Sigmaringen Castle

Sigmaringen Castle

Sigmaringen Castle was the princely castle and seat of government for the Princes of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. . . . During the closing months of World War II, Schloss Sigmaringen was briefly the seat of the Vichy French Government after France was liberated by the Allies.

Sigmaringen Castle

Vikings: Valhalla Season 3 Netflix

Vikings: Valhalla | Season 3 Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix

Great stuff. Season 2 saw Leif and Harald going south across the Rus to Constantinople. Now they have been in the employ of the Emperor for seven years.

Season 3 starts off with the siege of Syracuse by the Byzantine Emperor:

Maniakes was a Greek general of the Byzantine Empire . . . . His greatest achievement was the partial reconquest of Sicily from the Arabs beginning in 1038. He was aided by the Varangian Guard, then led by Harald Hardrada, who later became King of Norway.

The Byzantines prevail thanks to the explosives concocted from Sulfur by Leif Ericson. They dig tunnels deep beneath the walls and in a scheme that would make Rube Goldberg proud, use the explosives to bring down a section of the wall. This allows the Emperor's soldiers to storm the city. The central castle holds out, but the Emir in charge calls for single combat to decide his fate. Leif's fellow Viking, Harald Haraldson has become one of the Byzantine generals and gets picked to fight the Emir.

So we have numerous historical characters, plenty of action, intrigue and people murdering their fellow man in all kinds of horrific ways. Much of the plot involves people scheming to get themselves or their children on the throne of one country or another.

Vikings: Valhalla

Wikipedia season 3 episode summaries.

Ljubljana Castle

Ljubljana Castle

Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia. The hill was likely the site of a Roman fortress back when Rome ruled the Earth. Since then it has been rebuilt a couple of times. Wikipedia page. Reminds me Orvieto.

Ljubljana Castle History

Architecture Today has a story about a planned renovation which contained this brief history: 

The outcrop on which the castle stands had been occupied in Roman times, and twelfth century timber fortifications were replaced by a stone fortress in the thirteenth century, when it was occupied by the dukes of Carinthia, and the surrounding settlement gained city rights. Over successive centuries the castle was extensively enlarged for use by provincial governors but by the eighteenth century it became redundant and there were proposals for its demolition. After occupation by French soldiers at the start of the nineteenth century it was put to use as a prison, and during the first half of the twentieth century it provided housing for disadvantaged citizens, following its purchase by the city from the state in 1905.

Google Maps 3D view of this place.

Vikings: Valhalla

Vikings: Valhalla | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Historical drama set in England with a bunch of historical characters including Leif Erikson and Æthelred the Unready. It starts with:

The St. Brice's Day massacre was the killing of Danes on the 13th of November 1002, ordered by King Æthelred the Unready of England in response to frequent Danish raids. - Wikipedia

I remember hearing about Leif Erikson when I was in school about a zillion years ago, and Æthelred the Unready, that's a name that sticks in the memory. 

His epithet does not derive from the modern word "unready", but rather from the Old English unræd meaning "poorly advised"; it is a pun on his name, which means "well advised". - Wikipedia

Danes had been living in England for a long time. The English noblemen advised the King to exterminate them. Not everyone thought this was a good idea as they suspected this would enrage the Vikings and they would want revenge and that's just what happened. That's my quick guess as to the origin of his nickname.

This show is like a follow on to The Last Kingdom which starts in 877, and we've still got Normans, Saxons and Danes hacking on each other with swords and axes.

The production values are pretty good, meaning the clothing, weapons, boats and buildings all seem reasonable for the period. They do slip in a number of women and brown people into roles where you might not expect them, but who knows? This is hundreds of years after the Romans left and slavery is still a thing. Some people seem to get bent out of shape over this kind of thing, but it doesn't bother me. Sometimes having a black person in a drama really throws some light on the situation, like when we had a black person playing Thomas Jefferson in Hamilton.

Real historical characters from the show:

We even have some dates for some of them. The names in blue are links to Wikipedia which prove (prove) that they really, truly existed.  

Google spreadsheet here

Let's Have Ourselves a Good Fight

Pope Urban II Preaching the First Crusade in the Square of Clermont (1835) - Francesco Hayez

On November 17, 1091, Pope Urban II made a speech which include this bit:

At this point Pope Urban raised a second issue to which he and his illustrious predecessor Gregory VII had devoted years of effort – the chronic warfare of medieval times. The popes had been attempting to achieve a “truce of God” among the feudal nobility, many of whom seemed inclined to make war, even on their friends, just for the sake of a good fight. After all, it was what they had trained to do every day since early childhood. Here was their chance! “Christian warriors, who continually and vainly seek pretexts for war, rejoice, for you have today found a true pretext … If you are conquered, you will have the glory of dying in the very same place as Jesus Christ, and God will never forget that he found you in the holy battalions … Soldiers of Hell, become soldiers of the living God!”

Via Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

Yuri Dolgoruky

Russian Nuclear Submarine “Yuri Dolgoruky” (K-535) Sub-Sea Launch Four “Bulava” Missile.
Russian submarine cruising around in the ice covered northern sea, firing missiles. The CIA would have given their left nut for video like this 50 years ago. Of course, this submarine didn't exist back then. They started the project just before the Soviet Union collapsed and it stalled. They resumed building it in 1996 and finally launched it in 2008.

Statue of Yuri Dolgoruky in Moscow erected in 1954

The sub is named for Yuri Dolgoruky, literally "Yuri the Long-Armed" (c. 1099 – 15 May 1157), founder of the city of Moscow.

The Physician

Statue of Avicenna Ibn Sina
I am pretty sure this is in Adana, Turkey

On the surface The Physician is not a great movie. The characters are a little thin and their motivations transparent, but it deserves credit for even attempting the story at all. It attempts to cram about six full movies-worth of story into one. It runs two and a half hours.

We have some characters out of the history books:

• Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037), the physician, known as Ibn Sina in the movie,
• Muhammad ibn Rustam Dushmanziyar (? – 1041), aka 'The Shah', and
• Tughril (990 – 1063), the unnamed commander of the Sekjuk horde.

and a real place with fictional sounding name:

• Isfahan, a city in central Iran that has been there since before the beginning of recorded history.

Towards the end of the movie the Seljuk horde conquers the city. From the Wikipedia article, that seems to be plausible:

The Turkish conqueror and founder of the Seljuq dynasty, Toghril Beg, made Isfahan the capital of his domains in the mid-11th century; but it was under his grandson Malik-Shah I (r. 1073–92) that the city grew in size and splendour.

The story is basically about ignorance, the beginnings of medicine, and stupidity of religious fanatics. All stuff we know, but sometimes it's good to go back and review the basics. Whether our hero (the Christian Englishman masquerading as a Jew) was actually able to preform any of the medical miracles attributed to him is totally a matter of conjecture. Someone had to be first and it could well have been him. The knowledge from the first actual trials may not have survived. It may be that our first recorded instance of a successful medical procedure wasn't the first one. It may not even be the second or the tenth. It is just the first record we have. Prior to the printing press, our history is a little spotty.

Fall of Islam

I have heard how Islam society used to be very advanced in mathematics and science. We (Western Civilization) got the concept of zero from Arabia. They had astronomers and philosophers and doctors and libraries. But all this is in the past tense. Now the only thing we hear about the Middle East is goats and oil, and Jihad of course. So what happened to the Muslim world that caused this change?

So I asked my friend Jack. He is something of a history buff. He definitely knows more about it than I do. His take on it is that the leadership of the Arab world made a conscious decision to cut off contact with the West and to suppress science around the year 1050. This is about the same time that the Crusades were going on in the Middle East, and also about the same time that the Moors suffered a serious defeat in Tours, France. That's what I recall from our conversation anyway. And Jack says that his interpretation based on reading between the lines, but it will do until someone comes up with another theory. And you know, it could have been the Persians and not the Arabs, but that's a distinction that's lost on me. They both follow Mohammed and they are both from the Middle East. I need something substantial to be able to tell them apart.

The Muslim world was not alone in cutting off contact with the outside world. The Chinese did it, as did the Japanese, so it was possible, and with a happy populace and/or a repressive regime, it could be done now.