Monday, January 24, 2011

Thorstein Veblen

I have considered and rejected Thorstein Veblen, author of the famous and influential "Theory of the Liesure Class," on the same grounds as Roald Dahl, Carl Sandburg, and especially, Ole Rolvaage.  I will, however, find a way to honorablly mention all these first generation immigrants of note.

newcomers

Today the Scandinavian 78 welcomes two new candidates.

(1)  Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish humanitarian who saved tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust (more than Schindler, if what I've heard is accurate).  He joins a growing list of eminent 20th century Scandinavian humanitarians.  I believe he will rank high in the 78.

(2)  Peter Christen Asbjornsen & Jorgen Moe seem to have worked mostly in close collaboration, therefore feel justified for including the partnership as a single entry.  They traveled throughout Norway collecting every bit on folklore they could find, and preserved it in writing in a landmark and highly influential book.

Asbjornsen & Moe are particularly exciting since the suggestion came from a real live Norwegian (albeit through an intermediary). 

Since starting this project, I have discovered red hairs in my beard.  True story.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

13 minutes to close

I'm pleased to say that at least two people have found this blog.  But there's a downside.  I'm going to have to straighten up.  Guests might now start dropping in at any moment.

A week or two ago I asked a friend of mine, a guy whose knowledge of history deeply impresses me (which is saying something) how much he knew about Scandinavian history.  This was his response almost verbatim:  "Some people lived in the cold, then they were Vikings, then Lutherans, then made furniture."   A brilliant summation on the spur!  Well  done!

I was at Alki beach with another friend of mine recently, on a blustery freezing Sunday.  The water and weather brought the Vikings to my mind.  I confessed that the more Viking history I read, the more like I feel I owe the Irish reparations.  I'm half Norwegian: it was the Norwegian Vikings who especially despoiled Ireland, and they did it for a very, very long time.

She let me buy her a Guiness and we called it even.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

updates

Gone from the 78, king Christian II of Denmark, an interesting psychopath (or possibly just misunderstood): his contibutions, including the Stockhom massacre, will be folded into the history of the Kalmar Union, under the great Queen Margareta.
Another monarch, Gustavus III, gone.  So is Norwegian labor leader Marcus Thrane,  Neither of these guys deserved much consideration.  Also, Selma Lagerlof, who will join a long list of Nobel prize winners not to make the 78.  Also, actor Max von Sydow, who will appear, at any rate, in Ingmar Bergman. 
A fair amount of work has gotten done on this project over the past two days, and many more pertinent books are en route.  But this place closes in 10 minutes, I've got to go, so it's got to wait.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tycho

Today I picked the brain of an acquaintance, a professor of the philosophy of science, about Tycho Brahe.  I learned that this worthy Scandinanvian's name is pronounced Teeko Bri (rhymes with "sky"), not Ticho Bra-hee, as I had assumed.  In between chess moves, I was recommended some books pertaining to Tycho and his achievements, including Kuhn's Copernican Revolution, which I KNEW I should have picked up.  It's probably not too late, but still, I ought to trust my hunches, and err on the side of grabbing whatever might prove to be useful to write this thing. 
The plan of action:  Finish listing and ranking the 78.  Write drafts of 3 or 4 of the biographies.  I'm thinking Gustavus Adolphus, out of familiarity as much as affection, and Tycho--these guys are interesting to me, more so, as baroque era Europeans as Scandinavians. 
I want to have a proposal soon.
Today the 78 welcomes (for the moment) Halldor Laxness, Carl Larsson, Arne Jacobsen and Gideon Sundback.   

Sunday, January 2, 2011

chopping block

 The Scandinanvian 78 needs a significantly better arrangement before it's going to make sense. 

Magnus the Good has been as good as gone for days now.  Today, it's official, though I'll miss him.  Also, Ole Rolvaage today gets disqualified on the same grounds as Roald Dahl and Carl Sandburg did previously.  Because Rolvaage wrote in Norwegian, and not English, he seemed to merit more thoughtful consideration.

This brings up another sticky issue of classification.  The early modern monarchs, including the mighty and famous Gustavus Adolphus.  Are they Scandinavian?  The question might seem perverse.  Who could be more Scandinavian than the national hero of Sweden?  Yet, I believe there's a good case to be made that these guys were Germans, members of Germanic dynasties which, by the early modern period, happened to rule over the Scandinavian countries.  German was, I think, Christian IV of Denmark's first language; it was the official language of the Danish court, and he was a German Duke as well as a Danish king.  I'm not sure about Adolphus.  He was multi-lingual, and German was certainly one of his languages (as well as the nationality of his mother, and his father's mother).  Was German his first, or in any sense primary, language I don't yet know.

There's no chance I will be disqualifying Adolphus on any count; he will rank very high in the 78 (though perhaps not as high as my original projection of #7).  Christian IV, sadly, might conceivably go, but if so, it won't be because he wasn't really Danish.  But these concerns do highlight the difficulty of pin pointing ethnicity, in the past no less than the present.    I call them both Scandinavians.