Saturday, February 21, 2009

Ask Dallas : what language is Eric speaking ?

I like that people feel comfortable enough with me to ask questions that they think are stupid -even though the truth is they aren't stupid questions at all....

Question : "I want to ask you what exactly is the language that Eric's uses?"

This was my answer ...

From Vikings wikia.com

Old Norse is the North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300.

It evolved from the older Proto-Norse in the 8th century and evolved into the modern North Germanic languages after the Viking Age.

Most speakers of Old Norse dialects spoke the Old East Norse dialect in what are present-date Denmark and Sweden. In texts which date from Medieval Icelandic time, writers wrote with Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian dialects. These dialects derive from the Old West Norse dialect.

No clear geographical boundary exists between the two dialects. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden.

Some consider Old Gutnish, sometimes included in Old East Norse because it is the least known, a third dialect since it shares traits with both Old West Norse and Old East Norse and also has developed its own.

The Icelandic Gray Goose Laws states that Swedes, Norwegians, Icelanders and Danes spoke the same language, dǫnsk tunga. Speakers of the eastern dialect, spoken in Sweden and Denmark, would have said dansk tunga (Danish tongue) or norrønt mál (Nordic language) to name their language.

Gradually, Old Norse splintered into the modern North Germanic languages: Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish.

Modern Icelandic is closest to Old Norse. Written modern Icelandic derives from Old Norse/modern Icelandic phoneme system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can understand written Old Norse, which differs slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order.

In the True Blood TV show Alex Skarsgard is just speaking his native Swedish but in the books Charlaine Harris describes Eric's language as being a very old Viking language that probably would have been spoken over 1,000 years ago.

Alexander speaks Swedish( his own native language) as Eric in True Blood

Examples from episode 4 and episode 12

Eric speaks in Sookie Books

"Eric cursed in a language that probably hadn’t been spoken out loud in centuries" bk8

"He shouted something in a language I'd never heard, and he closed his own eyes" bk4

"Eric said, smiling. He had a slight accent. English was not his second language, of course; it was maybe his twenty-fifth." bk 5

Updates Sookie book and short story timeline


Special thanks to Rflatstone and the wiki girls for sticking with me this week as we refined and updated the books and short story timeline. This may not look like much, but it took hours and hours. I will post the list and my notes from the research.

Let me know if you see anything we missed ...

Book Timeline
(this is the Sookieverse timeline for all 9 books and short stories with Sookie)

1. Dead until Dark- between April 4th and June 21st 2004
2. Living Dead in Dallas - Early September 2004
3. Club Dead -December 1-13th 2004
4. Dead to the World -First weeks of January 2005
* "Fairy Dust" from Powers of Detection - Late January 2005
5. Dead as a Doornail - End of January 2005
* "Dracula Night" from Many Bloody Returns -February 8th 2005
* "One Word Answer" from Bite- Late February 2005
6. Definitely Dead - the week of March 20th 2005
* "Lucky" from Unusual Suspects - late April early May 2005
7. All Together Dead- week of September 19th 21- 2005 (Shortly after Hurricane Katrina)
8. From Dead to Worse - very last weeks of October 2005
* "Gift Wrap" from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe -Christmas Day, December 25th 2005.
9. Dead and Gone - Charlaine has said it takes place in January 2006

Book Time Line Notes

1. Dead until Dark- between April 4th and June 21st 2004
Spring is mentioned and Gran says they are on Daylight savings time. The first day of daylight saving time was April 4 that year and the first day of summer was 22nd of June.

2. Living Dead in Dallas - September 2004
Sookie says it's almost fall pg 5 and it's was unbearably hot in Dallas --sounds like early September in TX.

3. Club Dead -December 1-13th 2004
We know the book opens on that night in December and then there are a certain number of days that Bill is missing. When Alcide shops for Christmas presents, it is 2 Saturdays (2 weeks) until Christmas.

4. Dead to the World -First weeks of January 2005
Sookie finds Eric on New Year's Day and he's at her house a couple of weeks.

* "Fairy Dust" from Powers of Detection - Late January 2005
Spring night, we know she meets Claude before Dead as a Doornail

5. Dead as a Doornail - End of January 2005
Book opens on January 25th , the first full moon because Jason turns for the first time. Sookie says it's the end of January on pg 3, 5 and 51. Eric says to Sookie 4 pages from the end of the book that he needs to hire her in early March.

* "Dracula Night" from Many Bloody Returns -February 8th 2005
Dracula Night is February 8th and the Fangtasia invitation Sookie receives has that date for the party. I don't know why according to the CH bibliography the story is listed in October.

* "One Word Answer" from Bite- Late February 2005
Trimming bushes with Bubba at night, it's 62 degrees at night and it's been 4 weeks since Hadley's murder ( Quinn did the hierarchical wedding in January)

6. Definitely Dead - March 21st - March 31st 2005
It's been about 6 weeks since Hadley's murder. Spring begins on March 21st and Claudine says it's March. Sookie attends Queen's Spring Ball.

* "Lucky" from Unusual Suspects - late April -early May 2005
Sookie says Amelia has been living with her for about a month

7. All Together Dead- week of September 19th 21- 2005 (Shortly after Hurricane Katrina)
Sookie says it's the 3rd week of September on pg 5.

8. From Dead to Worse - very last weeks of October 2005
Sookie says its October on page 32/ Portia's wedding was moved from the 2nd Saturday in April until late October because of Caroline's illness/ Sookie talks about Halloween.

* "Gift Wrap" from Wolfsbane and Mistletoe -Christmas Day, December 25th 2005
Preston comes to Sookie on Christmas Day.

9. Dead and Gone - January 2006
Charlaine has said it takes place in January 2006

Charlaine Harris interview Pt 5 & 6 of the Arizona Poisoned Pen Bookstore Interview

I have posted part one ( videos one and two ) and part two ( videos three and four) of the series of Youtube videos from an interview with Charlaine Harris by Barbara Peters of Poisoned Pen Press and Bookstore, Arizona.

I believe this interview took place in May of 2008.

Part 5 and 6



Alexander Skarsgard Vman interview


Very nice interview with Alex Skarsgard in Vman magazine
http://www.vman.com/

Click to enlarge

Laissez les bons temps rouler ( Let the good times roll) it's Mardi Gras !

The terms "Mardi Gras" (mär`dē grä) and "Mardi Gras season" in English, refer to events of the Carnival celebrations, ending on the day before Ash Wednesday. From the French term "Mardi Gras" (literally "Fat Tuesday"), the term has come to mean the whole period of activity related to those events, beyond just the single day, often called Mardi Gras Day or Fat Tuesday.

Yes, the town Sookie lives means 'good times' in French (Good Times = Bon temps)

You can watch a Mardi Gras parade live in a few minutes !

Tune in live and catch all the Uptown Mardi Gras krewes as they roll down St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans.

Next webcast: Catch the Krewes of Iris and Tucks Saturday, February 21. First parade rolls at 11 a.m.

Launch live parade webcam: Tune in now!
Full Schedule of events HERE

http://www.mardigras.com/

To learn more about Mardi Gras in Louisiana :

http://www.nola.com/
http://louisianatravel.com/

Also a great site with history, recipes etc http://www.louisianacajun.com/index.asp

Dialectically (French or Cajun) : "lay-say lay bawn tawmp ru-lay" or "less-say lay bawn tawmp ru-lay"

Vrykolakas The Bloodless Vampire

UFO digest writes about the Greek Vampire!

A most terrible night
The Vrykolakas, the Greek version of the Vampire
In the west, we tend to categorize everything. We try to come up with rules and regulations that define what something is, sometimes to desperate lengths and great frustration when something just doesn’t fit.

Mythical creatures are no exception. We view the vampire as a blood drinking undead human, and a werewolf as a living human that can take a wolf-like form and ravage the population like an animal. In Eastern Europe, the homeland of most folklore relating to the vampire and werewolf, these lines can become hopelessly blurred, and the creatures can become almost the same.

Take the vrykolakas, the Greek version of the Vampire. While most vampire legends tend to involve drinking human blood as part of the mythos, in this case, it does not. The vrykolakas comes into being simply after living a sacrilegious life, or after an excommunication or burial in ground that was not consecrated, or most ominously eating mutton that had been previously tasted by a werewolf.

Read on http://www.ufodigest.com/news/0209/vrykolakas.php

True Blood Music Video of the Day



Make U Move" by Danielia Cotton. ( Danielia is pretty cool, NPR interview here )
Thanks to Thellou