19 Comments

I've got a stack of Icelandic and Norwegian Medieval vampires that call nonsense on him and his pellagra. What does he think the dead did in 900? Just lie there under the hill? Pshaw.

Expand full comment

Waiting, waiting on the corn to arrive! LOL

Expand full comment

It is conceivable that there was an element of shifting.

But always verify the evidence with folklore and then triple check because it's not a field with high standards of evidence.

Expand full comment

The number of intellectual types who think they're going to do well when there's a big change is astounding.

Expand full comment

If you are writing to whatever the current fad is, you are doing yourself, your audience, and your book a huge disservice. I feel for this author, because whether he realized it or not, he doomed his work to be irrelevant from the outset. This is his legacy, and how he will be remembered is as a sellout.

Expand full comment

*A History of the World in 6 Glasses* and *The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers* are good. Also early.

Expand full comment

I don't think I care to give this author or more, his publisher, any of my money again. Much less my time.

Expand full comment

Life is short. Books are long. Quite understandable.

Expand full comment

And I have a towering TBR stack that never seems to shrink.

Expand full comment

Vampire myths come from Flea Death.

Hence why thinks like Garlic and certain types of wood keep vampires away.

Expand full comment

Belief in vampires and other unquiet dead predate the Romans, and certainly predate Justinian's plague.

Expand full comment

You do know what Flea death is, right?

Expand full comment

You mean Yersinia pestis, also known as the Black Death, Black Plague, and Justinian's Plague?

Expand full comment

No. See the post I just made on my substack.

Expand full comment

Well, one would assume you are referring to the Black Death, transmitted by fleas (carried by rats).

Unless you're talking about Discworld fan fiction Death of Fleas?

Expand full comment

Thanks for writing that up John!

Expand full comment

I'm just surprised that more people don't know about this, but then again, maybe I shouldn't be.

Expand full comment

No.

Expand full comment