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SlothfulCobra posted:Was that sort of X the Y title sort of a prestige thing among the norse, or was it just a unique identifier to differentiate people? Harold the Tall instead of Harold the Chubby or Harold the One With a Big Nose for instance. Probably similar to the cognomen in Roman nomenclature except less familial (e.g. Caesar being purportedly about killing an elephant or having gray eyes or a caul or something) and more individual. Ragnar Lothbrok (I can't find the little hashed lowercase d character on my phone) for example is a nickname talking about his shaggy pants. It sort of makes sense for the same reason the cognomen did in Roman society - if you have a shitton of people with the same family name wanting the same given name (e.g. Gaius Julius) you've got to figure out a way to at least differentiate which branch of the Julii this particular Gaius hails from. Or, which of the handful of Ragnars whose fathers were named Bjorn you're talking about. So, Gaius Julius Caesar, or that Ragnar, the one with the shaggy pants. It's probably more of a thing in the literature than in conversational use at the time, since it's unlikely that you run across more than one Ragnar Bjornsson or whatever at the same time and even then you can just point and be like "that Ragnar, not the other one" but  might as well own it if they're going to name you for your baller jorts.
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Sep 30, 2016 17:42
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Some interesting historical or semi-historical Icelanders with nicknames: -Önundur tréfótur (Önund Pegleg) settled in Iceland in the late 800s after being on the losing side of a war against Haraldur hárfagri (Harold Fair-hair). Called so because he became maimed in battle and had to rely on a wooden leg after that though he was reportedly "the bravest and most agile one legged man in Iceland.". Great-grandfather to the saga hero and vampire slayer Grettir sterki (Grettir the Strong). -Geirmundur heljarskinn (Geirmund Helskin). The son of Hjör king of Hordaland and his concubine Ljúfvina the daughter of the king of Bjarmia. His nickname comes from the fact that he had unusual facial features for a Norseman and quite dark skin. It is likely that his mother was Samoyedic. Due to being the son and grandson of kings he is often said to have been the most noble of the settlers. -Þórir þursasprengir (Þórir Giantexploder). It is unknown how Þórir got his nickname but his son was reportedly some sort of monster fighter, as a sidegig from being a blacksmith, and is said to have killed a witch who was disguised as a water filled bullskin by stabbing her with a iron stake. Others include: Ljótur óþveginn (Ljótur the Unwashed), Gils skeiðarnef (Gils Spoon Nose), Eyjólfur ofsi (Eyjólfur the Furious), Þórir dúfunef (Þórir Pidgeon Nose), and Þengill mjögsiglandi(Þengill Sails-a-lot). FreudianSlippers fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Oct 1, 2016 |
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Oct 1, 2016 20:39
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A yes, Þórir Giantexploder and his cousins, Thors Largehuge and Sven Groinpunch
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Oct 1, 2016 23:48
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FreudianSlippers posted:
"Drinking was the primary pastime in Iceland"
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Oct 2, 2016 00:01
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What domestic item did Þórir explode and claim that it was totally a giant in disguise you guys stop complaining I break all your stuff.
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Oct 2, 2016 08:53
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sebzilla posted:What domestic item did Þórir explode and claim that it was totally a giant in disguise you guys stop complaining I break all your stuff. Looks like someone's water-filled bullskin, so not only did he break someone's poo poo, he got all their poo poo wet because it was a loving witch giant in disguise. And they bought it, because they wouldn't have called him the giant exploder for nothing.
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Oct 2, 2016 09:01
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Maybe they were actually making fun of him. Hey, remember when that dumbass Thorir got so utterly hammered he thought Rolf's waterskin was a giant witch in disguise?! Watch out for Thorir Giant-exploder! 
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Oct 2, 2016 11:25
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hailthefish posted:Maybe they were actually making fun of him. Second vote that is was an inside joke. They laughed their rear end off after they straight-facedly told the rune-carver his name.
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Oct 2, 2016 11:42
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That was his son. Thorir exploded something else. Exploding runs in the family.
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Oct 2, 2016 14:24
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Youre taking it too literally. His giant explosion...
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Oct 2, 2016 22:07
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Cast_No_Shadow posted:Youre taking it too literally. His giant explosion... Thorir BigFart
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Oct 2, 2016 22:11
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Knockknees posted:That was his son. Thorir exploded something else. Exploding runs in the family. Giant exploder was my dad's name call me dwarf exploder.
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Oct 3, 2016 00:01
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Speaking of runes, a church in my municipality (Sweden) houses an unusual one, a late one from the latter half of the 12th century, i.e after the end of the Viking age.  Written in the runic alphabet/futhark, but it translates into Latin! Ingeborg filia Ermundi iacet hic. = Ingeborg, Ermunds daughter rests here.
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Oct 3, 2016 08:17
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Today in ancient astronauts news: Iraqi transport minister claims first airport was built 7,000 years ago in Iraq by ancient Sumerians quote:Memo reported that the minister also claimed that the angels “were all Sumerian” and “Sumerian spaceships used to launch from here towards the other planets.”
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Oct 3, 2016 13:26
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Kassad posted:Today in ancient astronauts news: The Babylonians must really have been something to have been able to kick the Sumerians' rear end.
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Oct 3, 2016 14:24
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fucksake it's not the information minister back again is it
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Oct 3, 2016 19:27
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Next Michael Moore documentary looking good.
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Oct 3, 2016 20:38
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Kassad posted:Today in ancient astronauts news: "The angels were all Sumerian" sounds like a line from Welcome to Nightvale.
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Oct 3, 2016 21:51
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Freudian Slippers tell us about Icelandic vampires please.
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Oct 4, 2016 01:02
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Edit: Sorry, mispost. But please, more on those vampires!
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Oct 5, 2016 02:18
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I was being slightly hyperbolic. Not vampires per se but Grettir fights and slays the draugur Glámur. Glámur himself was a monster hunter of some sort that was killed by the unspecified evil force he was hired to drive out and then himself transformed into a undead monster, presumably from his contact with the evil. He goes around "riding houses", killing lifestock and murdering those who dare stay out after dark. He nearly wipes out the entire county before Grettir the Strong is called in to fight him. Grettir wrestles Glámur into submission and then decapitated him but in his final moments the draugur gives his slayer the evil eye and curses him with a lifetime of unhappiness. Another saga tells of Þórólfur Lamefoot who rises from the dead and begins to roam the countryside, jumping on people's backs and riding them to either death or insanity. Those he kills also return from the dead and before long Þórólfur has his own little undead army. Þórólfur himself died a natural death but rose from the death simply from being a complete rear end in a top hat in life. The idea that new vampires are created only from the victims of those vampires that came before them is a fairly recent one. Although being the victim of a vampire was a surefire way of becoming one yourself in Slavic folklore you could also become a vampire in many other ways. Dying suddenly, committing suicide, and being murdered were causes of vampirisim, especially suicide. Vampires were often social outcasts or eccentrics in life so being a bit odd seemingly increases your risk of undeath quite a bit. More obscure ways include eating the meat of lifestock that a vampire has prayed upon, being a witch, converting from Christianity to Islam and having a cat jump over your dead body. Similar things apply to Draugar especially the parts about social outcasts and suicide. Although draugur literally means "ghost"* they are usually quite different from the ghosts of most of Europe in that they are not ethereal spirits but physical walking corpses that rise from their graves and have the ability to change shape usually into that of some animal. They are more similar in form to Slavic vampires than most medieval ghosts in Europe. With the main exception being the revenants that William of Newbury wrote about in the 12th century who are often regarded as being a sort of "proto-vampire" along with the Greek Vrykolakas and the Spectrums described in Henry Moore's 1655 Antidote Against Atheism. None of these, except arguably William's revenants, actually drink blood but all have similar abilities and behavior as the vampires that came later. Witches are also a proto-vampire of sorts since they were often said to steal blood either to use in magic or to drink it. In some places witches and vampires are one and the same with all witches/wizards being destined to become vampires upon death. The idea that the Norse Draugur is one of these proto-Vampires is not entirely new. In 1897 Scottish folklorist Andrew Lang wrote about Glámur as "Glam the vampire". This view has also become increasingly widespread among Icelandic scholars in recent years. One such scholar, Ármann Jakobsson, claimed that draugar in Icelandic medieval literature can be broken down into two categories. The first being Guardians/Mound Dwellers who stay in their grave or sometimes former home and protect the treasures therein from trespassers and thieves and behave in many ways like dragons on their hoard. The second category is "tilberadraugar"**, these behave quite differently. They roam around looking for victims to either directly kill, often by dragging them into the grave with them or simply by beating them to death, or to drive them insane. They only exist to haunt the living and serve no other purpose, their undead existence is therefore a parasitic one where they try to literally or symbolically bring the living into the world of the dead. Slavic vampires are most often said to be red skinned and unrotten but engorged, presumably with the fresh blood of their victims. Draugar are a bit different in that they are most often said to be black or blue skinned and in many tales they are similarly swollen. In the 19th century the Icelandic ghost became increasingly less corporeal as the popularity of spiritisim surged and brought with it some more continental ideas about the spirits of the dead. Icelandic draugar also have similar weaknesses as their Slavic cousins with the go to way for destroying a draugur being to dig up the corpse, behead it and usually burn it for good measure. Another common way of destroying a draugur is to drive stakes or rods into the corpse although the limbs are preferred to the heart. This does not always work. Sometime in 1812 a poor vagrant woman called Gudda died and soon after she began to haunt the countryside and harass the living. To put a stop to this she was dug up and iron rods driven into her hands and feet in the hopes that it would stop her from crawling out of the grave. The haunting continued and Gudda was even more malicious than before possibly because now she had to crawl around on here elbows and knees. Another account tells of a young man who finds a half-skeletal corpse on the sea shore. When he approached the corpse it stood up and began to chase him. The corpse was given a proper burial in the hopes that it would stop haunting the boy but to no avail. The haunting continued until the boy, at the advice of an old man, drove two iron stakes into the top and bottom of the grave, dug a hole between them, and took a poo poo in it. short version since this is probably really rambling: Both Icelandic ghosts(draugar) and Slavic vampires are physical undead. Both have shapeshifting abilities that they most often use to turn into animals. Both . The destruction of the actual corpse is the preferred method of dealing with both creatures and in both cases the undeath is infectious. Source:  and also a bunch of other books and essays *In older texts the word is more of a general word for someone or something supernatural and/or evil and is sometimes even used interchangeably with "tröll" which later became to mean only "ogre" or "giant" but originally had a wider meaning and could refer to anything from a wizard to the undead to a actual troll. "Draugur" can also mean a tree log but that meaning is almost only used in poetry. **A Tilberi being a vampiric reanimated human rib brought to life by a witch. First the witch must dig up a human rib from a graveyard, a fresh corpse is prefered and it is best to do it during the Pentecost. She must then wrap the rib in stolen wool and hide it between her breasts when she goes to mass. Instead of drinking the wine during communion she has to spit it down her cleavage unto the rib. She must do this at least three times. Then she must create a small teet on her thigh from which her creation can drink her blood. She can then send the being out to steal milk from other people's cows. It suckles the milk directly from the animal and the comes home to vomit it into the butter churn. Tilberi butter is said to be substandard and if you draw a specific magical sigil on butter it will melt into foam or possibly explode if it was made from Tilberi vomit. They can also be sent to steal wool or money. If one wants to get rid of a Tilberi it is best to send it out to gather all the sheep dung for it will work itself to death.
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Oct 5, 2016 22:33
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"I will commit necromancy in order to produce and sell poor-quality butter!" Some witches have very limited ambitions.
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Oct 5, 2016 23:02
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The Serbian Empire's 1349 code of laws actually mentions vampires. It's nothing exciting though, basically if someone digs up a corpse and stakes it because it's suspected to be a vampire, they're to be heavily fined, and also any priest dumb enough to take part in the ritual will not be a priest anymore. You can almost hear the emperor muttering "I swear, if I hear about you peasants doing this one more time, someone is going to get staked, and it's not going to be the vampire"
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Oct 6, 2016 00:02
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my dad posted:The Serbian Empire's 1349 code of laws actually mentions vampires. This emperor seems suspiciously pro-vampire. Has anyone seen him outside in the daytime? #askquestions
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Oct 6, 2016 00:08
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Mantis42 posted:There's Chinese grafitti in that ancient Egyptian temple, surely that counts? lol
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Oct 6, 2016 01:34
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my dad posted:The Serbian Empire's 1349 code of laws actually mentions vampires. Yeah, some places also had laws against calling other people witches, to stop the witch hunts.
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Oct 6, 2016 01:44
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FreudianSlippers posted:The corpse was given a proper burial in the hopes that it would stop haunting the boy but to no avail. The haunting continued until the boy, at the advice of an old man, drove two iron stakes into the top and bottom of the grave, dug a hole between them, and took a poo poo in it. That old man had no idea what he was talking about but he knew EXACTLY what he was doing 
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Oct 6, 2016 05:47
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quote:Posca was a popular drink in ancient Rome and Greece, made by mixing sour wine or vinegar with water and flavouring herbs. It originated in Greece as a medicinal mixture but became an everyday drink for the Roman army and the lower classes from around the 2nd century BC, continuing to be used throughout Roman history and into the Byzantine period. huh https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posca
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Oct 6, 2016 10:30
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I don't know if this song dates to ancient times but it's beautiful. Georgian monks and a child sing to Pope in Aramaic. https://www.facebook.com/OtkroiGruziu/videos/1770517589866681/
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Oct 6, 2016 15:36
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Doctor Malaver posted:I don't know if this song dates to ancient times but it's beautiful. Georgian monks and a child sing to Pope in Aramaic. pro loving click right here
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Oct 6, 2016 23:45
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Doctor Malaver posted:I don't know if this song dates to ancient times but it's beautiful. Georgian monks and a child sing to Pope in Aramaic. That was loving beautiful, I couldn't turn away.
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Oct 7, 2016 08:02
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Posca was also the name of Cesar's chief slave in HBO's Rome. I just finished watching the first season and I liked it, except for occasional plot twist. (I hated Cesar's wig too... until I learned that the actor really has thick black hair despite being 60  )Is there anything unrealistic about how they portray everyday life in Rome?
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Oct 9, 2016 16:21
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Doctor Malaver posted:Posca was also the name of Cesar's chief slave in HBO's Rome. I just finished watching the first season and I liked it, except for occasional plot twist. (I hated Cesar's wig too... until I learned that the actor really has thick black hair despite being 60 Titus Pullo and Lucius Verenus were both the same rank in real life, showing a total lack of respect for the historical sources  More seriously though, the course of political events is a bit simplified and telescoped but in terms of day to day life I gather it's pretty accurate.
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Oct 9, 2016 17:37
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But it's nothing like New Jersey!!!
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Oct 9, 2016 22:10
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Rome is the most accurate show/movie in general. They do play with timescales and stuff and make Pullo/Vorenus more important than reality obviously but other than that I never really noticed anything that stood out.
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Oct 10, 2016 01:56
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The portrayal of Egypt was a bit inaccurate, as I remember. At least, there was no ancient Egyptian palace in Alexandria since the city was ~300 years old at the time.
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Oct 10, 2016 08:30
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Ynglaur posted:Second vote that is was an inside joke. They laughed their rear end off after they straight-facedly told the rune-carver his name. I still think that Ivar the Boneless has the best Viking name ever. So how did he get that name? Was he a super sneaky Viking? Did he suffer from erectile dysfunction? Or was he actually crippled? Historians want to know.
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Oct 10, 2016 08:39
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He might just have been an utterly spineless guy.
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Oct 10, 2016 08:45
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thrakkorzog posted:I still think that Ivar the Boneless has the best Viking name ever. I think several of the Celtic/Viking/Anglo-Saxon/etc monarchs had great titles. I'm also a fan of Aethelred the Unready, for instance.
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Oct 10, 2016 08:47
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Elyv posted:I think several of the Celtic/Viking/Anglo-Saxon/etc monarchs had great titles. I'm also a fan of Aethelred the Unready, for instance. Well, Aethelred the Unready was a ten year old kid who was crowned King of England, and had to fend off vikings. Hell, I wouldn't trust a ten year old kid to take over a local McDonald's franchise, much less England.
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Oct 10, 2016 10:07
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