Supposedly, the Vikings had gotten to Mexico even before the Spaniards had. Isn't that wild? Many countries, including mine, had a tax on windows, considering them "luxury" items. I love historical trivia, and I loved the metaphor in this text.
It is wild. There were a lot of things happening in the past that we do not know today, only gradually uncovering through archaeological and historical research.
Light as a luxury – but it is more or less the same as when we today see taxes on energy, including the electricity we use for lighting up our homes.
About history: I have a feeling that it was much bigger, that people lived a much richer life, than we normally attribute to them, during most of the history of humanity. The idea that everything was primitive, people were less knowing, behaving in an uncivilised way, is too simple. Evidence is accumulating that even Vikings were not that wild, not (all of them always) the monsters they have been described as, they were mostly travelling trade people.
History writers at any time have focused on describing the people of the past as simpler and more brutal than us, but often, this has been for a purpose: they wanted to lift our self-feeling, our nationalism.
Books have not been for everybody during most of the history, that part seems sure, but there are more catches to that story. This one is one of them: having light indoor means the possibility for doing things indoor other than sleeping. Such as reading.
That then also requires reading skills and something to read, but the well-known birchbark letters from Novgorod, part of today's Russia, shows how ordinary people have been regularly writing trivial things to each other (shopping lists, love letters, etc.) already a thousand years ago, and writing in general have been a widespread idea in parts of the world long before that. To me, it is obvious that with many people writing, there would also be many people reading.
Even if the writing in these early times wasn't printed, not in a book shape, it still is an element in the investigation of books — we began consuming books for some reasons, and knowing how to read and being in circumstances where it was possible (i.e., having light for reading), is part of this.
History, as they say, is written by the winners. And it's often focused on "big" events. That, in itself, gives us a skewed perspective. Then, writing was often for the privileged, which were often male in the clergy. I have a feeling things like the Birchbark letters or the Pompei graffiti were an oddity. But I'd love to know what the regular people were writing!
Maybe the Vikings wanted us to believe they were wild? I mean, if you are going to travel the world, it's safer to have your reputation precede you.
Good thinking! The Vikings didn’t write much, unless the people in Novgorod were actually Vikings, which they could have been. That we even know about the birchbark letters is a matter of luck and a cultural peculiarity: The city had a habit of laying wooden boards on the city road, more and more layers over time, and all the garbage people threw there was covered in an oxygen-free environment, so they survived. If Vikings elsewhere were writing similar letters, we don’t know about it, because they have rottened up over the years.
Supposedly, the Vikings had gotten to Mexico even before the Spaniards had. Isn't that wild? Many countries, including mine, had a tax on windows, considering them "luxury" items. I love historical trivia, and I loved the metaphor in this text.
It is wild. There were a lot of things happening in the past that we do not know today, only gradually uncovering through archaeological and historical research.
Light as a luxury – but it is more or less the same as when we today see taxes on energy, including the electricity we use for lighting up our homes.
About history: I have a feeling that it was much bigger, that people lived a much richer life, than we normally attribute to them, during most of the history of humanity. The idea that everything was primitive, people were less knowing, behaving in an uncivilised way, is too simple. Evidence is accumulating that even Vikings were not that wild, not (all of them always) the monsters they have been described as, they were mostly travelling trade people.
History writers at any time have focused on describing the people of the past as simpler and more brutal than us, but often, this has been for a purpose: they wanted to lift our self-feeling, our nationalism.
Books have not been for everybody during most of the history, that part seems sure, but there are more catches to that story. This one is one of them: having light indoor means the possibility for doing things indoor other than sleeping. Such as reading.
That then also requires reading skills and something to read, but the well-known birchbark letters from Novgorod, part of today's Russia, shows how ordinary people have been regularly writing trivial things to each other (shopping lists, love letters, etc.) already a thousand years ago, and writing in general have been a widespread idea in parts of the world long before that. To me, it is obvious that with many people writing, there would also be many people reading.
Even if the writing in these early times wasn't printed, not in a book shape, it still is an element in the investigation of books — we began consuming books for some reasons, and knowing how to read and being in circumstances where it was possible (i.e., having light for reading), is part of this.
History, as they say, is written by the winners. And it's often focused on "big" events. That, in itself, gives us a skewed perspective. Then, writing was often for the privileged, which were often male in the clergy. I have a feeling things like the Birchbark letters or the Pompei graffiti were an oddity. But I'd love to know what the regular people were writing!
Maybe the Vikings wanted us to believe they were wild? I mean, if you are going to travel the world, it's safer to have your reputation precede you.
Good thinking! The Vikings didn’t write much, unless the people in Novgorod were actually Vikings, which they could have been. That we even know about the birchbark letters is a matter of luck and a cultural peculiarity: The city had a habit of laying wooden boards on the city road, more and more layers over time, and all the garbage people threw there was covered in an oxygen-free environment, so they survived. If Vikings elsewhere were writing similar letters, we don’t know about it, because they have rottened up over the years.