[gothic-l] Re: "The hunt for Odin"

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at y..., george knysh <gknysh at y...> wrote:
> Thor Heyerdahl's book by that title was published in
> Norwegian in late 2001. An English language version is
> expected to be available in November 2002. Here is a
> link to an extremely unflattering review of this opus,
> which dismisses Heyerdahl and his colleague as
> incompetent pseudo-scientists dabbling in matters they
> know less than nothing about. The rejection is so
> strong, in fact, that it might perhaps generate some
> doubt as to the whether Heyerdahl's book is that
> bad...Those of us who do not understand Norwegian will
> have to wait for the English text. But I find the
> critics' misunderstanding of the mediaeval dialogue
> form as a useful method for serious scientific debate,
> and their obiter accusations against Omeljan Pritsak's
> work (Heyerdahl certainly didn't get any of his Odin
> views from the latter!!) just as troublesome as the
> Heyerdahl contentions (if these have in fact been
> reported correctly).
>
> http://www.hf.uib.no/i/Nordisk/MaalogMinne/artikler/heyerdahl-v1.pdf
>




Hi George,

thanks for the link to the review of Heryerdahl's latest book. The
review is indeed devastating. The authors of the review are well-
established scholars, including Prof. Christian Keller of Oslo
University. Thus, there should be little reason to doubt their
competency, especially since their review is in line with comments
from other archaeologists and historians. The overwhelming view seems
to be that Heyerdahl's book is fiction and fantasy not scholarly
science.  But given his reputation, it will likely be successful and
sell more copies than real research into these matters ('petchalno,
no fakt', as Stalin used to say:-))

cheers,
Dirk









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