… to Belgium?
We all know that the problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for gratis, and Belgium is pretty much the same. And so I was astonished today to be given a big two-litre bottle of fizzy pop when I walked into the supermarket on the corner for my baguette this morning.
Apparently they had found a crate of it at the back of the warehouse and the sell-by date was just out. And so they were giving away a bottle free to each of their regular customers. I felt highly honoured.
Last night was another typical night just recently so I won’t describe it to you. I wasn’t awoken at 06:00, just for a change, and I did go on my travels – although all memory of it immediately disappeared the moment I awoke.
And apart from that, I had a shower and a shave today, to make the most of my clean bed, and that was really that. But one thing that I didn’t do was to make tea. I was doing something interesting interesting and forgot. It was 21:45 when I realised what time ot was. I had a quick snack instead.
But my search for a copy of Carl Rafn’s Antiquitates Americanae produced some dividends today. And I can hardly be blamed for not finding it sooner because, being held in an American university, they have translated his name to Charles Rafn. Totally stupid if you ask me, but that’s Americans for you.
Mind you,it’s not done me much good because although I was delighted to see that he wrote bilingually, his book is in Latin and … errr … Danish. It makes me wonder why the Americans wanted to possess it, but there we are.
But all is not lost, because I found a book – in English – called America Discovered in the Tenth Century. This dates from 1838 and is a summary by Rafn of his work, and as far as I can tell, presented to the Royal Societies of Northern Antiquaries.
He’s big on the “Cape Cod Bay” theory, although his nautical calculations are rather exaggerated, he fails to take account of the shifting coastline, and he is, like most people until Munn first tentatively explored the theory in his “Wineland voyages Location of Helluland Markland and Vinland,”, totally unaware of the effects of Global Warming.
It needs hardly to be said that the Norse explorations took place in what was known as the “Medieval Warm” period (not that this is intended by any means to belittle the magnificent voyages that the Norse undertook) and that in the days of Rafn the Northern Hemisphere was still recovering from the effects of the Little Ice Age, with a couple of degrees’ difference in temperature and climate. During this period, the Domesday Book records grapes being grown commercially as far north as mid-Yorkshire. That’s about 500 miles north of the current viable limit and all of this puts the flora and fauna discovered by the Norse in Vinland into a potentially much-different region than where the same might be found today
So now I’m off to bed, early again. Let’s hope I have a good night tonight, and remember where I’ve been.
And I wonder what this free fizzy pop tastes like.
