Human Terrain

Human Terrain

by Justin Durand

I’m fascinated by this graphic way of viewing the size and spatial relationship of the world’s cities.

I live right there in Denver but I was born in Laramie, which is that little spike up there to the left of Cheyenne.

Try it yourself: Human Terrain: Visualizing the World’s Population, in 3D. You should see your own area and be able to fly around the world looking at others

It seems like there should be some way of adapting this type of presentation to genealogy, but I’m not seeing it right off.

Revised to update link.

Research Resources

Research Resources

by Justin Durand

Life is easier when you have an list of links to the sources you use most often, or so says Thomas MacEntee. This is mine. I had it started before I watched his 2011 webinar. One of these I’ll come back and do some polishing. Now, I’m moving it back offline.

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Prosopography

Prosopography is an academic field closely allied to genealogy. It studies the lives of individual people as part of a group by gathering all original source material about their lives. Prosopographical databases are useful to genealogists because they provide precise dates and forms of names.

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Miscellaneous

My Link Collections

St. Mark’s Lutheran

St. Mark’s Lutheran

by Justin Durand

I was sad to hear St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Provo has closed. Or, not exactly closed but the property is sold, there are houses where the church used to be, and the congregation is now meeting at some event center up north. A casualty of being a religious minority in Utah Valley.

This was the church where my sisters Evonne and Linda got married, where their children and grandchildren were baptized, the church Evonne attended her whole adult life, where she belonged to Altar Guild, and where she taught Vacation Bible School.

The pastor I remember is Bruce Jeske. I’m godfather to my two nephews, so I had to meet with him before their baptisms. My sisters liked him but he came across to me as adversarial. Maybe because by then I was Episcopalian rather than Lutheran. When you’re a minority you probably don’t like defections.

Then too, St. Mark’s was Missouri Synod. We had a whole history of not being Missouri Synod. Too conservative.

We were Augustana Synod in Brigham City, Utah. They were the Swedish church. Then they joined with other churches to form the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) in 1962. In Las Vegas we had to drive across town to an LCA church even though an American Lutheran Church (ALC) church was closer. But in Grand Junction we had to go to an ALC church because that was the only choice. That’s where I was confirmed.

The particular flavor of Lutheran mattered because my (step) dad was a Freemason. The more conservative kinds of Lutheran didn’t allow that.

Back in Utah, in Orem-Provo the only choice was Missouri Synod. Even more conservative. They went their own way even after the 1988 merger of the ALC and LCA into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Update March 10, 2023: I’ve heard the St. Mark’s congregation is still meeting, now in a building in Lindon. I don’t know what happened. Maybe the membership dropped to the point they couldn’t afford to maintain the church building any longer.

Ragnar Lodbrok

Ragnar Lodbrok

by Justin Durand

I have a special affection for Ragnar, but not for the reasons you’d think. I’m a volunteer curator at Geni.com, but several years ago I got thrown out of the site by another curator, Anette.

We have a Ragnar Lodbrog project at Geni, as you might expect. Anette started the project. A bunch of us worked on it. Until Anette got mad. Then she threw me out of the project, along with at least one other guy. Not satisfied, she also threw me out of Geni itself, then (so very strange) removed herself from the project.

Wow. Some strong feelings there.

That whole tantrum was my fault, I suppose. I said no real academic thinks Ragnar Lodbrok is real. It turned out Anette did think he was real and did think of herself as an academic. So.

Geni let me back into the site but not back into the project.

Coming back to reality, there are a few different choices for dealing with Ragnar academically.

The majority view of experts was articulated by Stewart Baldwin as far back as 1997. He argued for a Ragnar who is a composite of different figures from different stories. This is also the view expressed by Hilda Ellis Davidson.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that the father of the leaders of the Great Heathen Army who invaded English in 865 is likely the core of Ragnar’s legend. His story grew because their stories grew. Everything, including his ancestry, is likely an accretion, although the name Ragnar might be authentic.

More Information

  • Stewart Baldwin, Was Ragnar Lodbrok Historical? (rev. 1997), at Scangen.se, visited Nov. 17, 2019. Ragnar is probably a composite of different characters.
  • Jackson Crawford, The Sons of Ragnar (Oct. 4, 2018), at YouTube.com, visited November 17, 2019. Already in the sagas Ragnar is the quintessential viking, more than he is any sort of historical personage.
  • Jackson Crawford, Who was Ragnar Lothbrok? (Dec. 28, 2016), at YouTube.com, visited November 17, 2019. He might be a historical figure if he was the Reginheri who raided in France in 845 but if so his story has been much expanded.
  • Hilda Ellis Davidson (editor), Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes (1980).
  • Arith Härger, The Truth About Ragnar Lothbrok (Nov. 14, 2018), at YouTube.com, visited Nov. 17, 2019. Ragnar is probably a composite of different characters.
Great Heathen Army

Great Heathen Army

by Justin Durand

They found it. Or more accurately, they’ve decided what they found in 1979 really is it. I’m talking about a mass grave at Repton in Derbyshire. The experts have solved a dating problem. Now it seems very likely the bodies are from the Great Heathen Army.

Here’s the short version.

In 865 vikings from coming from the Continent joined forces to invade the kingdoms that comprised what is now England. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle called them the Great Heathen Army. In legend, the army was led by the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok, who had a grudge against King Aelle of Nlorthumbria because he had killed their father.

According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the army wintered at Repton 873/4, and thereafter split up. The mass grave discovered there contains (probably) 264 bodies, of which 80% are males between the ages of 15 and 45. Many of them have signs of violent injury.

That looks like an army. There doesn’t seem to be any historical record that would explain the mass grave. The likeliest explanation is that members of the nearby military camp suffered some sort of epidemic.

More Information