rlfj: Blog

For those curious, the Red Arrows are the UK version of the US Air Force Thunderbirds or the US Navy Blue Angels. They belong to the RAF.

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For those curious, it seems that Yanks and Brits really do speak different languages. What Americans call sheetrock and lumber, the British call plasterboard and timber. There are a few other instances like that throughout the story. One of my English editors pointed this out. Interesting!

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Chapter 8 looks at military medicine. Until I wrote this story, what I knew about military medicine was based on MASH, a 1970s TV show about a 1950s war, where Hawkeye and BJ performed ‘meatball surgery’ in tents by the light of a kerosene lantern. Modern military field hospitals are vastly different. They are modular and palletized. When they are airlifted or driven to the site they are expanded and unfolded and then linked together in a variety of configurations by an engineer detachment. The engineers will probably take longer leveling the site than bolting the pieces together. If you need a dental office or an OB/GYN suite, just bring in the correct modules. And for those curious, yes, they have laparoscopic capabilities, which was the most astonishing thing I learned.

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The coins the Vikings had in their possession would have been very different from what we would consider coins. A typical coin of that period might have had a profile of the local ruler and a year of his rule (Year 4 of King Dipshit the Second, that sort of thing.) This would all have been in Latin. These coins were handmade, with a hand-carved die and a piece of gold, silver, or copper pressed into the die and then hit with a hammer. Even better, each batch of coins might have a different mix of gold or silver. When Archimedes had his famous ‘Eureka!’ moment it was because he had figured out how to measure the gold/silver content of precious metals.

Ninth Century Vikings didn’t use coins. It wasn’t until a hundred years later that coins began to be produced in Norway. They used bullion before then, bulk gold or silver. (Grab a bunch of gold cups and plates from a church, that sort of thing.) However, coins were available in England, so they would have been taken on any raids and the Vikings would understand them.

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I did the best I could, using both an Old Norse translation site and another site with an Old Norse dictionary. Is the grammar perfect? Are the word choices optimal? Are the tenses and verbs properly used? To those three questions and many others, the answer is that I have no idea. It’s a good thing Lars is an expert. At least we have an expert in old languages on site. I did the best I could. For your peace of mind, and mine, if you don’t like the translations, ignore them and read the stuff in the brackets { }.

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