The Dead Walk Among the Living, Roman Style

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Some modern holidays, including Halloween and Dia de los Muertos, are rooted in the idea that on certain special occasions the spirits of the dead can return and walk among the living. The living can join the celebrations by disguising themselves to mingle with the spirits.

The ancient Romans did not celebrate a holiday quite like our modern ones, but the idea that the dead could still be present in the living world, and that living people can use masks and costumes to blur the line between living and dead, is one that they would have recognized. Here is a detail of Roman funeral customs reported by the Greek historian Polybius:

After burying the body with the customary rites, they place an image of the deceased in the most prominent part of the house with a wooden shrine around it. This image is a mask of the deceased’s face, shaped and painted to be an extraordinary likeness of the dead person. They display these masks with great reverence on public occasions, and whenever some prominent member of the household dies, they are worn by participants in the funeral procession, whoever seems to best match the original’s appearance in shape and size. They also don appropriate clothing: if the ancestor was a consul or praetor, a toga with purple edges; if a censor, a wholly purple toga; if he had celebrated a triumph, a toga worked through with gold.

Polybius, History of Rome 6.53

(My own translation)

Our modern traditions are different (these Roman worthies weren’t going trick-or-treating), but there is something ancient about the feeling that, on certain special occasions, the line between living and dead may not be quite as clear as we think.

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.

Grammatically Female Dwarves in Tolkien

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Jimtheviking on Tumblr wrote about how the Dwarven names in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit connect with Old Norse, especially Dwarf names listed in the poem Völuspá.

According to Jimtheviking, Tolkien chose a number of names from Old Norse and tweaked those names in an interesting way. Namely, Tolkien grasped Old Norse grammar well enough to know that the omission of one n from a name ending in –inn changed it from masculine to feminine. To quote Jimtheviking:

“Well, I give you the names of the Dwarves from the Hobbit, as they appear in Dvergatal (stanzas 14-16) and in the order they appear:

“Dvalins, Dáinn, Bívurr, Bávurr, Bömburr, Nóri, Óinn, Þorinn, Þráinn, Fíli, Kíli, Glóinn, Dóri, Óri

“Now, in the Hobbit, they’re named as follows:

“Dwalin, Dáin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Óin, Thorin, Thráin, Fíli, Kíli, Glóin, Dori, Ori.

“Now, you notice something with the way those names got changed? That’s right, he changed the masculine -inn definite suffix to -in, which is feminine.

“That means that, at least grammatically, Dwalin, Dáin, Thorin, Thráin, and Glóin are female Dwarves.”


Then, moving on from purely linguistic, Jimtheviking continues with an intriguing argument:

“Since we know Tolkien was meticulous about his grammar, this was done most likely as an in-joke […] [emphasis original]

“But there’s a not-inconceivable chance that the Dwarves were using the masculine pronouns in Westron because that’s what the Men who met them used, despite the fact that a third of the company was female, and hey, it’s kinda neat to think he wrote a bunch of Dwarf-ladies going on an adventure.”

It is really interesting, isn’t it, to posit male and female Dwarves in Tolkien’s adventures?!

500px Alexander Turchanin Thorin Cosplay


Poking around, I found versions of Völuspá that differ from the Dwarf list as given by Jimtheviking*. Not just the list itself, but also spellings differ depending on the edition you’re using (which isn’t rare at all in philology). Nevertheless, the main point stands: Tolkien changed names that had –inn in the original to just –in in English.

Of all Tolkien’s Dwarf names, he seems to have adopted Durin, Dwalin, Náin, Dáin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori, Óin, Thorin, Thrór, Thráin, Fíli, Kíli, Fundin, Náli, Oakenshield (Eikinskjaldi, cf. Icelandic ‘oak shield’), Glóin, Dori, and Ori from the Völuspá.

Of them, Durinn, Dvalinn, Náinn, Dáinn, Óinn, Þorinn, Þráinn, Fundinn, and Glóinn are all originally spelled with a double n. (In addition, there’s a change from a double r to a single one in Bívurr / Bívǫrr, Bávurr / Bávǫrr, and Bömburr / Bǫmburr, which Jimtheviking does also comment on.)

Anyway, the whole thing kinda reminds me of the first time I read The Lord of the Rings, decades ago now. I was young enough that it was in translation, which means the young me ploughing through LotR was quite confused over the gender of some characters. The Finnish language doesn’t have grammatical gender, you see. Instead of he or she, we just have one third-person singular pronoun, hän, which is used of all people regardless of sex, gender, age, kinship, marital status, whatever, just like the English third-person plural they is. Normatively, in Finnish everyone is a hän.

Even at that young age, I knew that (apart from Astrid Lindgren) most of the publications, including those for the younger audience, centered boys and male characters. Contextually, I could tell that Frodo and Sam were male. Same for Legolas and Gimli, Aragorn and Boromir, and Gandalf and Elrond. Arwen, Galadriel, and Eowyn were female.

But Glorfindel? Maybe male, I thought, but there is nothing explicit at all in the Finnish translation. And Merri and Pippin? Somehow at that time I couldn’t make them out at all; indeed, they’re the two characters whose gender confused the young me the most.

Having grown up reading the Moomins, Pippi Longstocking, Ronia the Robber’s Daughter, The Famous Five series, and The Dark Is Rising sequence, I saw nothing odd in girls and women also going on adventures. So I thought it was quite plausible that Merri and Pippin could be female, and was too young to read all of the textual cues that imply they aren’t. (Remember that in Finnish the gender-neutral pronoun hän gives absolutely no clue whatsoever about anyone’s gender.)

The possibility of a linguistic in-joke regarding these Dwarven names really tickles the imagination and would be completely plausible of Tolkien. Interestingly, the name Gandalf also originally comes from the Dvergatal (see e.g. stanza 12 in Pettit’s 2023 edition, which lists the name as Gandálfr). A Dwarven Gandalf would, indeed, give quite a different vibe to LotR.

And now I kinda want new movies of The Hobbit, with the amazing attention to detail that Weta lavished on the effects and props in Peter Jackson’s versions, but with more heedful writing and with half the Dwarves in the party female. That would be a truly intriguing take!

Images: Thorin cosplay by Alexander Turchanin on 500px.

*) Dwarves are named in stanzas 10-16, starting with Mótsognir and Durinn. The undated Völuspá version linked to by Jimtheviking, edited by Guðni Jónsson, includes more rows than the newest edition I found. The extra lines must come from (an)other extant version(s) of the text.

Names in the undated Völuspá version linked to by Jimtheviking (ed. Guðni Jónsson):

Durin (stanza 10: Durinn)

Dwalin (11: Dvalinn)

Náin (11: Náinn)

Dáin (11: Dáinn)

Bifur (11: Bívurr)

Bofur (11: Bávurr)

Bombur (11: Bömburr)

Nori (11: Nóri)

Óin (11: Óinn)

Thorin (12: Þorinn)

Thrór (12: Þrár)

Thráin (12: Þráinn)

Fíli (13)

Kíli (13)

Fundin (13: Fundinn)

Náli (13)

Oakenshield (13, 16: Eikinskjaldi)

Glóin (15: Glóinn)

Dori (15: Dóri)

Ori (15: Óri)

Names in Edward Pettit’s 2023 edition of the Völuspá:

Durin (stanza 10: Durinn)

Dwalin (11: Dvalinn)

Bifur (11: Bívǫrr)

Bofur (11: Bávǫrr)

Bombur (11: Bǫmburr)

Nori (11: Nóri)

Thrain (12: Þráinn)

Thorin (12: Þorinn)

Thrór (12: Þrór)

Fíli (13)

Kíli (13)

Fundin (13: Fundinn)

Náli (13)

Oakenshield (13, 16: Eikinskjaldi)

Gloin (15: Glói)

Note that Pettit’s version doesn’t include Náin, Dáin, Óin, Dori, or Ori.

On, of, and about languages.

ESA’s Video Flying Over Xanthe Terra on Mars

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The European Space Agency has released a new three-plus-minute Mars flyover video based on images transmitted by the Mars Express orbiter.

According to Phys.org,

ESA’s Mars Express takes viewers on a flight over Xanthe Terra, a highland region just north of the equator. The film is a mosaic created from images taken during single-orbit observations by Mars Express’s High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC). The images were combined with topography information from a digital terrain model (DTM) to create a three-dimensional view of the Martian landscape. The main feature in this video is Shalbatan Vallis, a 1300 km-long (~800 mi) outflow channel that transitions from the Southern Highlands to the Northern Lowlands.

ESA Xanthe Terra Mars Express Screencap

(Note: The image above is merely a screencap; follow the text links to see the video on ESA’s site.)

There are two amazing things about this video. First, as large as the area clearly is, compared to the rotating image of the planet in the very beginning, the features we see are completely dwarfed by Valles Marineris (the huge canyon south of Xanthe Terra). And second, the amount of detail is surprisingly ample. I wonder how much an exogeologist would be able to deduce?

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again: it is a very good time to be a space geek. 🙂

(Also interesting to me, at least, is that since the video is silent, my brain started playing the main theme from the movie Gravity. Space imagery must be accompanied by majestic music now?)

Found via File 770.

Out There highlights intriguing art, places, phenomena, flora, and fauna.

Tell, Don’t Show

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“Show, don’t tell” is one of the old chestnuts of writing advice. Like most such nuggets of wisdom, it has value, but there are also good cases for ignoring it, even sometimes doing the exact opposite.

Telling, as a writer, means giving the reader a direct and straightforward description of a character’s thoughts, emotions, or personality. Showing means providing the reader with tangible evidence of the same things without stating them outright. “She was nervous” is telling. “She fidgeted and took hesitant, aimless steps while her eyes darted about, refusing to focus on anything in the room” is showing.

Showing is valuable in writing because it engages the reader’s imagination. It makes the characters’ experiences more relatable, but also requires the reader to pay attention and figure things out for themselves. When we read about a character fidgeting and taking hesitant steps, we discover her nervousness for ourselves rather than have it served to us. Making little discoveries like this is part of the joy of reading, and that joy is diminished if we have nothing to figure out.

While it’s useful to show your readers things, there is also a good case for telling things sometimes. You don’t want your readers to have to figure out everything for themselves. For one thing, that’s exhausting. For another, it divides your readers’ attention and keeps them from focusing on the elements of the story that you want them to pay attention to. It’s perfectly fine to write “She was nervous,” if the character’s nervousness isn’t the point of the scene.

Jane Austen uses telling rather than showing to excellent effect in her novel Emma. The very first line of the novel tells us exactly who Emma is:

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

As the novel goes on, we get plenty of chances to observe these qualities in Emma for ourselves, but Austen starts by telling us straight out who her heroine is. By giving us this portrait of Emma up front, Austen frees us from having to figure her out for ourselves and allows us to focus our attention on the world around her, discovering the characters who make up her life bit by bit through their own interactions with handsome, clever, rich Emma.

At the same time, the straightforward way Austen introduces Emma may trip us up. As the novel unfolds, Emma discovers that she has misunderstood who her friends and neighbors in Highbury really are. By telling us about Emma instead of showing her to us, Austen lulls us as readers into expecting similarly straightforward introductions to the other characters, and so we get to go along with Emma’s own discoveries rather than getting ahead of her.

Showing is a skill you need as a fiction writer, but knowing when to tell is a valuable skill, too.

How It Happens looks at the inner workings of various creative efforts.

Star Trek: Discovery Theme as Disco!

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There’s a brilliant version of Star Trek: Discovery theme—in disco style:

Star Trek Discovery Theme but the theme is DISCO by Craven In Outer Space on YouTube

It really packs a lot into its minute-and-a-half running time. I can’t figure out a single thing that’s extraneous or out of place; everything fits either into disco or Discovery, even the tempo change at the end. Ha! 🙂

Found via Daniël Franke on Mastodon.

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Homemade Bagels

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A lot of international foods are available now in Finland that may have been hard to find decades ago, but one food that is still elusive is bagels. While there are some bakeries making good bagels here, they are few and far between, and certainly not as convenient as our neighborhood bagel shop was back when we lived in Massachusetts. So I have decided to try my hand at making bagels myself.

I started by looking through my cookbooks. Astonishingly, there’s not a single bagel recipe in any of the cookbooks on my shelf. Even my trusty old Joy of Cooking let me down here, so to the Internet it was! Fortunately, there’s no end of bagel recipes online. After looking at a number of recipes, I settled on one that seemed straightforward and clear, this New York-style bagel recipe from the Sophisticated Gourmet. (One thing I particularly appreciated about this recipe is that it gives both American and metric units. I’ve gotten used to doing conversions, but it’s nice when you don’t have to.) With that recipe as a base and a few tweaks to suit my own kitchen, I made my first test batch of bagels.

And they were good!

So, here’s my process, in case you want to try the same. This recipe is for a plain white wheat bagel without inclusions or toppings. Adjust as you like to make your own preferred type of bagel.

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Thumbs & Ammo Nopes Out of Gunplay

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The other day, I was rummaging around in some old stuff when I found this. The blog Thumbs & Ammo collected movie posters or screencaps with firearms replaced by a thumbs-up.

Some of my favorites are below.

Thumbs n Ammo Pierce Brosnan
Pierce Brosnan as James Bond by Pulai A. via Thumbs & Ammo
Thumbs n Ammo Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne in Matrix Reloaded by Jonathon J. via Thumbs & Ammo
Thumbs n Ammo Sigourney Weaver
Sigourney Weaver and Carrie Henn in Aliens by Elliot D. via Thumbs & Ammo

And saving the best for last:

Thumbs n Ammo Harrison Ford
Harrison Ford in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope by James L. via Thumbs & Ammo

Epically hilarious! 😀 Looks like the blog hasn’t been updated in a good while, though. Shame.

Images via Thumbs & Ammo

Hey, look! We found a thing on the internet! We thought it was cool, and wanted to share it with you.

Quotes: Mistakes in Lesser Matters

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The Roman writer Vitruvius had some opinions about public art, expressed here in a critique of the city of Alabanda in western Anatolia, modern-day Turkey:

The people of Alabanda are sharp enough when it comes to affairs of state, but they have been found foolish for their mistakes in lesser matters, since the statues in their gymnasium are all arguing lawsuits, but the ones in their forum are holding the discus, running, or playing ball.

Vitruvius, On Architecture 7.5.6

(My own translation)

Vitruvius’ gripe about the statues in Alabanda may seem odd at first. Why is it foolish to have statues of people playing ball in the forum? Why shouldn’t there be statues of people pleading cases in the gymnasium? Vitruvius’ point is that the statues the Alabandans chose for their important public spaces didn’t match the functions of those spaces.

The gymnasium was a place for the men of the city to socialize and spend their leisure time, but above all to exercise and improve their bodies. The forum was a public space that served many functions, but importantly among them it served as a courtroom for trying legal cases. Vitruvius was clearly of the opinion that art in public spaces should mirror the functions of those spaces: statues of lawyers belong in the forum, and statues of people playing sports go in the gymnasium. In his opinion, the Alabandans made the foolish mistake of setting up the right statues in the wrong places.

Vitruvius’ text is a useful indicator that people in antiquity thought about the visual culture around them and had opinions about the appropriateness of particular subjects, themes, or styles for particular spaces. You couldn’t just slap any old statue anywhere you liked; there were rules to be followed, and the Alabandans had failed to follow them.

At the same time, Vitruvius’ remark is also useful evidence that not everyone shared the same opinions. Vitruvius may not have appreciated the Alabandans’ choices for public statuary, but the Alabandans clearly saw no problem with them. Maybe they thought that lawyers arguing in court should be inspired by the vigor of athletes or that people exercising in the gymnasium should be reminded to also improve their minds like the great orators of the past. We don’t know for sure, but it’s good to be reminded not only that people in the past had opinions about the world they lived in, but that those opinions could and did differ. What one person considered an artistic mistake was for someone else a sensible decorating plan.

When we read ancient sources, it is important to remember that they represent one person’s perspective, not necessarily a universal ideal.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

When the So-Called High Art Falls Entirely Flat

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I’m not a huge high art aficionado, but at times it can be fun to visit a museum. Then there’s art I do not understand. At all.

Content note: this post contains one f bomb.

Case in point: the Ouroboros Steak, a project designed by Andrew Pelling, Orkan Telhan, and Grace Knight. On the Design Museum website, the project is described like this:

“Ouroboros Steak is a DIY meal kit for growing gourmet steaks from of one’s own cells. It comes as a starter kit of tools, ingredients and instructions that enable users to culture their own cells into mini steaks, without causing harm to animals.

“Commissioned for the exhibition Designs for Different Futures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the project is a critical commentary on the lab-grown meat industry and critiques the industry’s claims to sustainability.”

Judging by the museum website metadata, the… product… is also listed for the 2020 Beazley Designs of the Year competition.

Err, what? Art? Product? Gourmet?!?!?!? What the fuck did I just read???

I… just… What?!? I can’t even decide whether the name is clever or artsy-fartsy pseudo-intellectual crap. Or whether the project might be just a boredom-induced crude joke??? If it were, it would be in highly, EXTREMELY poor taste to not take the health implications of cannibalism into account DURING a pandemic. Unless that’s supposed to be a part of the project???

Just can’t fathom this, in any shape, size, or form!

(WHAT?!????)

Image via Designmuseum.org

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Imagine Being Surrounded by Maps

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The Villa Farnese is a gorgeous Renaissance palace in central Italy, built in the early 1500s and richly elaborated with sculptures and frescoes. One of the rooms in the villa features a map of the world filling the wall at one end, with detailed maps of the continents on the other walls, under a ceiling decorated with constellations. Standing in this room, the magnates of the villa could see the whole world, as it was known to scientists and cartographers of the day.

The map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Etienne (Li) via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)

Looking at this space, it occurs to me that a room like this would make an excellent setting for a scene in a fantasy or historical story. Many such stories play out over long distances, and knowing how one territory or city relates to the others around it as well as to the shapes of the land can make a huge difference in understanding the stakes and possibilities in play.

Africa, from the map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Jean-Pierre Dalbèra via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)

In a visual medium like tv or movies, it could be very helpful to have a visual in the background while characters are discussing important movements or plans, but even in text, putting your characters in such a place could give you an opportunity to describe them looking at the map, tracing routes of travel or the borders between nations, and arguing for their plans.

Europe, from the map room at Villa Farnese, photograph by Ulrich Mayring via Wikimedia (Caprarola, Italy; completed 1574; fresco; by Giovanni Antonio de Varese)

Maps make everything better!

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.