Mannen som kidnappade "Sagan om ringen"

 

Tobias Hübinette har kvittona... 

Om Åke Ohlmarks högerextrema bakgrund

On and off with Nostradamus

Peter Lemesurier is a British “Nostradamus expert” whose book “Nostradamus: The Next 50 Years” has that elusive quality we've come to expect of cheap European paperbacks on the sensational: “it probably can't be true…but what if it is…it must be true…but what if it really isn't”. An American writer would presumably have declared, with a straight face, that of course Nostradamus was an alien who predicted Gamergate (or, if he's a skeptic, of course Nostradamus is a clear and present danger to liberal democracy and the Great Society). Apparently, Lemesurier comes out of his British closet as an all-out skeptic in his latest book on Michel de Notre Dame, a book I haven't read.

Lemesurier's translations of Nostradamus' quatrains aren't literal, so the book is of little use to those who want to know what the Provencal seer actually said. The interpretations seem fairly traditional, and are to a great extent based on Nostradamus' own explicit statements about a future Muslim invasion of Europe, statements made not in the prophecies themselves, but in a letter to the French king Henry II.

Nostradamus' prophecies are so convoluted (and deliberately not published in chronological order) that it's almost impossible for the reader to know what the future has in store before it actually happens. With some ingenuity, many prophecies can be applied to very different characters or periods. Thus, Lemesurier suggests that the Anti-Christ who struggles for 27 years before being made low (Quatrain VIII.77) is a reference to Stalin, but Hitler or even the French Revolution are other possibilities. Stalin dominated the Soviet Union for (almost) 27 years, Hitler's entire “career” spanned (almost) 27 years, and the French revolution, alas, lasted for (almost) 27 years (I came up with that one myself). Quatrain II.89 is traditionally taken as a prophecy of the Hitler-Stalin pact, but Lemesurier proposes the détente between Reagan and Gorbachev instead. “The New World” mentioned in the quatrain could be both Hitler's New Order, the United States, or the New World Order proposed by Bush Senior! Several verses describing the bad guys as “reds” are applied to Lemesurier to the future Muslim invasion, although Communists or Russians are surely more likely candidates (who knows, maybe the “reds” will stage a come-back in the future). A Swedish faux interpreter of Nostradamus, Åke Ohlmarks, even amused himself by translating some of the prophet's convoluted verses in several alternative ways, thereby getting different “predictions”.

Reading old books on Nostradamus and comparing their predictions to what actually happened is always an interesting exercise. Ohlmarks' Swedish compilation of Nostradamus-based prophecies (the paperback from 1983) claims that France will become an absolutist monarchy during the 1990's, but says nothing about the Balkan Wars, Iraq or 9/11. But yes, the future Muslim invasions are there, too, with the Saracen eventually being defeated by…Swedish troops!

So did Lemesurier manage to predict the future any better in this book from 1993? Hardly, since he assumes that the Muslim invasions will start already before the new millennium, Pope John Paul II will be overthrown by force, and the now famous quatrains I.87 and VI.97 (supposedly about 9/11) are really about European events. In Lemesurier's version, the liberation of Europe from Muslim terror comes from his native Britain, not Sweden.

The author at several junctions implies that Nostradamus was cheating, either because he was really describing events in his past, or believed in a cyclical view of history, which made it possible to predict the future without recourse to supernatural means, simply by projecting past or present events into the future. The Muslim invasions of Europe during the 21st century (or later) are simply a more frightening version of the Arab and Ottoman conquests. The fact that the future papacy is removed to France is reminiscent of its “Babylonian captivity” at 14th century Avignon, etc.

Still, even Nostradamus sometimes said things which make you wonder. Georges Dumézil, tongue-in-cheek or otherwise, devoted an entire essay to a study of IX.20, which does indeed sound like a prediction of the capture of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette at Varennes during the French revolution. Another old favorite is I.35, about the death of Henry II.

As for the end of the world, that ever-contentious subject, Ohlmarks placed it at AD 2777 while Lemesurier opts for AD 2827. Only time will tell whose right. One thing's for sure: there will be plenty of time for humanity to screw up again, and plenty of time to reinterpret the prophecies of Nostradamus…

Lord of the Swedes

A review of J R R Tolkien´s "Lord of the Rings", originally posted in 2007

This is a review of the novel, not this particular edition. Before the LOTR fans eat me alive, Orc style, let me say that I'm not an expert on Tolkien or LOTR, and only read the epic once, in a non-approved Swedish translation. Still, I offer my comments, for all they may be worth.

Here in Sweden, almost everyone reads LOTR. And I really mean, everyone! I met assembly-line workers and dispatch riders who read LOTR. Already in elementary school, all kids read LOTR, and one of our teachers read it aloud during class. It took at least two semesters. Every year in February, Swedish bookstores have a traditional clearence sale. LOTR always sold out the very first day. Imagine growing up in a nation where reading "Lord of the Rings" is considered conventional, almost common knowledge!

As a kind of protest against all this, I decided already as a kid *not* to read LOTR, and I never did, until after I saw Peter Jackson's first movie, and by then I was obviously an adult. I can't say the novel thrilled me. The first part, "The Fellowship of the Ring" smacks of being written for children, and I found it quite silly. By contrast, "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King" are more for adults. Here, Tolkien presumably wanted to write a quasi-historical epic, and inadvertently founded an entirely new literary genre, fantasy. I didn't really like the two concluding books either, however. To me, "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King" are essentially the same story, repeated twice. First, the dark lord Sauron attacks Rohan, and somewhat later he attacks Gondor. The Ents were just plain silly, a kind of throwback to the childishness of "The Fellowship of the Ring".

I readily admit that these impressions of mine are purely subjective. Perhaps I'm just not a fantasy guy. Incidentally, I think Peter Jackson experienced the same problems as I did with the contradiction between children's story and adult epic. He seems to have solved it by turning his movie version of the "Fellowship" into a dark monster movie (adieu, Tom Bombadil).

Why is LOTR so popular, then? Perhaps one of the reasons is that the story can be read on many different levels. The similarities with Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology (Beowulf) are obvious. Indeed, Tolkien apparently wanted to create a new mythology for our age, and what better place to start than simply re-write the old one? The popularity of LOTR here in Sweden can at least in part be explained by this Norse angle of the work, which the un-authorized Swedish translation apparently strengthened even further.

On another level, LOTR is a political allegory of World War Two and the Cold War, although Tolkien himself denied this. Still, the similarities are pretty obvious: Saruman is Hitler, Sauron is Stalin, the Shire is England. The main part of the story could be read as a Third World War allegory, with the Soviet Union (Mordor) in alliance with the Third World (the pirates from the south) attacking the free nations of the West. While this may appeal to people with bad experiences of Communism, it unfortunately leads to racism at times. The crooks are often black-skinned, have almond eyes and wield scimitars, while many of the heroes are white and fair. Still, it seems few people interpret the story as racist, thank Iluvatar, and many actually see it as anti-racist, since the Fellowship of the Ring consists of both humans, elves, dwarfs and hobbits.

Yet another reason for LOTR's popularity is that the work can be read as environmentalist. A romantic love of nature and hatred for modern industrialized society is a recurring theme in the novel. For some reason, Saruman seems to be the chief culprit in this regard, both in Isengard and later in the Shire. Indeed, it was a great pity that Peter Jackson left out the scourging of the Shire from his movie version of "The Return of the King", since this is obviously an important part of the story.

Here in Sweden, most people have only read LOTR in Åke Ohlmark's translation from 1959-61. Tolkien himself hated this translation, and never authorized it. This lead to a later fall-out between Ohlmarks and Tolkien's son Christopher, who prohibited Ohlmarks from translating "The Silmarillion". Ohlmarks denounced Christopher as a "sociopath" and the Silmarillion as "crap" at a fantasy convention, which didn't exactly endear him to the Tolkien fans. Later, Ohlmarks claimed to have been attacked by a dark-side faction of the Tolkien Society, and wrote a scurrilous book accusing fantasy fans of being Satanists, going so far as to state that he regretted ever having translated LOTR. He even claimed that the real author of LOTR wasn't Tolkien, but C.S. Lewis (!). This entire episode was something of a tragedy, since Ohlmarks, despite being a very well-educated man, was a fantasy freak himself. I believe he was over 70 years old when he agreed to play "Bombur the Fat Dwarf" at a fantasy party organized by the Tolkien Society in Sweden!

It's ironic that generations of Swedes have grown up reading a version of LOTR Tolkien himself discarded. Indeed, the only Swedes who don't read Ohlmark's translation are presumably the members of the Swedish Tolkien Society, who prefer the English original. Yet, it might have been Ohlmark's idiosyncratic translation that made LOTR so popular in Sweden, since he consciously attempted to make the names of places and persons in the epic as "Swedish" as possible.

I have no idea how to rate this work, so I give it three stars out of five. One thing is certain: badly translated or not, LOTR will sure find new readers and new converts in many generations still to come.

A Swedish tragedy

Åke Ohlmarks? 

"Tolkien och den svarta magin" is a book best forgotten. Thankfully, it only exists in a Swedish edition. No translation has ever been made. Let's hope it stays that way.

The author, Åke Ohlmarks, translated Tolkien's famous trilogy "Lord of the Rings" to Swedish in 1959-61. Tolkien himself hated this translation, and never authorized it. Yet, it was the only Swedish translation of LOTR until a few years ago. Ohlmarks (perhaps deliberately) mistranslated and distorted many of the names of places and persons in the novels. Thus, he called Rivendell "Vattnadal", which means Water Valley. In reality, Rivendell is based on two ancient English words meaning Rift Valley. Frodo Baggins was named Frodo Bagger in Ohlmark's version. In English, the name refers to a bag, but in Swedish, it refers to a ram. Many Swedish children who read LOTR imagined Frodo to have two horns!

Ohlmarks wanted the names in the LOTR to sound as "Swedish" as possible. In this, he succeeded to a large extent. Indeed, his idiosyncratic translation may have been one of the reasons why Tolkien's epic became so popular in Sweden. Still, the translation issue created a conflict between Tolkien and Ohlmarks, a conflict deepened by the fact that Ohlmarks appended a foreword to his translation, arguing that the novels were allegorical. For instance, he claimed that the ring symbolizes the atomic bomb. He also shortened the original text somewhat, and at one point made a serious translation mistake: in Ohlmark's version, the Witch-king of Angmar is killed by Merry, rather than by Éowyn!

Tolkien's son Christopher hated Ohlmarks even more, and eventually prohibited him from translating "The Silmarillion". The conflict between Ohlmarks and the two Tolkiens was something of a tragedy, since Ohlmarks, despite being both old and learned, nevertheless loved fantasy and participated in fantasy re-enactments. I believe he was over 70 years old when he agreed to play "Bombur the Fat Dwarf" at a fantasy party organized by the Tolkien Society in Sweden!

I never met Ohlmarks myself (he died in 1984), but I saw him on TV once, naturally together with some teenagers dressed in elvish outfits. The man was apparently a kind of maverick scholar of religion with an extensive knowledge of foreign languages, including Old Icelandic, French and Italian. However, some of Ohlmarks' translations are considered idiosyncratic, including one of the Icelandic Edda and another of Nostradamus. He also wrote a couple of novels set during the Viking Age (which I haven't read). I suspect that Mr. Ohlmarks considered himself to be a misunderstood genius of sorts. Small wonder he clashed with Tolkien, a man who believed that LOTR was written under some kind of divine inspiration!

At the end of his life, Ohlmarks made a sudden and inexplicable U-turn. He showed up at a fantasy event (I believe it was held in the Humlegården park in Stockholm), screaming and shouting that "The Silmarillion" was sheer crap, and that Christopher Tolkien was a sociopath. In 1982, just two years before his death, Ohlmarks wrote "Tolkien och den svarta magin", a truly bizarre book in which he claims that the Tolkien societies the world over are Satanists and responsible for at least one ritual murder. Ohlmarks further claims that a Satanist nicknamed Gandalf from the Swedish Tolkien Society attacked him and his wife in their house in Sweden, that LOTR was really written by C.S. Lewis, and that he is sorry for ever having translated it into Swedish. He also directs personal attacks at a competing compiler of Tolkien lore, at Christopher and naturally at Tolkien himself, who is depicted as quite insane. For some reason, Ohlmarks calls "The Silmarillion" blasphemous. As far as I know, however, Ohlmarks wasn't a Christian. (He expresses some sympathies with Zoroastrianism but seems to have misunderstood its message.)

"Tolkien och den svarta magin" is virtually impossible to get hold of even in Sweden. I read it at the Royal Library. I'm surprised that the book has a product page here at Amazon, albeit an empty one. Once again: the book is in Swedish, so unless this happens to be your first language, you can't read it. Indeed, it's so badly edited that it made even my head spin!

Having nothing better to do at 4 AM local time, I decided to retell this little story...