“Floating in this cosmic jacuzzi…”

This weekend, at a truly enjoyable fundraiser, I met several newcomers to Becoming Charlemagne, as well as a few people who had already read the book. As we got to chatting, I was reminded of the neatest thing about writing a book in the first place: the author’s obsession, developed over years and often nurtured in solitude, finally becomes a shared point of reference through which readers can look anew at some aspect of the world.

Those readers aren’t always strangers, either. I came home from the luncheon to find that a friend had emailed me the following news item:

Schwarzenegger Learned Dealmaking in Tub

San Jose, Calif. (AP) – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger learned the art of political negotiation in a setting that’s oh so California – soaking in his backyard hot tub. Keynoting a gathering of Silicon Valley business leaders Friday, the Republican governor explained how his wife – former television news anchor Maria Shriver – came to support his 2003 gubernatorial bid.

“We were sitting in the Jacuzzi. I said, ‘Maria, here’s an idea. What do you think about this, me running for governor?'” Schwarzenegger said to peals of laughter. “I said, ‘There’s a recall, there’s only a 2-month campaign. I think we can work our way through this two months and then I’m governor – isn’t that great?'”

After the laughter died down, Schwarzenegger turned solemn.

“In all seriousness, she had tears in her eyes. I had to work on her for 14 days,” Schwarzenegger said. “That’s where I learned to negotiate – bringing Democrats and Republicans together right there in the Jacuzzi.”

“Californian, eh?” my friend writes. “Seems to me Ahnold’s not the first leader of Germanic extraction to practice politics from the tub.”

He’s right. Here’s Einhard on—who else?—Charlemagne:

He took delight in steam-baths at the thermal springs, and loved to exercise himself in the water whenever he could. He was an extremely strong swimmer and in this sport no one could surpass him. It was for this reason that he built his palace at Aachen and remained continuously in residence there during the last years of his life and indeed until the moment of his death. He would invite not only his sons to bathe with him, but his nobles and friends as well, and occasionally even a crowd of his attendants and bodyguards, so that sometimes a hundred men or more would be in the water together.

Last year, during Thanksgiving and Christmas, my family and friends surprised me with their eagerness to talk about the conflicts of Charlemagne’s era, the culture of medieval Baghdad, and the cruelty of the Byzantine empress Irene. Maybe this year, inspired by historical parallels, we can debate a more urgent proposition: whether Karolus Magnus, for all his scholarly advisers, would have been able to pronounce the word “gubernatorial” without sounding just a little bit silly.

“…and no one knows but Lorelei.”

Ah, the Middle Ages: idealized by some, studied by many, and fated to serve as the wellspring of some truly awful motion pictures.

Scott Nokes at Unlocked Wordhoard is having fun with the “study guide” for the impending Beowulf movie. A sample: “As I searched for the actual number or e-mail to order the study guide, I realized that the glossy ads for the film on the back of the poster were the study guide. Oh.”

Carl at Got Medieval is grumbling, too, about Beowulf’s mother’s footwear choices.

Meanwhile, Jennifer at Per Omnia Saecula notes, with understandable dread, a film adaptation of Boccaccio’s Decameron starring fame’s latest love-children.

Alas, my Charlemagne-and-the-giant-scorpions miniseries is no closer to becoming a reality. However, Variety mentions another movie that may have tremendous potential:

Telepool also picked up “The Charlemagne Code,” Munich-based Dreamtool Entertainment’s $7 million TV movie about an archeologist on a perilous quest to find the legendary Nibelung treasure. Made for RTL Television in Germany, Telepool has already presold the TV movie to Telecinco in Spain and TV2 in Hungary.

Charlemagne, the Nibelung treasure, and a German Indiana Jones? I’ve been teaching Wagner for three weeks, so part of me would love to see this improbable, ridiculous gesamtkunstwerk find its way to American cable.

And if it happens to have a few giant scorpions in it? So much the better.

“Now the D and the A and the M and the N…”

Happy Halloween! Here are a few video treats to get you in the spirit of the day.

With spooky poems, delivery is everything—especially for a classic horror ballad.

God help you if your childhood Halloweens were anything like Bill Haverchuck’s.

Bet you didn’t know the scariest castle ever once haunted the Jersey Shore.

Here’s a burning question: can Betty Boop prevail in Hell?

“Think happy thoughts, children, or the scary rapper man will do his crazy dancing in your nightmares.”

When you hear “Switzerland,” do you automatically think “bloodcurdling”? You will after watching this. (Just not for the reasons the Swiss hope you will.)

As my three-year-old nephew might say: Skeery!

“Strut on a line, it’s discord and rhyme…”

Halloween approacheth, and if your family is anything like mine, you’ll observe the holiday amid sentiment and song as you gather ’round the giant plastic animatronic mummy. But when the cackling stops and the sobbing of toddlers subsides, why not turn to a little seasonal reading—for example, a medieval werewolf romance?

Thanks to Google Books, you can, if you’re so inclined, partake of the Middle English romance “William of Palerne” without having to visit the library. I’ll let W.R.J. Barron summarize the plot:

William, Prince of Apulia, is stolen in infancy by a werewolf who, to protect him from the murderous designs of his uncle, carries him from Sicily to a wood near Rome where he is brought up by a cowherd until the Emperor, struck by the lad’s promising appearance, appoints him page to his daughter Melior who inevitably falls in love with him.

There’s more; there’s always more in medieval romance. The poets who wrote these works were, thank goodness, only dimly acquainted with the merits of parsimony. Why serve fillet mignon when you can pile on the folklore motifs, stock situations, and encounters with wild animals and grill up the literary equivalent of a Hardee’s Monster Thickburger instead?

If you want to learn what becomes of young William, you’ll have to check out the book, which was edited in 1867 by the indefatigable W.W. Skeat, and wade through more than 5,000 lines of crisis and universal brouhaha—plus a neat five-page scholarly digression on medieval werewolf lore.

Fortunately, things end on a high note, especially for the werewolf, whose name turns out to be Alphonse, and whose subsequent wedding requires him to ponder the most challenging demande d’amour of all: chicken or beef?

UPDATE: Halloween werewolves have also been spotted at Per Omnia Saecula and Unlocked Wordhoard.

“As Grendel leaves his mossy home…”

The year I applied to graduate school, I was both an aspiring cartoonist and a wannabe scholar. My adviser, an English professor, liked that first part; it was that second part that made the dear man cringe. “I’ll write you a letter of recommendation,” he informed me, “but I’d rather help create one literate cartoonist than another academic desperately scrounging around for the next pot of grant money.” In the end, I opted for neither career, but I do sometimes wonder what that literate cartoonist might have looked like.

That’s why I was pleased to discover Alexis Fajardo. He’s the creative soul behind Kid Beowulf, an all-ages epic in which twin 12-year-old brothers Beowulf and Grendel romp across a Europe inspired by great works of classical and medieval literature. To Fajardo’s credit, he’s not just swiping names to gussy up unrelated characters; his comic adaptations are prompted by real affection for his sources. Last year, in fact, he made a surprising promise: “I want to be true to the material, the epic. As these guys travel, they will learn what it is to be a hero, what their destinies are. In the end, Beowulf will kill Grendel.”

The first volume of Kid Beowulf is already for sale; as you can see from his blog, Fajardo’s style is clearly inspired by Asterix, Pogo, Bone, and maybe even traces of Dragon-era Phil Foglio. As he fleshes out his 12-book series—which may include cameos by Sir Gawain, El Cid, Gilgamesh, and others—I’ll eagerly await one volume in particular, Kid Beowulf and the Song of Roland. Pedants may argue that Beowulf, Charlemagne, and Joan of Arc shouldn’t all find themselves inhabiting the same story—but if a gold-painted Angelina Jolie can play Grendel’s mother, then what’s the harm in a teenage Grendel skulking ahistorically across the canon? This one, at least, your children can enjoy.

“A secret to be told, a gold chest to be bold…”

Hail to the king, baby. In an essay for the quarterly Coyote Wild, Scott Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard sets the 1992 guy-with-a-chainsaw-for-an-arm movie Army of Darkness firmly in its Arthurian tradition. Scott argues—persuasively, I think—that the film is more faithful to the spirit of Twain’s Connecticut Yankee than other adaptations have been, largely because it’s less willing to congratulate the modern world on its supposed superiority and doesn’t automatically sneer at the medieval.

My only regret is that Scott isn’t an Americanist. Then he could shed some critical light on another terrific Sam Raimi-Bruce Campbell collaboration, the little-noted nor long-remembered Jack of All Trades. You’ve got to love any series that keeps manufacturing excuses to place on the same East Indian island such figures as Lewis and Clark, James Madison, the Marquis De Sade, and Napoleon (Verne “Mini-Me” Troyer, in the role he was born to play). I like to think that if the show had lasted another season, King Arthur might have washed ashore, too. Avalon, Schmavalon—that funeral barge had to land somewhere…

“…our only goal will be the western shore.”

What is it with the Sci-Fi Channel? Last weekend, as I prepared to teach The Saga of the Volsungs, they re-aired Dark Kingdom: The Dragon King, a sweet Teutonic smoothie that blends the Volsungasaga, the Nibelungenlied, and Wagner’s Ring into one lumpy Gygaxian confection.

And then, this weekend—right after my lonely blog post to honor Leif Eriksson Day—they premiered Wraiths of Roanoke, the story of—well, I’ll let MovieWeb summarize the plot:

In the late 16th century, colonists on Roanoke Island, Virginia, found themselves under siege against evil spirits left behind by the Vikings. The Wraiths are hunting the innocent souls of the first-born children in order to get into Valhalla.

I’m delighted that even the story of the Roanoke colony can be infused with a heady dose of spooky, horn-helmed medievalism, however unlikely it may seem. But as I glance at the Sci-Fi Channel’s prodigious roster of monsters and heroes, I notice one glaring omission—one legendary figure whose ability to carry a formulaic, CGI-laden B-movie has been grievously overlooked.

I refer, of course, to Charlemagne.

And so, as I await the release of the Becoming Charlemagne trade paperback, I’ll also hope for that phone call from the Sci-Fi Channel. As a reasonable man, I’ll happily make…adjustments…to history, as long as every change is consistent with Sci-Fi’s famously stringent standards of accuracy.

After all, if Coolio can fight a pterodactyl, and if Beowulf can wield a crossbow that blows stuff up, then I see no reason why Charlemagne can’t fight a giant scorpion—nay, ride a giant scorpion—on the slopes of a fiery volcano while battling Nazi super-mutants with the aid of lethal anthropomorphic mosquitoes.

There’s nothing in the sources that says he didn’t. And believe me, I’ve looked.

“On we sweep, with threshing oar…”

It may not be a day off from work, but today, my fellow Americans, is Leif Eriksson Day. By happy coincidence, I’m teaching The Saga of the Volsungs tonight. Why not find your own way to mark this marvelous manifestation of medievalism?

If your belly cries out for a taste of goopy, chilled curds, then swing by your local Whole Foods. It’s the only chain in the U.S. that sells skyr, the “yogurt” of the Vikings, in all its tart, rennety goodness.

It’s never too early to plan a trip to L’Anse aux Meadows, the remote site in Newfoundland where the Northmen landed. (Just be prepared to eat the occasional cod tongue.)

Why not groove to a little neo-Viking pop? Take in a Skitamorall video or two, or read a very old article about Sigur Ros.

If you’re pining for the fjords, you can order a VHS copy of The Outlaw, the 1981 film adaptation of Gisli’s Saga, for only $68.63. You can specifically commemorate Leif Eriksson by reading the Vinland Sagas—or, for kicks, you can read the Havamal:

Deyr fé, deyja fraendr,
deyr sjálfr it sama;
en orðstírr deyr aldregi
hveim er sér góðan getr.

Deyr fé, deyja fraendr,
deyr sjálfr it sama;
ek veit einn at aldri deyr:
dómr um dauðan hvern.

Wealth dies, kin die,
The self must die as well;
But reputation never dies
For one who can obtain it.

Wealth dies, kin die,
The self must die as well;
I know one thing that never dies:
The renown of every dead man.

Leif Eriksson surely knew these bits of Nordic wisdom. A thousand years later, these eddic verses still find validation in the statues and airports that bear his name. Like this quasi-holiday, they’re unlikely and often overlooked tributes to a brave and lucky traveler—the one medieval Icelander whose name we Vinlanders are most likely to remember.

“With a snow-white pillow for my big, fat head…”

In the murky world of trade publishing, accomplishments are relative. How does one judge the success of a little mass-market book about Charlemagne: Amazon rankings? Attendance at library talks? Emails from history and genealogy buffs?

I don’t know—but I must be doing something right, because some cheeseball paper mill is hawking a five-page paper about my book. For $49.75—a mere $9.95 per page—you even get a bibliography with two—two!—sources.

Of course, the intelligent plagiarist would economize. Behold: the same service also offers the enthralling “Justinian vs. Charlemagne.” With its three pages and three sources, he would save 60 percent and enjoy a 50 percent increase in the size of his bibliography. Apparently, the paper weighs the relative awesomeness of the two emperors “and argues that the Mandate of Heaven (the right to continue ruling) should go to Justinian.”

And really, what history prof wouldn’t want to receive a paper about that?

“One gun added on to the one gun…”

Now here’s a story Ken Burns might have retold: on Monday, the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran an article about retired archbishop Philip Hannan, who recently recounted his experiences as a military chaplain for the oral history project at the National World War II Museum. As a young priest, Hannan parachuted into battle alongside his men, and he helped to liberate a concentration camp—but one of his deeds that wasn’t a matter of immediate life and death also bears repeating:

When the regiment took Cologne, the first thing Hannan did was visit the cathedral to see whether its “wonderful collection of art” survived the war.

Hannan said the German prelates tried to protect the art by storing it in boxes made of brick. He worried those boxes would be bait for American soldiers, who had come into possession of some British-designed Gammon grenades and were eager for targets to test them out.

He was forbidden to cross the Rhine river, but he ignored the orders and set out in search of the German archbishop. That bishop appointed him protector of the cathedral, and Hannan made sure his paratroopers guarded it.

If not for Hannan, countless medieval treasures might have been destroyed, including several remarkable reliquaries, a famous tenth-century crucifix, and other irreplaceable artifacts that help us understand the past.

It’s become a cliché to say that during World War II, Allied forces “saved the world.” A few, showing foresight and decency, also saved the Middle Ages.