Patreon Interview with Dr. Gísli Sigurðsson! / Rune Books Sale (Patreon)

With the great "NaNoWriMo" month of November passing, I'm getting back into scheduling some live interviews for you. One of the most exciting that I think I've ever been able to "book" for you will be this Saturday, December 3rd, at 10:00 a.m. U.S. Mountain time (check timeanddate.com for what that is in your local time, and just use Denver for my time). You'll have a chance to pose your questions to Prof. Gísli Sigurðsson, research professor at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík. Not only is Gísli one of the great giants of the Eddic studies field, but his edition of the Eddic poems is standard in advanced Icelandic classrooms (and a very good companion to reading the poems as long as you can read the Modern Icelandic commentary), and I'm happy to call him enough of a friend that he pulled out the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda while I was in Iceland for no better reason than that I wanted to read it in person. He's a magnificent scholar and a hell of a guy, so I hope you can join us. The Zoom link is here ( https://cuboulder.zoom.us/j/98097453397 ) and the passcode is: stjarna

Gísli suggests that his theme for Saturday will build off some ideas he presented in a recent paper, the abstract for which is this: "I shall discuss how the eddas and sagas can be read as a reflection of a now lost memory culture around the professional elites of poets and lawmen. The stories and poetry in the literary works that have come down to us are interconnected through a web of shared family relations, locations and travel routes in the world of the Norse. The poets were responsible for remembering the regnal years of kings, which form the warp of the chronological web back into time, adding on the poets that had served under them as the weft, before the actual weaving could begin with the poetry they had composed — and associated stories.This knowledge and art of poetry is based on mythological illusions about the Milky way, stars and planets in the sky where they can be pointed at when training young aspiring poets – as we can read in Snorri's Edda. The lawmen on the other hand were more local within Iceland and they had to remember earlier lawspeakers and cases associated with them, stories about legal disputes over land that had been claimed by the first settlers and over inheritance and other reasons for conflict in human society, using genealogy as the chronological ‘warp’ — as we can read about in the sagas.”

In other news, Stella brings to my attention the exciting news that Boydell and Brewer has a 50% off sale on all their books through Dec. 2nd. They have several important titles in runic studies, including especially Barnes's Runes: A Handbook (the no. 1 book in runes that I recommend all the time), Page's Introduction to English Runes and Runes and Runic Inscriptions, and Spurkland's Norwegian Runes and Runic Inscriptions. On the non-runic side, they also have Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology, an important reference work that I keep close at hand and which I'm pretty sure you can see me check in my last visit to IGN to talk about God of War: Ragnarok. The discount code for the sale is BB115; Stella says you have to type it in at check out.

I hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving had a good one. Together with my siblings and cousins I had the opportunity to rent a house my grandparents lived in 60 years ago (view pictured above) which is now a rentable vacation property. We had a very nice time, though it was a cellular and internet black hole so I was able to do less work and less updating than I normally would have with even a little connection. I can't say I'm ever too disappointed at that kind of turn of events, though.

I'll announce the 7th annual holiday cards soon, with full details for how to submit your address that I hope will make that an efficient and stress-less experience for everyone. 

In the meantime, all the best to everyone, and thank you for your continued support and kindness during a year that I know has been tough for many of you.

Jackson Crawford

P.S. My Patreon messages don't work. I don't get notifications for them, and there's nothing on my home page to show me when there is or isn't a message. I can't even always see them when I check for them manually, and you won't see it if I reply! The best ways to get in touch are: a) just to comment on posts like this, b) to post in the  Community page, or c) to email my assistant Stella at [admin AT JacksonWCrawford.com]--remember the 'W' between my first and last names in that domain name.