The prologue is set in the Second World War. A brave Norwegian resistance
fighter with a Celtic tonsure makes his way across the border to Sweden,
despite being hit by the bullets of pursuing German soldiers. He is known
only by the code name "The Kingfischer". He struggles as far as the parish
of Tantrum and the home of an old hunting companion, Oscar "Gunner"
Andersson. With his dying breath the Kingfischer tells Andersson that he has
managed to smuggle out of Norway something that can cripple German morale by
striking at the very roots of their Nasti ideology, proving that the Nordic
race has always been part of the Roman Catholic world. It's a photograph of
a document pasted into the cover of an old book in a remote Norwegian
church. Before he can explain any more, he dies of his wounds. Andersson
looks at the blurred photograph, where it is faintly possible to discern an
incomplete map of the world that looks as if it came from a faulty slide
projector. He fails to see how it can hurt the Germans, so he just puts it
away in the family bible.
The story proper starts fifteen years later, when Andersson's precocious
daughter Britta, aged about ten, finds the photograph and asks her father
about it. He tells her as much as he knows. She realises that it is a
pre-Columbian map demonstrating a knowledge of North America that
conventional scholarship has hitherto denied. She writes to the vicar of the
church in Norway, asking if she can come to look at the map. The reply is a
disappointment: the vicar tells her that she has to have at least a Ph.D. to
be allowed to see it. But that only makes little Britta determined to
achieve a doctorate. With Schliemann-like zeal, she reads voraciously,
concentrating on primary sources, and attains proficiency in all the ancient
and modern languages of Europe.
By the age of nineteen Britta Theodora Andersson is more than qualified to
start university, but she realises that proper analysis of the huge amount
of data is going to require access to a powerful computer. This is still
back in the days before the PC, when it took a whole room to hold a
computer, and the only one in Sweden at the time belongs to the SAAB
aeroplane factory in Linkøping, where the family are now living. Instead of
going to university she gets a job as a typist at SAAB. When all the other
staff go home, Britta spends the evenings at the computer, learning
everything that can be learnt, developing new programming languages, and
inventing a way to connect computers via the telephone line. In the process
she creates the Internet and single-handedly establishes the global rules
for electronic communication via Usenet.
After many years of preparation she has done her homework and is finally
ready to start her history studies at university. She quickly runs into
opposition from the entrenched views of the orthodox scholars. They refuse
to accept her thesis, which runs as follows: The Goths originated in
Tantrum, from where they spread their woad-based civilisation over Europe
under the leadership of her ancestor Theodoric (after whom Britta gets her
middle name). Depressed by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the
Goths moved back to Tantrum, where they remained until 1362, when the Pope
selected them for a very special mission. The Catholics in Boston and the
rest of Vinland were several centuries in arrears with their tithes, and the
pagans had never paid a cent, so strong-arm tactics were called for. A
plucky band of Goths and Norwegians, captained by Ivar Hardon, set off for
the New World on their "collection journey". With them they had a
cartographer, Paul Kuntson, who mapped all the coasts of Greenland and
Hudson Bay. They abstained from molesting the Native American women out of
fear of contracting breast cancer from them; instead they drilled "mooring
holes" wherever they went. They also collected all the coconuts they could
find, thinking they would make fine cups for the Pope and his family. Then
the party split up. One group headed home, building the Newport Tower to
mark the harbour from which they left the New World. Back in Europe, they
deposited one copy of the map in a church in Norway, another in the secret
Vatican archives along with a lovely bunch of coconuts. The other group
fared less well. They ran into hostiles deep in the wilds of Swedumbega, but
luckily had time to carve a runestone for posterity. They were butchered,
but not before teaching the natives a few hundred words of the ancient
e-dialect of Tantrum.
Presented at a seminar in this way, without the supporting evidence at hand
for the moment, Britta's ideas are ridiculed by scholars and fellow students
alike. She finds out that all her tutors and lecturers belong to a society
of self-hating Scandinavians affiliated to the great Columbian Brotherhood,
a clandestine but powerful global conspiracy. They use secret handshakes and
invoke bureaucratic technicalities to make sure that she is edged out of the
university before she achieves the qualifications necessary to consult the
map in that Norwegian church. She is obliged to forge ahead with her
research as a freelancer.
But now she has a PC of her own, an Internet account and an e-mail address
(dora....@not.telling.com), and can continue her work with the aid of the
Usenet she built up years before. She posts so frequently that she earns the
title of Top Poster six years running. She forges genuine friendships with a
few e-correspondents in obscure corners of the world, and finds herself
especially drawn to shifty types with a bent for using the CAPS LOCK key,
including a French speaker called Graffiti with whom she exchanges
billets-doux. With one fellow in particular she develops a profound and
poignant relationship. He is an expatriate Scandinavian now living in the
Antipodes, running a reused furniture business and spending all his time and
sunburnt dollars on fruitless litigation while trying to find his true
purpose in life. His name is Pukko Elgskog. Britta sends e-mails promising
copies of precious documents for Pukko's eyes only, and although the letters
all get lost in the mail or the envelopes arrive empty, Pukko never loses
faith. He promises to write the foreword to Britta's forthcoming book, and
Britta is not backward about accepting the offer.
Meanwhile, Britta is abused and mocked by all the other Usenet users. They
make fun of her Oxford spelling and her Scarborough grammar, which they
cruelly dub "Brittish", with two t's. They have the iron gall to forge her
posts, they ignore her threats of legal retribution and they e-mail
hard-pore corn to deride her dyslexia. Only the love and support she
receives from Pukko keeps her going, doggedly working on the book that will
make the naysayers eat their hats as soon as it is edited. And together they
hatch their plans for the great coup in which they will turn the Easter
tables on their adversaries.
Pukko sells his last few sticks of furniture to raise the money for a
standby flight to Sweden. Britta and Pukko finally meet in the flesh - a
truly romantic scene. They head for that church in Norway, not to get
married, but to break into the sacristy during the night. What a
disappointment awaits them! The map pasted inside the church book turns out
to come from a dot matrix printer and thus, they conclude, cannot be
pre-Columbian. But Britta suspects that it is a printout of a scanned copy
of the genuine original, and she thinks she knows where that can be found.
Off they fly in a stolen SAAB aeroplane, with Britta at the controls, to
war-torn Iraq, where they run the gauntlet of numerous dangers. Among other
things, they stumble across a doug-out containing a huge cache of Saddam's
weapons of mass destruction, thus incidentally justifying Bush's war. They
finally reach their destination in deepest Kurdistan: a Christian monastery
perched atop a mountain peak. Some abbots - again with Celtic tonsures -
block the gate with their crosiers, saying that no women are allowed in, but
Pukko, now armed to the teeth and seconding every relish, soon disposes of
them, down to the last monk standing.
In the archives, hidden under a booksheet, Britta is amazed to find a chest
full of manuscripts that were believed to have been lost forever: a history
of Gothenburg and the Goths by Diocassiodorus; Aristotle's lost work on
comedy, in which he argues that the best belly-laughs are provoked by people
who are unintentionally funny; the "Ora Begorra" by the Irish scholar
Dicuil; an entry visa to Iceland for one CristĂłbal ColĂłn, dated 26 August
1477; some whatsits and doodahs by Nicholas Thingey; the deed poll by which
Pelagius changed his name to Palladius; a B-manuscript, a C-essay and a
D-composition of the Vulnerable Bede (to which Pukko surreptitiously adds an
E-mail and an F-word); detailed medieval maps of North America signed in
anatase by "The Kingfischer"; a polite request from King Arthur, dated 67
BC, asking for someone to come and teach Christianity to the Surreymen; a
plan of Rosslyn Chapel showing which column the Holy Grail is concealed in;
a new Old Norse "Skammsaga" (an ambiguous title, meaning either "short
story" or "saga of shame"); a fifteenth-century rubbing of the Kensington
runestone with interlinear transliteration into the characters on the
Phaistos disk, confirming the proto-Idiotic decipherment by Foucaullayou
(aka Graffiti). All the sources that Britta needs to clinch her argument are
there. Moreover, a close examination reveals that all this is stored in
nothing less than the original Ark of the Covenant, on which both Theodoric
and Moses have left their names written in woad, thus certifying the Ark as
Gothic/Mosaic.
The story ends with Britta's book triumphantly rolling off the printing
presses and millions of copies leaving the bookbinders on a fleet of
fork-lift trucks. The 504-page tome has no ISBN but four prefaces: one by
Pukko Elgskog, with LOTS of words in CAPITALS; one jointly written by
Kirsten Wallace and Birgitta Seaver, suggesting a recipe for chapeau au
gratin with prime sauce; one endorsement by an unnamed professor of
methodology and copyright law; and the most important one by President
George W. Bush, personally thanking Britta for his re-election. The title of
the book is "My Pet Goth".
> The following manuscript, sent to me anonymously from an Internet café in
> Reykjavik, strikes me as being of potential interest to many readers. It
> seems to be a storyline for a thriller which could be developed into a
> best-selling book or made into a Hollywood blockbuster, if you can imagine
> something like "84 Charing Cross Road" meets "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
> Since the author did not identify him/herself, I guess anyone is free to
> make use of the script.
TH,
Nope, no one would ever believe that story. Even as fiction.
<snip>
--
Tom McDonald
OTOH Something in this piece strike me as a roman de clef.
If only we could work out the Keys to the characters!
Cheers
Soren Larsem
Nothing to do with me! For once...
I love it (especially Ivar and Mr Kuntsson), but I fear it goes beyond the realm
of anything believable, even Harry Potter seems more likely. Nevertheless, it
all seems strangely familiar...?
Cheers
Martin
PS Will Igner's dyselxia allow her to understand it?
Oh, you give it away! The butler didn't do it.
tk
Eh? What bulter?
What sort of group is this? Its full of fucken trolls and pissants posting
mostly bullshit. What the fuck has the above to do with medieval history or
archaeology for that matter?
No, it was the butter.
tk
What does an implement used in the short game have to do with
not doing it?
--
Tom McDonald
Nothing the fuck to do with either. Much the fuck to do with
truth. Ya got sommat against truth?
--
Tom McDonald
Inger E
Was Bitta butter simple country girl?
Eric Stevens
Thanks, Tony. I didn't take your excellent advice, but I did do
a trace on the IP address.
I need a shower now.
--
Tom McDonald
I did the same. Could it be?
--
Fuzzie Jester
"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very
angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea."
- Douglas Adams
Don't panic- the end of the long (and in Britain very damp) university
vacation is almost in sight :-)
David B.
Are you saying that you still don't know who "Mr Horror" IS ?..
You should ask Martyn C. Harrison about that...
grapheus
I know that only three living persons are able to know about one of the
person mentioned but misspellt in the text. That part isn't anywhere to be
read.
Inger E
>
> grapheus
> The following manuscript
Astounding!! Astonishing! Absolutely admirable in every aspect!
This explains EVERYTHING!!! (note caps)
Fortunately I had already finished drinking my coffee! 8-)
--
Mary Loomer Oliver (aka Erilar)
You can't reason with someone whose first line of argument
is that reason doesn't count. Isaac Asimov
Erilar's Cave Annex: http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
> What sort of group is this? Its full of fucken trolls and pissants
> posting
> mostly bullshit. What the fuck has the above to do with medieval history
> or
> archaeology for that matter?
You are displaying your ignorance of what has been going on here for
years...or just your ignorance 8-)
Unfortunately, I hadn't. :-(
Butter not to ask....
Hmmm... witty, incisive and brutally to the point. I have seen this 'style'
before somewhere perchaunce?
This must surely be Paul Kuntson?
How mysterious...
> In article <vuSXc.10473$D7...@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
> "Harold H" <Haro...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> What sort of group is this?
[Sorry for piggy backing on erilar apparently I have killfiled
anyone who posts from *.au] It's the kind of group where you
need a big fat bulging killfile which requires frequent
updating.
[heh-heh]
--
Philip
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Mol. Anth. Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DNAanthro/
Mol. Evol. Hominids http://home.att.net/~DNAPaleoAnth/
Evol. of Xchrom.
http://home.att.net/~DNAPaleoAnth/xlinked.htm
Pal. Anth. Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Paleoanthro/
Sci. Arch. Aux
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sciarchauxilliary/
>> What sort of group is this? Its full of fucken trolls and
>> pissants posting mostly bullshit. What the fuck has the
>> above to do with medieval history or archaeology for that
>> matter?
> Nothing the fuck to do with either. Much the fuck to
> do with
> truth. Ya got sommat against truth?
Geez folks, I am sitting over here using 'BacDown' to scrub the
S'cum off the back of my visual cortex. Put a chasity belt on
your 'tongue', lol, please.
> In article <DMNXc.2519$ZC5...@newsfe2-win.ntli.net>, "The
> Horror" <Thehorrortheh...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The following manuscript
>
> Astounding!! Astonishing! Absolutely admirable in every
> aspect!
>
> This explains EVERYTHING!!! (note caps)
>
>
> Fortunately I had already finished drinking my coffee! 8-)
Lol, my sentiments, exactly.
> This must surely be Paul Kuntson?
No, no, no [Jumping up and down and swearing like a drunken
Swedish sailor] the parsonage is names exactwy to the wone of us
whose traveled amug greun pygmiestes and Arthurant exilets and
whose penned Inventio Fortunata and gavert Prime source
information to the 1507 map, should you have the original search
motor of us and halfed the 3AM scholarly email contacts that I
have, Yu wood certinly Showld knowed of this. Donw't maek funned
of my Dislexctia iither.
Philip! I had no idea you were fluent in Ignerish - perhaps you can translate
for us all in future?
> "Tom McDonald" <tmcdon...@nohormelcharter.net> wrote in message
> news:10j0ha8...@corp.supernews.com...
>
>>Tony Smith wrote:
>>
>>>Tom McDonald wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Nothing the fuck to do with either. Much the fuck to do with truth.
>>>>Ya got sommat against truth?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Tom. Can't you smell a dirty sock?
>>>
>>>Have a google on your new friend and see just how recently it's left
>>>its cottage.................
>>
>>Thanks, Tony. I didn't take your excellent advice, but I did do
>>a trace on the IP address.
>>
>>I need a shower now.
>
>
> I did the same. Could it be?
Fuzzie,
It's the same computer. How likely is it, do you think, that
someone else also uses it?
--
Tom McDonald
The 'style', language and filthy temper alone speak volumes...
Where is Seppo the Nazi Clown I wonder, not like him to miss something like
this?
Cheers
Martin
> Tom McDonald <tmcdon...@nohormelcharter.net> says in
> news:10j05d6...@corp.supernews.com:
>
>
>>>What sort of group is this? Its full of fucken trolls and
>>>pissants posting mostly bullshit. What the fuck has the
>>>above to do with medieval history or archaeology for that
>>>matter?
>
>
>> Nothing the fuck to do with either. Much the fuck to
>> do with
>>truth. Ya got sommat against truth?
>
>
> Geez folks, I am sitting over here using 'BacDown' to scrub the
> S'cum off the back of my visual cortex. Put a chasity belt on
> your 'tongue', lol, please.
>
>
Phil,
I found it interesting that "HH" (heil somebody?) used the
language he did. He's always before been the first one to jump
on raw language, putting himself (in his mind, anyway) on the
moral high ground. Which is pretty funny, given the viciousness
with which he encases most of his own posts.
Perhaps he would agree to stop posting such language. If he
refused, well, fuck him. :-)
--
Tom McDonald
> Philip! I had no idea you were fluent in Ignerish - perhaps
> you can translate for us all in future?
Whats did Yu seything, whend ares Yu evert joining to learnt
English If You didth has halfed the EOD that I aideth in writed
long years beafoth you grandmother twinked in eyed because you
coming mother did, you doesn't spoked to me liked that. Stock
abusingly me!!!!!!!
I doesn't never knew how to spoken Ignorish!!!! My Engrish IS
PIERFUCT likedt mit famtous grandfadthers blasting
moorholes!!!!!
I now call the DatainspectionswedeNazis to unscrew your
computer from datasending connectornet, and You never sendt
portography virused email to USERNET until you grandchild
twinkle in eye.
Goodnight!
ROTFLMAO!
GOOD NIGHT!
--
Drew
----
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
James Madisonz
<6VSXc.10515$D7....@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
And his first post was an attack on Tony Smith starting on the
13th of August.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Harold_H4%40hotmail.com&hl=en&
lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&scoring=d
Well, hell folks, there aint nothing like a loon who tries to
escape killfiles by completely altering his identity.
Let's all change our names to Seppo Renfors and see how he
enjoys identity theft?
Does he even know anyone else?
Doug
Grethe `:)
:-)
--
Tom McDonald
I did not scan his other messages for IP, in my own neglect. Having
rectified my own ineptitude, I see that you are entirely correct.
I am going for that delousing now......
Sorry to hear that. I think buckets should become standard safety equipment
for SHM.
It's definitely not me.
The ears and tail are awarded.
Now we only have to get rid of the bull.
Any-one here know of a good bullshipper ? hint hint :-)
ROTF
Could "Pukko" in the story be a thinly disguised David Bradbury?
Alan
--
Alan Crozier
Lund
Sweden
......snip....
> The title of the book is "My Pet Goth".
If there was a reference list,
you'd have mentioned it, right?
I think what Alan is trying to hint here is that the Mysterious MSS reads
suspiciously like a parody of the Inger biography I produced earlier this
year. For the record- I am not the mysterious person in Reykjavik (fond
though I am of Reykjavik, and indeed most things Icelandic, to the point
where I may even develop a taste for throat singing and human trumpets)
David B.
No, my attempt at humour failed miserably here. I should obviously leave
that to the mysterious author. I was pretending to be stupid and thinking
that the character of Pukko in the story was based on you, not that you
wrote the thing. Inger has already worked out who did it.
> that the character of Pukko in the story was based on you, not
that you
> wrote the thing. Inger has already worked out who did it.
NoL?