There are apparently still a few people left out there that Coz and I haven't cornered to tell this story to, and who are therefore still wondering why the merest mention of Vikings sends us into fits of snickering in the corner. But it takes a little while to tell properly, so I thought I'd write it down.
Back in 2012, we got to spend a month in Spain, Sweden, and Norway. At the very end of our trip, we visited the town of
Sigtuna, Sweden, which is famous for it's runestones. "Famous" turns out to be correct; its close to Stockholm, and the place is jam-packed with bus tours full of Germans and midwesterners, strolling the strip in their Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, buying tacky souvenir horned hats. Once you get off the main drag however, it's a lovely little medieval town with quite a nice museum. And runestones.
The stones are scattered throughout the town - some whole, some broken up and re-purposed in churches or graveyards. There's a map you get from the Tourist Info office, but some are fairly-well hidden, so you have to track them down. Each is accompanied by a small plaque, written by some slightly-stuffy archeologist 20 years ago, explaining what they have translated of the writing on the stone, and what they know of its history.
I don't remember any exact text, but it went a bit like this:
"Stone of inferior workmanship, carved by Torbjorn in XXX to commemorate the building of a new bridge over the River Tun."
"Excellent example of twined knotwork or vines by Olaf Rolfsdottir."
"Crude piece without writing; attributed to Torbjorn."
"Beautiful interwoven dragon motif, carved by Hjarlmar Rockbiter on the tenth anniversary of his father's death, in his memory."
"The inscription reads: 'To honor his ancestors, Knut Erikkson had this stone carved by the hand of the Great Torbjorn' - poor spelling and bad penmanship."
 |
| A decorated "blank" (no writing) by the Great Torbjorn. |
It was never explicitly mentioned in the signs, and yet slowly a picture started to form; every single time he was mentioned, Torbjorn the runecarver copped some fairly harsh criticism from our unknown archaeologist / art critic... and yet Torbjorn had clearly also carved about half of the stones in town.
At which point you may be thinking "Heh; that is mildly amusing." But Coz and I had been on the road for over a month; despite having a fantastic time, we may have been a bit frayed around the edges. Whatever the reason, this struck us as the most hilarious thing we'd ever seen in our lives. Pretty soon we were rushing to the next sign and expounding pretentious critiques of his obviously inferior skills. We're giving each other the Torbjorn used-runestone sales pitch:
"Oh yeah mate, I _could_ do you one of those twisty things like Olaf Dragoncarver, but it'd be 6 months, and it'd cost ya. Now this baby here, this I did last year for Dave the Smith over in Uppsala, to honor his wife's father. Only she ran off with a tinker and now he doesn't want it, does he? Never put the names on; never had a day in the sun in its life. Now for you mate, because I like you, I could do this baby signed and delivered by Tuesday for - I'm cutting me own throat here! - for a mere 20 gold Knuts. Do you a mostly *cough* matched set if you like; put one on either end of a bridge and no one will be able to tell them apart. I swear it to you by Odin's left testicle. Praise your ancestors coming
and going. Wattaya say? Only I'd move fast; had this guy up from Stockholm yesterday and he was
very interested in this piece..."
By this point we're weeping tears of laughter, and having to hold ourselves upright on ancient historical artifacts to keep from falling over. The few other tourists who made it out this far have brittle smiles and are backing away slowly, because we've obviously overdosed on history and cracked. Which only makes us laugh harder, because we're imagining them as customers stunned by the full kilo-candle glare of the commercial juggernaut that is the Steve Jobs of runestones; Bloodeagle-Me-Own-Chest Torbjorn.
So there you have it; hundreds of years of proud heritage and culture, reduced by a pair of giggling Aus-Sceppos to a bad Used Car Salesman joke. I think we escaped confinement for our own safety only because the town policemen were superstitious, and didn't want to touch crazy people. If you mention vikings or runes and we lose it a bit, just smile and back away. And for goodness sake don't let us sell you any runestones...
Hold my beer, because I am going to overthink the Everloving Crap out of this.
Arguments both for and against DST always sound to me a bit like what they’re _trying_ to say is this:
There’s this minor inconvenience (DST | minimal useful daylight) that only affects maybe 10% of people, so why should the other 90% of us have to crawl over broken salted glass to appease these petty tyrants!
What they actually sound like to me:
There is a minor inconvenience A that affects everyone, but only 10% of people care.
There is a minor inconvenience B that affects everyone, but only 10% of people care.
The solution to A is the cause of B, and vice-versa. So 10% of people are going to be irritated either way. I don’t want it to be my 10%.
And then a small vocal percentage of People Irritated By A will argue loudly with a small vocal percentage of People Irritated by B, and meanwhile a few people are nodding both directions and 81% of us sitting on the sidelines are not sufficiently irritated by either to understand why it’s worth making a fuss over. And the core misunderstanding actually seems to stem from human empathy, of all things. It is natural for people to assume that others will feel the same way they do, so both sides envisage 90% of people suffering and 10% benefiting, and therefore it’s clearly an untenable argument and anyone can see that the other guy is just being selfish.
Wait for it; I’m just getting started.
Because I just did the same thing, when I had the above thought this morning, and realizing that is what actually kicked me out of bed to write this down. I naturally assumed that most other people felt the way I feel, and therefore when spitballing made-up percentages I chose 10% of people to be irritated enough to care, making 81% of people agree with me that it’s just not that big a deal either way. But it could just as easily be 90% of people who care passionately about either issue (making 81% irritated by both but presumably paralyzed by indecision, 9% still pushing one way or the other, and a mere 1% actually agreeing with me.) Its hard to find real opinion numbers – a recent US poll had “43% want to stay on standard time year-round, while 32% prefer to see the clocks remain on daylight saving time. Only 25% percent like the existing state of affairs.” But that’s seeking people out to ask for a preference, and “don’t care” wasn’t an option. The “final stage completion rate” of that poll was 17.4% – so that’s how many people cared about the issue enough to finish responding to a poll – but that could be high or low for a lot of reasons. Checking a handful of online petitions finds most struggle to get more than a few thousand people to even go to the effort of signing an online petition. But _that_ could just reflect the general opinion that online petitions are useless…
Anyways, I was interested in the realization that it is a form of empathy that causes each side of the argument to sound unreasonable to the other, and likewise a sort of empathy that makes people like me feel that both sides are being a bit hysterical. And that both sorts of empathy are very possibly misplaced, depending on the actual opinions of people, which I at least don’t know and couldn’t find much decent data on in a cursory google. Thought it was an interesting enough idea to share; do with it what you will.