Teleidoscope

Sat, Apr 21, 2007

Market, Mead, and 'The 13th Warrior'

Posted at 11:00 pm MDT to Media

Farmer's market. Feels like being home: it's nice to get back into a familiar routine.

I spent today helping Nanette at the Farmer's Market. The weather cooperated and people came out in droves to buy stuff. I think everyone is reacting to the winter finally being over.

The Market was having a wine and mead tasting as a special event (all local producers) and I decided to take part. I tasted several kinds of mead and chocolate truffles -- I'm not fond of most American wines: the characteristic called 'foxiness' sets off my hyper-sensitivity to bitterness. I've been fond of mead ever since I first tasted it at an SCA event years ago.

I ended up buying some of the chocolate truffles and two different kinds of mead.

I need to re-watch "The 13th Warrior". I haven't watched it in a while, and mead always reminds me of it. The protagonist is a Muslim traveler, Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan Ibn Al Abbas Ibn Rashid Ibn Hamad (played by Antonio Banderas), who has gotten entangled in the Beowulf story. When he tells one of his Viking companions that he is not allowed to partake of grape or grain, the warrior assures him that it isn't a problem, because the drink he is being offered is mead, which is made from honey.

That movie is really impressive in many ways. The Vikings are one of the historical periods and cultures that I've spent a fair amount of time studying over the years, and I recognized several scenes as being taking directly from primary sources. There is a Viking funeral scene early in the movie that is taken directly from the account of a real Muslim traveler named Ahmad ibn Fadlan who visited the Viking settlements that later developed into Russia.

I also like the way the movie handled language. Translators (through multiple languages) early in the story. Then when the protagonist is travelling with the Vikings, whose language he doesn't understand, we initially hear them speaking their language (not sure if it's actually Norse or Old Friesian -- Wikipedia says Norse, but it says the translators were using Latin, and I remember it being Greek. Definitely time to re-watch the movie).

Gradually, as Ahmad begins to understand the conversations around him more and more of the Norse words and phrases are replaced by English. It's a very nice montage depiction of language learning through full immersion.

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