Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough - Book Review Five Stars

 

Book Review - Five Stars

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough

Excellent well-written and edited in-depth coverage of an era in history that ever after altered many generations to come. Worthy of more than five stars.

EXCERPTS:

Scandinavia as an interconnected cultural sphere involving other indigenous peoples who inhabited the peninsula. These groups did not necessarily share the same linguistic background or cultural practices as the Norse, and yet they were notable players in the Viking Age story. The most important of these were those known as Finnar by their Norse-speaking neighbors. They were the ancestors of Scandinavia’s modern-day Sámi population. For the most part, they were nomadic hunters and fishers with ready access to valuable Arctic furs and skins. Their primary territories ranged across the far north of what is now Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Hailing from Arctic Norway, Ohthere himself made much of his wealth through trading with and collecting tribute from his neighbors. But the Norse–Sámi relationship was also characterized by intermarriage and cross-cultural influences. There is also archaeological evidence that the Sámi also operated in southern areas of Scandinavia.

Through the eighth century the north began to develop rapidly in new ways. Much of this had to do with money. After the economic slump that followed the fall of the Western Roman Empire, a new influx of silver coins spread into northern Europe, lubricating the wheels of trade. Already by the year 700, new trading centers had sprung up on both sides of the English Channel. There was Quentovic, near Boulogne on the French coast; Hamwic, just outside what is now Southampton; Lundenwic, an Anglo-Saxon trading port upriver of the old Roman city of Londinium, where Westminster now stands; and Dorestad near the mouth of the Rhine, in the modern Netherlands.

The importance of food production, it is no surprise that the basic unit of Viking Age society was the farmstead. The people who lived on it tended to be largely self-sufficient. They grew, fished or hunted whatever they could, bartering with neighbors or itinerant merchants for anything else.

Other necessities, such as textiles, tools and building materials, were also produced at or near home. Animals were exploited down to the last useful sinew. The majority of the population lived close to subsistence levels much of the time, although fluctuating between scarcity and abundance from season to season and year to year. Life was tough and unrelenting, kept up through physical effort in the face of an uncompromising natural environment. Their material world was one of wood, wool, flax, bone, stone, leather and antler, hand-wrought and fashioned, with metal a precious commodity to be treasured and recycled.

The Norse world converted to Christianity far later than most of northern Europe. This means we have far more information about their pre-Christian beliefs and practices than, say, those of Anglo-Saxon England before the conversion. But on the other hand, this can lull us into a false sense of security. We need to remember that our written descriptions of Norse pagan practices and beliefs come from outside the system. Texts from the Viking Age itself were written by Christian or Islamic writers from other parts of the medieval world. They tended to be openly repulsed by whatever they deemed ‘pagan’, and reluctant or unable to understand it on its own terms. Later texts from within the Norse sphere itself were written well after the conversion to Christianity. This makes it difficult to know whether these accounts actually reflect what people did, said or believed centuries earlier.

There are times when love and lust lead to sex. There are times when sex leads to pregnancy, and times when it doesn’t. And both outcomes can prompt a range of emotions, from the very good to the very bad. Every single human living in the Viking Age was there because of sex and pregnancy. But it’s extraordinarily hard to find evidence of the experience of pregnancy, with all its complex emotions and potential outcomes, in either the written or the material record. Partly, this is a consequence of the fact that, if you had a womb, you probably didn’t have much of a voice in the official records, and so that limits the types of evidence available to us.

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RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945 - John M. Grimsrud

 

RECOLLECTIONS OF THE WAR YEARS. 1940-1945

I was born in 1940.

My first remembrance of those war years is that I could see real hate in everybody’s eyes as they chanted “kill the Nazis.” The chant “kill the Nazis” became “kill the Germans” by the end of the war.

There were 13 countries overrun by the Axis powers (Fascists), Germany, Spain, Italy, and finally Japan.

The U. S. issued 13 different commemorative five cent postage flag stamps depicting all of these overrun countries.

A link to the stamps: Click here.

I obtained a three by four foot world map that I framed and made into a stamp map where I affixed and labeled the countries stamps, and so opened my education in geography and interest in world history.

In 1944 when I was four years old, I ran away from home. Getting a beating, slapped around, and having soap rubbed in my eyes got me going. Mom said that I hurt her and now she was going to hurt me.Grandma’s apartment was nine blocks away, and I was on my way.

Wartime gasoline rationing made the streets quiet, and the East End Drug where Grandma’s apartment was located I knew well. It was my best-loved sanctuary…I loved Grandma, and she loved me. She named me stakkar, and said in Norwegian that means “poor thing.” Grandma was fully aware of her daughter’s personality and her eccentric dangerous behavior.

Great aromas wafted up from Grandma’s humble little kitchen where Scandinavian cookies were always in abundance. Her dessert specialty was prunes whipped up in whipping cream, oh so good!

Grandma was also a “poor thing.” When Grandma was sixteen years old she and four of her brothers set sail for America saying a final farewell to family and friends, and returning was not going to be an option.

Grandma told me a story about when the sailors played a prank on her bringing her a banana to see what she would do with it. Her little Norwegian village was isolated amd only accessible by boat in good weather with no electric or phone where they spoke only an Old Norse dialect. She had never seen a banana.

Grandma and her brothers headed west in America and did not stop until they reached a place where they could speak Norse. North Dakota is where they settled, but it was not yet a state, and Indian raids were serious business. You could see a long way in Dakota Territory but you couldn’t see much. There wasn’t anything to obstruct your view, not even a tree for a bird to sit in…they had to hop around on the ground. The soil was fabulously rich, and farming was a dream come true, not like rock bound Norway. Land was free for the taking.

Grandma married Edwin Benson, a landed Norwegian. He and his brother weren't taught any work ethics, and after the parents died the farm was lost. The sad part was that oil was later discovered on the farm land.

Grandpa Benson took a job as a watchman on the railroad when he moved to Superior, Wisconsin, with his wife and three daughters.

When the great depression hit and the “Hoover Days” began the family took up residence in a humble shanty in the woods east of Brule, Wisconsin.

My father married my mother, Myrtle Benson, the second of the three daughters and provided her widowed mother Bertha an apartment above his East End Drug Store.

Back to my runaway story, yes it was “poor thing” Grandma.

Grandma’s apartment:

Prominently displayed on her living room wall was a large sepia photo of her younger brother in his military dress uniform. He died in 1918.

I met one of Grandma’s brothers, Ingvald, who was a cook aboard a Great Lakes ore carrier that frequently called at Duluth-Superior harbor. He would always came to visit his sister Bertha arriving by city bus. One day when I was with my father in his car in downtown Superior, I spotted Ingvald at the corner of Belknap and Tower where he would transfer to the East End bus line. My Dad stopped and picked up Ingvald and drove him to Grandma’s apartment above the East End Drug Store. Gasoline was rationed at this time. but Dad received gasoline ration stamps because his drug store did home deliveries of medicine. Dad’s blue Studebaker coupe had to out last the war, rusted out floor boards and all.

Back to Grandma’s apartment, and my runaway story:

Grandma had a still working very old desk top tube radio that we would tune into for noon time weather and news plus some favorite evening broadcasts. During the war news was especially important for us and couldn’t be missed.

Her well-worn dining room table and chairs were part of a set with a bureau of drawers filled with her few valuables.

She treasured an envelope from her family in the Old County. It had been opened and resealed with an ornate tape decorated with Nazi swastikas. Inside the envelope the letter had been meticulously blanked out to censor the message. This was my first hand look at Fascism that was spreading across Europe with lightning speed and killing thousands in its wake. From the very northern tip of Norway on the Arctic Ocean at Kirkenes all the way south to the Straits of Gibraltar in southern Spain fascism had total control of the west coast of Europe. This was frighting and resistance was imperative. The U. S. was at the same time battling fanatic Kamikaze Imperial fascist Japan in the Pacific Ocean.

I have to interject that in 1944 I was only four years old, but I have to expand on this monumental story of my family’s involvement of resistance to Hitler’s Nazi invasion of little neutral Norway with a population of 3 million.

In the predawn hours of April 10, 1940, three German battle ships flying British flags stealthy and deceptively entered the Oslo Fjord refusing to halt on demand and identify themselves. My Grandfather’s nephew then performing his military duty (national guard), took aim with his Krupp German made cannon and sent 1,600 of the deceptive invading Nazi’s to the bottom of Oslo harbor. Neutral Norway whether they wanted it or not had entering the war and would be brutally occupied. They would be just one of the thirteen invaded countries of WWII.

Grandma’s oldest daughter, Esther enlisted in the military and was off to war. Her youngest daughter Nelly Bergland married a career military man who served five years in Europe during WWII, and was later sent off to Korea.

My dad’s older brother Lawrence was inducted into the army infantry and shipped off to North Africa and then to Italy where he was involved in the bloodiest invasion battle of WWII at Anzio, Italy. That brutal experience altered him for life.

Dr. Rudy Christianson, my father’s very best friend, I called him my “Uncle Rudy” gave his life to the war effort taking amphetamines “speed” so that he could do his life saving surgery until he literary dropped. Less than three years after the war his heart quit.

My father was deferred from military service because he was vital to the efforts at home, but his father, born in 1879, was eligible to be called to service. I remember my father, born in 1908, telling me that regarding military inscription of his father, he told him,

“How could they take an old man like you?”

Back to Grandma’s apartment: I was safe with Grandma.

There came a knock on the door and Grandma had me hide in her bedroom. There was a police man inquiring about me. Grandma protected me, and she sent the policeman on his way.

In retrospect looking back on this incident I learned about poisonous personalities and how deceptive and cunning they could be. Bipolar psychopathic personalities are impossible to live with and absolutely no positive outcome can ever be expected.

What sparked my memories?

I recently listened to the audio version of the book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. I highly recommend it. It is apropos to our current times.

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