It's time for some links

[wellinghall]

What could possibly go wrong?: Giant flame-throwing spider erected in Bristol

3,500 year old urn found buried in the Peak District

Kullervo: Tolkien's fascination with Finland

What if Dungeons and Dragons hadn't taken off?

See where the Vikings travelled

Fragments on Elvish Reincarnation

Festival of the Horse and Boys’ Ploughing Match

The Ness of Brodgar

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I notice that they've just found a skeleton at the Ness- a neonate, probably stillborn. That's the first evidence of actual people and right before they close down for the season.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

The report linked to refers to one other burial in "Trench J", which was also of a child, which makes me wonder if it was a place to bury children in particular, or maybe some subset of children - children conceived at crossroads or whatever. (Yes, I daresay there weren't crossroads - but handwave, handwave. :) )

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

There do seem to be very specific burial sites within the islands- it's why Rousay in known as 'the Egypt of the North' because there are just so many burial places.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Yes, indeed; and there are so many burial sites on Rousay that it seems probable that people were brought from other islands to be buried there.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

That's my view.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Yes, there was one other skeleton found before. I like your idea of a particular subset of children being buried there.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

As heliopausa says, not quite the first, but very nearly.

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

"Everyone knows what liches and drow are."
(long hesitant pause while she wonders just how cut she really is from the rest of the world)

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Everyone who ploughed obsessively through Dungeons and Dragons rule books knows ...

[heliopausa.livejournal.com]

:D

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

The article on Tolkien is interesting, but I'm not sure what Verlyn Flieger's source is for this idea that Shakespeare had used the story of Kullervo for Hamlet or that it is in any meaningful way the origin story for it.

If I recall correctly, Shakespeare had access to a 16th century translation of Gesta Danorum, and would've been familiar with the story of Amleth, but that's entirely distinct from Kullervo's story. I just don't see how the Bard could possibly have been influenced by a piece of Finnish oral tradition that wouldn't be collated, organised, and published until the 1830s.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

The book says (page xvi):

"Aspects of Kullervo can be traced back to the early medieval Irish Amlodhi, to the Scandinavian Amlethus of Saxo Grammaticus's 12th-century Gesta Danorum, and to Shakespeare's more modern Renaissance Prince Hamlet."

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I took the paragraph in the article as implying a reverse direction of influence -- from Kullervo to Hamlet -- rather than from Hamlet to Kullervo, which sounds significantly more plausible to me.