Monday, January 7, 2008

My kind of god

My son and I are flying off to Denver, Colorado at the end of the week to do three days of serious skiing/snowboarding. Woo Hoo! My knees are beginning to hurt just thinking about it. The only out-of-the-Lake Tahoe-area skiing we've done was one day on a large ball of solid ice in southern Indiana. Southern Indiana? That is very close to Kentucky-ya'll know-one o' them southern states. What were we thinking?

We are going to Keystone, but I just found out that only a couple of mountains over, Breckenridge will just be finishing up the Ullr Festival. Darn! We're going to miss it. I've always had a soft spot for the Norse Gods. How can you not like them? Most (ok, four) of the days of the week are named after them. People have written operas about them (ok, one person, four operas--bad example if you don't like opera). And Ullr IS, of course, the Norse God of Snow! In the article, I like the way they had to specify that Ullr is a mythical god. Unlike any other gods that man has dreamt up.

Ullr Snow God Statue
Of course the Asgard were real. Haven't they ever watched Stargate SG-1?

4 comments:

Kia said...

Well, Ulr does seem quite manly. Between that and being the god of snow, I'm a fan!
You'll find snow at Keystone...I went there for an aquatic biology meeting and they still had some snow in June.

artificialhabitat said...

I think if I was going to be religious I'd choose to believe in the Norse Gods. Or maybe the Egyptian Gods.... perhaps some crazy fusion of the two. Hey, if we're going to believe in a load of old nonsense we should have some fun with it.

I've just finished a two day first aid course, and many of the illustrative slides of injuries were skiing related....... take care!

Laurie said...

Kia,
Keystone in summer? What's the point? Other than actually seeing things in the field, I guess...
Tell them to move the meeting to winter so you can get some snowboarding in.

Andrew,
I thought you had dropped off the face of the earth! I do check your site if only to gaze enviously at the nice pollock(?) picture.

Stargate SG-1 was the perfect fusion of Norse (good) and Egyptian (evil) gods, with the occasional Babylonian, Roman and Greek gods thrown in. Of course the Norse gods turned out to be little grey aliens, and the Egyptian ones were eel-like parasites that take over your brain.

Thanks for the warning. I would pick a dangerous sport to take up relatively late in life. I'll do my best to avoid the more dangerous elements such as trees and snowboarders.

Were many of the injuries due to horses? I gave that up because I though skiing was safer.

artificialhabitat said...

Hmm, yes, I haven't been doing much on my blog recently.

I'd forgotton that SG-1 had already combined the two mythologies.

Interesting point about parasites that take over the brain though! Intentional analogy?

There weren't any pictures of horse-driven injuries (though maybe there were but it wasn't pointed out) - this probably just reflects the photos the guy running the course could get hold of, and he did seem to have mountain activity leanings.

Oh, and yes, it's a pollock, enjoying the sheltered habitat around the footings of a North Sea oil rig.