#I have also translated it and recorded it in danish

[chaoskiro]

aaaand a new podfic has been added yet again! This one is a short one of @cricketnationrise's story knit one, purl cthulu. A very sweet little NurseyDex fic. Go give it a listen!

[horsefigureoftheday]

can we hear more about your horse ghost experiences?

Sure thing!

White horses are a common type of ghost around here. They’re often headless, but not necessarily. They may breathe fire or leave a trail of fire, or they might not. In most records the white horses are just said to show up at a given place, with no speculations on their origins. When people do talk about their origins, the typical explanation is that they’re manifestations of dead people or terrible past events. Here are a few stories collected by Evald Tang Kristensen throughout the late 1800s:

My first encounter was when I was about 12, out in the woods with the pony riding school. It was a forest with a lot of memorials, including a memorial stone for a Danish poet, an arboretum to honor a teacher, and a historical hunting lodge that was burned down by a pyromaniac a few years prior. And yet the forest was only really used by our riding school, a few dog walkers, and a nearby primary school. Desolate enough for wildlife to thrive, yet frequented enough that the woods could never grow completely wild. Strange things seem to happen - or at least be observed by people - in those kinds of places.

As our train of ponies reached a hilltop and looked down, we all saw a white horse running between the trees, with neither tack nor rider. We all commented on it, but for some reason none of us even considered trying to track it down and make sure it was okay. It was like we all just instinctively knew the horse would be gone by the time we’d made our way back down the hill.

Second time I saw it was from a train window, back in March. While passing through the woods, I looked out and just saw a pure White Horse with its back to the tracks. No fences around. No tack. I saw it for all of 3 seconds but the rounded rump, long tail, and hocks were unmistakable. I know damn well how to tell a deer ass apart from a horse ass, and that was a pure white horse all alone in the middle of the dark woods. I've ridden that trainline countless times, and every time we pass that spot I look for horses. But I haven't seen any before or since.

Aside from human(oid) ghosts, white horse ghosts are by far the most common ghosts in Danish folklore. I don't personally believe they're typical ghosts (as in manifestations of death), I'm more inclined to believe they're vættir. But I call them ghosts for simplicity's sake, because that's what all the books call them.

I have a lot of pseudo-philosophical ideas about the supernatural and how it thrives at the border of imagination and reason. You need to open yourself up to the possibility of the supernatural, accept all logical and illogical explanations equally, and choose to make the illogical explanations a part of your umwelt, before you can experience these things. Empiricism and supernatural experiences can't coexist, and I value keeping my ancestral folklore alive more than I do the rational explanation that maybe a horse got loose in the woods.

I love how the Monster Talk podcast explains it in episode 253 (Yeti Stories You've Never Heard Before) - sorry it's compressed to hell but I didn't know how else to fit a 12 minute clip into a tumblr post:

Edit: I also love Mikkel Starup's explanation from his book "Elverkongen Freyr" (translation in alt)

[catchyhuh]

Well part 6 made it obvious that besides French and Japanese Lupin can talk at least in English, Italian, Russian, Spanish, German, Turkish, Korean and Dutch (gosh, he's good, I'm jelly).

What languages do the others know? I have some headcanons about Goe, but I'm curious about your ones!

well, the short of it, for all of em really, is: “do i need to learn this language to continue living for the next month? yes? ok let’s learn some conjugation.” so it’s less about which specific languages and just HOW many they know so much as how do they go about the process of learning/how do they USE the language once they’ve learned it so. IT’S A LOT

and uh also they all tend to default to japanese but you probably knew that LET’S GET INTO THE LOT

jigen:

jigen knows the least out of all of them, mostly because he. does not talk to many people. he’s an unintentional perfectionist about it in just that one sense; if he’s communicating, he wants to be SURE he’s understood, no room for misunderstanding

of course, that doesn’t mean he’s a slouch. i’m sure he can still speak, listen to, read AND write at least ten more languages than you and i can, minimum. BUT STILL, he just doesn’t want any room for misinterpretation, none whatsoever. so usually, he lets someone else do the talking, or he attempts to get by with whatever he and the other party can understand. it’s kind of funny because his stubbornness with this means a lot of times the gang will purposefully leave him to flounder, because THAT’S WHAT HE GETS FOR NOT WANTING TO REMEMBER SOMETHING AS SIMPLE AS “no ice in my drink please”

because of this, he’s most proficient in READING in other languages. there’s no need for input on his end, and he can get a hang of sentence structure AND the words themselves, so there’s no embarrassment later. so particular about these things

fujiko:

the only one who can speak a language better than she can understand it being spoken to her. like jigen, she mostly learns by just reading it, (sometimes by rereading a book she already knows, so she already has an easy guide to go off of) so trying to decipher someone TALK talking at a conversational speed is. a different beast

uses the whole multilingual thing as more of a novelty than a necessity. like it’s a party trick to her. like she's a translation dictionary in the flesh! ask her how to say purple in danish! wanna know the word for cookie in malay? if you want to know how to say “penis” in 30 languages, fujiko will frown and go “c’mon. grow up." ...but she'll still answer since it’s actually still just ‘penis’ in like five different languages anyway,

this is mostly because she weaponizes the “you don’t think i can understand x language, but yes, i can, and i can hear you calling me stupid while i’m standing right fucking next to you. you will regret this in time”

goemon:

absorbs foreign languages the fastest, which is hilarious because he’s always the most stubborn about wanting to just speak his first language. i mean it’s goemon, you probably saw this coming! 

has since softened on the concept, not because of a “loosening of his personal principles,” but rather, he saw how damn DIFFICULT it made things for the average person he interacts with for two seconds of his life. it was initially easy to hold onto it, until he saw the poor waitress grin apologetically and say she was so sorry she didn’t understand. then he softened. a BIT. if you know even a smidge of japanese he’s expecting it from you. 

wore a t-shirt that said COOL GUY in big, obnoxiously american letters once for a disguise. burnt it when the operation was over. lupin has five pictures of it. goemon allows the records to exist because he is, objectively, a COOL GUY

zenigata:

the funny thing is you’d ask him about it and he’d get kind of sheepish. like, yeah, he knows (he pauses to count on his fingers for a second) 23 languages but he’s not REALLY good at most of them it’s just like a thing for WORK it’s not like he’s REALLY got them down--

again, it’s the fault of that freakish hypercompetence that comes up for rule of funny. if he’s just getting off the plane and he realizes he’s left his gloves at home and is desperately trying to find a pair, no, he can’t get through in the slightest. but if it’s LUPIN involved, oh buddy if there is an ELEMENT of DANGER AND/OR LUPIN, he just breaks out entire sentences with almost perfect pronunciation and everything, to the point the other people in the room wonder if he was faking his issues earlier. and the answer is no, he wasn’t, he just didn’t have the proper motivation. NOW he does, and NOW he can speak fucking perfect indonesian, just because!

also kind of sort of treats it as a party trick the way lupin and fujiko do if he’s in a good enough mood (but you actually do get hints of that in the show, like that one little part 3 bit!) so that’s fun

[hatari-translations]

Matthías on Vikan með Gísla Marteini, 15.12.23

Another translation request I missed: Matthías was on Vikan með Gísla Marteini before Christmas, the other guests being Jón Jósep Snæbjörnsson or Jónsi, who competed in Eurovision on Iceland's behalf both in 2004 and 2012, and actress, screenwriter and director Tinna Hrafnsdóttir. The discussion touched on Palestine and Eurovision boycotts (at this point Matthías would have already been involved in Bashar Murad's Söngvakeppnin entry, but keeping it under wraps), Matthías's shift from the toughest guy around to a soft family man, his current job as a dramaturge for the National Theater, Christmas traditions, and Danish.

I fully translated more of this show than I really should have; it took ages and I should've tried to summarize more of the non-Matthías bits, but there was a lot of Matthías scattered throughout. Oh well. Hope you all enjoy hearing more from him, at least!

During the introductions, Gísli Marteinn says two of the three people on the couch have their names attached to bands they're no longer part of; he'd wanted to say "Jónsi í Svörtum fötum" (referring to Jónsi's old band Í svörtum fötum) and "Matti í Hatara" (Matti from Hatari). Matthías says "Skellur," which we could translate as, "That's rough." Gísli Marteinn affirms that neither would be correct. Jónsi says "What are we even doing these days? Are we doing anything these days?"

Gísli Marteinn mentions that last time Matthías was on the show, he was going to say he's no longer part of Hatari, but then they forgot to talk about it. Matthías goes "Oh yeah, right. That was supposed to be the big news." But Gísli Marteinn says they're all here because of the interesting stuff they're currently working on.

The show moves on to other things for a while, but we pick back up with them later, after a segment where Gísli Marteinn goes through the news of the week and makes jokes about them.

After a bit of banter with Jónsi about how Gísli Marteinn's dad jokes would have gotten him canceled many times over at Jónsi's dinner table (Gísli Marteinn says more dinner tables than his would) and a bit more talk about how they're all doing such exciting things, Gísli Marteinn moves on:

GÍSLI MARTEINN: There's one issue we didn't mention there despite being prominent in the news, and that's that we're watching the horrible actions of the Israeli army in Gaza, and it makes it hard to quite get into the Christmas spirit. And into that comes this discourse about Eurovision, which is unusual but understandable. I mean, we have two Eurovision-goers here--

JÓNSI: Uh oh.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I mean, in both of your cases there was talk of whether we should boycott. And Matti, you went to Israel. You had a message to Israelis. When you watch this discourse, what do you think?

MATTHÍAS: Well, I think it would be very courageous and good of RÚV to send a clear message. I mean, let's imagine that after the invasion Russia had competed in Eurovision, but Ukraine hadn't. It's a bit like that, from my point of view. Israel is competing but Palestine isn't. I think either there should be a rule that while there's active warfare going on you shouldn't be in this contest that's supposed to be about peace. Or you could pull out more flags, Palestinian flags, and include Palestine. I think that would be a neat thing to call for. But the boycott movement is very important, of course, even though we didn't quite follow it when it was our turn.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Right, they wanted you to boycott.

MATTHÍAS: Yeah. But boycott is a silent action. A bunch of people boycotted the contest when we were competing; people just didn't hear about it because they weren't recorded anywhere. We went a bit of a different route, but that's not to diminish this important movement.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: No. It's a complex matter. Everyone who insists this is simple perhaps doesn't see every side of it.

MATTHÍAS: No, it is complicated. But it's also very simple. I mean, what's happening now in Gaza is just -- I think people don't realize because they're so used to hearing news about this in their ears, the region of Palestine, but this right now is just -- I'm not going to completely kill the Christmas spirit in the show, but this is so much worse than ever before, ever in the history of Palestine. And that's going on right now.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Yeah, absolutely. And I didn't mean to say that that's particularly nuanced - of course that's simple, in itself.

MATTHÍAS: Yeah. But then you get everything else, which is complicated, of course.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Jónsi, even when you went, even though it wasn't the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I remember a call for you to boycott.

JÓNSI: Yeah, there was.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Namely, you went to Baku in Azerbaijan.

JÓNSI: Yes, it was 2012, and I think that was… It's been a while, and I'm sorry, there are probably a lot of people who know a lot more about this than I do because I perhaps tend to just try to forget these kinds of things and do something else. Please excuse me, I'm sorry. How often have I apologized now?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: A lot!

MATTHÍAS: Like he said, there's no wrong thing to say on this show.

JÓNSI: Right, thank God. Wiener dog.

[laughter]

JÓNSI: No, sorry. There was discourse about how there are human rights abuses going on down there, and we became aware, the group that went, me and Greta Salóme and more, that there were people who were asking us to show solidarity in action. And it was very hard, just sort of being between a rock and a hard place. I hadn't been imagining that this was something I would be tackling - aside from the fact I was probably just a privileged dude, being pampered out there. But by finals night, we really felt like we were in a bind. It was weird to be about to compete for our country and make everyone proud, on the one hand, while knowing that there were people who, from the literal safety of their armchairs in Iceland, wanted us to do something different. And it was always a bit unclear exactly what should be done -- you get so many possibilities, and you don't really know how to react because you think it's not going to matter at all what you do, and you're always going to make someone mad. Just like how you can no longer do a good deed and tell anyone about it, because then it's time to tell you off for trumpeting it. You feel like there's no right chess move to make, these days. But nonetheless, I don't want to minimize that there are horrible things happening in Gaza, and it's weird to feel that political angle coming into the music world. But I'm not an expert on it, I admit.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Of course, and you weren't brought here to opine as an expert. But it's necessary to discuss it. And -- Tinna, we were talking before the show about how it's hard, or you feel guilty for being in a good mood, or a Christmas mood.

TINNA: Yeah, it's a different Christmas season than often before, almost like you don't dare to be happy because there's so much going on.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: But you, artists and entertainers, putting on shows and making music and creating TV shows that are meant to delight us -- give us some good message about how we can do both at the same time.

MATTHÍAS: You're commissioning a message from us?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Yes. You were brought here to be…

MATTHÍAS: You can do both.

JÓNSI: Can't we just make it a message, like kop28 [I'm not sure what he's referencing], we're trying to show you some message that doesn't really mean anything by itself? I do realize that if I breathe here in Iceland, that doesn't really change much in Gaza. But I think we should keep talking about it, but I'm also an advocate for focusing on the good things. We should work from the good that exists in the world, and try to say, isn't the influence of good better down there than not? Maybe it doesn't affect anything, I don't know. But…

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Be joyful, but don't forget about Gaza. Is that the message?

JÓNSI: A good T-shirt.

MATTHÍAS: Yes. If you want the core message, it's that.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: To be joyful but don't forget about Gaza.

MATTHÍAS: Yes, you've got it.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Now we move to other things. Thank you for giving a bit of where your minds are at with all of this. I know it was a heavy beginning, but sometimes that's necessary.

JÓNSI: Yeah, it's necessary. That's quite true.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Should I talk about the clothes of the men on the couch next? You're both wearing Icelandic wadmal.

MATTHÍAS: You bet!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Is this the latest fashion trend?

MATTHÍAS: I got married in this, this summer, so I just decided to use it.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: It looks great!

TINNA: They specifically asked me to sit in the middle so that they wouldn't be side by side in tweed.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: That would be tacky.

JÓNSI: My friend Gunni at [clothing store] Kormákur og Skjöldur is very happy with us both, no doubt. But he doesn't realize how ridiculously warm it is under this, and we had a heavy discussion earlier, and they had to make up my ears twice so they wouldn't get red, and it's all just firing up now.

They move on to talking with Tinna about her new TV series Heima er best, which they compare to sort of an Icelandic Succession, which was just nominated for the Nordic scriptwriting awards, and then about when Jónsi and Tinna co-starred in Grease and then in Ávaxtakarfan ("The Fruit Basket", an Icelandic children's musical about bullying featuring anthropomorphic fruit). To stay sane after writing up all this I won't translate this whole section since Matthías doesn't have much to say in it, although he does express surprise that they had theatrical productions during the summer (Grease was an indie production that just kind of rented the City Theater over the summer).

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Speaking of your former lives and such… Matti, when you went to Eurovision and were Matti the Hater [Hatari], I would have said you were just about the coolest, toughest guy in the country. Then fifteen minutes later you're on your knees at Sky Lagoon proposing to your wife and had become so soft and tender and beautiful and in love, and now you've got a kid and another on the way.

MATTHÍAS: Exactly.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Was Matti from Hatari all fake, or did you just change that much?

MATTHÍAS: Mmm, I've always been soft. The other stuff is a bit of a costume. But of course it softens you when you're in love, and softens you more when you love your child. So maybe that's the Christmas message you were looking for.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I knew you had one in there!

MATTHÍAS: No, definitely. I was on my way home from work earlier and my sister-in-law who was babysitting called me and said, "Sóley has pooped everywhere!", and I found it to be good news, because I like hearing news of my daughter but also, "everywhere" means some of it went in the potty, so I was kind of just, "Score!" to hear that message. It changes a bit… You've got new and exciting stuff to deal with. It's wonderful. And I'm looking forward to having two. It'll be… Two girls!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Oh?

MATTHÍAS: Yeah, it's a girl.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I can recommend having two girls!

TINNA: I'm lucky to have two - twins. Two for one in my case.

MATTHÍAS: So you were quick.

TINNA: Just finish it all in one.

JÓNSI: In one evening, or?

TINNA: One evening! All in one, one evening.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: How old are your twins?

TINNA: They're eleven. And when I told them I was going to sit on a couch with the Hatari guy, they were like, "Wow, Mom!"

GÍSLI MARTEINN: If you've got twins, is the hardest part over, or is it only over when they're about thirty?

JÓNSI: Good question.

TINNA: I'm actually very lucky. They're very good friends and mesh together well, so it's gone pretty well for us. But then you never know what the teenage years will be like.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Right. We're making our way there.

TINNA: We're making our way there.

JÓNSI: But doesn't that make you alone against them, and then there's two of them?

TINNA: There are some plots going on that I don't quite know about, but I try to keep up the radar.

JÓNSI: A lie detector.

TINNA: Yes, and a lie detector and everything. They're watching me right now; they're probably going "Oh my God, Mom, don't talk about us!"

MATTHÍAS: And do you use these plots to write your scripts?

TINNA: Oh, yes, definitely.

JÓNSI: I also… How old are they?

TINNA: Eleven.

JÓNSI: What are their names again?

TINNA: Starkaður Máni and Jökull Þór.

JÓNSI: I'm going to look into camera two: Starkaður Máni and Jökull Þór, if you aren't good until Christmas, Matti from Hatari and Immi the Pineapple [Jónsi's character in Ávaxtakarfan, the tyrannical villain] are coming to your house.

[laughter]

MATTHÍAS: Correct.

They go to commercials. When we return to the show, Jónsi has brought out a guitar and is enthusiastically leading the audience in singing Christmas songs.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Jónsi formerly of Í svörtum fötum decided to keep everyone pumped while we went to commercials -- while capitalism took its share, since you didn't manage to bring it to its knees, dear Matti.

MATTHÍAS: The boys are working on it.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: The boys are working on bringing capitalism to its knees.

They talk about Jónsi and his wild success as a pop star in the early 2000s and how now he works for a financial corporation. He describes how fame and being surrounded by people who worship you almost regardless of what you do just kind of isn't healthy and he had just become kind of a dickhead, and he withdrew from it all to get away from it.

MATTHÍAS: But Gísli, you're one of those exceptions. You've been famous for a long time but you're not a dickhead. [He says a few more words that I can't make out over the laughter.]

GÍSLI MARTEINN: That's the best compliment I've ever gotten! Thanks, Matti, I'm grateful you say that. But back to you, you said earlier you were on your way home from work. Where do you work?

MATTHÍAS: The National Theater!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I mean, you aren't Matti from Hatari anymore.

MATTHÍAS: No, I'm Matti from the National Theater!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Matti from the National Theater! Who doesn't know Matti from the National Theater?

MATTHÍAS: Hopefully more people know now!

GÍSLI MARTEINN: We know you had become a playwright. You wrote award-winning plays. And theater is just your muse right now?

MATTHÍAS: It seems to be that way. The urge to write is still strong in me, and I'll probably keep doing that.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Don't you have the title of dramaturge, which nobody knows what that is, except Tinna?

MATTHÍAS: The chosen few know.

JÓNSI: Can we know what it is?

MATTHÍAS: Those of us who know what it is recognize each other.

JÓNSI: And no one says anything.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: A secret society!

MATTHÍAS: No, it's translated as 'listrænn ráðunautur' ["Artistic advisor"] for the National Theater, and of course it's the best job in the world. You get to read plays, watch them, your job is to have opinions on theater, talk about theater. You're part of a book club called the project choice committee of the National Theater, and you're in contact with all the directors, and reading scripts that Icelandic playwrights entrust to the National Theater, which is a big responsibility for me because I've been on the other side there.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Is this your dream job?

MATTHÍAS: It's -- of everything that exists that is a job, this is the best one.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Very good!

MATTHÍAS: Because the other stuff that I'd want to do even more doesn't exist as a job. It's just freelance. But this is perfect.

They turn to Tinna to talk about her project directing a drama series about Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, former president of Iceland. Matthías mentions he's excited about it and that they compared it to The Crown during the break and that really piqued his interest.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: And speaking of our heritage, you're doing the Edda [Snorra-Edda, the most comprehensive source about the old Norse religion, written in the 1200s] at the National Theater, right?

MATTHÍAS: Yes, I'm working on that as a dramaturge, and it's very exciting.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: It's your Christmas show, right?

MATTHÍAS: The National Theater's Christmas show.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: The Edda in its entirety?

MATTHÍAS: Yes, it's very comprehensive. But it's full of unexpected little twists for those of us who know these stories -- the myths, Thor, Loki, Óðinn and all that. Or for those who don't know and want to get to know their heritage, you're also welcome. But everyone who liked Njála [Brennu-Njáls saga, one of the Sagas of Icelanders written between ~1200-1350 CE] at the City Theater, if you saw that, this is the same director, Þorleifur [Örn Arnarsson]. That was one of the coolest shows I've ever seen, so this should be something.

They move on to a Berglind Festival (comedian) bit about rebranding Christmas. When we return to the studio, she has joined the couch, everyone is wearing sunglasses, and they're each doing some kind of little dance to the Christmas song remix still playing in the background. Matthías says, "You have to warn us if we're going to dance on the show." Gísli Marteinn says, "I didn't see you, did you look like dorks?" Matthías: "I don't know."

GÍSLI MARTEINN: So if we keep to the traditional Christmas, Christmas is next weekend. Do you have any bizarre Christmas traditions, or are you very standard about it?

MATTHÍAS: Speaking of rebranding, my dad… At the Ban Thai restaurant downtown, there's a course called [kung hansa?] [I looked up their menu to try to find out what the correct spelling is but unfortunately the online menu had no name similar to that], a shrimp course, and we find it Christmasy. We often have it as a starter on Christmas.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: On Christmas Eve? [Christmas Eve is the height of the Christmas celebration in Iceland.]

MATTHÍAS: Yes.

BERGLIND: So do you put an almond in the rice? [She's referring to the Icelandic Christmas tradition of making rice pudding and putting a single almond in it, often as a starter; whoever gets the almond in their bowl should try to discreetly remove it and then keep it hidden until the end of the course. If they do it successfully without being spotted, they will receive a special 'almond gift'.]

MATTHÍAS: Uh, no.

BERGLIND: Okay, lame.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: So do you just go to Tómas at Ban Thai and buy it, or do you cook it at home?

MATTHÍAS: We buy it at Ban Thai.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Wow, well done! How did that start?

MATTHÍAS: We were just at Ban Thai celebrating some milestone, as we do, and then someone said it was kind of a Christmasy taste.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Very good. Tinna, that's a hard act to follow.

TINNA: I will try my best. We have very firm traditions and always go to my mom on Christmas Eve and eat Danish duck, speaking of Danish Christmas earlier. It's an old family tradition, and we have the Christmas pudding and an almond gift and so on.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Is Danish duck getting imported?

TINNA: My mom has some secret ways of procuring Danish duck, I'm not going to get into that. In previous years we would sometimes sing afterwards, "Og nu har vi jul igen, og nu har vi jul igen, og julen varer helt til påske." [Danish: "And now we have Christmas again, and now we have Christmas again, and Christmas lasts all the way until Easter."] Do you know it?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: No!

TINNA: It's some Danish song. I love the lyrics - og julen varer helt til påske.

JÓNSI: I said that at the start of the show.

TINNA: Wouldn't that be great, just having Christmas all the way until Easter?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Christmas until Easter, definitely!

MATTHÍAS: Now you, and earlier there were some people in the audience talking about flødeskum [whipped cream], and you [Gísli] earlier with leverpostej [Danish liver pâté] -- do people generally just speak Danish--

JÓNSI: Danish is taking us over.

MATTHÍAS: --at least at Christmas?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: Don't we? I mean, it's all Danish traditions we have here.

MATTHÍAS: It sounds great, at least.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: It sounds great. Jónsi, the pressure is on.

JÓNSI: Så man sidder i sin festlige måde [Danish: "So you sit in your festive manner…"]… No, definitely not.

He talks about his workplace's tradition where they eat as much as they can and simply decide not to gain any weight by sending a message to the cosmos; Matthías doesn't comment further from here.

[pernillemagda]

Translation of the first episode of a new programme during the euros

Pernille was in the first episode, starting after 29 minutes

They start out talking about the disappointment after going out in the group stage last year at the euro, but back then, many hadn't played tournament before and they have gained experience from that.

In their free time when this was recorded (when they were still in Denmark), in the evenings they sometimes watched football or Bachelorette.

They then move on and talks about her national team career. The reporter plays a clip for her with the goal where she took the goal-scoring-record, at first Pernille couldn't remember it was exactly that goal she broke the record, but she was proud after the game. She also tells how she sometimes forgets what she already has achieved as she always set new goals if she reaches them. She says it's important for her to stop up, be in the moment and enjoy the success she already has achieved, the reporter then asks why, *Pernille smiling* "Because I have been told to". But she explains it isn't natural for her and that there always is a day tomorrow and she should be even better as she has said before.

If she should point out one moment in her career for the National team there is the biggest, she would say when they came home from the Euro 2017 to "rådhuspladsen" (a place in Copenhagen where Danish athletes are paid tribute for big achievements in their sport). She hadn't at all expected there would be that many people and says it's really big and describes it as a milestone and something she will never forget.

The reporter asks why she hadn't expected it, she says before that tournament, they hadn't really had much support from the Danish fans, but afterwards, they slowly gained respect.

They then move on and talks about how it was to play in "Parken" (the Danish national arena, where the men also play" and how big a day it was.

He plays a new clip where Pernille immediately says "I'm talking a little Swedish". It's a clip from the last World Cup where she's asked by a Swedish journalist how much she and Magda talked during the tournament. She then praised herself and says "I'm talking really good Swedish"😂 if you forgot, your girlfriend is Swedish Pernille. They just talk about how she saw all the Swedish matches and the usual things she said before as experiencing a tournament from a fan perspective.

Then he mentions the "famous kiss", here they also talk about the usual stuff, nothing new. Magda and Pernille understood their platform and all the positive reactions and messages. That they don't hide and just post normal pictures together. He also ask if they had ever thought they could have an impact and be a part of changing things, and she says they had never talked about it before.

He then plays a clip from the interview after the reading game in how she talks about the farewell from the fans of Chelsea and that she was grateful for the good farewell they got (basically the same as in this article)

He asks if Magda was the reason she transferred to Chelsea in the first place, with a smile she says she was one of the factors, not the only one. The reporter asks if she thinks she's a better player when she's on the same team as Magda and lives together. She says she thinks it's important that it's important that life off the field is going well for it to go well on the field. And she says it's better for her when she lives with Magda.

She also tells a bit about how they had sat down before choosing Bayern and given different clubs grades based of some different things as

The coach

The values of the club

The players already on the team

How much do they need them, and do they need them botj

How is the city

as it is important that the clubs suits them

He then asks with a smile to round it off, if Denmark or Sweden comes furthest in the tournament, and Pernille very confidently answers "Ofc. Denmark"

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:

If you listen to Donald Trump’s diehard supporters, we aren’t supposed to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. That’s about the only conclusion you can draw from their reaction to Trump being shot at during a rally this past Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania. With the notable exception of a staffer for Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi who either resigned or was fired after telling the shooter, “don’t miss next time,” Democrats have risen with one voice to condemn this for the abomination that it is. As I write this, a little over 50 hours have passed since the shooting. In that time, the Democrats have extended more grace to Trump than he ever has extended to them in the eight-plus years since he came down the Trump Tower escalator. The same people whom Trump attacked as enemies of the American people and targeted with degrading and sometimes blatantly racist language showed Trump a concept that he hasn’t even begun to understand—mercy and compassion. As the messages from Democrats poured in, I was reminded of passages in Scripture that liken showing compassion for your foes to pouring “hot coals,” “burning coals,” or “coals of fire” (depending on the translation) on their heads.

[...] While digging into this, I learned that the reference to coals came from an old Egyptian custom in which penitent men carried bowls of burning coals on their heads as a sign of repentance. Supposedly, showing kindness and compassion to an enemy could lead to shame and repentance. Unfortunately, any hopes of Trump showing any sense of shame were put to rest on Monday when he named Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. Vance is part of a long list of never-Trumpers who have morphed into full-on Trump diehards since 2016. If Vance’s morph isn’t the most opportunistic, it’s pretty close. In 2016, he told PBS Newshour that from where he was sitting, part of Trump’s appeal was based on racist tropes.

[...] But that doesn’t go far enough for a number of Republicans. A number of them have claimed that Democrats from President Biden on down bear responsibility for this tragedy for spending the last three-plus years attacking Trump for his not-so-veiled authoritarian inclinations. That rings extremely hollow from a party with a smorgasbord of elected officials who openly traffic in violence. But on a more practical level, Trump’s diehards expect Democrats to ignore the facts. They expect us to ignore the mountain of evidence from the published record that shows Trump was ranting about the election being stolen from him when he knew or reasonably should have known that he had lost. Specifically, it has been amply demonstrated that as early as a week after the election, Trump had to have known he had lost. Specifically, Trump campaign lawyer Steffan Passantino told The New York Times that his colleagues had known by then that talk of Dominion-powered voting machines in Georgia switching votes—the very basis for the Big Lie—was complete, unadulterated bullshit. He certainly knew by November 20, when the Republican leaders of Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature told him that they had no information that could overturn Biden’s lead there. The lawmakers later told The Washington Post that they believed at that moment, they believed Trump’s “blinders had fallen off.” This is critical, because Trump absolutely, positively, could not win without holding Michigan. They also expect us to ignore people like Roger Stone. In the Danish documentary “A Storm Foretold,” a film that figured very prominently in the January 6 hearings, Stone was caught on tape admitting that he knew Trump had lost. 

Darrell Lucus wrote a solid Substack post on why it’s imperative to both call out Donald Trump for the bad he’s done while still extending grace to him in the wake of the assassination attempt against him Saturday.

[russell-crowe]

who's the best javert

ooooffff. as much as i love les mis, i might not be the best person to ask about this. my exposure is pretty limited—i've only listened to the official recordings available on (dutch) spotify, which, as i recently discovered, don’t include any of the broadway versions. i’ve also checked out the danish recording on youtube, but it’s not really my favorite.

so, with the limited javerts i've experienced through those recordings and the live-action films, i’m probably going to stick with the solid and reliable philip quast. i love how he translated the french version into english and became something of a blueprint for future javerts. his attention to line delivery is incredible, and every sound feels so in character. for me, a great javert is judged by how well they deliver javert's suicide, and in my opinion, philip quast nails it. a lot of current javerts tend to go a little overboard with the unraveling, while my beloved crowevert is a bit too restrained, so i think quast strikes a nice, elegant balance between the two. (and i have a weak spot for freek bartels javert but that is because he's pookie <3)

[pumpking64]

Got tagged by @imaginary-wanderer, thanks! :D

Tag some people you want to get to know better!

Relationship status: single

Song stuck in my head: Another Suitcase in Another Hall by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, translated by Kenneth Thordal and performed by Amanda Friis Jürgensen. As far as I know, there (sadly!) doesn’t exist a recording, so have Madonna’s English version instead, even though I genuinely liked the other one better

Last song I listened to: Rainbow High by Madonna

Three favourite foods: homemade Käsespätzle, koldskål with kammerjunkere, garlic bread (dear god I love garlic bread)

Last thing I googled: identification of the purple-edged copper (Lycaena hippothoe), which is a lovely butterfly I saw today!

Dream trip: birding and insect watching in Sápmi, eastern Siberia, or Mongolia (the latter is currently on the planning table!)

Anything I want right now: a recording of the Danish Evita musical! That would be pretty neat

Tagging: @sinnsenke @triscribe @dasloddl @batmanisagatewaydrug if you guys feel like it! Also I’m not in the loop so no idea if any of you have done this already :)

PS: here’s actually an updated link of a recording where you can hear the lovely Danish version of Don’t cry for me Argentina at 0:12, and here’s the original link again where you can hear the same thing around 4:57 in lower quality but with more instruments and the costume, both sung by Sara Viktoria Bjerregaard

[these-detestable-hands]

@beantothemax can't add videos in reblogs

This is all I have so far. Also sorry it's sideways, not fixing that.

1. Doing this on my tablet, tablet does not have screen recording so this is the best you're getting for now.

2. Could not figure out how to upload custom files so Phoenix is just in Hickfield clinic

Honestly only picked 3-4 cause of Diego but then almost didn't pick it because I realized that I do not know a good Danish translation for kitten that is just as horrible. Best I can think of is snuskebasse (snuggle-buddy, but like, the silliest possible synonyms of both words). Other options are smukke but that's just the equivalent of "hey gorgeous". Also pusling/pusser that kinda just mean darling but are, as you can probably tell, much worse. Pus (shortening of pusling/pusser) is also. Up there. Also worth noting I had to find those on google because I know nothing on this subject 💔💔💔

[mosraev]

Lyrics through the decade 5/10

I've decided to collect all the songs I've made through the last decade and share my favourite snippets with you guys. The pictures for the backgrounds will (as much as possible) be pictures I've taken the same year as the lyrics were written. The full lyrics may or may not be made official someday.

Part 5; 2017

After three years with a lot of productivity in the songwriting department now I felt myself not really finding that much inspiration to write songs anymore outside of summer camp so the songs from 2017-2019 are very limited. I also starting writing more Danish songs with a folkish twist which is very fun in retrospect

More info under the line

Stay creative, my fellow foxes 🦊💚

Song 1 (pic1+2); Jack Frost

This one might be a stretch since it was written somewhere between 2016-2017 yet I recorded a demo of it in summer of 17 so I've said it counts. Since watching Rise of the Guardians for the first time in January 2015 I've wanted to write a fansong about Jack Frost so after many version this is the one I still use today (with a few alterations).

Featured lyrics:

You said your mother is the moon [and] your father is the cold.

It must be hard to know when summer comes you'll be all alone

2. ((Extended)) You said the frost doesn't bite you but I see

it affects you more than anyone [else].

It hardens your eyes and freeze your blood,

you seem build of glass while drowning in the flood of your own melted heart.

Song 2 (pic3+4); Elverhøj

Right before summer camp this year I'd watched a folk metal band from Denmark called Huldre that I was so inspired by so I decided to try to make an acoustic folk metal inspired song, and so Elverhøj was born. It is a five verse fairytale about elven vampires and an unfortunate young couple being the vampires' victims. This is also a song I have the fininshed recording of so it might be coming for youtbue/soundcloud as well soon :3

Featured lyric:

Original (pic3); Gyldent hår slikker hendes silkeskuldre, en lilje mellem tidsler ude ved Elverhøj.

Translated to English (pic4); Golden hair carress her silky shoulder, [she's] a lilly amongst thistles by Elvenhill.

[chaoskiro]

Voiceteam round up part 1

Heyo! I participated in voiceteam this year and had so much fun crating so many different audio fanworks and I just kind of wanted to do a round-up post talking a bit about it because after round 1 I got quite terrible at showing them of to tumblr. Enjoy!

First a little ao3 milestone: I now have two pages of works on ao3! I went from under 20 works a month ago to 27 works all in all. Truly wild and now to the audio works of round 1:

My first published work of voiceteam was this lovely 5 minute long Check Please! multivoice podfic. I had read and absolutely loved it sometime after I signed up for voiceteam and knew that this was one I really wanted to do for this. I think it turned out really well especially because of hullomoon and dairaliz' amazing voice acting in it. It was an amazing start to voiceteam.

This alternative Robin coming out scene (as a sidestory to better by you, better than me) was made for the challenge immersion chamber where you had to watch the source material for 40 minutes and then right after record the podfic. It is the best voice acting I have ever done, I am genuinely just so proud of this one. (By the way the cover arts for both of these were done by the lovely Silvernightwalker)

Now this one is different. For the challenge two-timer I translated a cricketnationrise Check Please! fic to Danish and then recorded both that one and the original English one.

It was really fun translating it and surprisingly disturbing editing a piece where I spoke Danish. My voice is different and it felt weird listening to it, but it's also just a really cute NurseyDex fic.

This cute little NurseyDex fic was suggested for me to podfic by dairaliz (a fellow phoenicopter) and it is just a really cute soft 20 minute listen that I really enjoyed making and decided to draw coverart for myself because I love these guys.

Apropos things I've drawn, I also made this silly little comic about our team mascot Phoebe the Phoenicopter. I am having fun playing with my coloured pencils. I am fascinated by phoenicopter anatomy now.

And then to round of this round (bar another vertical limit chapter that I managed to get points for) is this really fun Elle's birthday podfic which all of the team that were active that round participated in. It is really fun and written specifically for audio.

So this was all published works I contributed my voice to the first round of voiceteam. I will make another post later showing of the cover art I've made for others and bragging about my much improved photopea skills. It is fun to me looking back on this and if anything caught your attention go check it out!

[hmel78]

In conversation with Petter Carlsen ...

Earlier in the year, you may remember that we caught up with ‘Long Distance Calling’, and discovered that they had recently asked one of Norway’s finest vocalists to join them as lead singer on their new album, and tour of Europe.  When we went along to a show, we also discovered that Petter was the opening act each night - at which point, it seemed like a great chance to grab him for a chat! Born in Alta, not so many years ago, Petter Carlsen has spent much of his life creating beautifully personal and atmospheric music, reflecting the cold, dark and wild surroundings of northern Norway. His debut album  “You Go Bird” was released in 2009 and turned on many Norwegian ears. His second album “Clocks Don’t Count” was released to incredible reviews in 2011 in Europe, through UK indie label Function Records. Subsequently Petter really began to gain ground as an artist, and has picked up fans all over the world whilst touring as special guest with UK band Anathema, Danish artist Tim Christensen and throughout clubs and festivals in Europe, September 2014 saw the release of his third album “Sirens”; produced by Wetle Holte (Eivind Aarset, Anja Garbarek) and mixed by Christer A. Cederberg (Anathema). With all of these musical achievements, and long distance touring, it would seem that Petter has travelled far in life -and with much more travelling on the horizon, we were curious to know, how he got from there, to the here and now ...

HR - What first interested you in music? 

PC - I became very fascinated by a lot of music at an early age, but the band that made me want to learn how to play the guitar was Metallica.  The first time I heard ‘Fade to Black’ I was blown to Pluto and back (via Jupiter). Then I had to put together a two week intense promo campaign towards my mother to get her to invest in a guitar and amp. She did.

HR - Who taught you to play?

PC  - James Hetfield! haha. Some friends of mine had a head start, and I learned a few chords from them. But mostly I listened to music and tried to play the songs with the help from my ears and hands and some tabs. However I early started exploring how to write my own songs. That was the main aim all the way. My first band was called ‘Burger Heads’ and our inspirations was Metallica and Paradise Lost + other heavy bands.

HR - Is there a lively music scene in Alta?

PC - Yes, and It’s growing. There are a lot of youngsters that are eager up there, more now than before I think. There are more songwriters now and less cover bands. It’s a small town, but there is something going on. We have a very nice festival in the summer called Aronnesrocken which was founded on the idea of creating a scene for the up and coming. We also have a place called ‘Huset’ which translates ‘The House’ where there are lots of creative and hungry souls making music, and dance and other forms of art.

HR - Blackmoon Magazine is sold in ‘Puska’s Music’, and we have heard a lot about it - how much of your youth did you spend in the Alta store? And as an adult too?!!! ;)

PC -The legend’s original name is Gunnar Schwaiger, but everybody calls him Puskas. The store was quite big in the ninetees, and I was there very often - always exploring new bands , trying to find gold. I did. I remember quite a few times sitting down by the bar with headphones on and being blown away by Metallica, Paradise Lost,  TNT, Seigmen etc. I got a fulltime job there in ’99 and quit school (university). I don’t regret it. I enjoyed working there very much.

The store is still going strong despite that Puskas lost his beloved wife and partner for the last years.

May it last forever!

HR - Given the wealth of music you had the opportunity to listen to - Who have been your biggest influences?

PC - Anathema. I discovered the ‘Eternity’ album at Puskas too :) In recent years we have become friends and we have worked together for many occasions. They are very generous. It’s family.

HR - And what about Norwegian musical heroes?

PC - Åge Aleksandersen, Kari Bremnes, Kvelertak, Wetle Holte, Aleksander Kostopoulos, Motorpsycho, Seigmen, Jaga Jazzist and a lot of people I’ve been so fortunate to work with!

HR - Living so far north, in Alta, did you feel distant from the opportunities that may exist in the music industry?

PC - No , I didn’t. Ignorance is bliss haha. However I was quite young when I moved to Oslo, and I was 25 when I went ‘all in’as a musician.  I didn’t dare at first. So I worked as a sound engineer for a long time before I was ready to give it a shot with my own music.

I have to mention that I don’t think coming from the outskirts is any set back, quite the contrary. I’ve had a tremendous support from people in my hometown.

I have always been back and forth between Alta and Oslo. I have a lot of contacts both here and there.  I found my musical companions in Oslo , but I also have quite a few in Alta. Besides that, I am really happy to travel outside Norway and do gigs.

HR - What do you feel was your first real success?

PC - hmmm. Going to the next round in UKM with ‘Burger Heads’ in ’96. UKM is a cultural event for young artists.

HR - That’s pretty impressive! You have another project ‘Pil and Bue’ - how is that going?  How did the partnership with Aleksander happen?

PC - Pil & Bue is going very well. We are both very excited about it and at the moment we are doing festival shows in Norway. We have done two albums so far and are starting to work on the next this autumn.

The reason we met was because I needed a stand in drummer on a couple of shows for my solo project. At last his name came up and he was free and keen on doing the gigs. At a shabby hotel room in Amsterdam we talked about how we began playing music. It was quite similar for us, we started out with heavier and more aggressive music. His first band was called ‘Sinnsyk Ugle’ (Insane Owl) and was a hardcore band. We decided then and there that we should start a rock band. A few weeks after we returned to Norway he called me to let me know that he’d bought a new Gretsch drum kit, perfect for our plan. And as we felt that we didn’t need any more members, the band was up and running in no time. It felt good going back to the roots, and it still does. I’m happy that we met, cause the collaboration is very good.

HR - You’re about to tour Norway too - how does it make you feel to play to your home town?

PC - It’s always a little different than other shows. For a long time I didn’t enjoy those shows as much as others, but I think that’s over. Now I am more relaxed about it. I feel that I have a lot of fans and supportive people there, making it a pleasure.

HR - How did you meet up with ‘Long Distance Calling’? 

PC - Zoetemeer, the Netherlands, October 2010. I was supporting Anathema on their entire european tour, and LDC joined in for some shows in NL and in Germany. We hit it off straight away and have been friends ever since.

HR - on tour you are both vocalist for them, and opening act with your solo material - Do you enjoy the experience as a whole?

PC - Yes, I do! We have a very good time on the road - even though I don’t speak german haha. The initial plan was to bring Pil & Bue as a support act but illness in Aleksander’s family made that impossible. How fragile we are. It was a bit challenging to do the solo support when people were expecting a rock show, but all in all it went well. I learned a lot on tour I think.

HR - Do you feel like you have to be two different people - to be able to perform as a solo artist, and as part of a band on the same bill?

PC - Good question. It’s two very different set-ups but I’m the one who’s singing, and singing both my own stuff and LDC’s stuff comes natural to me. Takes a lot of focusing though, but I enjoy the challenge. So I guess the answer is no.

HR - Will you be involved with their future projects?

PC - I don’t know at the moment. We talked about writing together ... Let’s see what happens. Would like to give it a go. I know that we’ll be doing a new tour early next year for the ‘Trips’ album.

HR - And as a solo artist, and also Pil & Bue - what’s next?

PC - On the solo side I am making a new record. It’s gonna be a little different this time. The plan is to release it next spring.

Pil & Bue is the main ship as of now. We are two people and we have a certain responsibility for each other. The solo part is easier to initiate when it’s a little quiet in the P&B camp.

HR - Which of your compositions are you most proud of - solo or with a band?

PC - Impossible to say. I have to say I’m proud of them all. That’s a good feeling.

HR - And If you hadn’t become a musician, what would you have done?

PC - There was no other option!

[randomvarious]

Today's mix:

Club Gorgeous.dk, Volume 5 by CK Feltman 2001 Trance / Progressive Trance

Folks, we are wading so deep into the early 2000s with this mix here, that when people were trying to figure out what to name stuff back then, they were doing that en vogue thing of adding internet domains to the end of them in order to make them sound infinitely cooler. For example, a venue in Copenhagen called Club Gorgeous sounds fine, but Club Gorgeous.dk? Now, that's cool as hell! 😎

Anyway, it's not around anymore, but apparently Club Gorgeous was quite a happening place for partying. I can't find any actual history on it, but it played host to some of trance's most well known DJs in the early aughts, including Tiësto, Armin van Buuren, Ferry Corsten, Judge Jules, and Johan Gielen, all of whom have sets recorded from the venue that you can find online.

And in the year 2000, Club Gorgeous also happened to launch its very own mix series too, called Academy of Trance, with Gielen kicking off the whole thing himself, followed by some lesser-known guys mixing the other six remaining volumes through 2002.

And one of these lesser-known guys was CK Feltman, someone whose pretty empty Discogs profile might suggest that all he ever really did in his music career was just this one-off mix, but he's actually an eclectic, longtime veteran DJ from Denmark, who, according to a Google-translated page from his booking agency that I was able to find, was once given a Danish DJ award for being the country's most festive person 😂.

And while Feltman bills himself as a hip hop, house, and techno DJ, here, with the only commercially released mix that he appears to have ever made, he did a pretty damn nice trance set in this fifth  installment of the Club Gorgeous.dk series from 2001. Feltman doesn't appear to have reached for any real obscurities in this, and he won't bowl you over with a totally transcendent set either, but for a guy whose thing doesn't really ever appear to have actually been trance in the first place, this is definitely better than a whole lot of other trance mixes that I've sat through. Some of his transitions may feel a bit sharp, but none of them are too awkward or ham-fisted, and both the selection and sequencing are pretty good, especially with the big and devastating back-half one-two punch of Push's "Legacy" and the "Wippenberg remix" of Ian Van Dahl's "Castles in the Sky," both of which are, just, simply, gorgeous pieces of high-powered and feelgood trance 🥰.

The only really regrettable thing about this whole mix is that I was only able to find it on YouTube, and let's just say that the audio quality isn't overly great. I don't know if that's how it sounds on the CD itself too, but I would hope not, because that'd be pretty shoddy work! I mean, it's not something that should totally dissuade you from putting this set on altogether, but it's still something that's definitely noticeable 😕.

Either way, though, if you want a well-put-together dose of some trance jams that'll transport you back to *only the good parts* of 2001, then this super ephemeral set from one of Denmark's longest lasting and most versatile DJs should, a bit unexpectedly, manage to do the trick for you. It's not phenomenal by any means, but it's still definitely a steady and quality mix.

And how can you not adore this rudimentary y2k-era 3D computer graphic cover art too, by the way?!

Listen to the full mix here.

Highlights:

Electrochemie LK - "When I Rock (Santos remix)" Safri Duo - "Samb-Adagio (Riva remix)" Tiësto - "Urban Train (original mix)" The Space Brothers - "Everywhere I Go (original vocal mix)" Da Hool - "Meet Her at the Loveparade (Fergie remix)" Marc et Claude - "Tremble (CJ Stone Remix)" Schiller - "Das Glockenspiel (Humate remix)" Push - "Legacy (club mix)" Ian van Dahl - "Castles in the Sky (Wippenberg remix)" Breeder - "The Chain (Babealicious mix)" Mauro Picotto - "Verdi (Megamind mix)"

[cytobi]

Lyrics, Languages & Luck

October 31, 2023

The Search

So a couple days ago I came across a nightcore song called How Do You Do. It might have been on tumblr, simply through my Spotify feed or maybe on TikTok, i don’t remember. Anyways, I listened to it on Spotify and the specific version on there is by Nightcore Fanatics. It’s different from most other versions that show up on Google & YouTube in one major way: it has a non-english part somewhere in the middle, sort of like a second chorus. The original song (well sort of, we’ll get into that) doesn’t have a part in another language. So i started looking for the lyrics.

First the obvious, the lyrics button in Spotify itself. Turns out the lyrics aren’t synced to the song and a major part, the part that I’m looking for, is missing and just represented with an ellipsis (…). Similar to how it still is here (as of October 31, 2023 ).

To Google we go, where I made a couple discoveries: - there’s a ton of different versions, both nightcore and not - it’s hard to find stuff because How Do You Do! - Roxette also exists - the two major non-nightcore versions are by Boom! and BeFour - neither has the non-english section - there’s lots of websites claiming to have the correct lyrics but they either have the standard english-only lyrics or the spotify-version with the ellipsis

The Surrender

At this point a was feeling like just leaving it be even though I had the song on repeat and really wanted to know what it says, but I decided to look a bit more. In the Wikipedia article about the BeFour song it said that the actual original song is a Russian song called Kanikuly by Bum, so I thought maybe it’s from that song. But no, it sounds completely different.

On Spotify it credits Kim Peter Göran Johansson Karlsson as the songwriter, which is an extremely Swedish name. Additionally it also sounded kind of Scandinavian to me (that’s probably just my bias due to the languages I’ve been exposed too and Caramelldansen) which led me to believe I was on the right track. However, my limited Swedish skills in conjunction with various translation and automatic speech recognition tools as well as conversations with multiple LLMs didn’t get me anywhere.

The credited record label is 1702219 Records DK which I thought might be Danish but it turns out DK just stands for DistroKid, a music distribution service. So no luck there.

I also found this version on SoundCloud which said it was Russian but I assumed that was wrong and probably just due to the original song mentioned earlier. It did not sound like Russian to me at all, probably because I’d never heard Russian in that high pitched nightcore voice.

So then I gave up.

The Resolution

Just today, three days after first looking into this I told a friend (who coincidentally knows a little Russian) about my search over lunch. He went on Spotify to listen to the song a few hours later and then sent me a text á la “Hey, it’s Russian, the lyrics are right here on Spotify”. At first I didn’t believe that because Spotify was obviously the first place I’d looked but it turns out they updated the lyrics very recently and they in fact now have the full (russian) lyrics. So know I present:

The Russian Lyrics to How Do You Do - Nightcore Fanatics

Превед медвед, Мы не виделись сто лет, Я везде тебя найду, How do you do you do

For those who can’t read Cyrillic:

Preved medved, My ne videlis' sto let, Ya vezde tebya naydu, How do you do you do

And in English:

Hello bear, We haven’t seen each other for a hundred years, I’ll find you everywhere, How do you do you do

The Backstory

The lyrics being updated exactly now sounds like a massive coincidence and a ton of luck for me of course but I’m not sure it is. I obviously somehow got to this song exactly now for some reason and i think that reason is an algorithm, maybe the Spotify recommendation system, maybe TikTok, maybe tumblr, maybe even YouTube, maybe multiple of them together. I’m pretty sure that song is going a bit viral somewhere right now and I’m just part of that wave which is why Spotify was getting much more traffic on that song and decided to prioritize the lyrics. Another example for how marvelous the internet really is.

I also found a reddit thread about exactly this today where the guy transcribing the lyrics asks for help which is kind of funny.

Finally, what does Hello bear actually mean? Well, it stems from a big Russian meme about a peculiar picture. In this slang words are purposefully misspelled (”Preved” instead of “Privet”) which then leads to the according to the “cringe af” lyrics. This is a good starting point if you want to read more.

[envihellbender]

A slightly obsessive and deranged adult Dec rescuing teen Mads from his father’s? :3c

OCs: Mathias “Mads” Iversen, Declan Gerritz

AU: teen!Mads (14), canon age Declan (24)

Content: first meeting, parental abuse, sfw (I mean, maybe not cause violence but I think it’s fine.)

(Image from Kåre Hedebrant Let the Right One In, FC for young Mads)

—

Declan wasn’t entirely sure why he installed the spyware on Lukas Iversen’s computer, he supposed it was primarily revenge. He was perfectly capable of doing his work from his flat back home in England, but apparently Lukas enjoyed dragging Declan all the way over to the middle of nowhere in Denmark. It was from the comfort of his hotel room that he first noticed the teenage boy. He saw him sat on the living room floor whilst Lukas was at work, his arms wrapped around his legs and was far too close to crinkling television set. It was strange, Declan thought, Lukas owned the biggest tech company in Europe and yet his home was small and furnished as if it was almost thirty years ago. Lukas also hadn’t mentioned a son, not that there was any reason for him to, he supposed. It did set off something inside him however, he wasn’t sure what but his facial burns itched and a familiar chemical smell filled his nostrils.

Later that night, Declan laid back on his double bed, with the laptop he built on his knee. He had just finished a match on League of Legends when he minimised the screen and precisely why he did was blown from his mind when the video surveillance he set up blared from the corner of his screen right into his mind. He maximised it to be certain he was correct, he’d set up the spyware expecting to feel superior as he found out Lukas’s dirty little secrets. Instead he felt sick to his stomach. Right there, in Lukas’s living room he was stood over his son. The small teenage boy was curled up, his head beneath his arms and blood soaking through his white t-shirt. Above him, the gigantic Lukas stood, breathing heavily, beads of sweat covering his forehead and soaking his light blue button up short. Declan felt sick to his stomach as he watched Lukas continue to beat his son. After a while he stopped, he left the room and returned a moment later having splashed water over his face, it dripped down just like the sweat had - drenching his shirt as he painted heavily. He grabbed his son by his hair, and dragged him out of the room. Declan couldn’t watch any more. He slammed his laptop lid shut and sat in silence, his hands shaking as he grew dizzy.

What happened next was obvious, really. It was the only thing Declan could do. It would be difficult, he hated going outside and feeling stares burning into his skin but he didn’t have much choice. He spent that night searching through Glacier Tech’s records as well as Lukas Iversen’s personal ones, by the morning he had a plan of action. He knew Iversen’s schedule and knew precisely when to strike. He wasn’t stupid, he knew he wouldn’t get away with just storming in and kidnapping a minor. For one thing, he didn’t want the kid to be scared of him to. No, first things first was he had to get inside the house and scope out the place. Ideally, he’d show the boy he wasn’t a threat. If he wasn’t able to do that… well, he’d just have to take the kid by force. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.

Declan was sleep deprived and chugging down an energy drink - at least he assumed it was, the text was in Danish but Google translate helped - when he reached the house. He wore his navy hoodie and the hood was pulled forward, it and his hair covering his scar. He had waited for Lukas’s care to leave, and paused for another five minutes before approaching. He knocked on the door, and waited patiently. He hadn’t expected Mathias to open the door, but it was worth a try. He took out his lock-pick and got to work, he let out a snort of laughter when he managed to click the lock open. Apparently Lukas wasn’t as smart or prepared as he thought he was. He carefully stepped in, he knew the layout very well. The teenage boy had a bedroom downstairs at the back of the house, but given how small it was Declan expected him to be in the living room just at the end of the hall. He was surprised to discover that it was empty, and before he could check anywhere else he felt something sharp pressing into his back.

“Få fanden ud af mit hus,” a soft, quiet voice spat from behind him. Declan’s spine stiffened and he swallowed.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said immediately. The knife in his back didn’t move but there was silence in response, Declan immediately berated himself. He hadn’t prepared for the fact the boy might not speak English. He raised both of his hands and turned round, swallowing nervously as he realised the boy was an inch or so taller than him despite being nearly a decade younger. He did however lower his knife and his blonde eyebrows furrowed, Declan thankfully he’d the fact he did not look like a threat on his side. He kept one arm raised as he slipped his phone out of his pocket. The boy nervously raised the knife again before Declan held it up and began typing into it. He opened Google translate, and thought for a moment before typing: I’m not going to hurt you. He passed it to the boy, who reluctantly took the item, his eyes narrowed and head tilted as if he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. He could however read what was on the screen. He looked at it bewildered, and Declan used a pale finger to press on the screen bringing up the keyboard. The boy slowly began to type something in reply. Declan bit his bottom lip in an attempt to not be frustrated and impatient. He took the phone and saw the small words on his screen: what are you doing here? Declan sighed in relief as he took his phone back to reply. It seemed they had a way to communicate.

I want to help you. My names Declan. What’s yours? He smiled as he passed the phone back but looked away with burning red cheeks as the boy simply scowled.

Mathias. Help how? But his silver eyes softened as he looked back up and his scowl became a confused frown

How would you like to leave this house? Declan asked hopefully, but Mathias shook his head before he started typing again.

I can’t leave. Papa would kill me.

I’ll have you out of here before he knows you’re gone.

Why should I trust you?

Declan paused at that. He didn’t have an answer, he started typing and deleting what he had to say several times.

I don’t know. He began, the only plan he had was honesty. Hopefully that’d work, because if he had to drug and drag Mathias to safety he would. But if I wanted to kidnap you, I could have drugged you and had you out of here before you realised. You can keep that knife on you if it makes you feel better. You could beat me in a fight worst comes to worst. I just want to help you. Declan stared as he saw Mathias read the message and suspected the paragraph wasn’t translated too well, but eventually he nodded and began typing with a small, satisfied smile on his lips.

What do you want me to do?

I’ll be here tomorrow with a bag. You pack everything you want to keep. And I have two plane tickets for us back to go back to England.

Why are you helping me?

Because I wished someone had helped me. As soon as Declan said it he regretted it, it sounded cheesy to him but Mathias grinned as he read it. There was a shared understanding between them, even if they couldn’t quite understand each other.

[blueiscoool]

Silver Coin Featuring Famous Viking King Discovered in Hungary

A metal detectorist in Hungary has unearthed a tiny silver coin marked with the name of a famous Viking king that was lost almost 1,000 years ago.

A metal detectorist has discovered a small silver coin marked with the name of a famous Viking king.  However, it was unearthed not in Scandinavia, but in southern Hungary, where it was lost almost 1,000 years ago.

The find has baffled archaeologists, who have struggled to explain how the coin might have ended up there — it's even possible that it arrived with the traveling court of a medieval Hungarian king.

The early Norwegian coin, denominated as a "penning," was not especially valuable at the time, even though it's made from silver, and was worth the equivalent of around $20 in today's money.

"This penning was equivalent to the denar used in Hungary at the time," Máté Varga, an archaeologist at the Rippl-Rónai Museum in the southern Hungarian city of Kaposvár and a doctoral student at Hungary's University of Szeged, told Live Science in an email. "It was not worth much — perhaps enough to feed a family for a day."

Metal detectorist Zoltán Csikós found the silver coin earlier this year at an archaeological site on the outskirts of the village of Várdomb, and handed it over to archaeologist András Németh at the Wosinsky Mór County Museum in the nearby city of Szekszárd.

The Várdomb site holds the remains of the medieval settlement of Kesztölc, one of the most important trading towns in the region at that time. Archaeologists have made hundreds of finds there, including dress ornaments and coins, Varga said.

There is considerable evidence of contact between medieval Hungary and Scandinavia, including Scandinavian artifacts found in Hungary and Hungarian artifacts found in Scandinavia that could have been brought there by trade or traveling craftsmen, Varga said.

But this is the first time a Scandinavian coin has been found in Hungary, he said.

Who was Harald Hardrada?

The coin found at the Várdomb site is in poor condition, but it's recognizable as a Norwegian penning minted between 1046 and 1066 for King Harald Sigurdsson III — also known as Harald Hardrada — at Nidarnes or Nidaros (opens in new tab), a medieval mint at Trondheim in central Norway.

The description of a similar coin (opens in new tab) notes that the front features the name of the king "HARALD REX NO" — meaning Harald, king of Norway — and is decorated with a "triquetra," a three-sided symbol representing Christianity's Holy Trinity.

The other side is marked with a Christian cross in double lines, two ornamental sets of dots, and another inscription naming the master of the mint at Nidarnes.

Harald Hardrada ("Hardrada" translates as "hard ruler" in Norwegian) was the son of a Norwegian chief and half-brother to the Norwegian king Olaf II, according to Britannica (opens in new tab). He lived at the end of the Viking Age, and is sometimes considered the last of the great Viking warrior-kings.

Traditional stories record that Harald fought alongside his half-brother at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, where Olaf was defeated and killed by the forces of an alliance between Norwegian rebels and the Danish; Harald fled in exile after that, first to Russia and then to the Byzantine Empire, where he became a prominent military leader.

He returned to Norway in 1045 and became its joint king with his nephew, Magnus I Olafsson; and he became the sole king when Magnus died in battle against Denmark in 1047.

Harald then spent many years trying to obtain the Danish throne, and in 1066 he attempted to conquer England by allying with the rebel forces of Tostig Godwinson, who was trying to take the kingdom from his brother, King Harold Godwinson.

But both Harald and Tostig were killed by Harold Godwinson's forces at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in northern England in 1066; whereupon the victor and his armies had to cross the country in just a few weeks before the Battle of Hastings against William of Normandy — which Harold Godwinson lost, and with it the kingdom of England.

Medieval travels

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The penning found at Várdomb could have been lost more than 100 years after it was minted, but it's more likely that it was in circulation for between 10 and 20 years, Varga and Németh said.

That dating gives rise to a possible connection with a medieval Hungarian king named Solomon, who ruled from 1063 to 1087.

According to a medieval Hungarian illuminated manuscript known as the "Képes Krónika" (or "Chronicon Pictum" in Latin), Solomon and his retinue (a group of advisors and important people) encamped in 1074 "above the place called Kesztölc" — and so the archaeologists think one of Solomon's courtiers at that time may have carried, and then lost, the exotic coin.

"The king's court could have included people from all over the world, whether diplomatic or military leaders, who could have had such coins," Varga and Németh said in a statement.

Another possibility is that the silver coin was brought to medieval Kesztölc by a common traveler: the trading town "was crossed by a major road with international traffic, the predecessor of which was a road built in Roman times along the Danube," the researchers said in the statement.

"This road was used not only by kings, but also by merchants, pilgrims, and soldiers from far away, any of whom could have lost the rare silver coin," they wrote.

Further research could clarify the origins of the coin and its connection with the site; while no excavations are planned, Varga said, field surveys and further metal detection will be carried out at the site in the future.

By Tom Metcalfe.