Veizla

[jack]

Contributing to the faff was the Veizla announcement. The good news is it's sent. (As some of you have heard it was almost certainly going to be, it's confirmed for Sat 24th June.)

I am annoyed to find that my first two email clients cannot interpret what of "name+suffix@domain.com[1]" is an email address, linkifying various or no subsets of it. (None tried suggesting the TLD "com[1]" at least :)) Though squirrelmail did fine, so maybe most recipients won't have a problem.

The challenge was quite fun to think of:

The Jómsvikingar were a group of hard drinking, hard fighting mercenaries terrorising the Norse coasts around the turn of the millennium. Only fragments of their sagas have come down to us. The Jómsvíkinga saga describes their founding and decline, and the Runingawayingar describes their eventual defeat and migration to Albion.

The Jómsvikinga suffered a number of important defeats and were finally attacked by a joint force with supernatural help, led by Magnus I of Norway, who raized their stronghold and drove them from Scandanavia. During their last defense and journey through many perils to their new home in Albion chronicled in the Runingawayingar they famously demonstrated all 167 Jómsvikinga major and minor virtues.

Now the full text is lost, but many extracts telling of a Jómsviking showing a particular virtue (courage, impulsiveness, obedience, alchohol tolerance, cruelty, etc) in a particular situation (defending a wall, fighting a sea monster, playing cards, etc) are preserved as teaching ballards for young Jómsvikingar.

Most have been translated into English, either as prose or verse, though few nowadays still try to mimic the traditional Norse forms. They range in length from one couplet to over a hundred lines. Your task is to make up such an extract and present it at the Veizla.

That nearly qualifies as relevent for poemtranslators but probably not quite :) Very Tolkienesque, though.

ETA: Oh, cusfs croquet 14th of May. That'll be a croquetriffic weekend, then! CUSFS didn't send a termcard, did they?

[1] That was not an actual footnote, it is quoted. Nothing to see here. Stop reading, why does everyone always get more interested the more you disclaim something? Look behind you, dancing bears!

Comments

omg so cute!

[mair_in_grenderich]

Look behind you, dancing bears

not sure arouna would like to be described that way!

[megamole.livejournal.com]

AAARGH.

Eat my party (24th of June), why don't you :(