Book: Two Old Women
This will be a bit roundabout, I'm afraid, traveling through a song and an interview and a digression about translations, before getting to the actual book. :)
So, first off, a while ago I stumbled on an a capella musical group called Sassafrass that is working on an album called Sundown based on Norse mythology. In particular, there's a song that has wound up stuck in my head for weeks at a time, coming and going. It's a duet between Odin and Loki called My Brother, My Enemy - the link has streaming audio, so go and listen! :)
I also enjoy their absolutely delightful Futhark song. :)
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A bit later, I came across an interview with Ada Palmer, the composer. One of her responses in the interview led to one of those moments where a bunch of things snap into focus; I don't know whether it will have similar effects on anyone else, but I figure I'll share anyway:
BLT: You mentioned that while Christianity struggles with the problem of evil, the Norse myths face a rather different issue. Tell us about that.
Ada: Christianity and the Greco-Roman religions emerged around the Mediterranean, where life was basically good: the climate is comfortable, the earth is fertile, and there is an abundance of plants and animals for food. In these surroundings, where the world was basically good, the gods too are conceived of as basically good, thus giving rise to the question “if the gods are good, then why is there evil in the world?” But in the far north, where Viking culture emerged, the world was a very different place: the earth is more often frozen than not, plants and animals are rare, and even the gods have to fight and scheme for survival in a fundamentally inhospitable cosmos. In Norse cosmology, the basic elements of creation are ice and fire: dangerous elements that are intrinsically hostile to life. In such a world, the basic question that emerges isn’t “why is there evil in the world”: it’s “why is there anything good in the world at all?”
This more or less also clarified my views on civil liberties, in a philosophy I am hereby calling "Viking Socialism": concepts like "rights", "justice", "fairness", and "universal health care" don't exist in nature, don't exist apart from groups of people, and aren't floating around somewhere in Platonic idea-space. They're things we create, things that we do for each other, because we think they're good things, and so we bring these concepts into existence by an act of will, powered by a sacrifice of our time, energy, and resources. (And hopefully not of our eye, life, and/or capacity for love.) Talking about "rights" as if they were a thing that people somehow mystically "have" is misleading; "rights" are a thing we give to the people around us, over and over again until we are dead, and it will be inconvenient and painful at times, but that's what we do because that's how we make ourselves into someone worth becoming. (And because we carved the oath onto our spear, of course. And because any other choice will, in the long run, lead to the absolute annihilation of all that we hold dear. Ha ha only serious.)
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And now a digression into translation styles. When I'm delving into a culture and language, I really prefer word-for-word translations, where the translator keeps the original word order as much as possible. This is what I do when translating on paper, for example. It lets me start thinking in the language's sentence structure, to start parsing concepts in the language's word-bundles, and to start using the language's idioms naturally. Eventually, more and more words are just left alone, until poof, I'm basically just making a gloss of unfamiliar words.
But for stuff where I'm not immersing myself into a culture, I tend to indentify two main categories of translation. One tends to aim for conveying the same meaning, but this usually requires enough careful English phrasing to completely hide the original rhythm, style, etc. The other tends to aim for conveying the same emotional impact, but often tends to be a bit loose with the literal meaning of the words. Possibly it's just me, but no matter the type of the translation, I often seem to find myself wishing the translator had done more of the other type, whichever it happened to be. :) Maybe I'm just contrary and unsatisfiable like that. :)
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So finally, the book is Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. It's a native Alaskan folk tale about how a tribe and two old women deal with a harsh winter, and the consequences that follow. It is simple and direct and unflinching and pragmatic and honest. All the people feel real, all the choices seem human, and there is a complete lack of Romanticism and euphemism. It reads very much to me like something one would want to tell to one's children if one wanted to prepare them for life in a marginal hunter-gatherer tribe that lived near the Arctic circle. There is stuff that needs to be known and taught, not just simple knowledge, but feelings, spirit, and patterns of emotional growth, and this story seems a great way to get them across.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, when I first opened it without knowing anything about it. Perhaps something written by an outsider who was too much in love with the new rhythms of the language, who wanted to transmit the feelings they felt when they heard it for the first time, but which passed over what the story means to the people who tell it to each other, or perhaps which exoticized the meaning beyond recognition.
But this doesn't feel like that. I'm not sure what it feels like. Possibly like the unknown roots of what eventually became the Grimm brother's tales. But it's definitely worth reading!
So, first off, a while ago I stumbled on an a capella musical group called Sassafrass that is working on an album called Sundown based on Norse mythology. In particular, there's a song that has wound up stuck in my head for weeks at a time, coming and going. It's a duet between Odin and Loki called My Brother, My Enemy - the link has streaming audio, so go and listen! :)
I also enjoy their absolutely delightful Futhark song. :)
---
A bit later, I came across an interview with Ada Palmer, the composer. One of her responses in the interview led to one of those moments where a bunch of things snap into focus; I don't know whether it will have similar effects on anyone else, but I figure I'll share anyway:
BLT: You mentioned that while Christianity struggles with the problem of evil, the Norse myths face a rather different issue. Tell us about that.
Ada: Christianity and the Greco-Roman religions emerged around the Mediterranean, where life was basically good: the climate is comfortable, the earth is fertile, and there is an abundance of plants and animals for food. In these surroundings, where the world was basically good, the gods too are conceived of as basically good, thus giving rise to the question “if the gods are good, then why is there evil in the world?” But in the far north, where Viking culture emerged, the world was a very different place: the earth is more often frozen than not, plants and animals are rare, and even the gods have to fight and scheme for survival in a fundamentally inhospitable cosmos. In Norse cosmology, the basic elements of creation are ice and fire: dangerous elements that are intrinsically hostile to life. In such a world, the basic question that emerges isn’t “why is there evil in the world”: it’s “why is there anything good in the world at all?”
This more or less also clarified my views on civil liberties, in a philosophy I am hereby calling "Viking Socialism": concepts like "rights", "justice", "fairness", and "universal health care" don't exist in nature, don't exist apart from groups of people, and aren't floating around somewhere in Platonic idea-space. They're things we create, things that we do for each other, because we think they're good things, and so we bring these concepts into existence by an act of will, powered by a sacrifice of our time, energy, and resources. (And hopefully not of our eye, life, and/or capacity for love.) Talking about "rights" as if they were a thing that people somehow mystically "have" is misleading; "rights" are a thing we give to the people around us, over and over again until we are dead, and it will be inconvenient and painful at times, but that's what we do because that's how we make ourselves into someone worth becoming. (And because we carved the oath onto our spear, of course. And because any other choice will, in the long run, lead to the absolute annihilation of all that we hold dear. Ha ha only serious.)
---
And now a digression into translation styles. When I'm delving into a culture and language, I really prefer word-for-word translations, where the translator keeps the original word order as much as possible. This is what I do when translating on paper, for example. It lets me start thinking in the language's sentence structure, to start parsing concepts in the language's word-bundles, and to start using the language's idioms naturally. Eventually, more and more words are just left alone, until poof, I'm basically just making a gloss of unfamiliar words.
But for stuff where I'm not immersing myself into a culture, I tend to indentify two main categories of translation. One tends to aim for conveying the same meaning, but this usually requires enough careful English phrasing to completely hide the original rhythm, style, etc. The other tends to aim for conveying the same emotional impact, but often tends to be a bit loose with the literal meaning of the words. Possibly it's just me, but no matter the type of the translation, I often seem to find myself wishing the translator had done more of the other type, whichever it happened to be. :) Maybe I'm just contrary and unsatisfiable like that. :)
---
So finally, the book is Two Old Women by Velma Wallis. It's a native Alaskan folk tale about how a tribe and two old women deal with a harsh winter, and the consequences that follow. It is simple and direct and unflinching and pragmatic and honest. All the people feel real, all the choices seem human, and there is a complete lack of Romanticism and euphemism. It reads very much to me like something one would want to tell to one's children if one wanted to prepare them for life in a marginal hunter-gatherer tribe that lived near the Arctic circle. There is stuff that needs to be known and taught, not just simple knowledge, but feelings, spirit, and patterns of emotional growth, and this story seems a great way to get them across.
I'm not sure what I was expecting, when I first opened it without knowing anything about it. Perhaps something written by an outsider who was too much in love with the new rhythms of the language, who wanted to transmit the feelings they felt when they heard it for the first time, but which passed over what the story means to the people who tell it to each other, or perhaps which exoticized the meaning beyond recognition.
But this doesn't feel like that. I'm not sure what it feels like. Possibly like the unknown roots of what eventually became the Grimm brother's tales. But it's definitely worth reading!