#definitely not old english/anglo saxon

[innerchorus]

Okay, while we're on the topic of names I say as though we were in the middle of a discussion about names which we were not, I'm kinda having a crisis over Hilmes' name rn.

Because I looked up what the name Hilmes meant bc y'know me I wanted to see what symbolism I could cram in there, I was met with the shock of my life.

Hilmes, turns out, is supposedly an Old English/Anglo-Saxon name?????

It means dweller on the hill, by the way.

And y'know I get supremely uncomfortable when I encounter like, things that don't mesh with the setting, ie western/northern european elements in a west asian setting???

Look, I like the way the translation did his name, Hilmes is a good translation, it actually matches up w the katakana pronunciation (unlike fucking Hermes)

But this kinda threw me for a loop, lol.

I'll still continue referring to him as Hilmes, but I'm now considering messing w his name for Wolfsong. Just a teeny bit. We'll see if I end up choosing to do so.

It's okay, I've got you (or rather, the first fan translator of the novels has). It's actually almost certainly supposed to be Hirmiz. I highly recommend reading their notes concerning this here, I think you'll find them really interesting both in terms of the origin of the name and the reasons why Tanaka might have chosen it.

[nostalgia-tblr]

torn between "letting fandom have it's fun however it wants" and posting something like "the only reason we know so much about the Norse gods in the first place is that nobody was celebrating Christmas while they were writing that stuff down."

[thelionesswitchblog]

Witchcraft and Her History

See helpful terms and definitions below The definition of witchcraft varies widely among historians, practitioners, and throughout history. Google states that Witchcraft is “the practice of magic, especially for evil purposes”; Google goes on to state that, in a modern context, Witchcraft is “a religious practice involving magic and an affinity with nature, usually within a pagan…

[forestdeath1]

The Black family as representatives of ancient "Anglo-Saxon elite"

To me Blacks were never partially French. I'm not saying the headcanon "Blacks are partially French" isn't valid, it's just not as interesting to me and it strips away nuances from their history. Here's why.

(It’s just my fantasies mixed with historical facts! Don’t take it too seriously)

Firstly, their choice of surname.

I've noticed that two main Death Eater families bear surnames of French and Norman origin. Lestrange and Malfoy (fictional, but the "origin" is clear). And then there's Rosier and Avery. Rosier – definitely French, and Avery – from the Middle English and Anglo-Norman French personal name Aevery, a Norman form of Alfred. There are no other surnames like this in Harry Potter, except for Peverell (correct me if I'm wrong).

Clearly, this is a reference to the Norman Conquest of 1066. These Death Eaters could be associated with aristocratic and influential families who came to England after the Norman Conquest. This is a nod to the historical division in English society between Normans and Anglo-Saxons, where Normans represented the upper echelon of society, while Anglo-Saxons were less privileged.

Yes, I'm Captain Obvious here. So let's move on to the Blacks.

The surname Black is typically Anglo-Saxon. It could have derived from the Old English word 'blæc,' meaning 'black' or 'dark,' and may have been used to describe someone who wore black clothing or had dark hair.

(Old English emerged around the 5th-6th centuries and was used in England for about 600 years, until the 11th century. This period ended after the Norman Conquest in 1066).

Hogwarts, canonically, appeared over 1000 years ago. That is, before the Norman Conquest. (But Hogwarts Castle couldn't exist yet, because castle technology was brought by the Normans). The Blacks call themselves "the noble and most ancient house of Black." That is, the oldest family, and also the noblest. Maybe they were "noble" in the sense that they belonged to the elite of Anglo-Saxon society (which was fragmented into small kingdoms). But they consider themselves the oldest family among those who trace their lineage and uphold the nobility (purity) of their blood. Considering that "Hogwarts" appeared before the Norman Conquest, I fantasize that such families already existed back then. A lot of families are extinct. Except the Blacks.

So the Blacks are a reflection of "Anglo-Saxon aristocracy." And here I headcanon that the Blacks still considered themselves more entitled than everyone else, mocked the Malfoys and Rosiers, and generally looked down on anything French. Fanatics to the bone and lovers of elevating themselves above all.

Why the motto in French – in the Middle Ages, the use of Latin and French languages was common among European aristocracy (despite the fact that there is NO aristocracy among wizards, but they could have been part of the aristocracy before the introduction of the Statute of Secrecy). The French language was often considered the language of diplomacy and culture, and its use in mottos and coats of arms was a common phenomenon. Here I just headcanon that one of the Blacks either had a strange sense of humour, or wanted to put an end to the ancient feud of the Blacks with all things French and start the family on some new beginnings. Maybe they married someone with French roots to expand their influence.

Of course, all this can be explained differently. The headcanon that the Blacks have some French part also makes sense. But for me personally, that's not so interesting, considering the obvious connections of the Lestranges and Rosiers with France (Vinda Rosier, Lestrange family Mausoleum in Paris). I prefer the Blacks who are so arrogant that they even consider themselves "true English wizards," not "like those Malfoys." And I headcanon that this was not a real confrontation, but rather a pretext for jokes and fuel for greater kindling of their vanity.

[maniculum]

Do you have any books or sources for learning Olde English? I want to write a medieval-based story but I don't know how to write the characters speak the language.

That depends -- when you say "Olde English" do you mean Old English, like pre-1066 English? That's pretty far from modern English and it's unlikely that readers will be able to understand it easily. If that's what you're looking for, the texts I was taught with are:

Bright's Anglo-Saxon Reader

Quirk's Old English Grammar

Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader

They're all from a while back -- and, as you can see, some use the now-deprecated term "Anglo-Saxon" -- so you can find older editions free in the public domain. More recent revised editions can generally be found in cheap paperback form. I believe there are some more modern textbooks that are quite good, but I haven't looked at them, and I don't know how affordable they are.

I have also consulted with Zoe (@meanderingmedievalist) on this, and she recommends Baker's Introduction to Old English, as well as the related resource Old English Aerobics:

The reason there are textbooks for this, though, is because you genuinely have to treat it as a foreign language. It's very different from modern English. As a sample, here's the beginning of Beowulf:

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon hu ða æþelingas      ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing      sceaþena þreatum monegum maegþum      meodosetla ofteah egsode eorle syððan aerest wearð feasceaft funden he þæs frofre gebad weox under wolcnum weorðmyndum þah oð þæt him aeghwylc þara ymbsittendra ofer hronrade      hyran scolde, gomban gyldan      þæt wæs god cyning.

So if you put a lot of it into a story for a modern audience, most of them will be a bit lost.

If when you say "Olde English" you mean "English that sounds archaic and medieval, but is comprehensible to a modern audience", you're probably looking for Middle English.

I don't have any direct references for learning the language there, as I was mostly taught through immersion (i.e., here's a Middle English text, read and translate it, now do another until you get a feel for it), but Zoe recommends Fulk's Introduction to Middle English, so that's a good bet if you don't want to go through that process.

However, I do think the "just read the texts" method also works fine -- especially since, if you're writing a medieval story, you'll want to read some of the literature anyway for inspiration. Here's what you can do to use that method outside of a classroom setting:

Step One: Get a Middle English text with a facing-page translation. Armitage's edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is good for this. Read the Middle English text, referring to the Modern English translation on the facing page whenever you don't understand it. Do this with a pencil in hand, so you can annotate the text with definitions, translations, and notes about how the sentences work.

Step Two: Get a Middle English text for which modern translations exist. Don't get the modern translation. The Canterbury Tales works for this: it's a classic and you should be able to pick up a copy anywhere. The version on my shelves is Baugh's Chaucer's Major Poetry -- which is heavily footnoted with definitions, potentially saving some time with the dictionary -- but it doesn't really matter as long as it's in the original. Read it. Every time you don't know a word, look it up in the Middle English Dictionary (available free online, in searchable form, here) and write it down. Again, best to annotate directly on the page with a pencil. Trust me, it helps to do it that way. Once you're done, get a modern translation and check your work.

At this point, you'll probably have picked up enough of the language that you should be able to write in it to some degree, though you'll want to continue making reference to the Middle English Dictionary to make sure you're employing period-appropriate usage and spelling. If you have access to the Oxford English Dictionary (if you're at a university, you almost certainly do, otherwise check with your local library), use that to check when the words you're using originated -- the OED has that listed, and that'll keep you from accidentally dropping an 18th-century term into medieval dialogue. You can also use their Historical Thesaurus to find period-appropriate equivalents for terminology.

Optional Step Three: Keep reading more Middle English literature with the dictionary open, annotating as you go, to get additional practice. If you can get through Le Morte Darthur in the original (get the P.J.C. Field edition), I think you'll be set in terms of "writing convincing medieval prose". Not because it's particularly difficult -- it's late medieval, so the language is actually more modern than either of the texts mentioned in steps one and two -- but just because it's long, so you'll get a lot of practice working through it. As a bonus, reading Malory will familiarize you with lots of good knightly vocabulary in case that's the kind of story you want to write.

Optional Step Four: Read scholarly articles on Middle English language and literature to get a more in-depth understanding. Again, check with your local library, or if you're at a university, a university library will have a vast amount of resources on this subject you can browse through.

[oldenglishtextposts]

In your opinion, how hard is it to learn Old English compared to modern languages, for example French?

I'm not sure it's more or less difficult, but it's definitely different. There are obviously quite a lot of cognates with modern english, and parts of the grammar will feel familiar. I find learning ancient languages generally harder than learning modern ones, because actually speaking and using a language really helps me internalize grammar/vocab, and ancient language lessons usually just focus on reading.

There are generally good online resources, but thanks to the relative obscurity of the language it can be hard to find answers to questions that might come up.

This might be just a me thing, but I am awful about staying disciplined enough to teach myself a language, so having a buddy to study it with might keep you focused

This is a side note, but I saw your tags about wanting to revive Old English. I'm sure this was just a joke in good faith, but one should be careful with that sort of idea. Weird white supremacists are often obsessed with anglo saxons, especially with the idea that they were somehow racially pure and are a standard one should pursue. These ideas go hand in hand with (usually racist) concepts of linguistic purity and prescriptivism. These ideas combine to say that modern english is somehow corrupted by its wide influences and diversity. Again, I'm sure you weren't implying any of these ideas, but be careful with ideas of returning to an anglo saxon past and discouraging linguistic diversity.

[green5quirrel]

After doing some very very lazy research on Nick's last name "Burkhardt", I've got some amusing etymology!

"Burk" is a slang term for a stupid person. (Origin British)

"Hardt" means forested hillside or mountain forest. (Origin German)

I had originally thought of "Hart" in relation to his surname which would've meant "stupid deer". I thought that highly amusing considering Monroe's wolf nature. (And how perceptive of the Blutbad when he chastises Nick!)

"Stupid forest" seems just as endearing though. Definitely notable in the show's obsessive theme of using the heck out of Portland's foliage!

But then I found this on Behind The Name: Derived from the Old German elements burg "fortress" and hart "hard, firm, brave, hardy", or perhaps from the Old English cognate Burgheard. Saint Burkhard was an 8th-century Anglo-Saxon missionary to Germany (a companion of Boniface) who became the first bishop of Würzburg.

Honestly, though. I think Nick had a lot of growing to do before that definition applied. Stupid deer, indeed.

[theinquisitxor]

A Day of Fallen Night mild spoilers:

I want to talk about Wulf and his pov + Old English Literature.

What we know:

The Kingdom of Hroth is largely a Scandinavian/Nordic inspired country.

In Priory, Inys is roughly equivalent to the English Elizabethan/Tudor era (the 1450s- 1500s). Fallen Night takes place 500 years prior. What era was England in in the early 1000s? The (end of) the Anglo-Saxon era.

While Inys during Fallen Night is definitely not set in an Anglo-Saxon era, I feel like there are definite motifs and similarities. The Hrothi used to raid Inys, but stopped after the marriage of Sabran and Barholdt. Wulf uses a saxe knife. The fens and monsters resemble those of Old English epics.

Aside the Anglo-Saxon & Scandinavian influences, I want to talk about the references to Old English literature:

Firstly, Samatha Shannon introduces Part 3 with a quote from the Old English (fragmented) poem, Wulf and Eadwacer.

it is:

wulf is on iege, ic on oþerre. / fæst is þæt eglond, fenne biworpen… / Ungelice is us

This roughly translates to: Wulf is on one island. I am on another. Fast is that island set among the fens....We are apart.

Now, Wulf and Eadwacer is a notoriously difficult poem to translate and make sense of, for those of us who have studied Old English. It appears to be from the pov of a woman lamenting over the separation of a male person she loves (typically interpreted as a husband/lover, but it doesn't have to be) referencing an on-going violent event in the background. And! there a line about a child being left in the woods with a wolf.

But I think Shannon does something so neat here and she changes the meaning to fit for Tunuva and Wulf, and bases so much of Tunuva and Wulf's relationship/story on this small poem fragment!!

Secondly, during a titular scene with Wulf washing up on a beach, Wulf is called the seafarer. "By dawn, the lights had disappeared, and the seafarer was still alive" (pg 396). This is obviously a direct call to the Old English poem, The Seafarer. It's a melancholic, elegiac poem concerned with life and death, about a seafarer on a cold, wintery beach mourning the loss of his comrades. Sound familiar?

I just love this little attention to detail concerning Wulf and Fallen Night. Samantha Shannon is a brilliant, brilliant woman

[alexagirlie]

Sasnak City The Kingdom Convention - Day 3

(Link to Day 1) (Link to Day 2)

The final day! This day was a catch up day to make up any missed autographs and photos that didn't get done the first two days.

My group had a ton of photos to make up but we did hit a bit of a snag.

Our first photo of the day went great, a group photo with all four of us along with Mark and Arnas. Arnas once again coming up with the sword pose idea.

However after this photo my friend, who has a medical condition, partially collapsed and had to be brought back to her seat and had to sit out the rest of the photo op session.

(I really applaud the staff at this event for doing everything they could to make sure she was ok but she did end up having to have her own make up session later in the day and sat the rest of this one out.)

I got my last two photos done, one with Arnas and another one with both the boys.

I got to hug Arnas (my life is complete) and they both said good bye to my friend on their way out to lunch.

I also want to give a huge shout out to Rod Hallet (Constantine), after he was finished with his own photos for the day he came and sat with my friend and chatted with her for a bit while the rest of us got our photos done. He had opened his gift bag from the group and had read the poem my friend had write for him and he really like it. (She did one for all the cast, done in anglo saxon style, plus did a version translated in to old english as well). He was very very sweet.

After the photo op session was over it was time for lunch and then we got our autographs from Ryan. He was also very sweet and asked if my friend was feeling better and helped her to a chair while i got my print signed.

After that my friend and I had our meet and greet with Mark.

The man was late. He spent his lunch hour doing some sort of virtual tour thing and then at the last minute decided to eat. He still had half a cookie when he showed up 🤣

We got lots of good info during the meet and greet, including insider info on a new project he is writing that he would like to make one day. A super, super dark comedy.

I also asked about any ad lib that made it in to the show and he told us they did so much! The line about eating too much cabbage in season 5 was aaaalll him :D

We did our selfies.

Then they decided to save time by finishing his meet and greet with autographs in the same room and my friend had a ton of stuff so I was her gopher. Carrying things, running back and forth etc...

We ended up having to boogy back to the photo op room so my friend could get the last of her photo ops (Arnas helped her to and from her chair, dude took pretty much her whole weight and she is as tall as he is). I definitely got my steps in! She also got the last of her autographs from Arnas and Eliza and we had a little bit more time to chat with them.

They really are so, so very amazing.

The convention ended with everyone back in the main hall and watching 2 more short films!

There was 1 film, called Man Made, which featured Cavan and Harry, plaging a father and son and was a little heartbreaking.

The second film was written by Amelia and starred our very own Stiorra(Ruby)! It is called Oh Rats! and it was so amazing, and weird and creepy and i really, really loved it.

The final event concluded with a surprise as well....

This is not the end.

There will be a 2025 event! (Your welcome, my friend and I suggested a 5 year reuinion to the organizer and she took it to heart!)

The actual reason was because a sword she had the cast signed to be auctioned for charity was missing the shield plate (it has since been found) and she didnt want it to go to waste.

So 2025 The Kingdom is a go! It will be open to previous attendees first, and I am already brainstorming how to start saving money for wheb the dates are announced! (I'm opening commissions soon if anyone is interested!)

Ps. Mark is meeting up with Alex in Italy and will put a good word in! So. Maybe an Uhtred appearance next year???

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

So I’m interested in the thing you taught about Anglo-Saxons pushing the celts out of land- do you know how far north they pushed?

I’m Scots, and I have an interest in our history, but to be honest almost all of my knowledge of it comes from post-1000, with the exception of a few local myths about Viking raiders being scared off by a mother wolf.

So I’d love to ask what you know- and I’ll just say that, because you talk about the welsh language a lot, I would be interested in what you think of the work to revive Gaelic as a primary language of this country- my Nans all for it, but most other people think it’s not working the way it has in wales because Gaelic was never spoken across the country Welsh was- my mums family is from old Norse speaking ancestry/cities and the local area was more likely to speak French than Gaelic (my dads English with a clan surname so some Highland Clearance stuff definitely happened and also for about 50 years round about bonnie prince Charlie that name was banned/got you shot so some *shit* presumably happened)

In terms of how far they pushed, this is the map of the Heptarchy, i.e. their furthest extent:

So a bit of the Scottish south east. You see Strathclyde on there? That was the Brythonic part! This is why Glasgow is a Welsh name in origin. Cousins!

In terms of Gàidhlig revival (I'm not correcting you with the spelling, I just have friends who speak it and that's their preference lol), it's certainly a lot more complicated than it is in Wales, for numerous reasons. One is admittedly that Scotland has always been inherently multicultural - even before the Anglo-Saxons, the north was Pictish, the west was Goidelic (Dal Riada spanned west Scotland and modern northern Ireland), the south was Brythonic, and the islands have long been a spirited mix of Norse and Other. Each of those spoke their own language. Then came the Heptarchy, which birthed Scots, and then the Vikings in earnest... By contrast, Wales just spoke Welsh. Different dialects, sure, and infusions from elsewhere, but country-wide, we just had the one thing.

And then there's the sheer weight of numbers. The current percentage of the population that speaks Gàidhlig is, to my knowledge, less than two percent, which is an incredibly challenging position to be in. By contrast, the lowest Welsh ever slid to was seventeen percent, back in the Eighties, and today it's about thirty. That's much easier to pull off.

I should clarify here, of course, that I am not about to speak on behalf of Scottish people. Whether Gàidhlig is representative, whether it SHOULD be revived, those are ultimately debates for Scots to have, I'm nobody. But since you asked directly I can share my very Welsh-influenced perspective.

Firstly, any country-wide bilingualism is unilaterally a good thing. Without exception. Every country in the world should be aiming for it with *something*, regardless of what it is. There is no harm from raising a bilingual child. It's literally good for the brain.

Secondly, any language at all is a beautiful, unique thing that acts as a memory crystal for the culture and philosophy attached to it. If you lose one, you lose something important that can't be replaced. Here's an example! Translating between Korean and English pronouns is often a challenge, because Korean doesn't have the gender markers that English needs, but English doesn't have the age/social status markers that Korean needs. That tells you something fascinating about both of those cultures, and the philosophy and worldview they hold. Gàidhlig is not yet dead. There is time to save it. It is unique; it's a repository for so much of an older Scottish culture that otherwise might be lost. Why not save it?

Thirdly, why place the pressure on it to be a language spoken by all of Scotland? Does it need to be? Because there wasn't a pan-Scottish language, not until English, and that one was spread through imperialism. You won't find an alternative that was spoken by everyone. Does that mean you shouldn't bother with any of them? Well; see point one. But also...

If the issue is a lack of 'identity' - this was not spoken in my area, so I don't identify with it - it was still nonetheless a Scottish language. It's still unique and endemic to the country you now identify with. It's therefore still yours. And what's preventing someone learning something appropriately local as well? Fuck it, if you're from the south, learn Welsh. Pictish was lost - it can't be saved anymore. But it looks like it was Brythonic, so again, there's always Welsh as the closest analogue. But Gàidhlig is still Scottish, unique to the country, whereas Welsh is more pan-British.

So yeah, those are my very rambly thoughts that I have not actually pondered deeply at all. I shall now bow out of that particular conversation and leave it to the Scots

[rebelsandtherest]

ok so i’m going to preface this ask by saying that the name alfred is given to the first born males on my dads side, so it’s a name near and dear to my heart, that said, there’s an angle i’ve never (or in all likelihood missed) seen between alfred and arthur. and i crave your opinions.

growing up i knew that the name alfred became popular in the victorian period since the english started looking into history and saw king alfred and decided he was pretty great. so i wonder how arthur felt, to see and hear his estranged sons name so often. of course he’s glad that his country’s putting some respect on king alfred, but i can see him calling someone named alfred by their last name to avoid saying it out loud. “alfred, lord tennyson.” “who?” “lord tennyson.” “not a fan.” the man’s conflicted and petty.

or it could be the opposite, it could remind him why he chose the name to begin with. imagine him overhearing a man in a pub proudly boasting about how fast his little alfie is growing, showing off a picture he keeps of the lad. and arthur can’t help but smile to himself and feel a wee bit envious. a few situations like that, and he’s tentatively writing formal letters that go unanswered. a few decades and a great rapprochement later he can finally say alfred out loud without tasting bile.

or he could be so far up his own ass that he doesn’t even notice the trend in names. idk. definitely drunkenly hums ‘what’s it all about (alfie)’ in the 60s.

Ooooh man this is a good question! Thanks for sending in the ask.

This became an immensely long reply with a bad history lesson included (because I'm relying on my ADHD memory and hoping it doesn't scramble itself between my brain and the keyboard), so... sorry about the length.

Anyway.

I think the Victorian revival of "Alfred" as a name would have affected Arthur in a few ways, but within his context, I imagine that those moments would be relative sporadic.

So a few things:

First: The name itself is Anglo Saxon—the original ash (Æ) was replaced with an A to fit contemporary English spelling, and it would have been pronounced a little different obviously, but it is remarkably unchanged for an early medieval name over 1000 years old. So Arthur is probably used to hearing the name at least once in a blue moon, and I doubt anyone was much confused when he gave the name—even if it wasn't in vogue at the time—to his firstborn.

Second: The Victorian age for Arthur was absolutely chock-full of wars, particularly wars overseas. Victoria was called empress for a reason, because she had a penchant for stealing other people's land and sovereignty. So whether Arthur was enthused by the nonstop action or not (I'd wager he was, most of the time), he was incredibly preoccupied and probably didn't have time to mope about his son, so if the name ever made Arthur think about Alfred, it would be a short-lived reverie.

Third: The Victorian era was a historically interesting time for UK-US international relations. Your average USA citizen probably didn't spare much thought for English subjects an ocean away, but, on the whole, white Americans remained enamored with England as the "mother land", were keen on trans-Atlantic commerce, and eager to prove themselves as equals to their allies in Europe. This didn't exactly work.

Even so, Britain and the USA continued to host a bizarre mix of cultural proximity and mutual contempt. Bad blood had gone stale by the beginning of Victoria's reign, but stale blood bred an enduring sense of pettiness, especially on the British side. Though the two nations' diplomatic and economic relationships were strong and well-maintained, events like the USA's rather embarrassing showing at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London were devoured by the British public in a feeding frenzy of schadenfreude that solidified a kind of national desire to dunk on Americans whenever possible.

While Brits still relish dunking on Americans, the early Victorian need to put America down as an economic and cultural peer began to shift, at least in some ways, in the second half of the 19th century. The American Civil War devastated the English economy, particularly of the northern half of the country which depended immensely on American cotton to fuel its textile industry. The entire war, its fallout, and notably the end of slavery in the USA, were all topics that British citizens would have seen daily in their newspapers, a source of interest and immense anxiety. By this point, Britain as a whole had forcibly been made aware of how, like it or not, the state of the USA's government and economy affected their daily life in ways too large to ignore.

Whilst America quite literally murdered itself over the problems it'd decided to ignore for a century, Britain and Europe were all deep in the industrial revolution—hell, it started in England, hence the textile mills. England and the young German Confederation were both heavy hitters in the game, and improvements to seafaring technology as well as Britain's relentless expansion across the globe was continuously bringing in new wares from all around the world for European industrialists to copy and mass produce. European trade and industrial competition was booming.

Meanwhile, America remained intensely focused on itself, and understandably so. With the absolute disaster of Reconstruction, westward expansion, industrial revolution, and lest we forget, a bloody parade of genocides and land wars, the USA had plenty to be worried about within its own (expanding) borders. It was not isolationist in the true sense, but was not exactly competing for European attention at the same levels at it had earlier in the century.

However, when the USA eventually gathered itself to take more of an international presence, it would do so in a way that would take the entire world by storm. The sheer speed, size, and production volume of American industries began to challenge their European competitors. If you were white and well-connected or just immensely lucky, this was the age when the American Dream was born. The US military had undergone immense expansion since the Civil War, and they went from having a young navy only just big enough to form a blockade to having a navy large enough to send a top-of-the-line fleet around the world with literally no other purpose but to flex in front of their allies (and enemies) not even 50 years later.

.....This has been a very long winded way to explain that, while the Victorian Era was the heyday of Arthur's imperialist dreams and victories, it was also the very nascent stages of Alfred coming into his own and more or less forcing himself back into dear old dad's life. Coming hot on the heels of Victoria, The American Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the Great Rapprochement were all just around the corner. These shifts of history—to say nothing of the quickly-approaching storm clouds of World War—would bring father and son back together and force them to mend their relationship, at least as much as they could.

I think, in the early Victorian age, when 'Alfred' came into vogue after so many centuries, a part of Arthur would hear it with a sinking feeling in his gut, because he was certainly old enough to have seen the future on the horizon. Maybe it wasn't clear, or concrete, maybe he couldn't put it into words. But he would know, in some instinctual sense, that Alfred's star was rising in more ways than one, and that he'd would need to brace himself and his empire for whatever came next. So sometimes, when he heard the name, some indistinct prophecies would flash before his mind's eye, filling him with ominous dread that he couldn't have named.

Sometimes, if he'd been drinking or just in a sentimental mood, he would hear the name and reminisce on both the King Ælfred, and the golden son who bore his name. He would wax poetic about his firstborn and all that he'd accomplished in his life—daring even, perhaps for the first time in his life, to praise Alfred's tenacity, conviction, and strength during his fight for independence. He would of course be mortified by the drunken memory the next day.

Sometimes, it takes him off guard and he turns his head, fully expecting Alfred himself—a toddler, a child, a teenager, a young man—to step through the door and greet him. It lasts only moments, and the empty feeling that follows usually sends Arthur directly into some mentally or physically taxing task, to avoid uncomfortable emotions.

But I think more than anything, the re-emergence of the name would make Arthur feel old. So very, very old, when he continuously, despite repeated embarrassments, pronounces the name in the way he learned as a boy, with the long-i ash sound that his people forgot to pronounce somewhere along the last century or ten. The very same pronunciation mistake he couldn't seem to stop making all those years ago, when Alfred was small, still learning English and fully convinced a boy could have two versions of a name.

The same pronunciation that, even today, would make Alfred's head twitch up, looking for his father.

[incognitajones]

Answer the Questions and Tag 5 Fanfic Authors

@mosylufanfic tagged me!

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

When we were teens, my two best friends and I co-wrote a self-insert epic based on a terrible 80s fantasy series. Much later, being a part of online fan communities (first for Buffy and then for the LOTR movies) gave me the confidence boost to start writing again.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

This is tough to answer because (like @mosylufanfic) I've posted on many, many defunct archives & blogging sites and have lost track of a lot of fic over the years. On AO3 alone, if you include my other pseud which mainly writes tiny, obscure and/or old fandoms for Yuletide, it's over 40.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

I started posting it online in 2000, so 24 years.

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

I'm a fast reader and a slow writer, so I definitely read more.

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

My plotting has improved, in the sense that now my stories sometimes have an actual (if very basic) plot.

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

Not that weird, but I did a lot of fascinating research for Tolkien fic, from pre-industrial weaving to Anglo-Saxon riddles and wedding rites.

7. What’s your favourite type of comment to receive on your work?

Other than "absolutely any"? I love it when people comment that they're re-reading! A lot of fic is pretty ephemeral (not a diss, it's just the nature of the genre), so it's really thrilling to hear a story stuck with someone enough that they came back.

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

It's anonymous for a reason 😉

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

Long stories. As in "I have yet to write anything longer than 30k, so I honestly don't even know if I can."

10. What is the easiest type?

Character studies via smut, aka PWP. I enjoy writing them and they don't require a lot of research (just endless editing to make sure I haven't given anyone three hands).

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

At the moment, my writing practice consists of 20-minute bursts during my morning bus ride to work or on the weekend in between chores. I feel inadequate because I can't sit down and write for a solid hour but I'm trying to convince myself that it's okay - even short spells of time add up to a decent amount of work as long as they're consistent.

Google is evil, but I still use Gdocs because I need to write online & offline on multiple devices including my phone and not worry about manually saving/collating drafts. When I'm brainstorming or writing a first draft, though, I often write by hand in a notebook.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

An AU mystery that would require not only complicated plotting but historical research, and the drawerfic sequel to a BNF's story.

13. What made you choose your username?

It was a brand new pseud for a fandom I'd never written in before, so I was literally a "no name fan."

I tag: @glorious-spoon @unstable-reality @mnemehoshiko @luciechat and @englishable!

[ceruleanwhore]

Sorry but I just need to hop on and rant about how TVD handled the historical aspects of the Mikaelsons in the show because yeah it’s a CW show so the bar’s in Hell, but I’m also really fucking annoyed and opinionated about all of this. First off, we have this Old Norse family living in an Old Norse society (probably 800-900s Norway) and we know that widespread Christian conversion didn’t really happen there until at least the late 900s, but moreso the early 1000s AD, but somehow half this family has biblical names. Not only are Esther, Elijah, and Rebecca biblical names that definitely aren’t Old Norse, but a name like Elijah doesn’t even work with the sound profile or either alphabet of the language. As for the others, I’m not that mad about Finn or Kol because, if you just tack an r on the end, those are ON names and the loss of that extra r over time can be explained, but Mikael and Niklaus are newer names that just didn’t exist at the time. If they wanted Mikael’s character to have a relatively modern sounding name so the patronymic would blend in more as a last name in other places, they could’ve just called him Erik and let the kids all be Erikson because at least that’s an actual Old Norse name. Klaus pisses me off the most because ‘Klaus’ by itself is an ON name but Niklaus isn’t so all they had to do was not have those two extra letters and it would’ve been fine.

The other main thing that bothers me is everything about when they get to America and are just casually living with the natives, all speaking English like it’s no big deal. If you don’t want to create a whole pidgin to show linguistic evolution over time in a fucking CW show, that’s fine, but all you had to do was show Esther coming up with a spell that allows them to understand each other and communicate. It would’ve taken 3 seconds to show us a babel fish spell and then it wouldn’t all be bullshit pissing me off. Also, they don’t spend enough time on the early days like that, in my opinion, because I would’ve loved to see the culture clash of Old Norse and the New World werewolves.

The last main thing is the runes.Now, the names carved into stone in the cave are written differently from the ones on the paper for Esther’s linking spell and the ones in stone are a tiny bit more correct. That being said, they’re still woefully wrong because these Old Norse vampires are using Anglo Saxon runes instead of Younger Futhark. If you try to read the runes in Younger Futhark, the only characters that match at all are ᚱ, ᛒ, ᛁ, ᛚ, ᚾ, ᛋ, ᚢ and then the ᛦ is a ‘z’ in YF but a ‘k’ in AS and is used as a ‘k’ in these runes, so, for example, ‘Rebekah’ reads like ‘R_b_z__’ and ‘Niklaus’ reads like ‘Nizl_us’. Elder Futhark doesn’t really work either, plus the timing of its use would be beyond questionable, since the very latest it may have been used is 800. The ᛦ and ᛋ characters don’t exist but we do get the ᛖ and ᛗ, so now ‘Rebekah’ reads like ‘Rebez__’ and ‘Mikael’ reads as either ‘Mi__el’ in stone or ‘Miu_el’ on the paper (a mistake was made so ᚢ was used instead of ᛦ for the ‘k’ in his name, even though that’s also wrong and it should’ve been ᚴ.) 

If you realize the horrible decision they made to have their Old Norse characters write in Anglo-Saxon runes and read the names in that alphabet, that’s where there’s mistakes in the paper version and inconsistency between those runes and the ones carved in stone. For example, it’s ‘ᚱᛖᛒᛖᛦᚪᚻ’ in the cave but ‘ᚱᛖᛒᛖᛦᚩᚻ’ on the paper, which probably seems like a small difference but the first would be pronounced like ‘Rebekah’ whereas the second would be ‘Rebekoh’. It’s ‘ᛗᛁᛦᚪᛖᛚ’ in the cave but ‘ᛗᛁᚢᚩᛖᛚ’ on paper, so ‘Mikael’ becomes ‘Miuoel’. ‘ᚾᛁᛦᛚᚪᚢᛋ’ on stone later is written as ‘ᚾᛁᛦᛁᚩᚢᛋ’ — ‘Niklaus’ vs. ‘Nikious’. So not only do they use the wrong names and the wrong runes but then they fuck up the runes they’re using, and it feels like they just didn’t even bother trying to write Elijah’s name like that because there is no j and they couldn’t be bothered to try and figure out how to write that name in any of these writing systems. Fucking hell.

[catt-nuevenor]

Deórling

No funny w's to confuse matters this time round. You might already be able to guess the meaning of this word from trying to sound it out, though it may also surprise you to find its origins in the Old English language.

As with all compounds, let's break it down:

There are, unfortunately, a few competing spellings at work here. I'll start with the one I used for the title.

Deór - animal, beast (usually wild) or deer, reindeer or brave, bold or heavy, severe, violent

Deóre - expensive, precious, costly, valuable or dear, cherished, beloved or worthy, respected, noble, glorious

Bit mixed there. Let's try an alternate spelling:

Dýrling

Dýre - dear, beloved or dear of price, costly

Interestingly, in one of my dictionaries (full details of them at the end of the post) dýre is treated as a simple alternate to deór (not deóre) with no alternate definition.

The spellings dér-, diór- and déor- also pop up, but they are considered a bi-product of a lack of standardised spelling and regional dialect.

Right, now let's look at -ling:

-ling - ...

We're going a little off piece here as the dictionaries give quite academic answers and examples that might not translate to tumblr well. Basically, -ling is a suffix, or an ending you stick on a pre-existing word to change its meaning, that typically denotes something smaller, lesser, lower in a social or professional hierarchy, younger, or subordinate.

For example:

Eorþling (Ýrðling) - husbandman (horses), farmer, farm labourer, ploughman

Eorþe (Ýrð) - ground, land, earth, globe, world or ploughing, tilling or arable land or standing corn, crop, produce

Literally Earthling

Hæftling - prisoner, captive

Hæfte - bond, fetter or captive, slave, servant or bondage, imprisonment, affliction

There are many other examples, but I think that's enough for our purposes.

So, what does all that mean for Deórling?

There are typically, but not always, two ways to look at translations; context meaning, and literal meaning. Context and interpretation relies on how it is used in a sentence and wider piece, poetry and its translation often falls the most foul of this. Here, new words are made from compounds rarely if ever found in alternate source material. Take two separate words and push them together to give an enforced or sometimes more nuanced meaning. This type of compound is called a kenning. This tends to be the translation you find in glosses and dictionaries, and to quote one of my go-to books on the Old English language:

The best glossaries will give you both a literal of a kenning and an interpretation of it... But you must be on your guard, for some glossaries supply only an interpretation. To do so, of course, is to rob poetry of much of what makes it poetry. If you suspect that the definition of a compound is not literal but rather an interpretation, got to a dictionary and look up its elements separately.

P S Baker. Introduction to Old English. Third Edition

I always try and break compounds down into their component elements regardless of context, my archaeology background still haunting me into digging deeper.

Finally, after all that, we get back to our word.

Interpretive meaning:

Deórling - darling, favourite or minion or household god

Literal meaning:

Deórling - little beast, brave little one, fierce little one, beloved little one, cherished little one, dear little one, etc

I hope that proved interesting!

P.S. By the by, I've tried looking into what is meant by 'household god' from the Clark-Hall's dictionary, but unfortunately the entry is devoid of details and I've yet to find the context from which that definition hails. I'll put up another post if I find anything.

---

Dictionaries used: Bosworth and Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary online. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by J.R. Clark-Hall. Old-English Translator by Blue Engine Web Development

[maniculum]

I'm doing a College class on Ancient Foods. My focus is on Honey like the different recipes and usages in Medieval era. I found like a couple recipes, a thing on religious relation ("Milk and Honey of Paradise") /Crusades, medicinal use, and possibly bees/beeswax because I was struggling to get something.

Y'all have any recommendations?

(I've brought Zoe in on this one; the following is a collaborative effort. Also I'm assuming you have access to your university library so you can get ahold of the cited material below quickly and for free.)

Can you include beverages? Honey is the main ingredient in mead, which should give you a lot to talk about. Susan Verberg is the premier researcher on medieval mead, and has some excellent works on both mead making and honey production. She has a website at https://medievalmeadandbeer.wordpress.com/ where you can find both her formal publications and her blog.

If you do want to talk about beverages, there were other medieval drinks that used honey. Some citations for you:

Breeze, Andrew. “What Was ‘Welsh Ale' in Anglo-Saxon England?” Neophilologus, vol. 88, no. 2, 2004, pp. 299–301.

Fell, Christine E. “Old English ‘Beor’." Leeds Studies in English, vol. 8, 1975, pp. 76-95.

You can also go into cultural symbolism; here are a couple on that:

Enright, Michael J. Lady with a Mead Cup: Ritual, Prophecy, and Lordship in the European Warband from La Tène to the Viking Age. Four Courts Press, 2013.

Rowland, Jenny. “OE Ealuscerwen/Meoduscerwen and the Concept of ‘Paying for Mead'." Leeds Studies in English, vol. 21, 1990, pp. 1-12.

Also you might want to look into the general concept of the "mead of poetry" from the Old Norse sources. You can find the origin story for that in the Prose Edda, I believe.

Definitely check out https://www.foodtimeline.org for recipes with honey during the period - they have more than you'd expect. There's also a few medieval cookbooks you can parse through. Here's an online one you can sort through that does a great job modernizing the translations: https://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts.html

As for honey itself -- there's actually quite a bit of research on that! Honey was quite a specialized trade, and most of the medieval world used it for sweetener, so there's a good amount of research.

A few leads:

honey as an alternative to sugar, which was expensive, imported, and could indicate class

honey grading: honey was graded based on location/provenance, type (lavender, orange blossom, etc.), and also by grade. However, their method of grading was very different to our modern one.

honey as a preservative, not just for flavor

Articles on this subject:

(DEFINITELY this one!!) Fava, Lluis Sales, et al. “Beekeeping in Late Medieval Europe: A Survey of Its Ecological Settings and Social Impacts.” Anales de La Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval, no. 22, 2021, pp. 275-96, https://doi.org/10.14198/medieval.19671.

Wallace-Hare, David, editor. New Approaches to the Archaeology of Beekeeping. Archaeopress, 2022. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2b07txd.

Verberg, Susan. “Of Hony: A Collection of Mediaeval Brewing Recipes for Mead, Metheglin, Braggot, Hippocras &c. — Including how to Process Honey — from the 1600s and Earlier,” 2017. Academia.edu.

If you want to look more into the medicinal usage, Cockayne's Leechdoms, Wortcunning, & Starcraft collects all the medical & scientific texts of the Old English period. It's old enough to be public domain, so it's available on the Internet Archive and HathiTrust in searchable form, meaning you can just ctrl-F "honey" and see what comes up.

Let us know how it goes!

[oldenglishtextposts]

Hello, I love your blog! Would you consider recording pronunciations of some of your translations? Or do you know of any pronunciation resources? I’ve been having fun trying to read them out to myself, but I’m not sure if I’m sounding them out right 👀

Yeah here's me reading the post about calling a slug puppy. I have a few idiosyncrasies when reading, one is that I'm no good at distinguishing short from long vowels. Also, the person I learned Old English with spoke German, and would reduce e's at the ends of words to schwa like in German, and I picked this habit up from him. This probably wouldn't have happened in Old English, but no one knows for sure!

I'll link a resource for pronunciation below that's good for the basics, but is definitely missing a few things. I'll also put a recording of a much longer text.