#Even Ulving

[random-brushstrokes]

Even Ulving (Norwegian, 1863–1952) - Coastal Landscape in the midnight sun

[chiropteracupola]

Spring's a girl from the streets at night...

[foxstens]

on the last boss currently available in ender magnolia

[ghost-bison]

i became curious and searched up how the name "dalek" came to be:

at first, i thought it must have something to do with the norwegian word "dårlig", which means "bad", because of the doctor's reaction in 2x13 "doomsday" when rose said they were in bad wolf bay ("dårlig ulv stranden" if i'm not mistaken): he thought she'd said "dalek". but if you look up the pronunciation, it sounds more like /dɔːleh/ (approximate english phonetic transcription) than how she said it, /dɑːlɪg/ so i thought, even though the mix-up between "dårlig" and "dalek" was done on purpose and the definition, "bad", would be pretty damn on-the-nose, it's not it. so i did some more research.

apparently, it was terry nation (the guy who invented the daleks and davros in, i guess, 1962) who came up with it. according to him, the name simply "rolled off his typewriter", so it wasn't supposed to mean anything. but like me, he got curious and found out that the word "dalek" is serbo-croatian for "far, distant".

this really pleased me for two separate reasons: first, and this is the most obvious interpretation, the daleks are aliens from a distant world, far from earth. but i mean, to daleks or chelonians or raxacoricofallapatorians or any other alien species, the same can be said for earthlings: we are far, distant from them, and any and all species are far and distant from us.

but! if you think of the other meaning behind "distant", not geographically speaking but culturally/morally speaking, that's when things get interesting: the reason the daleks are the main foe in doctor who is that they are detached, so different from any and every other enemy the doctor and unit and torchwood and the shadow proclamation and such have ever had to fight. they keep surviving and coming back because they are so distant, so alien (in the "bizarre" sense of the word) to all other species.

if you take, for example, us humans, the doctor loves our species because of our capacity for love, forgiveness, change, compassion. you see it in the people he picks: rose, martha, then donna, etc. they represent everything he loves in a human being. everything he needs, everything he misses since his own species, which used to be capable of those feelings too, has gone.

he doesn't pick soldiers and has an aversion toward them, because as much as he pretends to hate it when his companions "wander off", he keeps choosing people whom he knows will wander off, people who will question his orders, people whom he doesn't have to feel or be superior to. whereas soldiers, they are conditioned not to question, and to follow instructions, to do as they are told.

in 1x06 "dalek", when nine realizes that the dalek's gun isn't working, he says "if you can't kill, then what are you good for, dalek? what's the point of you?". then, the dalek tells the doctor, "i am a soldier, i was bred to receive orders".

soldiers, whatever species they are, are too much like daleks: they wouldn't question him. that's why, when he realized he was the last of his species, the dalek turned to the doctor, his greatest enemy ("then what should i do?"), and then rose ("order me to die"), for orders. that's why twelve refused to keep journey blue as his traveling companion in 8x02 "into the dalek": people who don't question orders are dangerous to his lifestyle.

he needs people who go against what he says. not only that, but the doctor is, himself, a soldier of sorts, and sometimes he needs the right orders (1x06 "dalek": "what the hell are you changing into, doctor?" -rose ; "the runaway bride": "doctor, you can stop now"/"sometimes i think you need someone to stop you" -donna ; 4x02 "the fires of pompeii": "not the whole town, just save someone" -donna). else caecilius' family would have died in pompeii. else the doctor would use guns, he would die, he would try to break fixed points in time, he would lose himself.

in that sense, the daleks are as far from the doctor and his children of time as can be. i wrote about it somewhere in a one-shot someday: "the daleks weren’t robots, per se, but they kind of were, for someone like the doctor, or the humans, who both felt everything so deeply when all those monsters knew was hatred".

the daleks are to the doctor what dependence and servitude are to freedom, and in that sense, they are distant.

[artistsfuneral]

I'm always a sucker for Witcher fics where someone comes to the keep really young (maybe Eskel?) and they don't speak the common language at ALL and it's even more terrifying and confusing what's happening to them. Cue lots of friendships and learning how to find their place!

ohohohohohohoho yesssss ❤✨ also isn't it canon that Eskel came from "mountain people"? It would make sense that toddler Eskel only speaks Norwegian Northern (also I started learning norwegian for no reason whatsover, so I am going to use my 100 words)

deaged!Eskel, shy toddlers, softe Geralt and awkward Lambert

It was common knowledge that most of the collected artefacts in the dungeons of Kear Morhen were cursed in one way or another. So it wasn't all that surprising, when one of them started to omniously glow once Lambert got too close to it by accident. It also wasn't very surprising that the youngest wolf was quickly shoved away by Eskel, kind, protective Eskel, who promptly ended up at the center of the curse's magic.

The tiny toddler that appeared where the full grown witcher once stood, was unexpected though. Lambert had been prepared to fight a monster, but his drawn sword prooved to be rather counterproductive when it was noticed by big brown baby eyes that immediately turned teary at the sight of danger. The loud crying that followed strangled Lambert's heart painfully.

"Oh, no, no, no! Please don't cry, I don't know what to do, when you cry!" Panicking, Lambert did the only thing that came to his mind and he reached out to pick the tiny toddler up. The witcher looked helplessly around the room, as if any of the artefacts could provide him with the secret knowledge of childcare. Eskel didn't stop crying.

"Uh- Let's get you to Geralt, okay? You like Geralt right? You're best buds, he will know what to do."

Alarmed by the sounds of a crying child, Geralt was already halfway down the keep, when Lambert reached him. The - currnetly not - youngest wolf hastened his steps and practically shoved tiny Eskel into Geralt's arms. "Lambert, what on earth?" Adjusting his hold instinctively, Geralt started to rock the toddler in his arms, one hand gently petting the mop of unruly brown hair. "Uh- that's Eskel," Lambert managed to blurt out.

"Eskel?"

"He got cursed. Down in the dungeon. I didn't know what to do, not sure he recognized me." Geralt hummed. "If it truly is Eskel, then we might have a small problem."

"What, why?" Lambert's eyes darted down from Geralt's to look a the small figure sniffling in the witcher's arms. "He's was born up north," Geralt explained slowly, "didn't speak a word of common when he first got here. It took him years to learn." Lambert's mouth went dry.

What Geralt didn't seem to know was that Lambert could in fact speak most northern dialects. But what on earth could he possibly say to a tiny child he already managed to bring to tears seconds after meeting him? He took a shaking breath, "Går det bra med deg?"

Eskel's reaction was immediate. His little head snapped up from where he had been hiding it under Geralt's chin and he stared at Lambert with wide eyes. "Hva?"

"Går det bra?" Lambert repeated, trying his best to ignore Geralt's confused stare. Between snotty sniffles a small voice that sounded nothing like the Eskel they knew, the child answered. "Ja, bra."

Lambert let out a sigh of relief. "He says he's alright, probably just got scared." Geralt's shoulders relaxed visibly. "Didn't know you speak northern."

"Wasn't exactly needed until now."

"Can you ask him, if he knows who we are? Does he recognize us at all?"

Lambert blinked at the other wolf. Angry, at himself, for not thinking about asking such an important question. He focused his gaze back at Eskel. "Vet du hvem jeg er?" A wide, toothy grin spread across Eskel's little face. His chubby little finger pointed straight at Lambert and he exclaimed proudly, "Ulv! Rød ulv!" The action was quickly followed by a similarly enthusiastic pointing, this time at Geralt, "Hvit Ulven!"

Lambert chuckled. "I think he'll be alright."

[simena]

Even Ulving (detail)

[revacholianpizzaagenda]

A rebuttal of the theoretical entroponetics diagram

This one here:

PJÕL references in the last paragraph but kind of vague

As far as I'm concerned, the argument is threefold: the diagram's title positions itself in-universe theorizing. Which it almost is! It's very very close to Gary's (even though in his case it's textually not entroponetic). And it's a fun in-universe position to explore, imho. The subjectivity of people who want to believe this of the pale is interesting to me.

Secondly, check the following page on the author's website: it's his own magic system based on the same exact idea, inspired by the Mistborn novels. It seems to me like he envisioned the Elysium version of his concept (a fun practice), and agnostically framed it as a hypothesis in-universe.

Here it is!

But, thirdly... it massively shifts the themes, so no, as an actual legit thing... no thank you for me. The phasmid says something that I believe to be irreconcilable with this theory: the pale came with mankind. Not with special people. We're talking about the human condition, not about special people. It just doesn't track! Not thematically, not in practice.

The things that are shown to arrest or even recede the pale's advancement are not a lack of innovation. Ignus Nilsen himself didn't nail a godly Rhetoric check from hell for people to think that the pale wouldn't advance if we just ignored the future. Conversely, the characters who are shown effectively drawing knowledge from the pale on-page are NOT shown to increase its advancement (on the contrary: Ulv's practice temporarily halts it!). That one character who does in fact cause the spread of the pale certainly doesn't do it by bringing about innovations, DOES HE.

[yekokataa]

Pale lore in Sacred and Terrible Air

I pulled together some of my favorite descriptions of the Pale from Kurvitz's novel. All excerpts are from the excellent fan translation by Group Ibex, which I think really nailed the style of the game in these quotes.

Warning: Full of SPOILERS and extremely LONG!

The Pale, up close:

The main characters take a road trip to the Lemminkäise zone of entroponetic catastrophe in Katla. They hire a racecar driver and drive to the very edge of the disaster zone, where matter is actively dissolving into the Pale.

The border point disappeared behind them, along with the invisible boundary of winter’s orbit, beyond which is eternal winter. The asphalt also disappeared over time; they encountered rural families on sleds along snowy gravel roads. It is their great privilege to have seen the pale with their own eyes, where it has towered behind the silo since childhood. 

Kenni sees the black mass of the forest slowly drifting into the sky. The earth crunches and cracks as the spruce trees tear themselves out of it, roots and all. The wood screams, and the frozen earth too, like they’re in a dentist’s chair. A cloud of limestone gravel flies into the air, and far above in the dark, the first trees are subsumed in the pale. 

Tereesz, Khan, and the mad Suruese driver look outside, their heads tilted back, as the pale approaches from behind the house. Inside, the bass drum thumps robustly, and outside, behind the silhouette of the building, the dark mass of the forest rolls up into the sky across the entire visible horizon. The pale rises vertically from the spruce forests like a wave, from the mountain ranges above the expanse of the world. Its horror moves slowly, humming over the world, but the world is made of matter, and matter is evergreen, ancient; it sustains itself with surprising dignity even at the moment of disappearance.

The pale can lift up entire houses! Holy shit! Our boys make a narrow escape from the edge of the encroaching pale as a house is torn away from its foundation.

In the yard, where the wheels of the motor carriage have drawn a loop in the snow, Inayat Khan looks up at a farm building that hovers above him like a ghost. Electrical wire entrails hang out of the rotating object, black against the expanse of the starry sky. It drifts on into the pale with a self-evident calm. Up above, a trail of its furniture and crumbling foundation remains. In the yard in front of him, Khan watches how a startled Tereesz and Kenni follow the object’s path, their heads tilting back until they hit the wooden fence behind them.  In a strange, panic-free concern, they all look in the direction of Ulv’s crumbling house. It seems as if every little crack comes from its limestone foundation. Soon it will rise up. But nothing happens. The pale freezes in place far away, behind the house; the creaking of the forest stops, and the music in the house also stops. Somewhere in the perceptible distance, on the edge of the frozen pale above, the farmhouse falls apart and disappears.  […] The engine revs up and the carriage’s wheels spin in the snow. The mass of the pale can no longer support its phantom weight. It breaks down. The vast clearings crumple under it in an instant, exploding with powder snow; a collapse like a shock wave whirls over the world. Spruce trees bow under the blow, and the pale blasts open the windows of the old decaying manor house. It arches around the edges of the house, as if hesitating for a moment, and then explodes together, encompassing it. The pale grabs the manor in its lap, and somewhere inside, in a room with a low ceiling, the young man puts on his headphones. He reads the sweeping pale like a magnetic reader reads a Stereo 8 tape. […] The pale blows across the fields, on both sides of the village road. Its avalanche crashes onto the gravel; the rumbling wall approaches, glowing crimson from the motor carriage’s tail lights. 

Travel through the Pale:

Floating magnet trains seem common, and they even go through the Pale. There's a brief mention that Tereesz once spent a week on a magnet train and was then told he wasn't allowed to travel for a year afterwards due to the dangers of pale exposure.

Outside on the platform, giant buffers are being pulled off the train. The umbilical cord is cut and thus, freed from the connecting bridges, the entire weight of the train with its five-fold carriage slats sinks onto the magnets. They howl at full power below the train cars. And then the flight begins.  The magnetic support splits the North Sea under it in two. It’s quiet inside, the generators humming as the train whizzes by fifty metres above the water. The three of them stand together, laughing. Tereesz extinguishes his smoke in a bronze ashtray, and they turn their back on the observation windows. Ahead, the pale awaits, and past it begins a big world. […] Through the windows, all that’s left of the city behind them is the light pollution, a golden glow in the distant darkness of the snowstorm. 

This floating train station has an illustration Rostov by the way.

For a historical travel example: the famous disappearance of the airship Harnankur. This airship was referenced in the game in the form of the 50-real vodka in the special edition commemorative bottle! Rostov's illustration from the novel is here, showing a model of the ship in Khan's basement.

One hundred and fifty years ago, on another isola—the Graad isola—it snows in the city of Mirova. It’s a midwinter evening, but thousands of people have gathered in the harbour. The quay bustles with them. In the background lies imperial Graad—church steeples and chimneys. The crowd is waving, bidding farewell to the airship rising into the sky. A swan made of wood and nickel rises into the blizzard, and the passengers of the world’s first interisolary flight wave to the crowd from its balcony baskets: well-dressed boujee people, with a never-before-seen adventure ahead of them. It’s the pale—terrifying, but at the same time such an upbeat and unforgettable experience. Modern technology, in the form of a luxuriously upholstered airship, now makes such an experience possible for an ordinary, if perhaps slightly better off, citizen. And on the other side of the pale—oh mystical pale!—the land of Katla awaits, with its royal capital of Vaasa.  […] Two days later, the interisolary flight enters the pale, and then, barely six hours later, a deviation occurs in the airship’s course. “Harnankur” has gone missing with fifteen hundred passengers on board. The flight is believed to have drifted into an uncharted entroponetic mass, the pale superdeep. 

Sound

The pale makes a hissing sound. Here Khan receives a phone call from one of the missing presumed dead girls, who may be a ghost or part of the pale, it's all left very ambiguous. It reminds me of the part in the game where you can call Slipstream SCA and hear a ghost trapped in the phone.

He picks up the receiver, and the hallway fills with the hiss of the pale. It grates in his ear.  “Hello?” asks Khan. But no one answers. “Hello, who is it? Please tell me who you are!” he repeats, more and more pleading each time. The hissing becomes louder and louder, until finally it deafens him, the pressure in his inner ear goes awry, and only that vibration from who-knows-where remains, its centre. The silence goes through his flesh and bones like waves. It’s cold. 

Later, we learn that the pale can actually come through the phone lines?? Creepy!

The speaker switches to a long-distance call; the pale seeps into the hall air from the fabric-covered ziggurat. The signal runs as an entroponetic sequence through the Great Unknown, from Katla to Graad. Relay stations clear the call from the noise of history along the way, but something always creeps into the wires—a ghost radio station. Its quiet voice in its unintelligible language reminds us what it’s here for. To end life. 

It's also similar to the sounds of the pale latitude compressor! During a long distance call through the pale, a voice is heard spelling things out using an “international alphabet” like the real-world NATO phonetic alphabet.

This is how matter degrades, drop by drop, like an analog rhythm running from red through the colourless world. The international alphabet is hidden in the low-frequency waves, “... Nadir-Ellips-Gamut-Azimuth...” and so on, to the border of the settlement. 

Culture, ideology

Zigi as a teen is a total edgelord when it comes to talking about the pale:

But above all, Zigi is still a nihilist. He reads dia-mat [dialectical materialism], says that animals are automatons, is a fan of behaviourism, and adores the pale and the nihilistic innocence of Mesque, Ambrosius Saint-Miro. […] The geography teacher sent him to the principal’s office, and Zigi stopped at the door, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling. “See you in the pale,” he said, and ran his index finger across his throat. Back when entroponetics was not discussed at school, many people gathered around Zigi during recess, and the corridor echoed with his half-truths: “The pale is made of the past,” he said. “All the lost things are jumbled up there, sad and abandoned. The pale is the world’s memory of the world. It accumulates matter and sweeps away everything in its path. This is what’s called entroponetic collapse.”  “But when will it happen, Zigi?" “Yes, Zigi, when?” “It will happen in your lifetime, little Olle. At least, I hope so. History swallows the present; the world of matter disappears, desaparecido... That’s why there’s no point in our generation going to school. There will be no future. When you grow up, don’t have children like your underdeveloped bourgeois parents did. You’ll get to see them die, and that’s it. Compared to the pale, there’s only a small amount of the world left! In the end, the isolas will sink, dozens and hundreds of square kilometres of land mass, can you even imagine? Like a ship keeling over into the pale. Fwooom...” Zigi makes a sinking ship gesture with his hands, the zippers of his leather jacket jingling; the children gasp. “Don’t worry, Olle, this will be the peak of humanity.” 

In the game, Zigi's brand of entroponetic nihilism gets two very brief (and kind of hidden) mentions, where it's named as entropolism. I've got those quotes saved in my post here.

Waves

The pale seems very wave-like in that scene where it lifts a house, and apparently it's also like a wave according to science:

“It’s an oceanographic myth. The Killer Wave.” Little Khan points in the direction of the body of water. The four of them watch from the safe warmth of a beach towel. Insects buzz in the dark, around the gas lanterns. “For a long time it was just that—a myth, a sailor’s tale. Arda even has a mythological name for it: ‘halderdingr’. But now they’re a scientifically documented phenomenon, they really exist, you understand? This explains the dozens, hundreds of missing ships. […] “And you know what’s the most fucked up thing about it?” Khan asks slyly. He wipes his diamaterialist glasses and then puts them back on. His almond eyes squint behind the magnifying lenses, filled to the brim with popular science mystique. “The same effect—don’t ask me how, I don’t know—but the same non-linear effect also explains the pale. They use it in entroponetics. This is how the pale behaves when it sweeps over the world.” 

Mold

I've heard that in Estonian the word used for Pale is Hall, meaning both frost and mold, like a pale gray film that covers the surface of things. As the Pale takes Vaasa, fruits begin to grow mold. Some people choose to stay rather than leave the disaster zone.

The panic has cooled. In the strange indifference of the evacuation, whole families stay behind in Vaasa. There they play board games, in their houses, in their spacious apartments. They love vitamin-rich food, and when the pale is only a few days away, it’s always signalled by the same beautiful event. Fruits go mouldy. It grows vigorously on them. Children listen to oranges crackling on the table. Spores sprout from the pulp, apples are hairy with it. If you try to touch them, they crack open. No one knows why it’s like that. But few can muster the energy to be afraid of that time, and that’s why I say it’s beautiful. 

And later, when Zigi is living in a forest that's been taken by the Pale, even the animals have been consumed by it although they're still alive:

And to the dark forest, to the museum of natural history, where mould grows on the horns of the males and puffs of steam no longer rise from the kids’ nostrils. They still breathe—not oxygen, but pure pale. 

Turning into a protein mass

The mother of the missing girls sits in her home, waiting for the pale to take her:

Ann-Margret Lund also sits there somewhere in her kitchen, in the middle of the pale; her rooms are quiet and clean. The former teacher wears a beige jacket and an above-the-knee skirt, and watches the moulding apricots. […] Like everyone else, she can’t do anything in this extended stay, where one’s sense of the present slowly drifts away. But whereas the others dissolve into their memories, she simply disappears. It’s as if her life had never happened. The past is not awaiting her return. She just wanders around the rooms, adjusts her grandmother’s lace doily and bedspreads, arranges the curtains on the rails. And thus, tastefully, she refuses to indulge in those ecstasies which visit the human spirit when the world is disintegrating. Nothing leaves her hands, and nothing returns.  When Katla finally sinks into the pale, Ann-Margret Lund turns, without the slightest pleasure, into a protein mass. 

Hanging out in the Pale with the ghost of Ignus Nielsen

Years later, as an adult, Zigi has become immune to the effects of the Pale, and even stays in the middle of it in a tent, hanging out with the cytoplasmic spirit of a dead communist.

Human speech sounds out of place in the silence of the pale. It echoes in the gloom of the trees as Zygismunt trudges through the snow. There’s an old trick coined by the great entroponaut K. Voronikin, that you have to shout in the pale. Otherwise, you start to feel gloomy, and the past comes up. But Zygismunt needn’t be afraid of that. When he first entered the pale, he discovered to his great dismay that he couldn’t return like everyone else. Or rather—he could, but not where he really wants. This makes him indispensable to Mazov’s idea. The disappearance of the Lund children has literally given Zigi special entroponetic powers. 

He goes hunting for pale-poisoned ibexes. The phrase ‘protein mass’ comes up again. It seems that any human or animal in the pale for long enough eventually turns into a protein mass.

The entroponaut shakes himself. Snow falls from the shoulders of the anorak coat. He goes on alone. An hour of frozen machine tracks and hoofprints in the snow run along in the flashlight beam. And when a herd of ibex finally emerges from the darkness, they are frozen in place in the middle of the road, like an exhibit in a natural history museum. Some of the females sometimes jerk in place, sneezing; this is a nervous impulse, a muscle tremor. The backs of the stuffed animals are already covered with snow, but their snouts are still steaming, they’re still breathing—some for a few days, some for a week. An anorak-clad figure moves through the herd with the indifference of a professional until the beam of his flashlight casts the alpha male’s crown of horns as a shadow on the wall of spruce trees. Zygismunt looks into the animal’s glazed eyes. Its sense of time has broken down. An automaton’s primitive fragment of a brain strays in the pale faster than that of a human. This is how hunters from the outskirts go hunting in the entrokataa. Of course, they’ll eventually go mad from it as well, and one day they won’t return. But not Zigi, he has special abilities. He takes a pocket knife from his belt and slits the protein mass’s throat. 

[yellow-yarrow]

Music, mathematics and the Pale

This turned out to be a long post, but it started with thinking about the sound of sleigh bells that appear at different parts in the book.

We know they come from Ulv playing music and reading the pale, but what if they are part of one of Émile de Pérouse-Mittrecie's dodecaphonic works, that was remixed by Theo van Kok (or maybe by some other musician)? because it's hard to imagine electronic dance music having that instrument, and while the comte's concert scene only mentions a string section, there is classical music that uses bells.

I think it would tie in well with Rodionov saying "your music will reach us from the true end, even further beyond there, where all matter is but memory. So sounds the white light that shines into every darkroom, turning all revelations into nothingness.”

But that could also refer to Zigi listening to the track titled "Grave" when he is in the airship, or how even during the end of the world the radios play his music. And at one point the Lund girl's voices are compared to the bells, plus we could say that the Ignus Nilsen Waltz (a track from the game's OST) also has some kind of bells.

to my understanding, dodecaphonic works are composed according to some mathematical logic (I'm not smart enough to understand any of this, but for further reading for those who are interested [this artilce] plus the wikipedia pages) and the person who likes the comte's music the most is Rodionov, a mathematician

I'll get back to the bells but speaking of mathematics and the pale

Joyce -"The further into pale you travel, the steeper the degree of suspension. Right down to the mathematical -- *numbers* stop working. No one has yet passed the number barrier. It may be impossible." Abandoned Lorry - It looks like an article ripped out from a radio-enthusiast magazine. Complex mathematical equations explain the basics of something called 'the ULAN frequency system'.

"A pale latitude compressor is used to sort of... make the pale more manageable. With a lot of these, you can force a radio signal grid on the pale -- literally crunch the distance across it." (..) It's meant for forcing dimensions on something that doesn't *have* them. Needless to say, the frequencies used are... out of this world. "At the upper limit is the large prime number generator station. It's used specifically for pale latitude compression. That's why you may be hearing some numbers.

“It’s maths, right?” Jesper is sitting with his hands under his head. “Some mathematical rule explains this [the killer wave]?” “ (..) but the same non-linear effect also explains the pale. They use it in entroponetics. This is how the pale behaves when it sweeps over the world.”

Recording and playing the swallow in the church causes the building to shake, it's described as a tidal wave approaching that gives Egghead "the worst high he has ever been on". (waves and water often symbolize the pale) Soona says: "It was mathematical information -- from the anomaly -- presented as a waveform. That's what it was *technically*"

My point is, I think the comte's music doesn't just simply play as some kind of background music to the end times, he accidentally composed something that can be used to do something to the pale.

Jesper says "That’s right, [Ulv] talks with the dead. They’ll come if he plays them some Van Eyck and old Rietveld. That’s why he’s alone like that. No, dear, apparently he doesn’t tolerate Fakkengaf.” He doesn't mention Theo van Kok so maybe it's not the Theo van Kok / comte remix that has the bells, but maybe those were just a few examples that he plays? Theo van Kok was very influential for him after all.

When Harry looks at Arno van Eyck flyers, there are these checks:

Shivers - A GLIMPSE INTO THE PAST Inland Empire - And so all our lives become but a faded memory, an ephemeral vision of a Van Eyck concert flyer... blink or you'll miss it.

This could be a reference to the fact that his songs can be used to access memories in the pale?

Back to the comte remix, it's actually the remix of "one of the old overtures" and Ulv says: “Please… do not ruin… my intro,” "This is the most important… part.” as Tereesz and Khan step into his room, Maybe the intro is a remix of the comte's overture? or it's just literally the intro of Ulv's remix.

Which is the same thing Kras Mazov and the revolutionary lovers hear as the black and white memory of their deaths turn colorful. These scenes are similar to when it's mentioned that Ann-Margret Lund's hair turned grey overnight, and that "She hears music in her sleep; light from the kitchen window floods her hair and, for a moment, it looks golden again."

These remind me of the "your music will reach us from the true end, even further beyond there, where all matter is but memory. So sounds the white light that shines into every darkroom" quote.

As Nadia jumps into the water there is a mention of sleigh bells, and then above the water:

"Everything is yet to come—piccolo flutes, her favourite instruments, and brisk fanfare, what a splendid sound! The rolling thunder of the timpani, the sound of water in Nadia’s ears is like a furor, life, ovations, and warm, warm tributes"

which is very similar to

"The sun rises from the pale. The comte thrusts his hands towards the sky and the incomparable noise of time engulfs him. It’s louder still than the wind, louder than the masses of ice rubbing against each other. The man’s mouth sputters with drool, howling his favourite cadence. It’s written by him. And the voice in the pale in front of him sounds like applause, standing ovations, the stamping of tens of thousands of feet, and whistles, deafening whistles like those of fireworks, an atom that will someday be split in Revachol. The only thing in this world more beautiful than his own music is applause."

Another comparison to the pale:

"The waves of Perouse-Mittrecie are beautiful to listen to, like the ocean, mm…grave."

In conclusion: sound and mathematics definitely have some effect on the pale. The bells could be a part of the comte's music but there isn't solid proof, it's just a theory. I think Rodionov loves Perouse-Mittreice's music so much for pale related reasons.

[blueares]

You know, of all the bosses in Ender Lilies, I feel like Eleine and Gerrod kinda got shafted with their boss theme titles. I mean, all the others get a theme named to fit their story.

Julius: Accolade Julius only ever sought one thing: acknowledgement from his father. He rose up from nothing to become the captain of the royal knights, earning fame and prestige, even presumably partaking in the Battle of the Bastion. Despite all of his accolades, however, Julius never received the recognition he wanted until the very end.

Hoenir: The Sun As leader of the Dark Executioners, Hoenir spent most of his life living in the shadows. His duty was to remain unseen and unacknowledged by the kingdom he served. Hoenir spent much of his time in the dark, dismal dungeon that was the Stockade. To someone like him, the light and warmth of the sun must have been a nigh-foreign concept... And yet he defended the last light of hope from the Blight for as long as he possibly could.

Ulv: Bloom Ulv was known by many as the Mad Warrior. He was a stoic man of few words that mercilessly cut down the kingdom's enemies. Many of Ulv's own allies feared him, but in truth, he was actually a gentle soul deep down that simply lacked the ability to properly express himself through words. Fretia was the only one that saw Ulv for who and what he truly was, even instilling in him a love of nature's beauty. Ulv spent a great deal of time watching over a field of Fretia's favorite flowers; when Rain of Death came, his last moments of sanity were spent watching the flowers bloom.

Miriel: Evil There's a lot of ways you can interpret this one. Miriel was infected by the Blight while working alongside Fayden, and so he took to increasingly desperate measures to reverse her transformation. Even after Miriel fully transformed into a massive, hideous beast, however, she was... Different from the other Blighted. She attacks Lillie seemingly not out of malice, but to protect Fayden's lab. Though she may be corrupted, and while wicked deeds may surround her, one must ask: is this monster truly evil?

The Blighted Lord: Mother I mean... This one is pretty self-explanatory.

So yeah, you get all these clever, one-word song titles for most of the bosses in the game that hold significant narrative purpose to the characters, and then there's just... "Gerrod the Elder Warrior and Dark Witch Eleine." Like, yeah they sum up the boss you're fighting, but they feel kind of generic compared to the rest.

[andthentheresanne]

So we're just going to ignore the fact that the same guy who voiced Sutekh voiced the Beast in The Satan Pit? (And I'm at least three percent sure there was at least one musical but that popped back up. Also the noise the TARDIS made when landing... Isn't that the noise from the beginning of The Impossible Planet?)

Plus, we saw a shot of the TARDIS landing on Darlig Ulv Stranden, the TARDIS landed in that other universe at least twice (the first time when they crashed and thals. The second to leave Rose and TenToo there--did a Twist get made there too? Did that universe get dusted? If so, did the Doctor's keel-hauling fix that? Despite the other universe being cut off?

And that's not even touching on the snow...

/retreats back into her theory cave with stupid fanfic

[random-brushstrokes]

Even Ulving (Norwegian, 1863 - 1952) - Klesvask, Aasgaardstrand

[hapalopus]

Valravnen is less of a vættr and more of a fairytale creature. It's only known from medieval folk songs, and only from Denmark.

Valravnen shows up in two folk songs: The appropriately titled "Valravnen" and a version of "Germand Gladensvend," where Gammen is replaced by Valravnen. In the self-titled song, valravnen is a human who has been cursed to become a bird (sometimes a raven, sometimes an eagle) and is only returned to his human body when he drinks the blood of a baby. In Germand Gladensvend, valravnen is a monstrous bird who helps the main characters, but asks for their first-born in return, whom he then eats - he is, however, killed by the child's mother before it is revealed why he ate the child.

Even in the song commonly known as "Valravnen," this word only shows up in two of the nine versions of the song. In the other versions, the character is referred to as Wild Raven, Salmand Raven, or Verner Raven (Salmand and Verner being human names).

According to folklorists Holbek & Piø, "valravn" (battlefield raven) is not the original name for this figure, but is instead a misunderstanding of the more prevalent name "vilde ravn" (wild raven), as the figure never appears to have had anything to do with the battlefield, and "wild raven" is a far more common moniker in medieval sources.

However, during the early-1800s nationalistic romanticist wave, poet Adam Oehlenschläger showed a clear preference for the name "valravn" and chose to exclusively use that name in his reworkings of the folksongs. By the time folklorist Svend Grundtvig started his work, by the mid-1800s, "valravn" had overtaken the earlier "vilde ravn" name in popularity.

It is Holbek & Piø's opinion that valravnen is closely related to the werewolf, since they're both transformed humans who can be freed by drinking the blood of an infant, a belief that seems exclusive to Southern Scandinavia.

According to some modern authors, valravnen is a raven that haunts the battlefield, but I have not been able to trace back the origins of this belief. It seems fairly recent, and appears to be a result of the creature's name, more than its actual folkloric presence.

The heraldic combination of a wolf and a raven has been referred to as a valravn. This has seemingly nothing to do with the folkloric valravn, just as a heraldic antelope has nothing to do with a real life antelope. It does lend some credence to the idea that the valravn and the werewolf are related, though. The werewolf is also rarely described as "varulv" in folk songs, but is more often described as "vilde ulv" (wild wolf) or "grå ulv" (grey wolf).

Sources:

Holbek & Piø (1967) "Fabeldyr og Sagnfolk"

Poul Lorenzen (1960) "Vilde Fugle i Sagn og Tro"

[foxstens]

YO I BEAT THE BOSS RUSH

[inside-nordic-life]

Hej guys

Welcome to my blog!

I’m Julia, 18 years old, and currently volunteering in Denmark. It feels strange to write those words down. I’m a volunteer. Just a few months ago, I was still in my home country, thinking Denmark was far away. But time flies, doesn’t it? And now I’m already three months into my stay—three months of great experiences, meeting wonderful people, and learning about Danish culture.

Let’s start simple:

Where do I live?

So far, I’m staying with a host family near Aarhus. Christoph and Karen, who have two very adorable daughters, Alma and Ida. I had never been abroad for such a long time before, so staying with a host family was a completely new experience for me. First of all, I didn’t know them until a week before I came to Denmark. That made me nervous about what it would be like. Would we get along? How should I behave around my host family? What would they expect of me? I had a lot of questions! But I’m glad to say it all turned out well in the end. We get along really well, which isn’t hard because they’re very nice people. The children are sweet and are able to communicate with me, even though I can’t speak Danish yet. Living with people I didn’t know before turned out to be surprisingly similar to my family life back home. I join them for dinner, sit in the living room reading, help with cooking, or spend time with the children. Being around them is much easier than I imagined. At first, it felt a bit awkward to sit in the living room or eat their food, but I’m getting used to it. I’m still adjusting to the food part tbh, but I’m lucky to get along with them so well. I imagine it might be harder if your host family is very different from your own, or if you’re not a family-oriented person and need more alone time. But I believe this depends on what kind of person you are—whether you’re more extroverted or introverted.

What do I do?

I work at a forest kindergarten near Aarhus. Every year, three volunteers work there so they are used to having volunteers. I really enjoy my work. From the very beginning, the staff were very welcoming and friendly. I work in the "wolf group," the Ulve, and accompany the children through their daily routine. In the morning, I help the children hang up their backpacks, and then I bring the lunchboxes with fruit and bread from the kitchen for our breakfast together. After breakfast, the children either play in the kindergarten or we go on excursions to the meadow at the hunting lodge or into the forest. Lunch is usually eaten during these outings, unless we stay in the kindergarten, in which case we eat on-site.

After the excursion, some children take a nap, for which we hang up hammocks. Around 12:30, I prepare the next meal: crispbread, smørrebrød, and cold cuts. The children can then choose whether they want cheese, sausage, or leverpostej on their bread.

In the afternoon, it’s time for the children to play again. I spend a lot of time with them, whether in the sandbox, playing tag, or simply listening when they want to show or tell me something. I’m still practicing and trying to learn Danish, but it’s enough for simple conversations, joint activities, or just listening to the children. In the beginning, it was very hard to interact with them. I didn’t know their names yet and couldn’t say anything except my own. Most of the simple phrases I use now are things I learned by listening to the Danish staff. I’m really looking forward to starting language school next Monday. Although I use Duolingo and hear Danish every day, I still need to learn how to express myself. Moreover, working with children can be exhausting. Sometimes, when I get home from work, I wonder why I’m so tired because it doesn’t seem like hard work at first. But it’s the mental load—the exhaustion from social interactions 24/7. On top of that, I’m listening to Danish all day and speak English, which can also tire me out subconsciously. But overall, I’m very happy with my workplace.

For example, I understand more now, but I still can’t reply properly. If I can respond, it’s not always exactly what I want to say because I don’t have the right words. If you asked me whether Danish is hard to understand, I’d say no. But if you asked me whether Danish is hard to read or pronounce, I’d definitely say yes. I feel like they leave out most of the letters in the words when they pronounce them, and the o’s can be really tricky to pronounce. Although I’m German, which is apparently helpful for learning Danish, I still struggle. I hope language school will help me because I really want to learn Danish.

Now, this was my very first entry. I’m going to write more soon, but for now, this is it. I plan to write one blog entry every week. If I have the time or something interesting to write about, I might post more entries per week.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it :)

[rfsnyder]

Even Ulving