"... genuinely doubtful as to the meaning of existence but always open to revelation should it arrive. He is not even a wayward Christian, as he sometimes claims to be, beset by doubt and failing to live up to ideals he nonetheless holds. The ideals he holds are, in fact, the antithesis of Christianity — and his life proves it. He is neither religious nor irreligious. He is pre-religious. He is a pagan. He makes much more sense as a character in
Game of Thrones, a medieval world bereft of the legacy of Jesus of Nazareth, than as a president of a modern, Western country...."
Okay, that's where I draw the line, Andrew Sullivan.
Imagine what you like about the interior of Donald Trump's soul —
knock body-slam yourself out — but I've had it with opinion pieces that assume familiarity with
Game of Thrones. I don't watch it, and less than 10% of Americans watch it. I don't really mind being confronted with pop culture references I don't get. Why, only yesterday, I got stuck on a pop culture name I didn't remember seeing before, and I looked it up, watched a video, was a little offended but also amused and entertained, and I made
the post better with a quote and a link. But
Game of Thrones comes up again and again. It's dull, always the same reference. I gather that it has to do with vicious, hard core politics —
killing your rivals? — and I'm picturing seething Trump haters staring at it, muttering
: Trump!!!
But one more thing:
Pagans are pre-religious? That's awfully ethnocentric and arrogant. From Owen Davies, "Paganism: A Very Short Introduction" (
at Wikipedia):
It is crucial to stress right from the start that until the 20th century people did not call themselves pagans to describe the religion they practised. The notion of paganism, as it is generally understood today, was created by the early Christian Church. It was a label that Christians applied to others, one of the antitheses that were central to the process of Christian self-definition. As such, throughout history it was generally used in a derogatory sense.
So
otherizing, Andrew.
Bereft of the legacy of Jesus... that's how you accept insulting people these days? I stopped reading.
Posts
238 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 238 of 238Furious, the directors of GoT claim she is based on Margaret of Anjou.
And I've always admired Norse mythology. "We are doomed, but we're going to give those fuckers a fight that will make them wake screaming every night for the rest of their lives"
One, in specific, we really don't know that much about day to day religious observances of the Vikings.
The only thing we know with any certainty is that the Norse used a lot of talismans, perhaps as good luck charms or as badges of allegiance to a particular god, mostly Thor if the abundance of Mjölnir amulets is any indication. Adam of Bremen, one of the first Christian missionaries to visit Scandinavia report back to his bishop on Norse worship at Uppsala, the seat of the Yngling dynasty of Norse Sweden. He wrote that the Uppsala temple (which he doesn't describe) contained idols to three deities, each seated side by side as if equal in power and authority, which he named as Odin, Frey, and Thor. He mentioned that priests sacrificed stallions to those gods, but most of his account on the matter is lost.
Interestingly, the Gokstad ship burial, which may have been dedicated to one of Harald Finehair's jarls, contains the remains of at least ten horses, perhaps slaughtered in honor of the dead man's patron god.
"They were not restrained by large states with the powerful kings common to most other contemporary historical actors..."
I think you have misunderstood the nature of Anglo-Saxon England.
Nonsense. Name your stake and I'll bet you any reasonable amount of it that England always had a higher population than Scandinavia - regardless of whether it was under each monarch of the heptarchy or at any other point. A king and realm with a population that's a fraction of his rival's will never be as powerful. Until he conquers said rival. England was also vastly more resource-rich in nearly every way. QED.
Christian England was under the feudal system had like the rest of Europe prescribed codes of social relations that were way more restrictive than Viking Scandinavia had. And even if it were not for that, the morals imposed by Christianity were also restrictive in ways that made it easier to control than viking society.
It's just common sense.
Viking society further lacked the stratification that arises from separating warriors from peasants. A society rife with warriors ready to be glorified out of every man - as opposed to just a certain class of men - is also more difficult to control.
Rance Fasoldt said...
I read much of George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire," the first volume of which is titled "A Game of Thrones" before I tired of the bad writing. As an accomplished reader of literature, I can proclaim Martin the Thomas Kincaid of authors. A lot of people like Kincaid, but that doesn't make him a Master. Having suggested that the story is lame, I posit that the acting is average, but the production values are quite impressive. I credit the production values for the success of the TV series, in that one can hide behind the acting and locations while indulging in the nudity, incest and violence. Very quickly I was interested only in the dire wolf puppies. Did any survive?
5/29/17, 12:00 PM
Excellent summary. SoIaF, GoT is kitsch nihilist atheist version of medieval Europe with FX and dragons. The opposite of Tolkien, with his Catholic belief underpinning his morality.
#Tooth,
Christian England was under the feudal system had like the rest of Europe prescribed codes of social relations that were way more restrictive than Viking Scandinavia had. And even if it were not for that, the morals imposed by Christianity were also restrictive in ways that made it easier to control than viking society.
You don't know that because we don't know that. The Vikings did not write their own histories. What histories there were written years after the facts by Christian monks & scribes. You know why we got Beowulf? Because some buncha Anglo-Saxon monks thought it was a kick-ass story. That's it. The only reason it survives.
This business of the "freedom" of pre-Christian societies is simply projection by modern writers of fiction. It may have been the case, whatever "freedom" is defined as. Or, maybe not. We have no idea, because these were pre-literate societies. As an example, you know what we know about the Germanic & Celtic tribes Rome fought? Caesar, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus. That's it.
I read a lot of history. One thing I have learned [as did my mother, who also read a lot of history] is that every writer has his/her unique perspective on events and their significance. And I find that the best chronicles are often those most contemporaneous.
I don't like history filtered through centuries of shifting values and sensibilities.
Christian England was under the feudal system had like the rest of Europe prescribed codes of social relations that were way more restrictive than Viking Scandinavia had...
Anachronism. You're two hundred years off, Toothless.
But keep it up. You're close to achieving comedy.
mockturtle, pity the poor historians who will have to shift through mountains of dreck to write a history of our time.
That's assuming that in 100 years, there will be historians.
Exiled, as I understand it from my grandchildren, history taught today consists almost entirely of how women and minorities built the nation and how white men ruined it. I truly wish I had kept my old Western Civ textbooks!
Well, that, mockturtle, and how free and glorious life was before Christians came around and ruined all the fun.
700 AD in the lands of the Franks. Not England. Read the title of your source, Toothless - 1086 is two hundred years after the events in England and the Scandinavia that are the subject of Vikings. The Normans learned the feudal system from the Franks, and it was William the Bastard who imposed it on England.
Fine. Then regardless of whether feudal or not, any stage of Christian England lacked the warrior ethic of a society of people racing to meet Thor and Odin in Valhalla if they could only kill or be killed by enough battle adversaries. And if you're a king looking to exert control over a population, go ahead and make your case for how the former are as hard to control as the latter.
Not that it matters, but some of my Briton ancestors assisted William the Conqueror and received knighthoods for it. I often wonder how many titles were the reward for treason.
I've read -- and it sounds right -- that the Christian kings of Europe did not engage in wars of conquest against one another. At some point they justified their wars by appealing to (possibly fraudulent) lines of succession. William the Conqueror claimed that Edward the Confessor, being childless, gifted him his kingdom on his death (William was supposed to be a distant cousin of Edward's). The idea that one Christian nation would conquer another, and colonize it with its own people, goes only back as far as the Reformation.
As hard to control... and as restive!
That's a good word. Should have put it in there.
Yes. I believe viking populations were a good deal more restive.
As a king I have a choice to rule over Christians or to rule over Vikings. Which population do you think is readier to eviscerate me if I'm not to their liking?
Probably another reason for the raids. Direct their energies into something other than regicide and jarl-cide.
We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying,
Valhalla, I am coming!
On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore
Why is the blue called sky?
At 5:33 PM Toothless wrote: For someone to take the sagas or any other lore as gospel, well, let's just say they might as well literally believe something as far fetched as a bible story. I'm sure there's a lot of history in there. And just as much dramatization and fictionalization.
More recently: Then regardless of whether feudal or not, any stage of Christian England lacked the warrior ethic of a society of people racing to meet Thor and Odin in Valhalla if they could only kill or be killed by enough battle adversaries.
You do realize the only source we have for this belief is Snorri Sturluson's Poetic Edda written under a Christian context in the 13th century. I'm gratified and surprised you believe such far-fetched hokum.
Christian England lacked the warrior ethic of a society of people racing to meet Thor and Odin in Valhalla if they could only kill or be killed by enough battle adversaries.
The vikings typically fought for loot or land. The only recorded instances of their waging battle for religious reasons were on behalf of Christianity and against fellow Norsemen who preferred their ancestral beliefs.
EMyrt, I haven't read the books, so I can't speak about Martin as a writer. But your critic confuses the book with the tv script, which is quite good.
As for dire pups, Arya's is still alive somewhere in the wild. And I think Ghost is still with Jon Snow but don't recall seeing him at the battle to retake Winterfell.
If you want to go all recondite with extreme revisionism, go wild, Man! Who knows what those pagans believed. Perhaps it was the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Only dopes presume that Norse mythology wasn't just invented by post-13th c. viking haters, right?
Yes, I think that contemporary events in the sagas should be taken with as much a grain of salt as contemporary events written in the bible. If you hate single sources, then go back up the sagas' dramas with another one, or two. (Some will exist for a character here or there, but not every event in comprehensive detail).
So when did you become Erik the Red's official records-keeper?
Probably another reason for the raids. Direct their energies into something other than regicide and jarl-cide.
Perhaps.
But Occam's razor dictates that the lust for slaves and silver in the 9th century and more fertile fields in a gentler climate in the 10th was more than sufficient motivation for the Scandinavian aggressions of the Viking Age.
As a king I have a choice to rule over Christians or to rule over Vikings. Which population do you think is readier to eviscerate me if I'm not to their liking?
That's an . . . interesting historiography.
Vikings left their land to the oldest (or favorite) son. This left a lot of sons with no land.
For someone to take the sagas or any other lore as gospel, well, let's just say they might as well literally believe something as far fetched as a bible story.
What do you think the past is? A place you can visit? With people living in it?
Not picking on you in particular, R&B. What you've written about the past is a common belief, by people on both the left and right. But I have never believed it. The past, like the future is a work of imagination. It exists in the mind only (unless God exists). Language has a past and future tense, the universe does not. Everything happens now, and only now.
Of course, that doesn't mean that our imaginations are not constrained. If I broke my arm yesterday, I can't imagine away the hurt today. But the broken arm, and the pain, are the only real things. My breaking of the arm is a memory, it doesn't exist in the real universe.
You do realize the only source we have for this belief is Snorri Sturluson's Poetic Edda written under a Christian context in the 13th century.
Apparently that's the source for nearly all Norse mythology. So what's your point - to throw everything thought to be known about what they believed into question?
Either way, and whatever their reasons, they sure seemed to like doing a lot of ruthless fighting - by all accounts of their adversaries.
With every comment of yours, I increasingly get the impression that you're the president of the Viking Image Improvement and Modernization Committee. Do you have a surname ending in "sson" or was it the lineage they somehow "left behind" in Ireland that gives you such a personal and visceral sense of offense that you take at basically any conventionally resourced ideas about the vikings?
I'll leave it at that lest you take out additional swings of your battle axe against my comments.
But Occam's razor dictates that the lust for slaves and silver in the 9th century and more fertile fields in a gentler climate in the 10th was more than sufficient motivation for the Scandinavian aggressions of the Viking Age.
Yes. At last. Something conventional that I'm more than happy to also agree with.
YH,
Noble Savage type mythos?
Q,
the seat of the Yngling dynasty
Yngling? They had beer back then?
(ducks)
Sansa's direwolf killed by Ned Stark ( mercy kill)
Rob's killed by House Frey at Red Wedding
Bran's killed in zombie attack on 3-eyed Raven.
Rickon's killed by House Umber or, later, Ramsey Bolton. I forget.
Arya's last seen when she released him and told him to run n hide after biting Prince Geoffry (season 1). Assumed to be leader of wolf pack in wild. Arya returned to the region to assasinate the Freys, so I think they will reunite.
Jon Snow's last seen defending Snow's corpse at Castle Black. Assumed to currently be alive and with resurected Snow at retaking of Winterfell.
Lewis Wetzel:
Not space and time, just space? And a virtual "time" dimension that tracks kinetic energy.
Google says reason Jon Snow's not seen at Battle for Winterfell is because soecial effects budget only had room for the Giant Wun Wun or direwolf, not both. And it was giant's death scene.
Reading these comments was great fun. Thanks to most of you for the thoughtfulness.
Thanks to others for comedy, most of it unintentional.
Inga said...
On Memorial Day of all days."
To point out the heroes, one of which was an Army veteran, father of four, that stood up to hate is very fitting for Memorial Day. Too bad you Trumpists chose to ignore the incident and the heroes.
He ran as a Republic in a local election too. You are just being a terrible human being today.
The Toothless Revolutionary said...
These people are simply indecent cockroaches with no morals, standards or boundaries whatsoever. All that they care about is whatever they can do to grow their political power. That's all that matters to them. That's it.
You should be ashamed.
I thought Inga said she could watch Republicans being beat up all day long? Although I guess she gets bonus points for using a dead republican's corpse as a prop to score cheap shots.
Also, sidebet that the perp was either on psychotropic drugs or just coming off of psychotropic drugs. Like almost all the other nutjob killers.
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