eyja

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Tracing Our Ancestors on the Bottom of the Sea
Moon water blew in on Solar Wind

I was looking at my Gordon book the other day and finally took the time to read on the Grammar parts. Amongst it was this nice little section about the Norse language in England and how from what little we have of it we can tell what phonological changes that are present in Old Norse (aka 13th c. Icelandic) are not in the Norse preserved in England (introduced c. 875-950 and remained nearly unchanged until 1050-1200 when Norse loanwords start appearing in English). So, here are my notes, so that I might better translate for my period.

PN = Proto-Norse (aka pre-Viking Age, c. 3rd-7th c.)
OD = Old Danish
OE = Old English
OI = Old Icelandic (aka 13th c.)
ONor = Old Norwegian
ME = Middle English
MI = Modern Icelandic

ǫ: = ǫ with an accent
æ: = æ with an accent

#_ = beginning of word
_# = end of word
> = "goes to" or "becomes"
/ = "when"
Ø = null
C = consonant
V = vowel

stress indicated by underline

Phonological changes that had not taken place:
( 1-9Collapse )

So, looking through some of the sites elliesam linked a way back in her journal about baby slings and ways to tie them. I'm using this post as a little info dump for dimensions of the slings and different ways of tying the slings).

Nandu:
4m x 70cm

EllaRoo wraps:
100% cotton
27" wide
-small 4.2m long (good for parents up to 130lbs or 5'4" tall)
-medium 4.6m long (good for 160lbs or 5'8" tall)
-large 5m long (good for over 160lbs or over 5'8" tall)

Gaia Bali Baby Wraps
100% cotton
25" wide
-4.1m long/4.5yd
-4.6m long/5yd
-5.1m long/5.5yd
-5.5m long/6yd

And here are the ways to wrap them:
Nandu: Baby Sling Tying Tricks
Wrap Your Baby: Carrying Newborns
-With Video Instruction (demonstrations with older babies)
-Front Wrap Cross Carry
-Cross Cradle Carry
-Kangaroo Carry
-Rucksack and Tibetan Carry
Wrap Your Baby: Short Cross Carry
Wrap Your Baby: Putting Baby On Your Back

drápa f. 'a heroic, laudatory poem', probably derived from drepa 'to strike'. Composed in dróttkvætt metre, and much in fashion from 10th to 12th centuries, earliest of the 9th c. Even poems in honor of the gods, Christ, the holy cross, saints, etc. can be considered drápur, but most are in honor of kings, earls, princes, or eminent men. Usually consists of three parts: Introduction (upphaf), Burden or Middle Part (stef) (refrain?), Peroration (slæmr). It is very long, 20 stanzas, 60 stanzas, etc.

dræpingr m. diminutive of drápa, 'a little drápa' -- not as long and without a refrain.

flokkr m. (akin to fólk) 1. 'a body of men', 'a company, host', 'a troop, band', 2. a short poem, distinct from drápa in that it is shorter, less laudatory, and does not have the burdens (refrains) - also composed in dróttkvætt.

lausavísa f. 'a ditty' (literally 'loose-stanza') -- a single stanza of dróttkvætt said to be improvised on the spot for the occasion it marks.

kviða f. 'an epic poem, a song or ballad' composed in fornyrðislag or kviduháttr (the latter probably the more correct name of the two).

mál n. 1. 'speech, faculty of speech', 2. 'language, tongue', 4. 'a tale, narrative', 7. a name of old songs, containing old saws or sentences, also of poems in a dialogue, composed in málaháttr.

tal n. 1. 'talk, parley, conversation,' 2. 'speech, language,' 3. 'a tale, number,' 4. 'a tale, list, series.'

vísa f. 'a stanza', pl. vísur 'stanzas' -- a short poem of a few stanzas, no refrain, also composed in dróttkvætt.

Umayyad coin discovered in Egypt

(Ests = Estonians)

"Among the Ests there is a group of people who understand the process of freezing. And the reason why the dead men lie there so long without decaying is that they freeze them. If two vessels full of water or ale are set down, they cause one of the two to freeze over, in summer and winter alike."

p. 5, The Viking Age: A reader.

[...]"what the eco-imagery would like to picture as a pristine, untouched Urwelt [primeval world] in fact has been managed by people for millennia."

[...]

According to Susanna Hecht, a geographer at the University of California at Lost Angeles, researchers into upland Amazonia took most of their soil samples along the region's highways, which indeed passed through areas with awful soil [...] A few scientists, though, found patches of something better [...] in the 1990s researchers began studying these unusual regions of terra preta do Índio--rich, fertile "Indian dark earth" that anthropologists believe was made by human beings.

[...]

Because terra preta is subject to the same punishing conditions as the surrounding bad soils, "its existence is very surprising," according to Bruno Glaser, a chemist at the Institute of Soil Science and Soil Geography at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. "If you read the textbooks, it shouldn't be there."*

[...]

According to a recent study led by Dirse Kern, of the Museu Goeldi in Belém, terra preta is "not associated with a particular parent soil type or environmental condition," suggesting that it was not produced by natural processes. Another clue to its human origin in the broken ceramics with which it is usually mixed. "They practiced agriculture here for centuries," Glaser told me. "but instead of destroying the soil, they improved it, and that is something we don't know how to do today" in tropical soils.

---

~1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles C. Mann, p344-5.
ISBN 978-4000-3205-1

Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence

Anatoly Liberman's talk on "Who was Odin, and Why Did People Fear Him?" was recorded and posted on the Center of Medieval Studies website. Go watch it!