Hot Dogs and Crying Ladies

Do you celebrate Name Days where you live?

In Sweden, from the 18th century onwards, names used by the royal family were introduced to the Swedish list of name days, followed by other common names. The monopoly on almanacs, held by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, expired in 1972 and so did the official name day list. Competing lists began to emerge. However, widespread dissatisfaction with the confusions of different lists prompted the Swedish Academy to compile a new two-name list which was accepted in 2001 and in nation-wide use since then.

By old tradition, the week just gone by, 19-24 July, has six female names in a row: Sara, Margareta, Johanna, Magdalena, Emma, Kristina. (My middle name is Christina.) So it has been called Women’s Week, and also names like Tear Week, since it also has the rumour of often being wet and rainy.

We’ve had some rain this week, but also sun. Today the Crying Women’s Week is officially over. (Name of the Day is Jakob). But I woke up to 10°C (the coldest we’ve had in a long time) and heavy rain all morning. So obviously men cry too! I’m not putting too much trust in the old folklore…

So what about the dogs? Well, I learned yesterday from Ginny’s blog that in English this time of the year – not just last week but about a month onwards - is often referred to as Dog Days. I found this piece of information fascinating, and further research resulted in a post at my Harry Potter blog Through My Spectrespecs: Dog Days and Sirius Black. The connection is that the name “dog days” go back to Greek and Roman traditions, referring to the star Sirius, also called the Dog Star. And for those not familiar with the Potter books, Sirius Black is a character in the HP books who sometimes takes on the shape of a dog. For details, go read the other blog!

In Swedish, we also have a name for this period corresponding to the English Dog Days, but in our language and tradition it does not refer neither to dogs nor the star Sirius; but would simply be translated “rot month”. The month when things tend to go bad, one way or another. Especially before the days of refrigerators and freezers, it was difficult to keep food fresh during this often hot and humid period of the year. This also led to infections and diseases; the connection perhaps not always clear to people in the past. I guess it was also a critical time for harvests, which could either get too much water from above or too little. In folklore, it was also said to be a month when all kinds of sinister omens might occur -  like calves being born with two heads.

One hot dog who gets hot when it’s hot (and wet when it’s wet…) My brother’s cairn terrier, Harry. You can also see him at my brother’s blog Cutting Edge Easy Listening. As my brother pointed out in a comment: The dog’s full name is actually Harry Potter, but I had nothing to do with that! (He was named by the children at the kennel where he was born).

Of Many Faces

A stone head by artist Olle Brandqvist. The kind of stone used for this one is diabase; originally grey but polished it becomes black.

In this year’s sculpture festival, another and considerably bigger head that the same artist is working on has been moved into town, allowing people to watch him  work:

He is mostly doing some polishing now, because the actual cutting is too noisy.

The original block of stone used for this sculpture (granite this time) weighed 14 tons. When the sculpture is finished, this one too will have a polished surface (the darker colour you can see beneath the ear).

 

As you can see, both stone heads are of irregular shape. As you walk around the sculpture, looking at it from different angles, your impression of the face changes. The artist says this is meant to remind us that there are many sides to a person.

In Roman mythology, there is a god with two faces: Janus. He was the god of gates, doorways, beginnings and endings. The month of January, which begins the new year, was named after him. Janus is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, looking in opposite directions – into the future and the past.

Writing this, I’m reminded of an article I read just the other day – or maybe it was said on the radio. Anyway, it was about how these days, we spend a lot of time and energy just on creating profiles for ourselves, on Facebook and other internet communities (like Blogger…)

This in turn reminds me of an early blog post of mine entitled Multiple Me. Follow the link if it tickles your curiosity.

Being in a reflective mood, my thoughts also go to one of my favourite passages in the Bible. If God had a blog/ Facebook profile, this would be it:

When God calls Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses argues with the Lord:

“Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” 

God said to Moses: “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.”

Exodus 3: 13-14

 

Rainbow

The other evening after a thunderstorm had passed by, I looked out my kitchen window and saw a rainbow in the sky. I went across the flat to the balcony, and from there I saw the other end of the bow.

So I grabbed my camera (and a jacket, because it was still raining) and went outside to see if I could catch all of it.

It turned out that from the edge of the football field, I could see the whole bow, stretching from one end of the open field to the other… But I could not catch all of it in one photo. I doubt that even with a tripod I would have been able to put a full panorama together. (I don’t have a tripod.)

When I tried to walk further away from it,  fence and trees and buildings got in the way.

So I had to settle for taking pictures of parts of it. But I stood there quite a long time just watching… I can’t remember ever seeing an unbroken bow quite as impressive.

For quite a while, there were even two bows. A double rainbow has reversed colours in the outer bow. The darker space between them (I just learned) is called Alexander's band (named after the Greek philosopher who first described it).

In Greek mythology, the rainbow was considered a path between Heaven and Earth. Iris, goddess of sky and sea, was the personification of the rainbow. As the sun unites earth and heaven, she linked the gods to humanity and acted as messenger between them.

In Chinese mythology the Goddess Nüwa used stones of different colours to repair a slit in the sky.

In Hindu mythology, the rainbow is the bow of Indra, the God of lightning, thunder and rain.

In Old Norse Mythology, a rainbow called the Bifrost Bridge connects the realms of Ásgard and Midgard, homes of the gods and humans respectively.

In Biblical Mythology, the rainbow is the sign of God's covenant with Noah and his descendants, that “never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood”. (Genesis 9)

In Sumerian/Mesopotamian mythology (The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known works of literary writing),  the rainbow is the jewelled necklace of the Great Mother Ishtar (goddess of fertility), that she lifts into the sky as a promise that she will never forget the days of the great flood that destroyed her children.

In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the Rainbow Serpent is a common art motif. It is seen as the inhabitant of permanent waterholes and is in control of life's most precious resource, water.

In Irish folklore, a pot of gold is said to be hidden by leprechauns (a type of fairy) at the end of the rainbow.

The End of the Rainbow is in fact a place impossible to reach, because the rainbow is an optical effect which depends on the location of the viewer. When walking towards the end of a rainbow, it will move further away.

---

I decided to also do a Rainbow post in my Picture Book blog today, showing a few pictures a bit bigger and with the black background. In that post, you will also find a short note on the colours of the rainbow.

Thunder and Lightning

 

I did not attend the official opening of the sculpture festival on Friday afternoon. The clouds were gathering around noon…

And then Thor threw his hammer again.

Thor’s hammer

In Old Norse mythology, the god Thor rode through the heavens on a chariot pulled by two goats. Thor was known for his quick and hot temper. Lightning flashed whenever he threw his hammer Mjollnir ("crusher") which would return to his hand again after being thrown.

Thor was foremost of the gods to the common man and widely worshiped. Hammer shaped amulets were worn about the neck well into the Christianization of Scandinavia. Molds have been found which contain both cross and hammer shapes, side by side. His name occurs in numerous place names; and also lives on in one of the days of the week: Thursday. (Swedish: torsdag) Thor is associated to the Roman god Jupiter, the German god Donar, and the Anglo-Saxon god Thunor.

 

*A flash of lightning, followed after some seconds by a rumble of thunder is, for many people, the first illustration of the fact that sound travels more slowly than light.

*Lightning is approximately one kilometer distant for every 2.9 seconds that elapse between the visible flash and the first sound of thunder (or one mile for every 4.6 seconds).

*A flash of lightning and a simultaneous sharp "crack" of thunder indicates that the lightning strike was very near.

Passing Through Stone

Above is a collage of winter and summer pictures of a sculpture.
I posted pictures of it back in July 2009 too. My comment then was: "This is another one of those sculptures that may work as a magic door, if you dare look through it instead of just circling around it." (The perspective you get when looking through the stone is different from when looking past it from a distance, and it is added to by reflections, since the inside of the hole has been polished so that it works like a mirror.)

I'm generally fascinated by (stories about) "magic openings". And I know this is something I share with people all over the world, through thousands of years back in history...

Today, a post at the Japanese blog Camera Works Blogger by Tsutomu Otsuka caught my attention. It is entitled Relationship Making and Breaking Stone, and tells of

a shrine with "a giant stone 1.5m high and 3m wide. It is said that the power of the gods flows into the round hole on the top side of the stone. Pass through the hole in the stone from front to back to break off a bad relationship. And then pass through from back to front to make a good one."

This triggered a memory at the back of my brain - something I read a couple of years ago about a stone on some island off the coast of Scotland, to which similar traditions were connected. At first I couldn't remember what island, or why on earth I had been reading about it, but it came back to me...

It was in connection with my "Harry Potter research" that I came across it. I had been reading up on and comparing Old Norse and Celtic traditions; and then, in connection with "unbreakable vows" (there is one of those made in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince), I happened to come across a web page about The Odin Stone on the Orkney Islands. Once I remembered enough to know what to put into the search engine, I managed to find the website again now.

The Odin Stone, or Stone o' Odin, was a "holed monolith" (thought to have been erected around 3000BC) that stood in a field by the Standing Stones o' Stenness; until it was destroyed in 1814 by an incomer to the island, by the name of Captain W. Mackay.


The stone was "approximately 2.5 metres (8 feet) high with a breadth of about one metre (3.5 feet)" and "played a major part in a number of Orkney wedding traditions".


"...the man being on one side and the woman on the other, they took hold of each other's right hand through the hole, and there swore to be constant and faithful to each other. This ceremony was held so very sacred in those times that the person who dared to break the engagement made here was counted infamous, and excluded all society" 

"It was likewise usual, when a husband and wife could not agree, that they both came to the Kirk of Stainhouse (Stenness), and after entering into the kirk the one went out at the south and the other at the north door, by which they were holden legally divorced, and free to make another choice." - Although in this case, the "divorce" took place in the church of Stenness, a short distance away from the Standing Stones, was this a later development? Perhaps an attempt by the church to draw the Orcadians away from their heathen practices? 

I just find it interesting, that in so different parts of the world, a giant stone with a natural hole in it should be connected to "relationship making and breaking"...

(The modern Swedish sculpture, as far as I know, has really nothing to do with this, except in my mind.)

Oh Deer, I Won!

(No, it's not a spelling mistake!)

This has been a tough week for me in many ways, computer crash included. Yesterday, however, in spite of "only" having my laptop... I made an attempt at the Blog Anniversary contest at Dan's blog Wood and Pixels, which he generously kept running for four days (Tuesday-Friday). And I WON! Three other people also came out winners, on the other days. For an extra special reason, though, I am especially happy that Thursday got to be my lucky day. The special reason has nothing to do with the prize, because we will each get a photo print of our own choice. Which of course would make me happy any day! :)  No - the extra special thing for me about Thursday had to do with the picture to which the clues were pointing on that day - a white deer. (Click on the I WON link above to see Dan's photo.)

Dan provides a link to the Native American folklore about the white deer. However, the white deer or stag is also special in Celtic folklore, which I have been interested in ever since my first visits to Britain in my early teens.  In Celtic mythology it represents a closeness to the Otherworld. For example, "the white stag or hart often appears in the forests around King Arthur’s court, sending the knights on adventures against gods and fairies". The deer is also used in Christian /Biblical symbolism, to represent the human soul's longing for God. Modern fantasy writers have made use of the deer/stag symbolism, too. Two examples:

In C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, what brings Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy - by then grown up and Kings and Queens of Narnia - back to England at the end of the story, is the rumour that a White Stag has been seen in the Western Woods of Narnia. They go on a hunt and they see the stag and they follow it. This brings them back to the lamp post, and from there back to the wardrobe, and their life in this world.

In J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter books, a white stag, and towards the end also a white deer, also have very important guiding roles to play.

As I said in my comment on Dan's congratulations post:
Some things in life can really make you wonder about coincidence vs "meaning".

And as it happens, that very topic has been appearing in different shapes to me more than once over the past couple of weeks. Now here it was again, through the white deer...

Annual Book Sale

The last week in February means start of the annual nation-wide Book Sale in Sweden, as far back as I can remember. It is not quite what it used to be - the last chance to get cheap left-over copies of books that were going out of print. These days, cheap editions of some books are even printed especially for the sale. But it's still an Event for all booklovers. And a Temptation...

However, I'm not all that fond of crowds and queueing (I wonder if there's any chance I got the spelling of that word right...), and that sometimes keeps me from venturing into the bookshop on the first day of the sale. Besides, my bookcases are all full...

Nevertheless, I found myself joining the crowd (and queueing) again this year, even though I wasn't really looking for any particular book. And now I have to make room in my bookcases for three more books on mythology, and one about dreams. As if I didn't have any of those before...

But who can resist titles like these? (Not I, obviously...!)
(All books in Swedish, the titles translated into English by me.)

• World Religions (seems to contain readable summaries of the Big Ones... and pictures)
• Gods and Goddesses in Classical Mythology (very neat, with charts and pictures...)
• Classical Symbols, an Encyclopedia (lots of useful trivia, and again, pictures...)
• Dragons and Demons of our Dreams (fascinating/scary cover picture, and the book was really, really cheap...)