There is a legend of a 12th Century Welsh Prince who sailed to America and settled with a group of his countrymen.

Here is the story of Prince Madoc and his influence through the conquest of the American West 🧵 Prince Madoc was said to be the son of Owain, the King of Gwynned from 1137 to 1170 AD, considered one of the greatest Welsh kings.

When Owain died, violence broke out between Madoc’s brothers for the crown. The prince set sail to avoid the bloodshed, winding up in the Americas

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.

🧵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.

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.

🧵 Character required for a republic

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.

“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)

🧵 Beowulf’s Christianity Part 3: Fate, The Last Supper, and Redemption

I have previously posted about the poetic use of the words “wyrd” (fate) and “wyrm” (dragon) in Beowulf.

The poet combines a common Norse vision of fate with Christian symbolism to deliver his message. Many Norse sagas revolve around fate, though it’s not presented as discouraging. The heroes are not judged by their eventual defeat, but rather by the nobility of spirit they exhibit in the face of their doom. Consider Odin’s preparations for Ragnarok.

🧵 Macbeth: Barbarian and Civilized Virtues

In a letter to a friend, Teddy Roosevelt once said: “Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.”

This observation is central to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. (1/10) The play begins and ends with foreign armies in Scotland.

In the first act, we have thane’s revolting against the gentle King Duncan using Irish and Norwegian mercenary armies. These are referred to as the “villainies of nature”. (2/10)

🧵Beowulf’s Christianity Part 2: Partnership between the hero and God

The Beowulf poet reconciles the might and merit of classic heroism with the Biblical command to rely on God and not the arm of the flesh.

He presents the hero as a servant of God, anticipating the knight. As Beowulf prepares for his battle with Grendel, we are told that he “trusted confidently in his valiant strength, God’s grace to him.” (Line 545)

This line is vital to the poem. The poet later doubles down on Beowulf’s mighty valor being a gift from God (line 1054).

🧵Beowulf’s Christianity Part 1: The Fall and Redemption

The poem begins with a brief history of how the Danes came to power leading up to Hrothgar’s reign.

Having earned glory and fortune in war, Hrothgar’s builds a mighty mead-hall for his people: Heorot. Heorot was not to be an average mead hall. It was “a mansion, a mightier house for their mead-drinking than the children of men had ever known” and “the greatest of all houses and of halls”.

Here, Hrothgar would bestow gifts of treasure to his people

🧵Beowulf’s Christianity (prep-thread)

Most critics of the poem tend to present Beowulf as an essentially pagan work with some superficial Christian references sprinkled on top.

I believe the Christianity of the poem goes much deeper. To be sure, the poem is complex and stratified.

The poem must be based on an old Danish legend, and correlates with other Norse Sagas we have, particularly Hrolf Kraki’s Saga.

There are also historical layers describing the beginnings of the migration period.

🧵Werewolves in Norse Woods

The wolf was prominent in Norse cultures, being both feared and admired. From úlfhéðnar to Fenrir, the beast stalked their imaginations. Stories of men becoming wolves captivated them.

One of the best comes from the Volsung Saga. Near the middle of the Saga, one of the main heroes, Sigmund the son of Volsung, finds himself in quite the predicament.

His sister’s husband killed his father and has captured him and his brothers. The sons of Volsung have been tied up in the forest to be devoured by beasts.

Before Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone, Sigmund the Volsung pulled the sword from the tree:

During a wedding feast for a king, a wanderer appeared in the hall. He wore a spotted cloak, linen pants, no shoes, and a wide-brimmed hat. He had but one eye. Odin. In the midst of the feasting, Odin drew a sword and stabbed it into a tree trunk, up to the hilt, saying: “whoever draws this sword out of the tree trunk will receive the sword as a gift from me, and he will say truly that he never held a better sword in his hand”

The bloody rivers of the French Revolution divided the Founding Fathers. Particularly Adams and Jefferson.

France became a wedge which drove the two friends deeper into their respective political philosophies.

1/

https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1679860760145543169

The revolution exposed just how radical of a democrat Jefferson really was. Even the guillotines devoured the French Aristocrats, he stood by the revolution saying:

🧵 Cnut, The Prince

Only two English Kings have been granted the title of “Great”. Alfred, obviously, and the Danish-born Cnut, curiously.

Cnut created an empire through his prudence, valor, and cunning, a archetypal example of a Prince. Cnut was the grandson of Harald Bluetooth, the Danish King infamous for converting Denmark to Christianity. His mother is said to have been a Polish princess, who baptized Cnut.

See this older thread about the conversion of Denmark:

https://twitter.com/kentbanishearl/status/1607486792328183808

🧵 Sigemund vs Beowulf

I have previously discussed how the oldest extant record of the dragon slaying story from the Volsung Saga is to be found in Beowulf, with a few big differences (see thread attached).

This was done to intentionally compare Beowulf to Sigemund. But why?

https://twitter.com/kentbanishearl/status/1660704680668975105

The poet wants the reader to associate Beowulf with the preeminent dragon slayer of the Norse world. Not only does this help rank his slaying of Grendel, it foreshadows his own duel with a mound dwelling dragon.

For more on the dragon and it’s symbolism of fate, see thread:

https://twitter.com/kentbanishearl/status/1673520658775691265

🧵 Don’t say b**r

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.

Tolkien and Shakespeare 🧵

It’s no secret that Tolkien disliked Shakespeare and drama more broadly. He loved myth so deeply that Shakespeare’s more politically grounded plays irritated him.

Macbeth particularly it seems. Tolkien took particular issue with the Scottish play because of the dramatized myth presented by the Weird Sisters. In his essay “On Fairy-Stories” he noted that in drama “disbelief had not so much to be suspended as hanged, drawn and quartered.”

🧵 Dragon, Fate, Heroism

The Beowulf poet uses a bit of wordplay in the final act of the poem:

A “wyrm” (dragon) is awakened and rains down destruction on the Geats. Beowulf slays the dragon, but is mortally wounded.

The word “wyrd” in Old English means something like fate. The wyrm becomes a metaphor of sorts for wyrd. A fate inescapable and imposed upon the individual, most poignantly one’s hour of death.

The metaphor is deep, as the dragon dwells in a mound or barrow, a traditional burial site in Anglo-Saxon and Norse cultures.

Some of America’s most iconic guns came from the mind of one man.

Their creation involved an extermination order, a migration, and a genius.

The story of John Moses Browning. 🧵 In the 1830’s, Jonathan Browning was a gunsmith in Illinois. He is credited with inventing “harmonica gun” a repeating gun which found its way to the western frontier leading up to be Civil War.

The story of Sigurd the dragon slayer is captured (differently) in two main sources: the Icelandic Volsung Saga and the German Nibelungenlied.

But the oldest reference to this story is actually to be found in one of the oldest English poems: Beowulf.

A short 🧵 The story of Sigurd the Volsung is epic, involving a dragon’s treasure horde, a reforged sword, a ring (sound familiar??), as well as dangerous women and even Atilla the Hun!

The story has been referred to as The Iliad of the North.