From Vikings to Quakers

I've been amusing myself lately by blogging about the Vikings, those fun loving Norsemen of old who liked to swill mead and plunder monasteries. I was even more amused to learn a while back of a connection between Vikings and Quakers, two groups most people don't usually associate together.

It turns out that the North Midlands of England, where Quakerism was strong in its early years, was also the place with the most Viking colonists back in the day. In David Hackett Fischer's Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in American, the author quotes historian Hugh Barbour as saying,

"...in the central region of the North, the Pennine moorland, where Quakerism was strongest, the villages were mainly Norse in origin and name, and Norse had been spoken there in the Middle Ages. From the Norsemen came the custom of moots, or assemblies in the open at a standing stone or hilltop grave, which may have influenced the Quaker's love for such meeting places."

I enjoy the thought that the great great great....grandfather of an earnest Friend might have been a berserker back in the day. I guess it's more proof that Odin has a sense of humor.

POVERTY AS A CHILDHOOD DISEASE is discussed here.

TWO FROM COAL TATTOO. Here's a post from my friend Ken Ward about the future central Appalachian coal. along with one on the new book about Massey Energy and its former CEO Don Blankenship

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED
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