Atlantic
Athene
1Thessalonians 5:9
“For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,”
"Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies."~~~Milton
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies."~~~Milton
Chess: "Atlantic" "Athene"
"Unlike
the earlier wanderers, the Vikings had a rather splendid mythology,
romanticised for us by Wagner. Their runic stones give one the feeling
of magical power. They were the last people of Europe to resist
Christianity. There are Viking gravestones from quite late in the Middle
Ages that have symbols of Wotan on one side and Christian symbols on
the other - what is called hedging your bets. A famous ivory casket in
the British Museum has Weyland the Smith on the left and the Adoration
of the Magi on the right. When one reads scarifying tales of them, one
must remember that they were almost illiterate, and the written evidence
about them was recorded by Christian monks. Of course they were brutal
and rapacious. All the same, they have a place in European civilisation,
because these pirates were not merely destructive, and their spirit did
contribute something important to the western world. It was the spirit
of Columbus. They set out from a base and with unbelievable courage and
ingenuity they got as far as Persia, via the Volga and the Caspian Sea,
and they put their runic writing on one of the lions at Delos, and then
returned home with all their loot, including coins from Samarkand and a
Chinese Buddha. The sheer technical skill of their journeys is a new
achievement for the western world ; and if one wants a symbol of
Atlantic man that distinguishes him from Mediterranean man, a symbol to
set against the Greek temple, it is the Viking ship. The Greek temple is
static and solid. The ship is mobile and light. Two of the smaller
Viking ships, which were used as burial chambers, have survived. One of
them, the Gokstad ship, was intended for long voyages and in fact a
replica of it crossed the Atlantic in 1894. It looks as unsinkable as a
gigantic water-lily. The other, the Oseberg ship [11], seems to have
been more like a ceremonial barge, and was filled with splendid works of
craftsmanship. The carving on its prow has that flow of endless line
that was still to underlie the great ornamental style we call
Romanesque. When one considers the Icelandic sagas, which are among the
great books of the world, one must admit that the Norsemen produced a
culture. But was it civilisation? The monks of Lindisfarne wouldn't have
said so, nor would Alfred the Great, nor the poor mother trying to
settle down with her family on the banks of the Seine.
Civilisation
means something more than energy and will and creative power: something
the early Norsemen hadn't got, but which, even in their time, was
beginning to reappear in Western Europe. How can I define it? Well, very
shortly, a sense of permanence. The wanderers and the invaders were in a
continual state of flux. They didn't feel the need to look forward
beyond the next March or the next voyage or the next battle. And for
that reason it didn't occur to them to build stone houses, or to write
books."~~~Kenneth Clark: CIVILISATION. Ch.1 The Skin of Our Teeth
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