Back in Bø

The rest of London was fine, and I was glad to get to see the Sutton Hoo burial display at the British Museum.  I was glad to get out of the big city and be back in rural Norway.  Getting back to Bø was not as easy as we thought it might be.  When we got to the airport it turned out that there were no trains going that far, and the only bus going to Bø was leaving from Notodden and we couldn't get there in time to make it.  So what we did was take a train to Skien, and then walked across the WHOLE city (the train station was not on the side of the town that we needed to be on) and then headed out on highway 36, hitchhiking to Bø.  We actually didn't have to go very far before a nice, what looked like retired, couple picked us up.  They said that they were only going to Ulefoss, but decided that they had to drive us not only all the way to Bø, but to our respective dorms!  They were very very nice.  It was a pleasant surprise since we had made up our minds that we were going to just walk all the way back to Bø.  

Since I've been back in Bø I've mostly just been trying to hang out with everybody before they leave.  Chenoa and Heather are gone, as well as Teddi and Esther.  Most of the international students are gone as well.  The Americans left are me, Gustie, Adam, Sarah and Nichole.  We've been having communal dinners to try to get rid of all of the food that we have left.  

I just finished watching all of the seasons of Seinfeld, and am working on reading a couple of books while I'm still here.  I have been trying to read bits of the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The Children of Hurin, all in bokmål.  I have also sort of started the nynorsk translation of the Lord of the Rings, which is very interesting.  In the translator's comments, it is noted that Tolkien, who claims to be translating the story from an ancient lost document (a method known as "pseudo-translation"), has dimmed down the dialectal variation amongst the characters.  The translator says that he has actually made the variation larger than Tolkien allowed it to be, due to the fact that there is enormous dialectal variation in Norway, and that it is more easily understood by the entire Norwegian speaking population (employing obscure dialectal English words would have made reading LotR very difficult indeed).  So, reading this translation will be very fun and challenging.  

In addition to reading, I have also been doing a fair share of flyfishing.  Last week I went down to the sports store and asked what some good flies were for the area, and I was suggested three.  One was a sort of elk-hair-caddis streamer, another was like a royal wulf, but with brown wings, and another was a sort of mayfly imitation it looked like, with wrapped with green thread around the hook.  This last one has been the most successful one (I actually haven't caught anything on the other ones, though I lost the caddis pretty fast), and I bought three more this week.  Here are some fishing pictures.  I'm particularly proud of the first fish in the series, because I caught him using my recently acquired yet poorly executed roll-cast.  It's a cast used when there are trees right behind you and you are unable to do the typical back-and-forth casting used for flyfishing.  

Maldon

The next day I thought that I would take a trip out of the big city to see something that was on the top of my list.  That would be the city of Maldon, near which a battle being the source for one of the most important Old English poems (fragment of a poem really) took place.  The battle of Maldon took place on August 10th 991, alongside the river Blackwater.  There was a group of vikings who had camped at Northey Island and were attempting to raid the area.  Beorhtnoth, the Ealdorman of Essex led the defending English forces from the south bank of the Blackwater.  Rather than try to pay a ransom immediately to try to pay off the vikings, he told their messenger that he would rather fight than cowardly hand over treasure.  Later when the tide had gone out, in his "overmastering pride", he gave too much land for the vikings to fight on.                

Ðā se eorl ongan for his ofermōde
ālȳfan landes tō fela lāþere ðēode.
Ongan ċeallian þā ofe cald wæter
Byrhtelmes bearn(beornas ġehlyston):
"Nū ēow is ġerȳmed; gāð riċene tō ūs,
guman tō gūþe. God ān wāt
hwā þǣre wælstōwe wealdan mōte."

Then the earl began in all his pride
to give too much land to the hateful people.
He began to call then over the cald water,
Byrhthelmes son, warriors listened:
"Now the way is cleared for you all; come quickly to us,
men to battle, God alone knows
who can wield the battlefield."

Well, the battle did not end well for the English.  Byrhtnoth died, and so did his men defending him.  The famous lines at the end of the poem are thought to capture the northern spirit of fighting to the last defending or avenging your lord.  

"Hige sceal þē heardra, heorte þē cēnre,

mōd sceal þē māre, þē ūre mægen lȳtlað."

Thought shall be harder, heart the keener,

spirit shall be more, as our might lessens.

There wasn't actually too much to see in Maldon.  There was a statue of Byrhtnoth with some information about the battle.

Then I took a walk on a dike alongside the river to where the causeway was, and where the battle most likely happened.  

It was a beautiful day out, so I sat on the dike and ate lunch, sadly, where all of the English fought and died over a thousand years ago.  Then I made my way back to meet Chenoa and Trygve in London, and to see some museums.