so we thought.
.
1. Tally back: From a family name from Canada, we - Scharfe - tracked ourselves by specific line back to Norse linguistic roots:

Red Scariff in the early 16th Century in Ireland. There are place names there from the same root - Gaelicized - An Scairbh.
Scharfs from Kilkenny, Ireland, and what the Scarf-Scariff-Scharf group might have done there, see Scharf, Ironworking Norse to Ottawa, Canada, in the early 19th Century. Spellings continue to be changed. Scharf arbitrarily went to Scharfe, for example, with the superfluous e thanks to my great-greats. They sought to keep the mail straight, and differentiate their gang from all the other Scharf family farms outside Ottawa, say 1900.

2. Going further back from Red, we are left with our great imaginations, but we did find

Skarf from the 11th Century recorded Old Icelandic Saga (oral tradition from before that), Burnt Njal's Saga -- meet Burnt Njal's Saga, Otkell, son of Skarf . Otkell was not a model citizen.. Find related topics at Normans, Strongbow, and Norse Migrations. The Saga refers to people going back and forth to Norway, and place names there, and we did find what might have been intermediate stopping points in Orkney

Skarf or SkarfR in Old Norse in Orkney; probable meaning, cormorant or shaley places where they nest, on sharp cliffs, and

Skarfskerry in northern Scotland; and now
Skarfjellet, a mountain in Norway that rock climbers seem to like. That must refer to the sharp idea, not the cormorant? In German, the scharf means sharp, we understand. See http://www.en.wikipedia.oprg/wiki/Skarfjellet. Sundal, More og Romsdal, Norway. The Trollheimen Range. Elevation 1790 m (5,873 ft. See the picture there, view from Vassnebba. It is just above Innerdalen. Rock climbers favor it.

3. Now, the smoking linguistic bow and arrow found back in Norway, a mountain with Skarf in it - Skarfjellet.

So, we leave for Scandinavia at the end of August, hope to include Norway (update -- no time -- have to go back) and have the Mountain Skarfjellet, or Skarfjell as it sometimes appears, on our mental list.
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FN 1

A favorite resource for tracking linguistics has been An Icelandic-English dictionary: based on the ms. collections of the late Richard Cleasby, from 1874. After his death, Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Sir George Webbe completed the work. It is a google book. The history and migrations of the Norse are laid out at the Introduction at iii. Find it at http://books.google.com/books?id=RnEJAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=English+Icelandic+dictionary&lr=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny_is=&as_maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&as_brr=0&cd=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

4, Name meanings through Runes. SKARF in runes

No, not Skarf in ruins. Runes. We do not have the font for the Ancient Futhark or the Younger Futhark or the Icelandic or Anglo Saxon runes (Saxons to Britain in the 400'); but did find charts of some of them, all looking duplicative of each other, see Sweden Road Ways: Widing Name in Runes and some basic meanings, to be adjusted as we learn more.

So, for Norway to Iceland to Scharfs in Ireland to New York --go:

S ....Sun
K ....Torch
A ....Oak
R .... Riding
F .... Wealth

None of those come up to "cormorant" or the mountain in Norway or our other total word meanings apart from the runes. And we have no family story like my husband's family has, about the meaning of his (now my) surname, but the runes support the tale we do have. See the posts in Sweden Road Ways for the path to it. Maybe it's all wet, but it has been an enjoyable journey.