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Today is the last of three days that are the two thousand-year anniversary of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (Schlacht im Teutoburger Wald, Hermannschlacht, or if you must, Varusschlacht). It's not often we have a bimillennium to celebrate, and this was a doozy of an event. Germanic tribes made common cause under a brilliant leader, whose name has come down to us as Arminius but may have been Irmin, which my heathen readers should recognize as being quite a name - and ambushed and annihilated three legions, forcing the Romans to back down from annexing their homeland and in fact to build the first cross-country wall in Europe to keep them out of the Empire. For his pains, Arminius lost his beloved wife (with whom he had eloped), she died in captivity, and their son was born a slave, trained as a gladiator, and died young. Arminius himself was killed by treachery. If he had lived, there might have been more collaboration between the tribes, but the lesson was largely lost. However, it was a glorious victory, bought centuries of peace for the tribes, and those of us who do not regard Rome as a benign bringer of civilization and better religions owe a debt of admiration and gratitude to those warriors. Also there is at least one coda . . . the rediscovery of Arminius gave impetus and a rallying idea of nationhood to the movement for German-speaking people to unite and form their own country. Beyond that, there's a plausible theory that Sigurð/Siegfried is a metaphorical version of Arminius . . . which if true means he and his men also gave us the second great story matter of medieval Europe, after the Matter of Britain (the Arthurian material).
I posted about the Teutoburg battle in one of the posts of my now almost finished "Germanic History 101" that was my Blogathon project in 2008: http://weofodthignen.livejournal.com/355477.html . There's also a very fine set of articles on it at http://www.voluspa.org/teutoburgmain.htm .
Yesterday was also the anniversary of the Battle of Svolder, in 1000. A great Viking Age sea battle in the finest style - in which King Olaf Tryggvason's tremendous flagship, the Long Serpent, the longest longship ever and supposedly unboardable, was boarded and the king threw himself into the sea in full armor rather than be taken alive. He was a great king in some ways, and certainly overcame a difficult childhood - being captured by pirates and sold twice, for livestock and clothing, will give anyone a bad attitude, and then his wife died - but he was one of the most brutal converters in history. Whereas Jarl Eric Hakonsson, who boarded the Long Serpent at Svolder and sailed her back in triumph, promised to convert . . . but presided over a restoration of heathenry in Norway. Olaf got what he deserved. And Svolder was also an allied effort: the Swedes, the Danes, the Wends, and the Hakonssons all together, Xians, heathens, and pagans, dished it out to him.
I covered Olaf and Svolder at the start of this Blogathon entry: http://weofodthignen.livejournal.com/361687.html .
And of course today is 9-11, the day so many New Yorkers, plane passengers, and Pentagon staffers died in a terrible terrorist attack. I don't believe I've written about this on LJ, what it was like to be teaching on the mezzanine of the Pennsylvania Hotel that day and be called into my supervisor's office at break, where the news of the second plane strike came over the radio . . . to evacuate the school amid a flood of wild-eyed students from dozens of different countries . . . to walk home through throngs of people, all of us craning our heads into bars to see if there was a TV receiving a signal, via Times Square where the news of the crash in Pennsylvania was just passing around the news strip on the Times building, a growing crowd standing gazing up as the words slowly moved around the building, rumors of an attack on the White House, and for the first time the news that the towers had fallen . . . in my apartment I was able to get NY1 and one of their reporters was sitting there disheveled and dirty, thanking firefighters for shoving him under a firetruck, and saying he hadn't been able to find his cameraman and imploring him to call the studio . . . they had to cut away. Going by the firehouse around the corner - Rescue 1, high-rise specialists. They all died. A growing mountain of floral tributes, it was already blocking the door - there was no one to gather them up. And the next day, walking to work through hushed streets, greeting the brave students who had managed to come in; a young brother and sister, political refugees from the Middle East who had come to the US because their father had worked for democratic reforms in their country, had been spat on and menaced in the bus, but other passengers had protected them. And we had to try to explain what had happened to the Chinese guy with no TV. And then we were sent home because the school couldn't function without all the staffers who lived in New Jersey. And I went down into Penn Station and joined a line to buy a precious copy of the NY Times from the bundle that the news stand owner had taken a rowboat over to New Jersey to get, because a few years before, they had moved the printing out of their own building and into a facility across the river. And over the following weeks, the paper featured a list of some of the dead, and a short article about each one, every day. Ten or a dozen a day. The woman who was just there for an appointment, and she and her husband evacuated the second tower to be hit, but security was saying to clear the plaza, to go back into the tower that wasn't on fire, so they did, then the other plane hit and they ran but he got separated from her. The sculptor who rented an office in one of the towers as a studio and was busily preparing for a show. The dishwasher at Windows on the World. The fire crew from Brooklyn who were photographed heading over the bridge, rushing to assist. And students told me that in an office high in one of the towers, there were Ecuadoran employees who were an unofficial welcome and assistance bureau for their countrymen.
All dead.
This is why I don't write about it often. I don't know what lesson there is from 9-11, except that vengeance is justified and needful. And I was two to three miles away, quite safe. Others have more personal stories. Remember and honour the dead. Hail the heroes.
I posted about the Teutoburg battle in one of the posts of my now almost finished "Germanic History 101" that was my Blogathon project in 2008: http://weofodthignen.livejournal.com/355477.html . There's also a very fine set of articles on it at http://www.voluspa.org/teutoburgmain.htm .
Yesterday was also the anniversary of the Battle of Svolder, in 1000. A great Viking Age sea battle in the finest style - in which King Olaf Tryggvason's tremendous flagship, the Long Serpent, the longest longship ever and supposedly unboardable, was boarded and the king threw himself into the sea in full armor rather than be taken alive. He was a great king in some ways, and certainly overcame a difficult childhood - being captured by pirates and sold twice, for livestock and clothing, will give anyone a bad attitude, and then his wife died - but he was one of the most brutal converters in history. Whereas Jarl Eric Hakonsson, who boarded the Long Serpent at Svolder and sailed her back in triumph, promised to convert . . . but presided over a restoration of heathenry in Norway. Olaf got what he deserved. And Svolder was also an allied effort: the Swedes, the Danes, the Wends, and the Hakonssons all together, Xians, heathens, and pagans, dished it out to him.
I covered Olaf and Svolder at the start of this Blogathon entry: http://weofodthignen.livejournal.com/361687.html .
And of course today is 9-11, the day so many New Yorkers, plane passengers, and Pentagon staffers died in a terrible terrorist attack. I don't believe I've written about this on LJ, what it was like to be teaching on the mezzanine of the Pennsylvania Hotel that day and be called into my supervisor's office at break, where the news of the second plane strike came over the radio . . . to evacuate the school amid a flood of wild-eyed students from dozens of different countries . . . to walk home through throngs of people, all of us craning our heads into bars to see if there was a TV receiving a signal, via Times Square where the news of the crash in Pennsylvania was just passing around the news strip on the Times building, a growing crowd standing gazing up as the words slowly moved around the building, rumors of an attack on the White House, and for the first time the news that the towers had fallen . . . in my apartment I was able to get NY1 and one of their reporters was sitting there disheveled and dirty, thanking firefighters for shoving him under a firetruck, and saying he hadn't been able to find his cameraman and imploring him to call the studio . . . they had to cut away. Going by the firehouse around the corner - Rescue 1, high-rise specialists. They all died. A growing mountain of floral tributes, it was already blocking the door - there was no one to gather them up. And the next day, walking to work through hushed streets, greeting the brave students who had managed to come in; a young brother and sister, political refugees from the Middle East who had come to the US because their father had worked for democratic reforms in their country, had been spat on and menaced in the bus, but other passengers had protected them. And we had to try to explain what had happened to the Chinese guy with no TV. And then we were sent home because the school couldn't function without all the staffers who lived in New Jersey. And I went down into Penn Station and joined a line to buy a precious copy of the NY Times from the bundle that the news stand owner had taken a rowboat over to New Jersey to get, because a few years before, they had moved the printing out of their own building and into a facility across the river. And over the following weeks, the paper featured a list of some of the dead, and a short article about each one, every day. Ten or a dozen a day. The woman who was just there for an appointment, and she and her husband evacuated the second tower to be hit, but security was saying to clear the plaza, to go back into the tower that wasn't on fire, so they did, then the other plane hit and they ran but he got separated from her. The sculptor who rented an office in one of the towers as a studio and was busily preparing for a show. The dishwasher at Windows on the World. The fire crew from Brooklyn who were photographed heading over the bridge, rushing to assist. And students told me that in an office high in one of the towers, there were Ecuadoran employees who were an unofficial welcome and assistance bureau for their countrymen.
All dead.
This is why I don't write about it often. I don't know what lesson there is from 9-11, except that vengeance is justified and needful. And I was two to three miles away, quite safe. Others have more personal stories. Remember and honour the dead. Hail the heroes.
From: (Anonymous)
Battle of Svölder
As well as many other events.