Tygve Lie, et cetera

Is this project reckless or merely satiric?  It must be one or the other.  I'm in no intellectual position to compile this list, let alone write meaningfully (or even, perhaps, compellingly) about any, let alone all, of my chosen subjects.  Should this disuade me?

Maybe I should take the less egotistical approach, in the communal spirit that drives Wiki software...

I can't.  I won't.  Not yet, at least.  I need to see this project well off the ground, moving at sonic speed, before I cede its ownership to the collective....

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Trygve Lie was suggested to me. He was the first president of the United Nations, and a Norwegian. However, I had already considered, and decided against, Trygve Lie. I do intend to sketch his career in my chapter on his still-more important successor, Dag Hammarskjold.

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I admire Norway's practice of honoring cultural figures on its currency. I would like to see Edgar Allen Poe on the U.S. dollar and Emily Dickinson on the $100 bill!

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Deep into Heimskringla now, enjoying almost every gloriously gory, repetitive page of it.  I may also have to reconsider Harald Fairhair, Haakon the Good and St. Olaf, all of whom had been previously struck from the 81.

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Yngling Saga

No-one except Thor Heyerdahl, according to a most erudite friend, takes seriously Snorri Sturluson's contention the "Aesir" came to Scandinavia from the Black Sea region.  Why not?  Grant that  elements of Yngling Saga are (perhaps) obviously fanciful: Snorri's etymology of "Aesir" as deriving from "Asia;" the fact that some of his early Norse kings (particularly "Odin") were potent sorcerers; and so on.   What remains?   The legend of an ancient migration.  Couldn't Snorri's account be based on oral or even written traditions that, in turn, are rooted in historical reality?  Why is it far fetched to imagine that some Scandinavians, at least, are descended from a tribe or tribes wandering from the Black Sea?  They had to come from somewhere.

Ilium, once, was also just a myth, until it was proved true.  Or true enough.

I prefer to believe that "Odin" was a real person, or an amalgam, that time and liberal retellings of his deeds gradually elevated him to the status of a god--indeed, the greatest of gods--and that the Christian Snorri, intentionally or not, struck close to historical truth by demoting him back to a mere king.      



   

comings and goings

I forgot to mention medieval Swedish rebel leader Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, Enlightenment era Norwegian playwright, philospher and satirist Ludwig Holdberg, and Swedish actor Max von Sydow, all of whom, too, have been knocked off the Scandinavian 81.  Of over a dozen names suggested by a recently, fortuitiously acquired Norwegian friend, particularly outstanding are scientist Kristian Olaf Birkeland, Danish opera singer Kirsten Flagstad, and Danish film director Lars von Trier.  These three names are now on the candidates list, bringing me back to a total of 80.

I'm trying to impose a reading plan on myself.  Pagan Ressurection was a good place to start my systematic study.  Next up, the entire Heimskringla, additional sagas, and a review of all my Viking literature.  The plan now is to proceed in more or less chronological order. 

I might be insane just thinking this project is something I can do, even poorly. 
 

more Scandinavian synchronicity

How's this for Scandinavian synchronicity?  I was waiting for the light to cross the street today when a passerby on a bicycle asked me if there was an ATM nearby.  "In there," I replied, pointing to the cafe where I myself was heading.  "Where are you from?" I asked on an impulse; he had an accent, but I couldn't place it.  "Norway," he said.

We wound sitting down and discussing the Scandinavian 78 at the cafe for about an hour.  His English is excellent and he did seem genuinely interested in the details of my pet project.  I indulged him by sketching out a list of some of the more prominent Norwegian candidates.  (Amundsen, Nansen, Brundtland, Munch, Undset, Olav Trygvasson, and so forth: the only one he hadn't heard of was G.H. Hansen.)

He asked me which living Norwegian will rank highest.  "Gro Harlem Bruntland," I replied immediately, underlining her name.  My ranking system is no system at all, and of course everything at this stage is highly preliminary--but Brundtland, to my current state of knowledge, has no rival among living Norwegians in terms of world historical influence.  My new Scandinavian acquaintance agreed.  "But," he added ruefully, "if you asked most Norwegians that question, they would say the name of a soccer player."

I pounced.  "Who?"  Athletics remains unrepresented on the 78.  From this portion of the conversation, I took away the following names: Marit Bjoren, Kjetil Andre Aamondt (skiiers), Ole Gunnar, John Carew (?) and  John Arne Riise (soccer players, or more properly, "footballers.")  These talented worthies will receive due consdieration.  At the moment, I especially feel the lack of at least one outstanding female athlete.  Marit Bjoren may well fill the niche. 

The most important name I learned today, however, didn't belong to an athlete, but to a Norwegian mathematician.  Niels Henrik Abel was born in 1802 and died in 1829.  In his brief life he (according to Wikipedia) "proved the impossibility of solving the quintic equation in radicals."  I don't really know what that means.  But my companion, himself a mathematician, assured me that Abel's achievement was one of the most important in the history of mathematics. 

So much to learn.  So much to know. 

Now for the best part of my story.  My new Norwegian contact once attended a ceremony commemorating Gunnar Sonsteby!  Sonsteby gave a lecture on his experiences as a resistance fighter in Nazi occupied Norway, answered questions from the audience, and recieved a medal his valor in his service to humanity.

A young Norwegian mathematician, studying abroad for three months in an exchange program at the University of Washington, wanders on his bike to my neigborhood.  He has seen and heard Sonsteby      
(my personal favorite Scandinavian) with his own eyes and ears.  He asks a random stranger a question, and that stranger is me.  Had either of us arrived at that stoplight five seconds earlier, or five seconds later, we would not ever have met.

How can I doubt the existence of synchronicity?
 




 
      

    

I'm almost finished with Pagan Resurrection, and a used book on Svante Arrhenius arrived in today in the mail, and... and... and this project is barely an embryo when, in my estimation, it ought already to be a vigorous youth, bright with the promise of a prodigious maturity.  But there's so much to do, so much to know, so little time, and so, so many tantalizing excuses.

Today I described the Scandinvaian 78 on another hike, to another female friend, along another shore, but this time with different bad weather.   It rained so hard that we almost might as well have jumped into Lake Washington.  The wind, again, was intense.  We did not talk so much Vikings, however, as physics, conversational dynamics, Jung, and architecture; I'm looking forward to her view, when she acquires one, of Arne Jacobson. 

To read: "Wotan"  (1936)  Carl Jung

another attempt

I need a plan.  Pages of notes continue to pile up.  But I'm not on pace to complete this thing any decade soon.  I'd like to do it in a year or so, move on to something else.  Back to the Holy Roman Empire, I think, and my Jesuits and Rosicrucians, who are calling me.  I need a reading plan, a schedule, and I need to keep to it.  I need to take still more thorough, intense notes, start my own wiki, and start my 78 short biographies.   
I'm reading Pagan Resurrection by Richard Rudgley (melodramatically subtitled A Force for Evil or the Future of Western Spirituality?).  The most I've seen on Bureus since Churton.  I'm please to state that, in part thanks to this book, the Swedish Rosicrucian's place on the 78 no longer looks so insecure.  He may well at least stand in for neo-Pagan revival, the honored and coveted final place.
Here's a recent effort to organize the candidates, in this case by their broad types of achievements:   

Archaeological curiosity:  Tolland Man

Activism:  Queen Margreta*, Bremer*, Nansen***,  Alfred Nobel*, Raoul Wallenberg, Gunnar Sonsteby*, Gro Harlem Brundtland*,  

Architecture:  Arne Jacobsen

Art: Carl Larsson, Munch, Ingri d'Aulaire, Strindberg*,

Cinema: Greta Garbo, Ingrid Bergman, Ingmar Bergman, Liv Ullman 

Entrepreneurship: Ingvar Kamprad

Exploration: Erik the Red, Leif, Gudrid, Nansen***, Roald Amundsen, Thor Heyerdal*,

Literature:  Egill Skalgraimsson*, Snorri***, Swedenborg***, Holberg,  Bremer*,  Hans Christian Anderson, Ibsen, Strindberg*, Hans Orsted*, Selma Lagerlof, Knut Hamsun, Halldor Laxness, Sigrid Undset*, Par Lagerkvist, Astrid Lingren, Asbjornsen and Moe, Karen Blixen

Music: Buxtehude, Jenny Lind, Ole Bull, Grieg, Bjork,

Philosophy/Scholarship:  Snorri***, Johannes Bureus, Swedenborg***, Soren Kierkegaard, Gunnar Myrdal*, Sveinbjorn Beinstensson, Nick Bostrom, Nicholas Steno*

Saintliness: Birgitta

Science/invention: Tycho Brahe, Swedenborg***, Celsius Anders, Linnaeus, Hans Orsted, J.J. Berzelius, Alfred Nobel*, G.H. Hansen, Svante Arrhenius, Gideon Sundbeck, Nansen, Bohr, Linus Torvalds, Thor Heyerdahl*, Nicolas Steno*, Ole Romer   

Sport:  Bjorn Borg, Bjorn Daehlie, Magnus Carlsen

Statesmanship:  Snorri***, Engelbrektsson*, Axel Oxenstierna, Gunnar Myrdal*, Dag Hammarskjold, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, Gro Harlem Brundtland*,   

Monarchy: Gunnhild Gormsdottir, Harald Bluetooth, Sigrid the Haughty, Olaf Tryggvasson*, Sweyn Forkbeard*, Canute the Great*, Harald Hardrada*, Margreta***, Gustav Vassa*, Christian IV*, Gustavus Adolphus*, Christina Alexandra, Charles XII*

War:  Egill Skalagrimsson*, Rollo, Turgeis, Rurik, Olaf Tryggvasson*, Sweyn Forkbeard*, Harald Hardra*, Margreta***, Engelbrektsson*, Nils Dacke, Gustav Vasa*, Christian IV*, Axel Oxenstierna*, Gustavus Adolphus*, Vidkun Quisling, Gunnar Sonsteby*,