Theodora Elucubrare

This is pretty much my new favorite sentence: "The name is Väinämöinen, due to vowel harmonization, but we had pity on the type-setter."

(it's from a book that argue, among other things, that Hamlet is equivalent to Lucius Junius Brutus, who killed Tarquinius; that Hamlet had a mill, like the Sampo, that ground out salt and is now on the bottom of the ocean; and that Samson is also a parallel figure. Among other things, including, as far as I can tell, that ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING is related to their thesis. On the bright side, it's led me to wikipedia Väinämöinen, giving me this picture and has a black-and-white version of this 16th century map. Check out the monsters! they're adorable!)

So I'm doing reading for the paper due May 19th, not the one due Tuesday morning, or even better, writing the one due Monday afternoon. Whatever, that's what the weekend's for, right?

Anyway, I am glad I did, because I've found my new favorite theories: Olaus Rudbeck, Atlantica, and Daniel Juslenius, Aboa vetus et nova. The first is Swedish, and argues that - wait, I might as well use all of William Wilson's summary - "which 'established' that Sweden was in reality the legendary island Atlantis, the Hyperborean region of Greek mythology... and the source of all culture." Well then.

Of course, the Finns couldn't take this lying down. If the Swedes were going to claim crazy things, well then the Finns were going to claim crazier things! Again, William Wilson summarizes: "He went still farther, boasting that Finnish was actually one of the basic languages created at the confusion of tongues." Of course, this was not all the ancient Finns had done: "The Finns had migrated to their northern home... under the leadership of Noah's grandson Magog. There they had become a mighty warlike nation and had subdued armies as far away as Spain. The women, too, participated in these heroic struggles, for, as Juslenius explained, the Amazons of Greek mythology had lived in Finland."

And nothing like this would be complete without a claim of a great conspiracy against your favored group (which, in the case of people like von Daniken, includes... yourself): "However, the envious Swedes... had destroyed all traces of this learning in order to crush Finnish national feeling."