Winter New (Seed Catalog) Moon
The new year has begun, or as I thought about it in light of a post below, the next year has begun (Happy Next Year!). It finds me following trails laid down in other times.
In the morning I went through, for the second or third time, parts of the Lycaon story that I have previously translated. The goal now is to sight read the passage, translating with minimal helps. Right now I have to write a definition over the word, perhaps a grammatical note, but the way to get fast is to read Latin as I read English. That’s a long way off, but I can see the horizon line of that skill. When I reach that point, I’ll be able to do serious scholarly work as well as learn great stories.
In the afternoon I picked up Loki’s Children, itching to get my fingers on the keyboard, putting some pages behind me. Got waylaid looking up material about Thor, who is a very interesting god, probably the most loved god in Norse antiquity and mainly a giant-slayer, though he had a sideline in the inadvertent killing of dwarfs. He killed Alvis, for example, by asking him questions until the sun rose and the light of dawn turned Alvis to stone. Alvis wanted to marry Thrud, Thor’s daughter. Thrud, not exactly an elegant name, is it? Maybe it sounds better in Old Norse.
The research turned out to be very useful, allowing me a thread I can use for building a strong throughline in Loki’s Children. Sorry, but that part’s top secret.
