A word or two about the Vikings--Tricia McGill

My BWL books on Smashwords

As you can probably guess I have a fascination for the Vikings. There have been many tales told of them and their exploits, their travels, and above all about their raiding, looting, ravishing, and brutality. Most of what we have learned of their exploits comes from findings in graves and digs in places around the world that they inhabited. My main fascination with them is because of their great seamanship and their wonderful skills at building the ships that allowed them to sail to far off places. Their navigational skills set them apart.

The Vikings came from all over the region known as Scandinavia. They didn’t get along with each other and fought with their countrymen as fiercely as they fought with their enemies. The word Viking comes from “vikingr” which means pirate, or “Viken” the area around the Oslo fjord in Norway. They were also called Norsemen (men from the north)

The deck of a longship

Vikings were skilled in metal work and this helped their society to create the sharp axes they used to cut down the wood needed for building their famous ships and houses. After the trees were cut down the land that was left was perfect for the farmers to grow their crops. The Vikings prized their swords and it was said they even gave them names.

Warriors would often be buried with their weapons so they could use them in the afterlife.

A Viking craftsman’s chest was discovered in Sweden in 1936 that contained amazing implements and tools that were used for metal working and carpentry. Is it any wonder their longships were a masterful work.

The Vikings did not invent the runes but adapted a script in use at that time in parts of central Europe. The Vikings had a 24 letter alphabet that was reduced to 16 letters by AD800. Runes were replaced by the Latin alphabet as the Vikings were converted to Christianity.

Viking 16 rune alphabet

Vikings were masters of their environment and because of this their culture flourished. So, coastal settlements obviously became over-crowded. Thus the first adventurers set of in their wonderful ships to find new lands. Early Viking raiders were known to arrive at a new land in the spring, spend the summer there looting, then sail home for the winter.

A Viking jeweler's tools

 

Domestic Viking objects found at Coppergate, York UK

Vikings despised weakness. Even their poor babies who were sickly were often thrown into the sea at birth or left outside to perish so they would not be a burden to the family.

If you watched the series on TV last year “Vikings”, which I would not have missed for the world, it had Ragnar’s wife in a quandary as by rights she should have had one of their babies killed when it was born with a slight deformity, but she refused and clung to the child, which caused all sorts of problems between them. This series was not for the faint-hearted as it contained brutality of the worst kind.

The Vikings loved their rituals. Some were horrific by our standards. They made sacrifices to their gods—of animals and people. Every nine years they held a ceremony in Sweden (according to a writer named Adam of Bremen) where animals and humans were sacrificed and their blood was offered to the gods and their bodies were then hung from trees.

I  could go on for pages about the Norsemen, but guess this is where I should end. 

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Who Are The Heroes?

On August 15th, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, and World War II was officially over. That day has always meant something to me: my father fought in this war, my older brother died in this war, my ex-husband fought in this war, and my husband of 36 years fought in the Korean War. To me, these four men are heroes, as are all the men and women who have fought, died, or returned home from the many wars we have been involved in.

But who are the heroes of today? Sports stars from football, baseball, basketball, and the like are touted by the media as being "heroes." Really? What makes a football star a hero? I guess it depends upon your own personal definition of who or what makes a hero.

This is mine: A hero is a person who willingly, and without a thought of himself/herself, makes a personal sacrifice for the sake of someone else, known or unknown.

This is why every member of the US Armed Services is a hero to me. Each of these men and women have volunteered to sacrifice their own life, if necessary, in order to create safety for those of us left on the shores of the United States. This is why each and every one of the First Responders on September 11, 2001, is a hero to me. They willingly and courageously risked their own lives, and many lost them, to save the lives of hundreds of people they didn't know.

Who are the unsung heroes in our midst? How about the four teachers, school psychologist, and the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary school, who all died defending their students? How about six year old Jesse Lewis, who yelled "Run!" to the first graders in his class when the gunman rushed in, but had to stop to reload his weapon before he could begin killing again? His first shot went into the head of Jesse Lewis, who had waited until all his classmates were out the door before he turned to run. Too late.

What about all the grandparents today who are raising their grandchildren because their own kids have left the life of responsibility to drown themselves in drugs, or alcohol, or who go to jail because of having committed a crime? These Senior Citizens have made personal sacrifices, some have even had to return to some form of work to make ends meet, now that they have children in the home again. Their dreams of an easy and peaceful retirement have come to a sudden halt, as they now have to begin raising kids all over again. As a grandmother, I could not do this, so to me, those who do are heroes.

Where are the values of today's society, when we read and hear over TV all the time about the praises heaped upon the sports stars, celebrities, and other people of note, all of whom are referred to as "heroes?" What exactly have they done to be considered "heroes?" As a society, have we fallen so low that a hero is nothing more than someone who has 715 homeruns, or is a celebrity having children without marriage, and who is often leading an immature and sometimes drug-filled life, but who is still held up by the media as a "star?" These are the people our children are supposed to emulate, to be impressed by, and to grow up to be "just like?" Not in my book.

Who are your heroes?

Mikki Sadil
http:// mikki-wordpainter.BlogSpot.com
The Freedom Thief
Cheers, Chocolate, and Other Disasters
Lily Leticia Langford and the Book of Practical Magic
Night Cries: Beneath the Possum Belly, book one

Eighteenth Century Welfare-Parish Relief, by Diane Scott Lewis

In my continued research into history, to add to my 18th century novels, I came across interesting details about the English version of Welfare, Parish Relief. Charity in this era was limited. The very poor had to rely on parish relief to survive. But first they had to prove they had a legal link, such as birth, a residence or employment, in the parish—the territorial area under the clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest—where they sought funds. People who were denied parish relief were sometimes found starved to death.

Some parishes were so small they tried to shuffle their poor into the larger neighboring parishes. The elderly and sick were turned away. A few parishes paid indigent bachelors in other settlements 40 shillings to marry their poor women to take them off the books. Overseers of the poor might interfere in a marriage between two paupers, fearing it would result in burdensome children.
To make matters worse, parish authorities were often corrupt and stingy. They’d spend the Poor Rate (the tax on prosperous citizens for the care of the poor) on themselves instead of their deserving claimants.

The poor rates were a source of constant irritation to those who had to pay them. As the population and rates rose, the richer citizens were desperate to find others to pay for their poor. Men who deserted their wives or bastard children were pursued for support. One prominent merchant was discovered to have let his mother wilt away in a workhouse—he was forced to pay for her maintenance.

For deserted children, or foundlings, wherever they were found was their settlement/parish. Self-sacrificing women often traveled to the richer parishes at the onset of labor, hoping to birth their babies in more solvent settlements. But the parish authorities were aware of this and would force these women back over the boundaries. The Parish Act of 1772 came to the aid of these women by stating: “mothers who are suddenly taken in labour will no longer be subject to be removed...” Of course, enforcing this act was another matter.

Children born in wedlock were part of their father’s settlement. If the fathers died, after the age of seven, the children became part of their mother’s parish.

Reformer Jonas Hanway—a merchant who had traveled widely (and the first Londoner to carry an umbrella)—devoted himself to philanthropy. His efforts resulted in a Parliamentary act in 1767 to set aside funds to send urban orphans to country wet-nurses, and provided incentives for the children’s survival.

Though commissioned in the late seventeenth century, the classic eighteenth century’s solution to ending poverty and idleness was the workhouse. By the 1720’s parishes could commit any pauper who sought relief to the workhouse. Ideally a shelter, these places could never make a profit since many people were indigent because there wasn’t enough work available. Workhouses became the repository of the sick, elderly and mentally retarded. Infants consigned to workhouses before Hanway’s intervention were virtually sentenced to death. Hanway called one London workhouse “the greatest stink of mortality in these kingdoms, if not on the face of the whole earth.”

Three substantial private charities would be formed to take the burden from the parishes. The Foundling Hospital for abandoned children, Magdalen House to reform prostitutes, and Hanway’s Marine Society to clothe and prepare pauper boys for the navy.

Parish relief was resented, underfunded, unorganized and corrupt. Along with these issues and the misunderstanding of poverty’s causes, attempts to help the poor, or at least make them less visible, were doomed to fail.

Enjoy my recent release which takes place in 1781 Truro, England: The Apothecary’s Widow.

Click HERE to purchase

Diane Scott Lewis writes historical fiction with romantic elements.
http://www.dianescottlewis.org

Sources:
Daily Life in 18th Century England, by Kirstin Olsen, 1999
Dr. Johnson’s London, by Liza Picard, 2000