SimonRoyHughes

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore

Mountain Scenes: A Reindeer Hunt in the Rondane Mountains

#NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends #Folklore @folklore @norwegianfolktales @folklorethursday

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to linguistics

A girl at school felt ill, and had to go home. Of course, we need to establish contact with the family before we release a kid, so I got her to ring home. She rang a contact, showed me the screen on her phone, to let me see who she was ringing, and the word on the screen was one I didn't recognise.

She finished the conversation, and I asked her about the word. Arabic for pappa, she told me (transliterated into the Latin alphabet). So I asked her about the word for mama, and so on. The conversation lasted all of a minute, but it was as if this girl grew a couple of inches -- a teacher was interested in HER background. She left smiling, despite feeling ill.

Arabic is my no means a small language, but it is where I live, and so the same mechanisms this opinion piece describes ("You must change to please us.") are all too often apparent from day to day.

Show a little curiosity, rather. Learn a little from those whose perspactive is different from yours. And above all, respect other people and their backgrounds -- they are as valuable as you think you are.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/language-speak-big-slovene-english-german

#language #culture #pluralism #schoolwork #learning

mrundkvist, 1 month ago to academia

Want to see a bizarre alternative academic career? Look at mine: failed to get into the teaching precariat, got a part time job editing a research journal, learned early how to get $3000 grants, published eight books and 40 journal papers, ended up a full-time research scholar at a Polish university from age 47. And my kids didn't starve or want! I don't know the official yardstick of success in #academia. But personally I am satisfied.

#archaeology

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore

“There is no mention of the devil in the oldest accounts of these women who fare abroad in Holda’s company by night; he was only introduced later. But the whole thing is reminiscent of Odin when the witches are called caped riders. Their intercourse with the devil, and his choice of the one he likes best as witch queen on Walpurgis night is probably associated with the wedding feasts of Odin and Freya, which were celebrated at these times. It is likely that folklore has attached to these wedding dances the idea that the witches dance the snow off Bloksberg on the night of 1st May.”

— Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, 1859.

#NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends #Folklore @folklore @norwegianfolktales @folklorethursday #WalpurgisNacht

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore

Smack him!

#NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends #Folklore @folklore @norwegianfolktales @folklorethursday

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore Norwegian Bokmål

You can't always get what you want...🎶

#NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends #Folklore @folklore @norwegianfolktales @folklorethursday

"Swill and scraps and sleep in a sty."

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore

Beware the nisse.

#NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends #Folklore @folklore @norwegianfolktales @folklorethursday

mrundkvist, 1 month ago to languagelearning

Y, most Anglophones will agree, is a consonant. Swedes however consider it a vowel for a complex set of reasons that will confuse Anglophones.

1. Swedish doesn't have the 'dj' consonant sound in judge, jam, Jones.

1/2
#language

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to random

Today I received a message telling me that a couple of kids were going to be late for school because they had to run away from a moose (Alces alces, usually called an elk in Europe).

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore

Hm! I appear to be finished. I'll fiddle with the introductory and conclusory paragraphs for a bit, and then start sending them off for editing.

Publication late this summer?

#NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends #folklore @norwegianfolktales @folklore

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to poetry

“Oh dragon there,
Don’t burn my hair,
Before you try to eat me,
For if the knight
Sees such a fright,
He may not ever save me.”

#poetry #poem #folklore #frivolity

juergen_hubert, 1 month ago to Germany

Remember the time when German industry was primarily known for producing cheap knockoff forgeries of high-quality British goods?

#Histodon #Germany #UnitedKingdom #trade
https://archive.org/details/handbookfortrav05firgoog/page/93/mode/1up?view=theater

junesim63, 1 month ago to ukteachers

Good article on how England's outlier emphasis on phonics as the main method of teaching children to read is failing children and wider society.
#Education #Reading #Stories #Books #Phonics #Children

Phonics isn’t working - for children’s reading to improve, they need to learn to love stories
https://theconversation.com/phonics-isnt-working-for-childrens-reading-to-improve-they-need-to-learn-to-love-stories-226573

ClaireFromClare, 1 month ago to histodons

A shift from agricultural employment to manufacturing accelerated a century before the steam engine & the boom in coal usage: intriguing findings from 20 years of archival research in England & Wales.

New technologies? (eg in printing?) The ideas thus spreading? Hard-working immigrants? Any ideas here for an energy-efficient but prosperous future?

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/nation-of-makers-industrial-britain
https://www.economiespast.org/

#EconomiesPast #OccupationalData #CambridgeUniversity @histodons

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to random

I'll refollow when they've finished arguing about science fiction...

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to writing

Writing is a means to learning.
Writing is a means to thinking.
Writing is a means to remembering.
Writing is a means to organising.
Writing is a means to communicating.

@writingcommunity #Writing @writers

SimonRoyHughes, 1 month ago to folklore

Walpurgisnacht is fast approaching. If you want to fly to Blokksberg to meet the devil, but you’ve mislaid your greasehorn, this is the stuff you need to anoint your beesom with.

@folklore #NorwegianLegends @norwegianfolktales #Folklore #Blokksberg #Walpurgisnacht

SimonRoyHughes, 2 months ago to random

It’s #MythologyMonday, and I have time to post. Here is a Finnish folktale that obviously comes from the same sources as the Kalevala. #Blacksmith

“Ilmarinen the Smith Goes Courting”

https://norwegianfolktales.net/folklore/ilmarinen-the-smith-goes-courting

SimonRoyHughes, 2 months ago to random

Get the ingredients ready, for tomorrow is #WaffleDay in Sweden. That it happens also to be the Feast of the #Annunciation is no coincidence; Swedes have difficulty hearing the difference between "våffel" (waffle) and "vårfru" (our lady). So they stuff themselves full of waffles (and at the end of #Lent, too!) in remembrance of Mary's accomplishment of putting the best spin ever on bad news.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_Day

#Våffeldagen #Vårfrudagen

SimonRoyHughes, 2 months ago to folklore

I have committed a blog.

This one is on Peter Nicolai Arbo's artistic production, and how it shows a connection between witches, the wild hunt, valkyries, and the Old Norse goddess Freya.

https://norwegianfolktales.net/articles/freya-valkyries-and-witches-oh-my

@folklore @norwegianfolktales #Folklore #NorwegianLegends

SimonRoyHughes, 2 months ago to folklore

A cat that reaches twenty years old will turn into a witch. A witch that reaches 100 years old will turn back into a cat.

@folklore @norwegianfolktales #Folklore #NorwegianLegends

SimonRoyHughes, 2 months ago to random

The devil once promised to bring a witch an iron rod, so that she could sink during the test; he also kept his word and brought her a rod, but it was a sewing needle. The witch floated on the surface and was burned.

SimonRoyHughes, 2 months ago to folklore

“Don’t worry,” I thought, “it's only a preface; it won’t take more than an evening to translate. Put it off until later.”

It’s later.

The preface is 22 pages long. The language is old-fashioned, the argument is convoluted. It’s taken me a week so far, and I’m still only ⅔ of the way through.

On the other hand, it is one of the most interesting texts I have ever read, documenting the connection between (modern) folkloric witches and their familiars, valkyries, and the goddess Freya. The #folklore, #mythology, and writing communities need to read it.

@folklore @norwegianfolktales #NorwegianFolktales #NorwegianLegends @writingcommunity

A footnote from the text: A German journalist and poet [Julius Hammer] states in truth: “There are no poetic flowers that are so difficult to imitate as folktales and legends. Artificial flowers of this kind betray themselves as soon as they are made, even if they come from the most skilled hand.”