The Forty-Eighters

Germany in 1848-1849 was the scene of violence and revolution. Numerous individuals participated in attempts to overthrow existing provincial governments. When these revolutions all ended in failure, the would-be revolutionaries were forced to flee Germany or face possible imprisonment or execution. Many fled to Zurich and London; from those cities many then continued on to new homes in the United States.

Most of these German immigrants believed in equality and democracy. They disliked the institution of slavery, sensing how its very existence contradicted the lofty phrases of the Declaration of Independence. A majority of Germans settled in the North, partly because of their opposition to slavery, but also because there were more opportunities for free laborers in the North, and because the climate and landscape in many parts of the North more closely resembled that of their native Germany than did the climate and landscape of most of the South.

Germans in antebellum America tended to live close to one another in ethnic neighborhoods. They spoke German in their day-to-day dealings, and their children’s schools were taught in German. Most large northern cities had at least one German-language daily newspaper. The Germans also formed clubs known as Turnvereins, which emphasized exercise and physical culture. Some members of the Turnvereins also formed rifle clubs and joined local militia organizations. When war broke out with the South, these Turners (as members of Turnvereins were called) were a source of ready manpower which authorities in Washington, D.C. sought to mobilize.

SLPL can help persons researching German American ancestors who served in the Civil War. We own books and microfilm sets, and offer access to reference databases like Fold3.com that provide records of men who served in Union Army regiments.

Attack!

Return of the House of Wolfings

“Here is the next man to Thiodolf! here is one who will not fall till some one thrusts him over, here is Thorolf of the Wolfings! Stand fast and shield you, and smite, though Thiodolf be gone untimely to the Gods!”

Romney and Ryan are Romulus and Remus, the incarnation of the Roman Slave Masters of the risen Stupid Drunk Neo-Confederate South.

Jon

The book is the story of how the Wolfings fight, and eventually destroy, the invading Roman legions. But here Morris faced a problem: while he could try to reconstruct the society of these early people, their history is almost unknown, and what is known is known largely from the Roman side. Rather than attempt to force the story into a known historical context (in which case it would have had to be the story of the destruction of the legions of Varus in AD 9 by Arminius, leader of the Cherusci) Morris preferred to preserve his freedom of invention. His solution was brilliantly simple: the story is one told by the descendants of the Wolfings many years later, and as with the Saga of the Volsungs, events have become garbled with retelling.

So none gave back a foot, and fierce was the fight about the wedge- array; and the men of Otter–but there was no Otter there, and many another man was gone, and Arinbiorn the Old led them–these stormed on so fiercely that they cleft their way through all and joined themselves to their kindred, and the battle was renewed in the Wolfing meadow. But the Romans had this gain, that Thiodolf’s men had let go their occasion for falling on the Romans with their line spread out so that every man might use his weapons; yet were the Goths strong both in valiancy and in numbers, nor might the Romans break into their array, and as aforesaid the Romans were the fewer, for it was less than half of their host that had pursued the Goths when they had been thrust back from their fierce onset: nor did more than the half seem needed, so many of them had fallen along with Otter the War-duke and Sweinbiorn of the Bearings, that they seemed to the Romans but a feeble band easy to overcome.

On April 17, 2013 I will reveal to the world the Norse Grail of Rosamond. My grandson, Tyler Hunt, was born on this day. He was taken from me by my enemies, my own kindred who tried to take over the Art of my late sister, Christine Rosamond Benton. Mark and Victoria Presco, concealed my seventeen year old daughter from me after Heather Hanson betrayed me, disappeared from my life, and entered the camp of the destructive and un-creative ones who were jealous of their creative siblings their whole life.

On April 17th. I will send forth a Crusader named Wolf, and his six sons. They will destory the enemies of The Art of the World. I will reveal the Norse Grail. Some of the Wolfen sons became Knight Templars and owners of the Holy Shroud. In NORSE there is a ROSE – a Northern Rose! No one can defeat, or turn away, the Rose Wolf.

My enemies have turned my grandson against me. It is my hope Tyler Hunt will rebel against the liars who denied him his heritage, he forever reminded in True History, that the Norse Grail is my birthday present to him. Whether Tyler is worthy to own it – is the Story of our True Humanity. Only Lovers of the Truth, and the True Rose, can behold the Beauty in the World, read the Rose Words in the Prose, and pull the Tones from the Sword in the Stone.

Catherine Winnik, who plays Lagertha, may be my kindred.

Jon Gregory

‘Protector of the Norse Horse’

Lagertha was, according to legend, a Danish Viking shieldmaiden from what is now Norway, and the onetime wife of the famous Viking Ragnar Lodbrok (d. 840 or 865). Her tale, as recorded by the chronicler Saxo in the 12th century, may be a reflection of tales about Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr, a Norse deity.

Her name, latinized to Lathgertha by Saxo, probably derives from the Old Norse Hlaðgerðr (Hladgerd).[1] It is frequently rendered in English-language sources as “Lagertha”, and has also been recorded as Ladgertha, Ladgerda or similar.

As her impressively diverse list of credits attests, the beautiful Canadian-born Katheryn Winnick has always been drawn to the unconventional, showing range and depth with every role she plays. Winnick will next star as the fearless shield maiden, ‘Lagertha’, wife and warrior of a great Viking leader in the new eagerly-anticipated television series “Vikings”. Produced by MGM and The History Channel, “Vikings” is an epic historical drama that chronicles legendary events of the medieval times, also starring Golden Globe Winner, Gabriel Byrne and Travis Fimmel. Winnick considers “Vikings” to be her most precious acting memories to date.

http://www.bridgemanart.com/search/artist/Williams-Morris-Meredith-1881-1973/36083

https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/joaquin-miller-as-gandalf-the-grey/
http://www.history.com/shows/vikings/videos/lagertha

Swinburne’s choice of the “rose of the world” as one of his first subjects for verse suggests that he associated his conception of Rosamond with courtly love allegory, specifically the Roman de la Rose, in which the rose is the eternal symbol of the beloved and of the perfect beauty that is fearfully transient but simultaneously immortal.3 As in Swinburne’s later lyrics “Before the Mirror” and “The Year of the Rose,” Rosamond’s central symbol is the rose, and, like them, this play recapitulates the major preoccupations of courtly love poetry: the apotheosis of beauty; love as the necessary consequence of beauty fear of mutability; and a final insistence on the immortality of both love and beauty, which can be attained, paradoxically, only through death.

https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/joaquin-miller-as-gandalf-the-grey/

Christine Rosamond Benton and I were drawn into Tolkien’s Trilogy. The artist known as ‘Rosamond’ could not put these books down, nr could I. This caused our mutual friend, Keith Purvis, a British subject, to comment;
“She doesn’t know these books are real.”
We three were original hippies who took the Lord of the Rings to heart as we modified the modern world, made it over more to our liking, we oblivious to what normal folk were about. This is exactly what William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelite Brother and Sisterhood did. They – returned!
I discovered the Pre-Raphaelites in 1969 and let my hair grow long for the first time. I gave up drugs in 1967 and was looking for a spiritual format. I came under the spell of the Rossetti family who were friendly with Joaquin Miller. We Presco children knew Miller’s daughter as ‘The White Witch’ and we would call her for advice. Miller’s home ‘The Abbye’ was above our home in the Oakland Hills. Our kindred were friends of Miller, who was also a friend of Swineburn, who wrote ‘The Queen-Mother and Rosamund’ and ‘Rosamund Queen of Lombards. Tolkien was inspired by the Lombards.
Filed away in Rosamond’s probate is my plea to the executor to allow me to be my sister’s historian. I mention Miller and Rossetti. I saw myself in the role of Michael Rossetti who had his own publishing company. He published Miller and other famous poets. When I was twelve, my mother read evidence I might become a famous poet.
All my imput has been ruthlessly ignored, because petty un-creative minds have forced our families creative legacy down the tiny holes of their hidden agendas, into the mouths of worms and parasites, because these ignorant people sensed I and the real Art World, did not let them in the door – would never admit them into our circle, our ring of genius!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2011

Dinner at Rossetti’s
by Joaquin Miller
________________________________________
There is no thing that hath not worth;
There is no evil anywhere;
There is no ill on all this earth,
If man seeks not to see it there.
September 28. I cannot forget that dinner with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, just before leaving London, nor can I hope to recall its shining and enduring glory. I am a better, larger man, because of it. And how nearly our feet are set on the same way. It was as if we were all crossing the plains, and I for a day’s journey and a night’s encampment fell in with and conversed with the captains of the march.
But one may not gave names and dates and details over there as here. The home is entirely a castle. The secrets of the board and fireside are sacred. And then these honest toilers and worshippers of the beautiful are shy, so shy and modest. But I like this decent English way of keeping your name down and out of sight till the coffin-lid hides your blushes–so modest these Pre-Raphaelites are that I should be in disgrace forever if I dared set down any living man’s name.

A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark is a fantasy novel by William Morris, perhaps the first modern fantasy writer to unite an imaginary world with the element of the supernatural, and thus the precursor of much of present-day fantasy literature.[1] It was first published in hardcover by Reeves and Turner in 1889.[2] Its importance in the history of fantasy literature was recognized by its republication by the Newcastle Publishing Company as the sixteenth volume of the celebrated Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library in April, 1978.

This book also influenced J. R. R. Tolkien’s popular The Lord of the Rings. In a December 31, 1960 letter published in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, (p. 303), Tolkien wrote: ‘The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains.” Among the numerous parallels with The Lord of the Rings, Morris has Old English-style placenames such as Mirkwood (p. 2), germanic personal names such as Thiodolf (p. 8), and dwarves as skilled smiths (“How the Dwarf-wrought Hauberk was Brought away from the Hall of the Daylings”, p. 97).

This work and its successor, The Roots of the Mountains, were to some degree historical novels, with little or no magic. Morris would go on to develop the new genre established in this work in such later fantasies as Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair, The Wood Beyond the World, The Well at the World’s End, and The Water of the Wondrous Isles.[3]

Contents
[hide] 1 Plot summary
2 Copyright
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Plot summary

The House of the Wolfings is Morris’ romantically reconstructed portrait of the lives of the Germanic Gothic tribes, written in an archaic style and incorporating a large amount of poetry. It combines his own idealistic views with what was actually known at the time of his subjects’ folkways and language. He portrays them as simple and hardworking, galvanized into heroic action to defend their families and liberty by the attacks of imperial Rome.

Morris’ Goths inhabit an area called the Mark on a river in the forest of Mirkwood, divided according into the Upper-mark, the Mid-mark and the Nether-mark. They worship their gods Odin and Tyr by sacrificing horses and rely on seers who foretell the future and serve as psychic news-gatherers.

The men of the Mark choose two War Dukes to lead them against their enemies, one each from the House of the Wolfings and the House of the Laxings. The Wolfing war leader is Thiodolf, a man of mysterious and perhaps divine antecedents whose ability to lead is threatened by his possession of a magnificent dwarf-made mail-shirt which, unknown to him, is cursed. He is supported by his lover the Wood Sun and their daughter the Hall Sun, who are related to the gods.

[edit] Copyright

The copyright for this story has expired in the United States, and thus now resides in the public domain there. The text is available via Project Gutenberg.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and libertarian socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and English Arts and Crafts Movement. He founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which profoundly influenced the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. As an author, illustrator and medievalist, he helped to establish the modern fantasy genre, and was a direct influence on postwar authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien. He was also a major contributor to reviving traditional textile arts and methods of production, and one of the founders of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, now a statutory element in the preservation of historic buildings in the UK.

In the last nine years of his life, Morris wrote a series of imaginative fictions usually referred to as the “prose romances”.[29] These novels — including The Wood Beyond the World and The Well at the World’s End — have been credited as important milestones in the history of fantasy fiction, because, while other writers wrote of foreign lands, or of dream worlds, or the future (as Morris did in News from Nowhere), Morris’s works were the first to be set in an entirely invented fantasy world.[30] These were attempts to revive the genre of medieval romance, and written in imitation of medieval prose. Morris’ prose style in these novels has been praised by Edward James, who described them as “among the most lyrical and enchanting fantasies in the English language.”[31]
On the other hand, L. Sprague de Camp considered Morris’ fantasies to be not wholly successful, partly because Morris eschewed many literary techniques from later eras.[32] In particular, De Camp argued the plots of the novels are heavily driven by coincidence; while many things just happened in the romances, the novels are still weakened by the dependence on it.[33] Nevertheless, large subgenres of the field of fantasy have sprung from the romance genre, but indirectly, through their writers’ imitation of William Morris.[34]
Early fantasy writers like Lord Dunsany, E. R. Eddison[35] and James Branch Cabell[36] were familiar with Morris’ romances. The Wood Beyond the World is considered to have heavily influenced C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series, while J. R. R. Tolkien was inspired by Morris’s reconstructions of early Germanic life in The House of the Wolfings and The Roots of the Mountains. The young Tolkien attempted a retelling of the story of Kullervo from the Kalevala in the style of The House of the Wolfings;[37] Tolkien considered much of his literary work to have been inspired by an early reading of Morris, even suggesting that he was unable to better Morris’s work; the names of characters such as “Gandolf” and the horse Silverfax appear in The Well at the World’s End.

http://www.bridgemanart.com/search/artist/Williams-Morris-Meredith-1881-1973/36083

Morris Meredith Williams
Born 10 September 1881
Died 1973
Active: 1905 – 1937
Country of birth and death: Wales
Painter, stained glass designer, illustrator and teacher
Born in Bridgend, Glamorgan. He was appointed art master at Fettes College, Edinburgh in 1905. He and his wife, the sculptor, Gertrude Alice Williams, moved to Devon in 1929. He exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy in London every year between 1920-29 and most years at the Royal Scottish Academy from 1906-37. He drew the naval and military figures for the frieze of First World War soldiers in the Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle. The frieze itself was modelled by his wife. For further details see entry for Gertrude Alice Williams.

In his writings, in particular the fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings as well as the related novel The Hobbit and the posthumously published collection of stories The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien is cited as having had a number of influences. Several critics[1] have made the assumption that Tolkien’s novel was directly derived from Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. Many parts of his work were, as he freely admitted, influenced by other sources.[2] Some of the influences include philology (his field), religion (particularly Roman Catholicism), fairy tales, Anglo-Saxon and Norse mythology, and numerous sources from Finnish, Greek, Persian, Slavic, and Celtic mythology. Tolkien was also influenced by his and his son’s personal military service experiences during World War I and World War II, respectively.[3]
One of the greatest influences on Tolkien was the Arts and Crafts polymath William Morris. Tolkien wished to imitate Morris’s prose and poetry romances,[4] along with the general style and approach; he took elements such as the Dead Marshes in The Lord of the Rings[5] and Mirkwood in The Hobbit from Morris.[6]

Tolkien’s Elves and Dwarves are by and large based on Norse and related Germanic mythologies[28][30] and possibly Celtic Mythology.[31] Two sources that contain accounts of elves and dwarves that were of interest to Tolkien were the Prose Edda and the Elder or Poetic Edda. The only issue with these accounts are that the descriptions of elves and dwarves are highly ambiguous and contradictory. Names such as “Gandalf”, “Gimli” and “Middle-earth” are directly derived from Norse mythology, e.g. the Prophecy of the Seeress, a poem from the Poetic Edda.[32] Within the contents of the Völuspá Saga, specifically in stanza 9, the creation of dwarves predates man, which is precisely the formula Tolkien uses for Middle-earth.[citation needed]
Tolkien based the people of Rohan, the Rohirrim, on the historical Anglo-Saxons, giving them Anglo-Saxon names, customs, and poetry.[33] This reference may explain how to pronounce Rohirric names, and suggests Tolkien may not have provided guidance, as he did for Elvish names, because he assumed readers would be familiar with Anglo-Saxon.
The concept of kingship and monarchical hierarchy is continually alluded to throughout the history of Middle-Earth, the races and the construction of each society. There are particular descriptions and mentions of kings on rulers in all of the Norse sagas, narratives, and historical accounts/texts. In Tolkien’s universe, this is predominantly seen in the realms of Gondor and Rohan. In regards of the Norse, it is an ever-constant notion throughout the historical and mythological texts such as The Saga of the Jomsvikings.
A specific example of Tolkien’s mirror-imaging of Norse mythology and the Middle-Earth universe can be seen via Frodo’s journey and entry into Mordor, which echoes Hermod’s journey to the entrance of the Nordic underworld in the Prose Edda.[34] Also prevalent is the issue of beasts and monsters, as seen via the Balrog and the collapse of the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in Moria, which is a direct parallel to the fire demon, Surt, and the destruction of Asgard’s bridge.[citation needed]

Contents
[hide] 1 Life according to Saxo Grammaticus
2 Scholarship 2.1 Saxo’s sources
2.2 Identity with Thorgerd

3 Portrayals in fiction
4 References

[edit] Life according to Saxo Grammaticus

Lagertha’s tale is recorded in passages in the ninth book of the Gesta Danorum, a 12th century work of Danish history by Saxo Grammaticus.[2] According to the Gesta (¶ 9.4.1–9.4.11), Lagertha’s career as a warrior began when Frø, king of Sweden, invaded Norway and killed the Norwegian king Siward. Frø put the women of the dead king’s family into a brothel for public humiliation. Hearing of this, Ragnar Lodbrok came with an army to avenge his grandfather Siward. Many of the women Frø had ordered abused dressed themselves in men’s clothing and fought on Ragnar’s side.[1] Chief among them, and key to Ragnar’s victory, was Lagertha. Saxo recounts:
“Ladgerda, a skilled Amazon, who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man, and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders. All-marveled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed that she was a woman.”
Impressed with her courage, Ragnar courted her from afar. Lagertha feigned interest and Ragnar arrived to seek her hand, bidding his companions wait in the Gaular valley. He was set upon by a bear and a great hound which Lagertha had guarding her home, but killed the bear with his spear and choked the hound to death. Thus he won the hand of Lagertha in marriage. According to Saxo, Ragnar had a son with her, Fridleif, as well as two daughters, whose names are not recorded.[2]

After returning to Denmark to fight a civil war, Ragnar (who, according to Saxo, was still annoyed that Lagertha had set beasts against him) divorced Lagertha in order to marry Þóra Town-Hart, the daughter of King Herrauðr of Sweden.[1] He won the hand of his new love after numerous adventures, but upon returning to Denmark was again faced with a civil war. He sent to Norway for support, and Lagertha, who still loved him, came to his aid with 120 ships, according to Saxo.[2] When at the height of the battle, Ragnar’s son Siward was wounded, Lagertha saved the day for Ragnar with a counterattack:
“Ladgerda, who had a matchless spirit though a delicate frame, covered by her splendid bravery the inclination of the soldiers to waver. For she made a sally about, and flew round to the rear of the enemy, taking them unawares, and thus turned the panic of her friends into the camp of the enemy.”[2]
Upon returning to Norway, she quarreled with her husband, and slew him with a spearhead she concealed in her gown. Saxo concludes that she then “usurped the whole of his name and sovereignty; for this most presumptuous dame thought it pleasanter to rule without her husband than to share the throne with him”.[2]

[edit] Scholarship

[edit] Saxo’s sources

According to Judith Jesch, the rich variety of tales in the first nine books of Saxo’s Gesta, which include the tale of Lagertha, are “generally considered to be largely fictional”.[3] In portraying the several warrior women in these tales, Saxo drew on the legend of the Amazons from classical antiquity, but also on a variety of Old Norse (particularly Icelandic) sources, which have not been clearly identified.[3] Saxo’s depiction of women warriors is also colored by misogyny: Like most churchmen of the time, Saxo thought of women only as sexual beings. To him, the Viking shieldmaidens who refused this role were an example of the disorder in old heathen Denmark that was later cured by the Church and a stable monarchy.[3]

A woman called Hlaðgerðr, who rules the Hlaðeyjar, also appears in the sagas of the 6th century Scylding king Halfdan. She gives him twenty ships to help defeat his enemies.[4] Hilda Ellis Davidson, in her commentary on the Gesta, also notes suggestions in the literature that the name was used by the Franks (e.g. by Leutgarde, the wife of William Longsword, d. 942), and that the tale of Lagertha could have originated in Frankish tradition.[4]

When Saxo describes Lagertha as “flying round” (circumvolare) to the rear of the enemy, he ascribes to her the power of flight, indicating a kinship with the valkyries.[5] The tale notably recalls that of Kára, the valkyrie lover of Helgi Haddingjaskati, who flies above Helgi in battle as a swan, casting spells in his support.[6]

[edit] Identity with Thorgerd

Davidson deems it possible, as Nora K. Chadwick considered very probable,[1] that Lagertha is identical with Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr (Thorgerd), a goddess reflected in several stories.

Thorgerd was worshipped by, and sometimes said to be wed to, the Norwegian ruler Haakon (c. 937–995), who lived at Hlaðir (Lade). This may be the origin of the name Hlaðgerðr.[4] Gaulardal, the Gaular valley – where Lagertha lived according to Saxo – lies nearby and was the center of Thorgerd’s cult. It was also, according to Snorri, the abode of Haakon’s wife Thora.[7] Finally, the description of Lagertha coming to Ragnar’s aid with flying hair is similar to how the Flateyjarbók describes Thorgerd and her sister Irpa assisting Haakon.[4]

[edit] Portrayals in fiction

Christen Pram’s historical drama Lagertha (1789) is based on Saxo’s account. The choreographer Vincenzo Galeotti based his Lagertha (1801), the first ballet to feature a Nordic theme, on Pram’s work.

More recently, Lagertha (played by Katheryn Winnick) is a principal character in the 2013 TV series Vikings, where she is portrayed as a shieldmaiden and the wife of Ragnar Lodbrok.