On the subject of graffiti
I went to Istanbul and was standing in the big mosque Ayasofia and I noticed these wierd scratches in the balcony I was leaning on.
A sign underneath said they were Viking runes. That fucking blew my mind. Over a thousand years ago huge hairy vikings were standing in this enormous mosque in Constantinope... What must they have been thinking when at home they had at best big wooden barns. Sometimes these huge gulfs of time open beneath you and you almost get vertigo thinking about it.
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simbosan liked your link on, Thu 30 May 2013, 0:31,
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Runes were still being used until recent history
It might be some Swedish aristocrat doing the Grand Tour.
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WeirdWeb, Thu 30 May 2013, 7:19,
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The Volga Vikings had extensive trading routes all over what is now the Middle East.
Originally from Scandinavia, they followed the Volga through what is now Russia, and eventually founded Kiev. They called their new country "Rus"; the first few kings of Kievan Rus had Nordic names, but they Slavicised after about four generations. Eventually, Kiev became the capital of the emergent Russia: it wasn't for a few centuries that the capital moved to Moscow.
Anyway... point is, they were trading with the Turks in Istanbul both from the East and - via the Mediterranean - the west.
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 30 May 2013, 8:45,
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