Lo there! Spring is finally back in the dark gray Norumbegan air and that can only mean one thing: that I don’t know what that one thing is, and so rather than trying to find out, I am instead updating this pathetic, little excuse of a blog. But it’s not all bad, because this update involves a rare addition to the digital hall of the Heroes of Norse Proliferation with the induction of the one (and probably only) person alive who describes himself as “like if you crossed a viking and a cowboy, but got all recessive traits:” Jackson Crawford.
I first became aware of Dr. Crawford’s work about a year and a half ago when I inducted Dr. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough into this very same mostly unknown location on the outer fringes of obscure cyberspace. We succeeded in exchanging a few friendly messages through the digital ether (thanks be to the elves) and then she dropped an atomic Norse bomb by sending me a link to Jackson Crawford’s Tattúínárdǿla saga: If Star Wars Were an Icelandic Saga. Which is pretty much exactly what it says it is, and follows the story of the family of Anakinn Himingangari and Lúkr Anakinsson in proper saga fashion. Which is exactly the sort of thing I admire.
The aforementioned Saga of the People of the Tattúín River Valley was something Dr. Crawford penned back in his pre-Dr. days, and now he teaches Scandinavian culture and literature at the University of Colorado. He has also published his own translations of medieval Scandinavian myths and sagas (so far The Poetic Edda and The Saga of the Volsungs).
And he also provides numerous insights and valuable information about all things pertaining to Norse everything for the masses on his epic youtube channel, which is an especially potent platform of Norse proliferation. Particularly of interest (to me) is his rendition of the Hávamál in cowboy dialect since I like things that play with language in bizarre, geeky Norse ways, and his lessons and auditory examples covering the pronunciation of Old Norse. You just can’t get this type of information down at the Bunker Hill Community College.
And that makes it all the more worthy of raising a horn for a proper skål indeed!