Now, the first world shattering post out of the way i can move on to interesting weirdness in the world of academics. No! Don't run of yet! I have Jokes!
Lately it seems that my academic sources have been conspiring to make my world confusing, and giving me an incredible supply of interesting anecdotes, which, due to low monetary funds, I cannot take with me to the pub.
The latest in this long series of events assaulted me while I was reading an article on the Informants of Moltke Moe. Now A bit of backstory is needed here to avoid peoples head exploding... Moltke Moe was the son of Jørgen Moe. Those of you of the scandinavian persuasion will have goten some sense of what this means, for any foreigner in the audience I can add that Jørgen Moe along with Peder Christian Asbjørnsen published folktales. Imagine them as the Norwegian brothers Grimm, only with longer walks.
Now, Moltke Moe followed in the footsteps of his father and gathered tales from a little far-away land of make-believe called Bø, somewhere around the middle of Norway, and the Informants in question were the people wh told hm the stories he later published.
There, that wasn't so painful, now was it?
Now, on to the funny bit. In the 1970s Bjarne Hodne (noted norwegian folklorist) Published an article about these informants, where he gives a bit of Backstory to each of them, as far as he was able to find any at all, there were dung-eating peasants in a small town in Norway, and that's about as small as towns get.
One of these entries stands out from the rest. It's about a woman called Liv Bratterud and in it is quoted from a book published in 1918, an entry about how she got control of her farm from he husband Einar Slaatedalen, who is the real star of this narrative.
The entry reads thusly:
"[Han] fekk ho [og] Kaupte 800 pottur brennevin med ein gång og drakk upp. Han skaut etter svogeren sin og kom paa tukthuse. So stal han etter han o m ut att, og so skaate han på huse eingong til. so var han blitalande og velverd, og daa han kom og møtte arrestforvararen, sa'n "eg æ liksom dei som ikkje skjens fe aa komma igjen dær eg har våre før" sa'n[...]"
Now for the translation, this man, Einar apparently right after he got married went out and bought 800 pottur of Spirits,which he then consumed. Now what a pottur is I've yet to find out, whatever they are, and my historian-friends a have suggested anything from 3 deciliters to almost a Liter, this man managed to drink 800 of them. Seemingly in one sitting. He then goes on to shoot his father in law. Now I might now be the most rugged drinker, though I can hold my own, but somewhere between 240 and 800 liters of Spirits?? I can't even imagine you could drink that much water and survive... much less shoot your father-in-law.
Of cource he was arrested for this and thrown in jail. after which he went on to get caught stealing and being arrested and thrown in jail again, with the words "Well, I'm not the kind on man who minds going back somewhere I've already been..."
Clearly the Norwegians of the 1870s were made of something very different from what their made of now.
Huh, this ended up a lot longer then intended, oh well, I leave you now to pretend to be working, also, check out the "google-search of the day" in the sidebar, suffice it to say, your god-given-grant to have sex with a hamburger might be at stake...
