Beowulf’s name translates to “bee-wolf”. The name is an artistic euphemism, meaning bear.
Many heroes in Norse sagas are given similar kennings which indirectly mean bear. But why?
Beetlejuice.
The Indo-European word for bear was *h₂ŕ̥tḱos. In Greek this became “arktos”; In Latin, “ursus”.
Our word “arctic” is derived from the Greek “arktos”, implying lands suitable only to the bears. A land for beasts, not man.
Most European languages have a word relating to the Latin “ursus”. Italian, “orso”. Spanish, “oso”, etc.
Curiously, the Northern Germanic languages developed starkly different words: German bär, Norse bjørn, and English bear.
The English word means something like “brown one”.
The people of Northern Europe created crafty euphemisms to avoid calling bears by their actual (more ancient) name. These cultures held a belief that bears understood their real name, and would be summoned by it.
While the Norse and Germanics clearly feared these furry terrors, they also admired them. Bears embodied strength, courage, valor, and wisdom.
Naturally, they wanted their sons to possess the qualities they saw in these awesome stewards of the North.
They crafted clever kennings to endow their sons with the attributes of bears, while still paying them their due respect and caution.
For example, in Hrolf Kraki’s Saga there is an entire family of “Bear people”:
A Prince named Bjørn (meaning Bear) loves a woman named Bera (she-bear) who bears a son named Bothvar (little bear).
Bjørn is cursed to become a bear daily, while Bothvar goes on to become a renowned hero.
In fact, like Beowulf, Bjørn saves a Danish hall from a monster (in this case essentially a dragon) which brought destruction every Yule.
Such motifs where a warrior associated with a bear performs tremendous feats of heroism became a common archetype.
Of course some Norse were also known to be Berserkers, men who channeled the spirit of the bear into their fighting, often wearing bear or wolf pelts into battle. In the sagas these men are often portrayed as abandoning all reason for animalistic rage.
Other warriors in Norse literature partially take on berserker-like qualities, without becoming one themselves.
For example in Grettir’s Saga a man named Bjørn insults our hero by throwing his cloak into a bear’s den.
Grettir defeats the bear, foreshadowing his triumph of Bjørn. He brings back the paw of the bear, a trophy similar to one typically taken by a Berserker.
Yet Grettir is no Berserk, and he frequently kills the loathsome and criminal berserkers he encounters.
Grettir then shows a bear warrior aligned with Beowulf and Bothvar. They are men endowed with traits of bears but retaining the wit and virtue of men. Unlike a berserker, they are not prone to mindless frenzy but display the cunning and strength of the “brown one”.
It’s not hard to squint at this and see the beginnings of chivalry emerging from these northern cultures. Beowulf represents one evolution between traditional Norse heroes and later Arthurian Legends with the baptism of the bear man.
*correction: it is Bothvar that saves the Danish hall.
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Very obscure gun that played a huge role in the Lewis & Clark Expedition (short 🧵)
This is a 46-caliber Girandoni air rifle. It holds 22 lead rifle balls which are fired without powder, using only compressed air to propel each ball.
These air rifles were initially thought to be a technological leap forward as they didn’t obscure the battlefield with smoke and fired rapidly with very little recoil. The Girandoni rifles were adopted by the Austrian Army in the 1780’s and were used effectively in the Austro-Turkish War.
The rifle had some drawbacks. Similar to modern air rifles, the Giradoni required shooters to pump air into a reservoir. This rifle’s stock was actually a detachable air reservoir, and soldiers would usually carry three of these.
🧵A great man vs his own legend: Kit Carson and the mission to rescue Ann White.
Kit Carson was arguably the greatest figure of the American West. He was a trapper, Indian fighter, and scout whose life was in many ways far more adventurous than could be dreamed up in fiction.
By the 1840s, Carson had gained national notoriety by guiding John C Fremont’s expeditions throughout the West, including the conquest of California. Carson’s heroics had shone through Fremont’s writings, including successful rescues from and destruction of various native tribes.
Carson was awkwardly trying to settle into a domestic homestead when a tragedy struck near his frontier in 1849. A white woman, Ann White, and her two year old child, had been abducted by Jicarilla Apaches.
You think this movie is goofy action movie. Some guy thought: “what if we fought dragons with helicopters?”
But I am here to tell you this movie is actually an insightful drama about the modern world. One might, in fact, call it based.
A 🧵 for your consideration (1/11)
The movie introduces us to the protagonist, Quinn (Christian Bale) as a young boy. He’s looking for his mother, who is working a male-dominant, manual labor job. We learn dad’s out of the picture, and mom can’t afford to pay for good skewl Quinn’s accepted to.
Out of this broken familial circumstance, the long-hibernating dragon awakens, killing Quinn’s mother and quickly destroying human civilization. Quinn’s broken home, his mother’s employment, missing father are crucial.
Out of the modern disjointed family comes destruction.
Livy notes the Romans were only prepared for citizenship in a Republic after their character as a people was forged over 244 years of monarchy. He refers to the early kings of Rome as “successive founders”.
He rhetorically asks what would have happened if the plebs, a “mix of shepherds and adventurers” had won the privileges of republican citizenship in their first generation of asylum? He answers the city would have been torn apart at its birth.
The first generations of asylum seekers in Rome had not yet developed a love for being Roman. They would have fought a class war in a city not their own. Uniting a people requires careful intermarriage and love for the soil, love that takes generations to grow.
“My wish is that each reader will pay the closest attention to the following: how men lived, what the moral principles were, under what leaders and by what measures a home and abroad our empire was won and extended…”
- Livy (1/4)
“…let him follow in his mind how, as discipline broke down bit by bit, morality at first foundered; how it next subsided in ever greater collapse and then began to topple headlong in ruin-“
(2/4)
“until the advent of our own age, in which we can endure neither our vices nor the remedies needed to cure them.
The special and salutary benefit of the study of history is to behold evidence of every sort of behaviour set forth as on a splendid memorial;…”