dragonlady7

Dave and I went to the Central location of the Buffalo / Erie County Public Library. This involved driving to the nearby subway station, dashing through a sudden violent rainstorm, and taking the subway down to Lafayette Square.

I had decided to research Vikings. I'm having a little niggling thought that perhaps if I assembled enough information, and buckled right down, I could actually plan, compose, and complete a single, simple, unrelated-to-anything historical-romance novel dealing with the Viking period in Ireland. It's not far off from what I've been working on before-- variations on a theme-- but doesn't have quite the ambitious scale as I've had in the others. I've been reading all these books and realizing that their structure is much simpler. Even if greater world issues are addressed, they are not so complex as I've been making them.

Plus, I liked the image of the dragon-ships and the good-natured legal-minded savages from the Ellis Peters book. It conveys the preachy message of my other huge in-progress much more succinctly than mine.

Anyhow. I've decided the only way to do this is to do my research first. It is of paramount importance that I have all the materials assembled. I cannot let this project get out of hand. I must make it manageable, and above all, discrete, as in self-contained, as in without loose ends, as in doesn't require any further work.
Helpfully, I already have a working knowledge of Welsh, a sketchy knowledge of Irish, and a somewhere-between knowledge of (Norwegian) Norse. (Also, I have a copy in Bokmal of the Soga Om Gunnlaug Ormstunge, given me by a helpful Norwegian cousin who thought I'd like it as a light read (oh dear) which I am meant to be working my way through and haven't had the brainpower for.)

(As an aside, I may say, as

aesc might remember, that I am abysmal at translations and in fact Professor Higley wouldn't let me use the Middle Welsh dictionary unsupervised, but made my two classmates promise they'd do their work with it while I could be there, so I wouldn't be left alone with it and come in crying the next day because it kicked my ass. She hadn't seen many twenty-two-year-olds cry before, i don't think.)

But anyhow. I have discovered a number of fascinating things, including Ibn Fadlan's account of a (Viking) Russian chieftain's funeral in 992, which was obviously the source of the corresponding scene in The Thirteenth Warrior, including the Angel of Death and the bit about "Lo, there do I see my father and mother"-- guiltily, I loved that movie. At least they did their research. Some of it.

So, I have a treasure trove of books now-- I sacked and pillaged their shelf on Scandinavian history-- but I did not spend the evening reading. (I had time for two short books.)
No, Dave and I actually had a romantic evening together, for a couple of hours at least. It was quite unexpected, and quite a bit out of the ordinary. None of the usual stuff that I hear couples do-- no dinner or movie-- but we did spend two hours or so being happily eccentric together, and it was in its own bizarre way far more intimate than that normal-people crap anyway. I won't explain further, as it's inappropriate, but it was lovely. He'd been thinking about it for weeks, and planning it all out, and I was astonished when he suggested it to me, because I hadn't really thought he spent much time thinking about that sort of thing.
Very sweet, really. He is a honey. In his way.