Flash: Bragi

“Bragi” by Carl Wahlbom (1810-1858), Public Domain

There are those who claim the long-bearded one was just a ninth century midgard man named Bragi Boddason who traveled from hall to hall, plying gay tunes and romantic verse for an evenings meal. I say Nay, for I was blessed to hear the tales spun from the bardic god.

Twas only chance his and my paths crossed one night in a northern meadhall. He honored me with first tale after the king had waved us forward. And so I, with my merger skill, did share of news from my travels and twisted a tale about the Pennsic Wars.

Then he, Odinson and spawn of the giantess Gunnlod, did touch his hand to golden dwarven harp. Rune-shaped words fell from tattooed tongue and mesmerized with tale and song. Poetry is too mild a word for what I heard. Epic epeitath fell fire for armshiver. Warrior wept from sodden woesounds. Larksong and buoyant bells flashed forward for feastfamily festivity.

And I, not a sound could make.

My ears still rung with the runewords and yet my mind can not comprehend. Some mornings I wake hearing the harpstring, tears flowing for I will not hear it again.

Blessed are you who haven’t experienced this glory, and I fully pity you its lack.

But know you, the first thing you will hear in Valhalla’s hall after being let down by the Valkyrie maid will be Bragi’s harp for he is the Skald of Asgard. While he, for a time, did walk the earth in the guise of a midgard man, he is god born from a honeymead night.

(Words 265, first published 10/20/2019)

Geeking Science: Seed Banks and Bad-ass Scientists

By Frode Ramone from Oslo, Norway – DSCF0896.jpg,
CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61440340

 

Bad-ass Viking Scientists. That’s how I think about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and the Arctic World Archive. Norway is a culture who looks at the world dying and rebuilding as a given – and have prepped to jump start the next cycle after Ragnarok. The whole world is betting on them pulling it off.

Around the world, over 1,700 seed banks exist as a stop-gap between starvation and human stupidity – with Svalbard being the final line in the snow. At this time, 95% of humanity’s food comes from 30 crops. Monoculture agriculture at its scary finest. In case something happens like (cough) climate change (cough) making some of the food crops non-viable, humans (in an amazing feat of intelligence) have set aside historic seed for biodiversity.

Doing so wasn’t easy. Bad-ass Scientists around the world have died saving this hedge in the seed banks against humanity’s bone-headiness.  The St. Petersburg gene bank faced sure destruction during the siege of Leningrad from hungry citizens and a starving German army. The Russian scientists locked themselves in their vault, and some died waiting for the conflict to end surrounded by grain seed they could have eaten, hungry but never hungry enough to compromise their principles.

And just in case you were thinking this is all a pie-in-the-sky-someday-thing, in 2015 the first withdrawal of seed occurred. The Syria Seed Bank had been heavily damaged in a civil war and forced to be abandoned, so they asked for their wheat and barley seeds back. They had sent extra off to the Bad-ass Vikings for storage in the Doomsday Vault, as it is nicknamed. Doomsday just came a little early for them. The Bad-ass Farming Scientists then planted that defrosted seed in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley and in Morocco – since home still wasn’t safe, and collected the seed, splitting it between their hopefully future rebuilt seed bank and the Doomsday.

Not having enough to do, the Viking Scientists decided to add a Data vault as well. They came up with data storage materials that can last 500 to 1000 years and offered their services to the world. They aren’t asking for the originals, just copies of what countries want to save. Like the golden record of Voyager.

“The data will remain searchable online … as long as the internet and servers are still functioning.” (Jones 2017)

A chilling thought, not to have the internet. But that is what Doomsday Vault is about. Against just that eventuality. Brazil and Mexico sent the first materials, Brazil from a collection of more than 300 life stories recorded between 2006 and 2016, and Mexico copies of documents dating back to the Inca period. 

addition 2019 – Since the initial deposit in 2015, other government and governmental agencies has sent in material. Such as manuscripts form the Vatican Library and the European Space Agency recording of data acquired by a 1991 satellite. (Piql 2019)

Scientists united around the world, picking up keyboards, digging holes, saving genetic material, and grinning with bloody teeth against humanity’s self-destructive tendencies and a planet who both is our mother and ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Geeking Science – Hear the Nerds ROAR!

 

Bibliography

Duggan, Jennifer. “Inside the ‘Doomsday’ Value.” Time. (undated). https://time.com/doomsday-vault/ – Last viewed 12/2/2019.

Jones, Rhett. “Norway Gets a New Doomsday Vault That Stores Data.” Gizmodo. 2017 April 2 at 11:37 AM. https://gizmodo.com/norway-gets-a-second-doomsday-vault-that-stores-data-1793935778 – Last viewed 12/2/2019.

McCoy, Daniel. “Ragnarok.” Norse Mythology for Smart People. 2012-2019. https://norse-mythology.org/tales/ragnarok/ – Last viewed 12/2/2019.

Wikipedia. “Svalbard Global Seed Value.” (undated). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault – Last viewed 12/2/2019.

Addition 2019

Piql.com. “Arctic World Archive receives more world treasures.” 2019 February 21. – Last viewed 12/2/2019. (note – Piql oversees the Arctic World Archive)

Geeking Science: Space Archaeology

Leg Of Medieval Scottish Warrior Stock Photo

Image Courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Vikings in Spppace

“Space Archaeology” (giggle). I love the juxtaposition of outer space with a science closely involved in mud and dust for the gravity-bound. 

In early 2016 Sarah Parcak used her special software imagery to discover a possible second Viking landing site in North America. You can read about it here “Did Alabama space archaeologist just help rewrite history of Vikings in North America” (written by Kelsey Stein on April 2, 2016).

You may have seen the information when it first came out. It was a big deal, especially among those interested in human history.

What really caught my attention was not the Vikings in North America, but the full implications of the software. Folks this is BIG! 

(As a computer geek, anthropology geek, science fiction geek – all types of geek – I am so geeking this geekdom!)

So let’s start with with the “special software”. Most of us are aware, at least peripherally, archaeologists have been using satellite imagery to comb the planet for digging sites. They have been limited to places with little to no vegetation – desert areas – and sites with large stone structures – pyramids and Roman stone & concrete roads.  Basically easy to spot stuff that just happens to be covered in sand. What Dr. Parcak’s software imagery processor has done is shift the paradigm.

The software goes over vegetation areas, the more the better, and looks for something “off”. Straight lines of color, geometric shapes created by differentiation in growth patterns, and other non-organic patterns in the organic materials. The areas are marked on the map and shunted over to human eyes for further review, and finally to human bodies for digging. What forms these vegetative differences? Not huge stone structures, but a dirt wall fortification, long-rotted timbers creating soil differences, and a couple hundred pound rocks moved around. Basically organic materials long claimed by the forest and jungle, but the history remains hundreds of years later because plants grown a tiny bit different in those locations.

Suddenly we can look for human history anywhere on the planet. South America, except for a few ancient stone cities, is a mystery waiting to be revealed. Africa, home of humanity, can be search for in the desert, savanna, and jungle. Huge Asia, from steppes to shore, can be explored. Egyptian and Mediterranean history move over, we are going to see if you are really the cradle of civilization. You got lucky because of the sand and stone clearly wrote your cities locations, now we may find the second-on-the-mother’s side cousin-cities you forgot to write down.

Now the real geeking maximum.

Imagine this software exploring other planets! Before we were limited to industrial markers to find aliens, figuring large roads and cities may be visible from space. But what if the sentient species hasn’t gotten beyond mud huts and stone tools. Would we even notice them before taking over their world?

The answer now is YES! We will find them even if they hide under hundred-mile tall trees.

Discovering a possible second Viking site in North America is nice. But the software which made it possible has some real legs to it; I can’t wait to see what else it does.