"I dreamed a dream..." (Patreon)

Famously, the oldest preserved music from Scandinavia is the song "Mik drømde en drøm..." ("I dreamed a dream...") from the Danish manuscript Codex Runicus, also famed as the only manuscript written in runes. However, only a couple lines are preserved of the lyrics. When I still taught at UCLA, probably early in 2013, I wrote an expanded version of the lyrics in Old Norwegian (I don't remember why I chose this specific dialect except that I liked it) for my then-student and still good friend Masha Lepire and some friends of hers to perform for my Vikings class.

Recently, Masha found those lyrics. Here's a translation; I suppose the theme isn't exactly unusual for my original work.

I dreamed a dream last night
about silk and precious furs,
about a pillow so deep and soft,
about peace with no noise.

And in the dream I saw
as if through a grimy window
the whole doomed human race,
each one nursed its own fear.

The number of fears grew
and the solutions grew too —
but often the answer is a heavier yoke
even if it burns to bear the question.

I managed to sleep just the same,
and thought it was best—
to rest on a good soft wool
and forget most people there.

Peace, if it exists, is where
one gets distant from the human noise,
and with a wall built all around, one dreams
about silk and precious furs. 

I have to admit, I'm still pretty happy with the lines "Often the answer is a heavier yoke, even if it burns to bear the question."

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In other news, I'm glad folks are enjoying the Word of the Day experiment. Lens videos get cropped in an unpredictable way automatically, so I'm not always sure where the text will wind up vis-a-vis the corners of the screen. There isn't an intermediate screen where I can check what it'll look like before it uploads.

Stella and I are also looking into some options for how to upload the Word of the Day in a more lasting (written) format somewhere, so I'll update you on that when I decide how I want to do it.

All the best for now, and thanks as always for your support on Patreon,

Jackson Crawford