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[quomododragon]

why the fuck does english have a word for

but not for “the day after tomorrow”

???

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Roman emperor in a lower temperature

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My therapist, who is probably in her late 40′s, told me she never pursued more artistic opportunities in her younger years because one teacher told her she wasn’t a “good artist”. Now after taking art lessons the past few years she is pursuing an art therapy license.

I sit here and sing along to my iTunes remembering how I was punished as a child in elementary choir class which made me avoid choir like the plague as I grew older. I took band classes instead, which I stunk at, making me feel like I would always be a failure musically. Today, I can for the most part carry a tune and even harmonize, and can make up songs pretty quickly.

We need to remember that the arts are meant to be FUN, subjective, and a form of self expression instead of telling kids they are “good” or “bad”, “talented” and “not talented”. The arts are not meant to be graded.

[quomododragon]

THIS. EXACTLY THIS.

I tell this to my students every time I teach Norse Mythology. You have to pay attention to the sources.

Like the thing about Loki in Norse mythology is there’s like 8000 myths about Loki just being chaotically mischievous and the other gods are like lol oh that scamp, no matter how disastrous his schemes are, their reaction is still pretty much always ‘haha oh that’s just Loki.’

EXCEPT for basically….one myth. Where Loki’s instrumental in the death of Baldur and the gods are all WHOA TOO FUCKING FAR DUDE and send him to Hel to be tormented for all eternity, leading to his ultimate escape/release in Ragnarok to end all things and lead the army of the damned and his monstrous children to pretty much…eat all the gods, destroy Asgard, and burn the World Tree all to the ground so it can all start over.

Here’s the thing though. Norse mythology spanned centuries. The tales of Loki as the mischievous trickster god were told for centuries.

However, for most of that time, the myths were told as part of oral traditions passed down generation to generation, until they were finally compiled in manuscript form in the 13th century, roughly. This is when pretty much all the sagas, as Norse myth compilations were called, are considered to have been written down for the first time, and so they included thousands of stories that had been told over hundreds of years.

They were also regional, though there was a lot of overlap, given that the Vikings traveled widely and regularly across the various parts of Scandinavia. Still, different parts of Scandinavia had their own sagas. Norway had different sagas than Denmark who had different sagas than Iceland, etc. Even though all of them featured primarily the same figures, they each had their own unique stories featuring the gods. However, very rarely did they have radically different takes on those gods.

Now what’s significant about the fact that pretty much every saga we have, where these myths were all finally written down and preserved, is from the 13th century….

Is that pretty much all of Scandinavia had converted to Christianity by the early 12th century, with active worship of the Norse gods being scattered and mostly underground from that point on.

Why is this significant?

Because it means every Norse myth we have a written recording of was not written by people who still actively worshiped those gods. Nor were they intended to be read as such at the time. 

They were written down by Christian scholars who wrote them AS stories. They were intended as collections of their regions’ cultural histories, but not by or for people who still actively believed in these stories or the figures they featured. They weren’t like….TRYING to be super accurate, is the thing. The scholars who wrote these sagas were writing down the stories that had been passed down for generations, but through the lens of people who saw them as stories their ancestors once believed, not ones that pertained to their own current worldview.

And they were writing these sagas for an audience of people who similarly believed as they believed.

Which means that inevitably, some things got ‘adjusted’ to fit the current world view, the zeitgeist of the scholars writing down the stories and that of the people who would read or have the stories read to them from thereon. Because again, they weren’t aiming for being 100% faithful to the tales as they’d been told to them. They were just treating them as stories. And what do you do when the story you’re writing down has elements that don’t make that much sense to you because they were born of and aimed a worldview that doesn’t match yours?

Well, if you’re the Christian scholars writing the Norse sagas, you ‘tweak’ those elements until they make a story that fits your worldview.

So remember how I said the various sagas were regional and had a lot of overlap but some stories were distinct to some regions and didn’t show up elsewhere?

Yeah, Ragnarok is one of those.

Thousands of sagas encompassing centuries of Norse mythology and oral traditions were written down all over the various regions of Scandinavia in the 13th century.

Ragnarok only showed up in one.

The most famous, granted, but still. Everything we’re told in Norse myths about the death of Baldur and Loki’s role in it, leading to his punishment and torment in Hel and his ultimate release and bringing forth the armies of Hel to slay the gods and end the world?

Comes from the Prose Edda and the later Poetic Edda, from Iceland.

Which had primarily converted to Christianity as far back as 1000.

Now, the Vikings? Were actually surprisingly not a big doom and gloom people. Pretty much every assumption of them as such comes from how synonymous we regard Ragnarok with their culture.

It is after all, the ultimate Judgment Day myth, isn’t it? Right up there with Christianity’s Book of Revelations. An apocalyptic end of the world scenario, a war between heaven and hell, where everything is destroyed so that the world can basically start fresh with a clean slate. Nothing old ‘deserves’ to survive, pretty much the only way for a world free of sin and evil to arise is from the ashes of the old, after everything has been cleansed with fire.

Now contrast this ‘myth’ with pretty much every other Norse myth that’s survived. Larger than life tales of grand adventures, noble quests, gods walking among mortals in disguise and heroes fighting giants and stealing from dragons.

Where the closest thing the Norse pantheon has to a devil figure is Loki, the god of mischief….not even evil, but MISCHIEF, because a far more accurate representation of the Vikings’ world view is that sometimes shit happens, because Loki the god of chaos likes to make a mess of things. And what do you do when that happens? If you’re the Vikings, you basically just shrug, go “well, that’s Loki” for you, and drink some more mead.

Loki isn’t vilified in a single myth until Ragnarok, because the Vikings didn’t hate him. And they certainly didn’t fear him. They LAUGHED at him. In nine out of ten myths, Loki ends up the subject of ridicule himself, as he has the tables turned on him or outsmarts himself

Until Ragnarok.

Which, granted, could very well be another Norse myth that was passed down generation to generation in Iceland, land of frequent volcanic eruptions and likely inspiration for Musplheim, the land of the fire giants.

BUT. Which could equally likely, and far more plausibly given the overall context of Norse mythology, simply be a story the scholar who wrote the Prose Edda made up to ‘finish off’ his saga of the world according to the Vikings, from beginning to end.

An ending his Christian audience of the times would understand and identify with a lot better than they would understand the concept of a devil-figure that existed to be LAUGHED at, to show how little the Vikings feared some mythical figure with the power to lie and deceive them….the complete opposite of the way Christians feared Satan.

Basically put….Ragnarok, for all that we think of it as the ultimate Norse myth….DOES NOT MAKE SENSE in the context of almost EVERY single other Norse myth AND in the context of how Norse society viewed the world and their place in it, or their gods and their relationship with them.

Same with Loki’s depiction in Ragnarok.

What both Ragnarok and Loki’s role in Ragnarok DO make sense in the context of, however, is in a bastardization of Christianity’s own doomsday tales of a Judgment Day, stylized to fit the trappings of Norse mythology and feature their gods instead of Christian figures.

With Loki recast in the role of the Devil, as he was the closest fit they could find to that.

And with Baldur, god of light (a Norse god who is at best a footnote in Norse myths other than Ragnarok, and certainly was never the major pantheon figure he’s assumed to be), recast in the role of the Christ figure. Whose death starts the ball rolling for Judgment Day and who is destined to return for it, to triumph over Loki/Satan and preside over the new, purified world once it’s reborn from the ashes of the old one.

Anyway, tl;dr, don’t believe the hype, Ragnarok’s probably not even an actual Norse myth but the invention of Christian writers who were like lol this would make for a great Book of Revelations fanfic AU, and Loki was almost certainly never regarded by actual Vikings as some evil, malicious world-destroyer who would lead armies of the dead at Armageddon whoops I mean Ragnarok.

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Last class was Monday, and I STILL hadn’t gotten a grade for this, so I finally cracked and asked the professor how it was. He still didn’t give me a letter grade, but he burst out laughing and said it was “amazing”, so I think that’s an A?

So for grad school on Monday, I have to teach four Latin words to the rest of the class (all language teachers, none of whom know Latin, all of whom know my antics) without explaining what they mean in English.

I’m thinking of coming in in full Athena/Minerva costume, labeling my spear, shield, helmet, and aegis, and just yelling at them in Latin like I am a vengeful goddess carrying their doom at the end of my craft foam spear.

Thoughts?

[quomododragon]

I have never heard about the toilet demons! Please indulge us

Ahhhhahah WELL. You can read an article about it here (http://discovermagazine.com/2014/julyaug/4-archeological-crap-shoot), but tl;dr the Romans believed there were demons in their public toilets because flames would shoot out of them. 

It’s my absolute favorite thing about Ancient Rome.

[quomododragon]

Hannibal Barca had a brother named Mago. There is a city on a Spanish island named after him called Mahon. And that is the city where mayonnaise was invented. tl;dr: mayo is named after Hannibal's brother.

I... I don’t know what to do with this information, but that is amazing. 

[quomododragon]

I'm a student at a school where everyone either has to take Latin or Greek (Greek is for pussies only 1/5 takes it), and there not really popular with the students. Do you have to actively make sure the kids pay attention, or is it one of those courses where most are interested in the material?

As someone who has studied both Latin and Greek, I sure as hell would not call someone taking on Greek a pussy, hahaha. As for my students, it varies. The best classes are the ones where the students are genuinely interested in learning Latin, but much of the time, I also get the students who are just trying to avoid Spanish and French and find Mandarin too difficult. I’ve been dealing with some bad health issues, so I haven’t been doing as good a job at keeping their interest this year as I have in the past, which unfortunately affects the classroom environment.

[quomododragon]

Hi I’m working on graduating college to become a history teacher! Do you have any advice on the first year teaching or making it through college? I love your blog :)

The first year is the toughest. It’s when you’re breaking in a curriculum, writing up lesson plans, and still trying to figure out what in the hell you’re doing, so if you feel overwhelmed at the beginning, just breathe and remember that it gets much, much easier. And don’t be afraid to ask other teachers for advice.

If you get a good group of kids, and you love talking about your subject, it’s a lot of fun! Best of luck, and keep me posted!!

[quomododragon]

Hi I just found your blog, I’m going to do classical civilisation at uni next year and I’m planning on being a latin teacher after that but I’m not really sure about it. Any tips for an aspiring but anxious latin teacher?

Students appreciate teachers who are enthusiastic, consistent/fair, and who treat their students with respect. If you love Latin, you’re already halfway there. Also remember that being the teacher doesn’t mean you know everything. The best teachers, I’ve found, are the ones who can adapt and grow and who listen to their students.

Best of luck!! Keep me posted on how you’re doing.

[quomododragon]

Honestly, latin classes got my through highschool, they were the only classes i didnt find totally boring and now im at uni studying classics and i love ancient greek! cant believe this all happened cause my mom signed me up for latin class in 7th grade lol

That’s wonderful!! For me, it happened because all the Italian 101 classes were full, and I needed another class. Funny how life puts you where you need to be.

[quomododragon]

listen if somebody doesnt know about ancient roman penis charms then im sorry but i dont have the self-control not to share

[quomododragon]

If your child’s grades are dropping

DO NOT:

Yell at them for three hours

Take away their devices and look through them

Make them sit in their rooms in silent and do their homework alone

Side with the teacher and not get your child’s side of the story

Tell them that their grades are the most important thing they should worry about

INSTEAD:

Ask if they’re having trouble with other students or teachers

Sit down with them and help them with what they don’t understand

Speak calmly instead of yelling

Don’t invade their privacy by looking through their devices

Don’t take away their hobbies as punishment

Never make them feel unsafe or unable to trust you

This has been a message from a struggling high school junior that wishes their own parents actually did this stuff.