We all wear masks.
Oh, don't deny it. You know as well as I do that all of us, every single one, dons disguise whenever we log onto a web site. Our on-line selves may have some aspects of our personalities and hobbies - a quick look at the average computer's browsing history makes that abundantly clear - but true knowledge? The authentic self? Not only is this not usually part of our on-line personalities, to a certain extent it can't be, not without revealing far too much information to people who may or may not necessarily be our friends.
Case in point: me. I'm sure you all think you know who the entity known as "Ellid" is based on my posts here. You know that I'm a Democrat (duh), that I have a varying number of pet cats, that I live in Massachusetts, and that I like bad books (double duh), mysteries, science fiction, good movies, comic books, quilts, bad movies, and history, primarily the Renaissance and mid-century America. But how many of you know my favorite foods? The contents of my iPod? Why I'm divorced? What sort of housekeeper I am? Why I refuse to keep houseplants, and why I've nicknamed my local entertainment venue Heck Piazza?
The answers range from "that's really too personal to share" to "that's really embarrassing" to "that's sealed by the Court," depending. But the fact remains that what you see here on Saturday nights is only part of me, and by no means is it the best or most real.
The same applies to my other on-line personae. What I share on Facebook (primarily politics and extremely stupid jokes) barely goes past the surface, while my fannish hangouts on Tumblr and Archive of Our Own are even shallower than that. The stories I tell here are true, or as true as my memory will allow, but even there I've changed some names and cleaned up the sequence of events to protect the identities of those I love (although I promise you that my aunt Betty was very real, and very strange, and she would have been the first person to confirm this even if she never would have forgiven me for revealing the Great Hair Frosting Incident of 1975 or the Appalling Paella Horror of 1969).
This sort of layering, this compartmentalization according to one’s audience, isn’t unique to the Internet Age – remember Billy Joel’s song about The Stranger – but the cyberworld we build on-line is uniquely conducive to this sort of re-imaging and re-imagining. The click of a mouse, the stroke of a key, a few pictures that may or may have been stolen from someone else’s Instagram, and suddenly a mousy office worker becomes a raving beauty, a grim oil worker from the Dakotas a suave playboy, a brainy web designer an Adonis. We can pick and choose how we present ourselves on-line in ways that simply are not possible in person, and whether this is ultimately a good thing or a road to catastrophe is still not clear.
That said, we are the ones who get to do the picking and the choosing, at least before we start pining for the fjords and join the choir invisible. After that it’s up to others. And as anyone who studies history well know, having others sort through a life and decide what is good, what is relevant, what is true…until very, very recently that was a task that ultimately belonged to historians, genealogists, and loving family members. Whether those who came after got it right, or even came close, was not up to the person being studied. It was up to posterity…and as we all know, posterity sometimes gets it right but just as often doesn’t.
The same applies to history as a whole. Try as we might, we can’t experience the past in the same way as we experience the present. A good book, a good essay, a quality documentary or well-edited collection of letters, can offer insights into one aspect of a former time, a famous person, an influential literary or social movement, but that’s all it can do: offer insight. It can’t bring back what it was like to fight at Antietam, or have dinner with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, or dance before the Medici. Try as we might, study as we will, read every book we can find, make the clothes and redact the recipes and learn the slang, in the end we will fail. Time has moved on. As much as we might long for a charming man to arrive in a blue police box to whisk us back to 1066 or 325 or 1942, it’s not happening. The best we have is books.
Which is all well and good as long as the books can be relied upon…
Which, alas, they all too often can’t.
Chief among the peoples that have been particularly ill-treated by historical enthusiasts are the Vikings. Beginning with the popular image of rampaging barbarians in horned helmets, these hearty Norse warriors, traders, and artisans have been the victims subjects of an unusual amount of terrible books. These range from chauvinistic works that attempted to place them on the shores of Rhode Island to brawling, sprawling historical novels where mighty-thewed warriors sweep down from the fjords to sweep fiery-haired Celtic virgins off to their long ships for sexytime fun, to serious historical works that start with a false assumption and proceed down the path to Hel with appalling ease.
Tonight I bring you two such books. One, a serious examination of an alleged Viking document, has been assailed by the scholarly community almost from its first appearance. The other, a humorous romance about a time-traveling Viking, his enormous brood of children, and the modern woman who ends up contributing to the said brood, is a deliberately silly romp best read with neither food, drink, breakable objects, nor household pets in the general vicinity:
The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation, by R.A. Skelton, et al. - at first glance this book would seem to the antithesis of a Book So Bad It’s Good. Published by Yale University Press, this gives every appearance of being a long, scrupulously researched, thoroughly scholarly examination of a rare manuscript in the collection of Yale University. The manuscript, purportedly a 15th century map of North America drawn by Viking mariners to record an area they had first come across four hundred years earlier, would seem to qualify not only as rock-solid proof that Europeans had arrived in North America long before Columbus, but that the Europeans in question were no less than the ever-curious, far-sailing, utterly fearless Norsemen of song and saga. Even better, the map’s existence was discovered three full years before archaeologists excavated the remains of an actual Norse village at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland.
Rumors and legends of pre-Columbian visitors to North and South America had been floating about for centuries, with countries such as Wales (bold Prince Madoc!), Ireland, and Norway (lucky Leif!) claiming that the Genoese mariner and his Spanish crews were nothing more than explorers-come-lately. The Vikings had the best claim thanks to the mention of a place called “Vinland” and its hostile, dark-skinned “skraelings” in several sagas, but scholarly opinion on whether the sagas could be trusted was decidedly mixed. The Vinland Map would be important evidence that the Norsemen, at least, had been right all along.
The map itself had an interesting history. It had been bound with another medieval manuscript, the Hystoria Tartarorum (History of the Tartars), better known in English as The Tartar Relation, where it was discovered by rare book dealer Enzo Ferrajoli. Ferrajoli, aware that this might be more than a mere curiosity, offered the volume for sale to the British Museum via his associate Irving David. The British, wary about the book’s non-existent provenance, declined the offer, whereupon Ferrajoli sold the book to an American, Laurence C. Witten III. Witten, a faithful Son of Eli, then tried to sell the book to Yale. Yale’s librarians pointed out, correctly, that the wormholes in the Vinland Map and The Tartar Relation did not match, meaning that the map and the history had not been bound together in olden times and thus at least one was probably not authentic.
There the matter might have rested had not Witten’s friend Thomas Marston (a librarian at Yale, and if you think this sounds like the Old Boys Network Run Amok, just wait), bought a copy of Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale from, of all people, Irving Davis (see what I mean?). This all-time page turner had also been worm snacks at some point in its existence, and when Marston sat down to compare wormholes, it turn out that these lined up with both the Map and the Tartars, with the Map coming first, the Speculum second, and the Tartar Relation third.
That this might be just a wee bit coincidental as well as incestuous does not seem to have occurred to anyone at the time, at least no one who would admit it.
Witten, delighted by evidence that his prize discovery was not a hoax after all, promptly re-offered the Map and its Relation to Yale for a reported $300,000. This price, roughly the equivalent of $2.5 million today, was enough to give Yale pause, especially since Witten refused to reveal the map’s provenance due to the former owner’s tax issues (????). Yale was less than pleased at this (so much for the Old Boys Network!), ostensibly thanks to the Map’s historical importance, and recruited yet another alumnus, Paul Mellon, to buy the manuscript and donate it to Yale so it could be authenticated and then shared with the world.
Mellon may have been rich, and a Yalie, but stupid he was not. He agreed to buy the book and donate it on the condition that the Map’s existence be kept secret until it was analyzed and authenticated by a carefully chosen group of scholars. Yale agreed, and the Vinland Map and its saucy Tartar companion were whisked off to a lab and subjected to several years of study and analysis. By 1964 the scholars had reached the conclusion that this exciting find was the real deal. They handed the manuscript of their findings over to Yale, Yale accepted the manuscript for publication, and Mellon formally donated the Map to Yale. The Vinland Map and The Tartar Relation was published on the day before Columbus Day in 1965, and there the matter seemingly rested.
Alas for Yale, and the Map, and Viking history in general, questions arose almost immediately. The three scholars who had analyzed the Map might have had impeccable credentials, but only one, Raleigh Ashlin Skelton, a curator at the British Museum, had any expertise with old maps, while a second, Thomas Marston, was the Yale librarian who’d solved the mystery of the interconnecting wormholes. Not only that, Skelton and the third scholar were among the group at the British Museum who had seen the Map when Irving Davis first offered it for sale. Worst of all, thanks to Paul Mellon’s insistence on keeping the entire affair a deep, dark secret, the scholarly team had had to work pretty much on their own. Not a single scientist, manuscript expert, or forensic examiner had so much as known of the Map’s existence prior to 1965, let alone had a chance to analyze the ink, parchment, binding, or anything else.
This was not the best situation from an academic standpoint, especially for such a potentially valuable find. Questions from scholars who were affiliated neither with Yale nor the British Museum (nor the Mellons, not to mention Irving Davis and Enzo Ferrajoli) ranged from forensic tests to provenance to the actual content of the map. The controversy grew so heated that the Smithsonian Institution agreed to host a conference specifically devoted to the Map in 1966. This was reportedly a splendid and very valuable affair, especially when Laurence Witten agreed to answer questions about the Map’s provenance, but its importance was somewhat lessened by a five year delay between the actual conference and publication of its proceedings.
Regardless, questions about the materials, geography, language, potential connection to phrases associated with a 19th century scholar, paleography, etc., continue to be asked, and there is yet to be a definitive answer to the question of whether the Map is a forgery or not. Most troubling of all is the ink, which might (or might not) contain early 20th century ingredients depending on which lab one believes, although a 1989 essay by Laurence Witten stating that he actually had no idea of the Map’s history prior to its acquisition by Enzo Ferrajoli is nearly as troubling. Ferrajoli himself was unavailable for comment, as he had been convicted of theft soon after foisting the manuscript off on his dupes the sale of the map, spent time in prison, and died, comes close
Yale did not help matters when it reissued the book in 1995 and included only scholarly material that supports the Map’s authenticity, although per a statement by Alice Prochaska in 2002, its official position is merely that "[w]e regard ourselves as the custodians of an extremely interesting and controversial document, and we watch the scholarly work on it with great interest."
The parchment, at least, is genuinely old.
The Very Virile Viking, by Sandra Hill - Sandra Hill likes Vikings.
She really, really does.
The origins of this fascination are not clear. Hill's early life was unremarkable in the extreme; born and raised in Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, she went to Penn State, married a stockbroker, and worked as a journalist for many years. Along the way she raised four fine sons, who are now adults with families of their own. Hill seems to have gotten along without the presence of anyone named Arnold Leifson, Leif Arnolfson, Arni, Leifi, Sven Leifson, Leif Svenson, or Sven Svenson, son of Sven impeding upon her otherwise ordinary existence.
That is no longer the case. Hill, who turned to writing romance novels about twenty years ago, has produced a positive spate of novels with titles like The Viking's Captive (aka My Fair Viking), The Bewitched Viking, The Blue Viking, A Tale of Two Vikings, The Reluctant Viking, The Outlaw Viking, The Tarnished Lady (who seems to end up with a Viking), The Last Viking (if only!), Truly, Madly Viking (what?), Wet & Wild (did he fall overboard?), Hot and Heavy (presumably referring to his armor after a hard day massacring Saxons), The Love Potion (not #9?), Frankly, My Dear (ooo, intercultural romance!), and Sweeter Savage Love (Rosemary Rogers called and wants her title back). She's written about other subjects - most notably Cajuns, which I am trying to track down because they sound diary-worthy, oh yes they do - but the bulk of her worth centers on the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs flow, etc., etc. insert loud incomprehensible scream and power guitar riff
These fine entertainments feature (of course) Vikings to one extent or another, with the obligatory "Female Gaze Hunk Whose Chest Is Based On Fabio or Chris Hemsworth, Take Your Pick" cover art of - you guessed it - a brawny Viking. Usually light hearted and on the silly side, they're popular enough to have vaulted Hill onto the best seller lists. She has a loyal following, and if her books aren't precisely Tolstoy, they serve their purpose well.
And then there's The Very Virile Viking.
I first encountered this book at the Pharm-A-Rama Do It Yourself Drugstore here in Easthampton, Massachusetts, home to me, the Double Felinoid, and one of the Meeropol brothers, children of the Rosenbergs (no, I am not making this up). I was waiting for a prescription and had already finished my monthly read-through of "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" in The Ladies' Home Journal (answer: yes), spotted the cover, and deduced that this had to be a joke. Surely no one would write, or read, a book with such a ridiculous title unless they were looking for a laugh, I thought, and flipped the book over to read the back cover blurb.
It looks like I was right:
Magnus is a 10th century Viking farmer.
Angela is a modern-day vineyard owner.
He has eleven bothersome children.
She yearns for just one child.
He takes a vow of celibacy...
Even though he is a very virile man.
Uh-oh!
Let the Viking laughter begin!
And begin it does, with the very first lines:
Magnus Ericsson was a simple man.
He loved the smell of fresh-turned dirt after springtime plowing.
He loved the feel of a soft woman under him in the bed furs...when engaged in another type of plowing.
He loved the heft of a good sword in his fighting arm.
He loved the low-ride of a laden longship after a-Viking in far distant lands.
He loved the change of seasons on his well-ordered farmstead.
What he did not relish was the large number of whining, loud, bothersome, needful children who called him "Faþir." "Father, this..., Father, that...," they blathered night and day, always wanting something from him. Ten in all! He had that size of a brood, despite having lost a son and a daughter to normal childhood ills and mishaps. Holy Thor! The large number was embarrassing, not to mention annoying. He could not go to the garderobe without stepping on one or the other of them. Like rats, they were, or fleas.
It seems that Magnus began plowing more than his fields when he sixteen or so, and four wives, six concubines, several one-night stands, and "at least one barley-faced maid," whatever that means later, he's fathered a dozen little Mini-Me's, eleven of whom are alive and well and eating him out of hearth and long ship. Several of these women dumped him after finding him with yet more women, and the year 999 finds Magnus at his wit's end because a) he's become something of a laughingstock for having so many kids, b) the kids are driving him nuts because his most recent wife ran away to Ireland with a non-celibate monk, c) he's just been presented with
another child, the product of a drunken one night stand with a serving maid (freckled, not "barley-faced", and d) he's really horny but doesn't want more kids since the latest addition is #11.
This is a real problem, since, as Magnus himself admits, he is a "lustsome man."
Worse, his two oldest sons are showing every sign of following in his footsteps, or at least the three-way these lustsome teens have with a serving maid would so indicate. Magnus is so desperate, and so frustrated, and so impatient with his friends, that some of his buddies actually recruit a bunch of middle aged, barren, or already pregnant women and parade them past Magnus so he can take his pick and satisfy his lustsomeness with a woman who won't push out another brat (and another, and another, and another, and....) before eloping to the Lake Isle of Innisfree with Brother Stefan the Ultra-Endowed. Magnus reacts about as well as one might expect - he throws the women and his buddies out of the house, then swears a vow of celibacy - and thus ends the first chapter.
That's right. That's all in Chapter One. And if you think that the rest of the book cannot possibly top this remarkable opening, you would be wrong. For Magnus, who is horny but not stupid, figures that the best way to fulfill his vow is to sail away to Greenland, taking nine of the fruits of his loins with him while leaving his estate to his eldest daughter (safely married) and eldest son (not married but awfully lustsome). As he muses after the great announcement but before he and his brood sail away,
For the first time in a year or more, Magnus was excited, and it had naught to do with the throb betwixt his legs.
As sure as dragon piss, it was a good sign.
Little does he know that his ship will sail through a fog bank that turns out to be a time warp that not only spits him out in 2011 or thereabouts, but sends the ship all the way from the North Atlantic to Los Angeles. There, instead of freaking out because of the cars, the smog, the electronics, and the noise, Magnus and his nine
Nazgul kidlets assume that they have simply arrived at the strange new lands to the west of Greenland that explorers have spoken of, shrug, and start looking around.
Where they are immediately spotted by a casting director who needs a Viking for his upcoming film, assumes that Magnus is an actor or a historical reenactor, not an actual Viking, and casts him on the spot. Soon thereafter Magnus meets Angela, who owns a vineyard and has "kissome lips," whatever those are. She thinks he's British, he thinks he's now an "act-whore" (evidently the magical TARDIS cloud has a universal translator function) and that "sexist" means "sexy," and soon enough he's wooing her with lines like
“Methinks this is all about lust. Methinks you are as randy as a mare afore being mounted by her stallion.”
The plot continues to stagger to its lustsome, kissome, happysome ending, which concludes with Magnus and the Nine Moppets o'Doom settling down with Angela for a new life in California, complete with that exotic food "pizza" and the cow Angela bought Magnus as a wedding gift. Not only that, Magnus learns that his two missing brothers, who somehow
also got sucked into a time vortex, are now, respectively, working at a "cultural fair" as a historic reenactor (okay, I can buy that) and a personal trainer in Texas (oh no, not a chance, you have
got to be kidding me).
Best of all, they'll soon be welcoming a tenth little Magnus-let, since modern birth control is no match for the mighty loins of the Very Virile Viking.
Yes. Really.
%%%%%%
Have you ever read a bad book about a Viking? Cosplayed a Viking? Read a book by Sandra Hill? Heard of the Vinland Map? Gather 'round the mead hall, my friends, and share....
%%%%%%
Readers & Book Lovers Series Schedule: