Saints and Martyrs

 Times are Changing.

        November  seems to be our transition month . It begins with All Saints Day,   Nov 1

             honoring  all  saints known and unknown, a national holiday in many countries.

The feast of All Saints began in the ninth century during the reign of the Byzantine Emperor, Leo VI "the Wise" (886–911). His wife was known to have lived a devout life. After her death, her husband built a church intending to dedicate it to her. When he was forbidden to do so, he decided to dedicate it to "all saints", so that if his wife were in fact one of the righteous, she would also be honored whenever the feast was celebrated. According to tradition, it was Leo who expanded the feast, to a general commemoration of All Saints, whether martyrs or not. This  may not be the true origin of All Saints' Day , but it has been accepted and observed on various days in different places. Many ‘saints’ suffered persecution and a violent death while others welcomed the release from mortal life. The definition of  ‘a martyr’ is considered to be one who chooses to suffer death rather than renounce religious principles. These are considered victims and are honored and revered by most.

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Currently, there are  worldwide problems of political and religious conflicts that has changed this

view. Groups of  Mideastern ‘fundamentalists’ have chosen a very narrow interpretation of their ‘religion’ and  violently opposing anyone choosing to disagree with their ‘new  law’.
   These radicalists are convinced that their motivations are grounded in faith and directly tied to religious scripture.They seek to live in accordance with laws and scripture dating back thousands of years and carry out their onslaught  without any shred of guilt or shame. Their ‘cause’ is rewarded by the belief that any male soldier dying in battle will be rewarded in their afterlife with the companionship of a bevy of 'willing maidens of their age'. In this way, the soldier desires to become a martyr and be honored by their fighting companions.

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In  The Viking age, Nordic countries were mostly pagan while North Europe had earlier become Christianized. As kings and kingdoms changed territorial rules, these new kings forced their beliefs upon the conquered  people. Those that resisted were eliminated; many becoming the new ‘martyrs’ and later saints.
Many ‘saints’ suffered persecution and a violent death while others welcomed the release from mortal life.

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In Norse mythology, Odin was the king of  Asgard, one of  Nine Worlds and home to a tribe of gods.  He was a god of war and death and the god of wisdom and poetry. Along with being a god, he was the ‘All-Father of all the Nordic Gods’.

He lived in Valhalla (pronounced “val-HALL-uh”; “the hall of the fallen”). This was believed to be a hallowed hall located “near gods and elves” where the god Odin housed the dead whom he deemed worthy of dwelling with him. Being  a place of perpetual fighting ,warfare was associated with religion, however pagan
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One of the most revered Norwegian kings become a saint and a martyr. Olaf Haraldsson, the son of King Harald Grenske of Norway spent most of his youth as a Norse raider until 1010 when he was baptized at Rouen, France. In 1015, after succeeding to the throne, he started a war to free Norway from the domination of the Danes and the Swedes. 

He also requested that missionaries be sent from England to advance the Christianization of Norway. While neither popular nor especially holy during his lifetime, Olaf was soon revered after death owing to reports of miracles occurring at his tomb. He was  respected as a champion of Norway’s independence, and his shrine became the foundation of the cathedral of Trondheim, a popular place of pilgrimage during the Middle Ages. He became the patron of Norway, and honored as well as in having his name as a major college in our country.

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There are numerous saints who have become known as martyrs and honored annually, however, there are some that are not so well-known, but honored for their deeds.Whims and wishes of early Kings was to be done without question. Daughters of kings became property of invading kings in order  to settle demands.

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Lucia of Syracuse (283–304)is known as a young Christian martyr who died under the Roman rule. Christians were persecuted for their faith,  forced to endure horrific torture and often met painful ends. According to later accounts, she refused the Roman governor's advances and to punish her, the governor ordered the guards to gouge out her eyes; Lucy, whose name can mean
"light" or "lucid," became the patron saint of the blind. Her feast once coincided with the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year and her feastday has become a festival of light. December 13th has become an important day of remembrance for St. Lucia., also known as Saint Lucy, or in Italian: Santa Lucia.

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Another young maiden became involved in the spoils of war.

 Philomena  was the daughter of a king in Greece who, with his wife, had converted to Christianity. At the age of about 13, she took a vow of consecrated virginity. When the Roman Emperor Diocletian threatened to make war on her father's kingdom, her father and his family traveled to Rome to ask for peace. The emperor fell in love with the young Philomena  and to avoid warfare, the father agreed to give his daughter to the emporer. Despite her father’s demands, she refused to be the emporer’s wife. When she continued to refuse his  demands to marry , the emperor subjected her to a series of torments: scourging, being shot with arrows, and  drowning in order to change her decision. Two Angels responded to her aid curing her each time. Finally, giving up his quest, the emperor had her decapitated.

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           An Viking attack in Ireland resulted in another incident of  a leader becoming enamored with beautiful maidens.

 Sunniva was to be the heir of an Irish kingdom, but had to flee when an invading heathen king wanted to marry her. To escape his advances, she with her brother Alban  and their followers sailed to the island of Selja in Norway during the rule of the pagan Jarl Hákon Sigurðarson ( 962–995). Their pagan Norwegian neighbors on the mainland later suspected the Christians of stealing sheep and complained to Jarl Hákon.

 Hákon arrived on Selja with a group of armed men, intending to kill the accused inhabitants. When the Christians realized what is happening, they hide in caves on the island and prayed to God to collapse the caves to spare them from being ravaged by Hákon and his men. The caves collapsed killing all those in the cave. Later, travellers noticed a supernatural light over the island and arriving in Trondheim, the men told their experience to King Olaf Tryggvason. After another later account of similar events by different witnesses, the king travelled to Selja, excavated the cave and recovered the body of  Sunniva that appeared as if the woman was asleep. Numerous institutions in Norway are named after her, including the Catholic church in Molde, various schools, including St Sunniva School in Oslo,as well as several Norwegian ships and the St. Sunniva dormitory in Bergen,. The short form Synne  has  become the most popularly given form of this name peaking in popularity in the late 1980s .

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Many saints' names have been recalled as children have been named either in their memory or because the name itself is attractive. At our latest Sons of Norway public dinner, a very young girl was enjoying her meal.She was only " Two fingers old", and her mother mentioned her name was "Sunni." When asked how she got that name, the mother replied that the little girl was named for Saint Sunniva. In  family visits to Norway and Oslo, they had learned about St Sunniva, and their next little girl was named in honor and memory of the Norwegian saint.

  The present lives on in memory of the past.

There May Be Trouble Ahead

He’s back! Our friend  Niño is coming to visit us once again this winter. Niño is the Spanish word for 'boy or child', and in this case, a mischievous youngster. El Niño is a pool of warm ocean water that's driven from a change of winds, normally blowing from east to west, but now blowing from the west to the east.

As snowcover disappears in the Arctic North , the Arctic permafrost emerges from historic slumber yielding relics of past inhabitants and debris  that has laid hidden for decades, even millennia. We  have very limited knowledge of our deep waters and even less experience of knowing what is in our northern permafrost areas.  While this warmer winter weather may be welcome, it also causes problems."The warm water is driven across the Pacific Ocean", according to Environment Canada Senior Climatologist Dave Phillips, "and triggers changes to the circulation of the atmosphere that can have repercussions thousands of miles away.”  

“It's got an impact all over the world, including Antarctica”  states Ted Scambos, a senior scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.  The end result is the melting of Arctic ice and glaciers around the world have shrunk markedly in recent decades.

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       This brings a combination of good news and bad news..

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"The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet" says James Astill. The retreating ice offers access to precious land area as frozen tundra retreats northwards, and large areas of the Arctic will become suitable for agriculture. An increasingly early Arctic spring could increase plant growth by up to 25%. That would

allow Greenlanders to grow more than the paltry 100 tons of potatoes they manage to harvest now, and much more valuable materials will become increasingly accessible. The Arctic is already a big source of minerals including zinc in Alaska, gold in Canada, iron in Sweden and nickel in Russia, and  plenty more to mine, but the costs will also be huge. Unique ecosystems, and perhaps many species, will be lost in a tide of environmental change. The cause is likely global pollution, and the risks it carries are likewise global.

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Our prehistoric theories and facts note extreme earthquakes and earthly turmoil. This combined with a giant

asteroid that struck earth at the Yucatan Peninsula in Southeastern Mexico wiped out the existing dinosaurs and created  extreme changes. This ‘new earth’ might have introduced some new elements now buried deeply in permafrost for decades.

 “If you start mining for something, you will excavate layers of frozen soil by millions of tons,” says Jean-Michel Claverie, head of France’s Structural and Genomic Information Laboratory .“If there is something nasty there, it will be released in the atmosphere and affect the people who are working there. If we are not careful, and we industrialize these areas without putting safeguards in place, we run the risk of one day waking up viruses such as smallpox that we thought were eradicated.”

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A team of French scientists is closely studying viruses uncovered in Siberia to ensure they won't wipe out humanity in a few decades. Their problem is that one can't  study frozen samples to see what will happen - the samples must be thawed and activated, and in microscopic studies of sample specimen, researchers have isolated  suspected viruses.

To identify a virus, the laboratory has to use a sample of an amoeba such as plankton. If the amoeba dies in contact with this sample, scientists can conclude that they were exposed to a virus. Amoeba, if you remember your high school science classwork, is a single cell animal which can divide and quickly multiply.

An amoebe

 Infected,  this could prove devastating. Researchers then proceed to test it on mice and human cells to see if it is, or is not hazardous. Claverie and his team previously had discovered an ancient virus, and these  discoveries raise the possibility that, as the climate warms and exploration expands in long-untouched regions of Siberia, humans could release ancient or eradicated viruses.So,while warmer winter weather may be welcome, it also causes problems.The warm flow is driven across the Pacific Ocean and triggers changes to the circulation of the atmosphere that can have repercussions thousands of miles away.” 

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There have been four types of prehistoric viruses found since 2003, however all have been proven to be

harmless.Common vaccines have controlled the influenza and chicken pox viruses, measles and mumps and many other well-known diseases. Careful attention finally controlled the polio and, currently, carefully monitoring the ebola viruses.

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An Arctic deep-mine.

“In the event of mining operations, millions of tons of these layers will be dug up and exposed to air. All the conditions will be in place for the reactivation of those viruses, some of which could be pathogens.” said Claverie. These ancient viruses found frozen in Siberian ice are proof that a variety of virus types can survive long periods of time at extremely cold temperatures.One recent research study by a team of French scientists found a virus  named the “Mollivirus Sibericum” that qualified as

 a "giant virus." This virus was discovered in 2015 in a 30,000-year-old sample of Siberian permafrost. French scientists plan to reanimate it in order to explore how it developed. It was unearthed from one hundred feet of Siberian permafrost. Molllivirus Sibericum which means “soft virus from Siberia” is in the process of being analyzed. As Arctic environments warm up, ancient viruses that lay dormant for thousands of years might thaw and reinfect humans once again.

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 There are skeptics claiming climate change is just routine weather variations.

 

Currently, the Middle Eastern countries, accustomed to high summer temperatures are suffering  an extreme heat wave as thermometers reaches 164 degrees in Iran, and 159 degrees in Iraq. Prolonged days of broiling heat would not be conducive to human outdoor activity. While some world areas are experiencing an elevated heat index, other areas are finding the warming conditions  melting ice and food sources are no longer available. Animals migrate for suitable hunting areas and humans are known to do likewise. If 'climate change' continues to be factual and, in some part caused by humans,

 we will be forced to take action. 

Hunting for food.

Perhaps the possibility of ‘climate change’ and it’s effects as possible health hazards should be taken much more seriously.