Datasets:
victcn
/
security-classify-data

Dataset card Data Studio Files
xet
Community
1
text
stringlengths
9
2.4k
Through the 1920s and 1930s only Britain and Japan retained battlecruisers, often modified and rebuilt from their original designs. The line between the battlecruiser and the modern fast battleship became blurred; indeed, the Japanese "Kongō"s were formally redesignated as battleships after their very comprehensive reconstruction in the 1930s. Plans in the aftermath of World War I. "Hood", launched in 1918, was the last World War I battlecruiser to be completed. Owing to lessons from Jutland, the ship was modified during construction; the thickness of her belt armour was increased by an average of 50 percent and extended substantially, she was given heavier deck armour, and the protection of her magazines was improved to guard against the ignition of ammunition. This was hoped to be capable of resisting her own weapons—the classic measure of a "balanced" battleship. "Hood" was the largest ship in the Royal Navy when completed; because of her great displacement, in theory she combined the firepower and armour of a battleship with the speed of a battlecruiser, causing some to refer to her as a fast battleship. However, her protection was markedly less than that of the British battleships built immediately after World War I, the .
The navies of Japan and the United States, not being affected immediately by the war, had time to develop new heavy guns for their latest designs and to refine their battlecruiser designs in light of combat experience in Europe. The Imperial Japanese Navy began four s. These vessels would have been of unprecedented size and power, as fast and well armoured as "Hood" whilst carrying a main battery of ten 16-inch guns, the most powerful armament ever proposed for a battlecruiser. They were, for all intents and purposes, fast battleships—the only differences between them and the s which were to precede them were less side armour and a increase in speed. The United States Navy, which had worked on its battlecruiser designs since 1913 and watched the latest developments in this class with great care, responded with the . If completed as planned, they would have been exceptionally fast and well armed with eight 16-inch guns, but carried armour little better than the "Invincible"s—this after an increase in protection following Jutland. The final stage in the post-war battlecruiser race came with the British response to the "Amagi" and "Lexington" types: four G3 battlecruisers. Royal Navy documents of the period often described any battleship with a speed of over about as a battlecruiser, regardless of the amount of protective armour, although the G3 was considered by most to be a well-balanced fast battleship.
The Washington Naval Treaty meant that none of these designs came to fruition. Ships that had been started were either broken up on the slipway or converted to aircraft carriers. In Japan, "Amagi" and were selected for conversion. "Amagi" was damaged beyond repair by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and was broken up for scrap; the hull of one of the proposed "Tosa"-class battleships, , was converted in her stead. The United States Navy also converted two battlecruiser hulls into aircraft carriers in the wake of the Washington Treaty: and , although this was only considered marginally preferable to scrapping the hulls outright (the remaining four: "Constellation", "Ranger", "Constitution" and "United States" were scrapped). In Britain, Fisher's "large light cruisers," were converted to carriers. "Furious" had already been partially converted during the war and "Glorious" and "Courageous" were similarly converted. Rebuilding programmes.
Unable to build new ships, the Imperial Japanese Navy also chose to improve its existing battlecruisers of the "Kongō" class (initially the , , and —the only later as it had been disarmed under the terms of the Washington treaty) in two substantial reconstructions (one for "Hiei"). During the first of these, elevation of their main guns was increased to +40 degrees, anti-torpedo bulges and of horizontal armour added, and a "pagoda" mast with additional command positions built up. This reduced the ships' speed to . The second reconstruction focused on speed as they had been selected as fast escorts for aircraft carrier task forces. Completely new main engines, a reduced number of boilers and an increase in hull length by allowed them to reach up to 30 knots once again. They were reclassified as "fast battleships," although their armour and guns still fell short compared to surviving World War I–era battleships in the American or the British navies, with dire consequences during the Pacific War, when "Hiei" and "Kirishima" were easily crippled by US gunfire during actions off Guadalcanal, forcing their scuttling shortly afterwards. Perhaps most tellingly, "Hiei" was crippled by medium-caliber gunfire from heavy and light cruisers in a close-range night engagement.
There were two exceptions: Turkey's "Yavuz Sultan Selim" and the Royal Navy's "Hood". The Turkish Navy made only minor improvements to the ship in the interwar period, which primarily focused on repairing wartime damage and the installation of new fire control systems and anti-aircraft batteries. "Hood" was in constant service with the fleet and could not be withdrawn for an extended reconstruction. She received minor improvements over the course of the 1930s, including modern fire control systems, increased numbers of anti-aircraft guns, and in March 1941, radar. Naval rearmament. In the late 1930s navies began to build capital ships again, and during this period a number of large commerce raiders and small, fast battleships were built that are sometimes referred to as battlecruisers, such as the s and s and the French s. Germany and Russia designed new battlecruisers during this period, though only the latter laid down two of the 35,000-ton . They were still on the slipways when the Germans invaded in 1941 and construction was suspended. Both ships were scrapped after the war. The Germans planned three battlecruisers of the as part of the expansion of the Kriegsmarine (Plan Z). With six 15-inch guns, high speed, excellent range, but very thin armour, they were intended as commerce raiders. Only one was ordered shortly before World War II; no work was ever done on it. No names were assigned, and they were known by their contract names: 'O', 'P', and 'Q'. The new class was not universally welcomed in the Kriegsmarine. Their abnormally-light protection gained it the derogatory nickname "Ohne Panzer Quatsch" (without armour nonsense) within certain circles of the Navy.
World War II. The Royal Navy deployed some of its battlecruisers during the Norwegian Campaign in April 1940. The and the were engaged during the action off Lofoten by "Renown" in very bad weather and disengaged after "Gneisenau" was damaged. One of "Renown"s 15-inch shells passed through "Gneisenau"s director-control tower without exploding, severing electrical and communication cables as it went and destroyed the rangefinders for the forward 150 mm (5.9 in) turrets. Main-battery fire control had to be shifted aft due to the loss of electrical power. Another shell from "Renown" knocked out "Gneisenau"s aft turret. The British ship was struck twice by German shells that failed to inflict any significant damage. She was the only pre-war battlecruiser to survive the war. In the early years of the war various German ships had a measure of success hunting merchant ships in the Atlantic. Allied battlecruisers such as "Renown", "Repulse", and the fast battleships "Dunkerque" and were employed on operations to hunt down the commerce-raiding German ships. The one stand-up fight occurred when the battleship and the heavy cruiser sortied into the North Atlantic to attack British shipping and were intercepted by "Hood" and the battleship in May 1941 in the Battle of the Denmark Strait. "Hood" was destroyed when the "Bismarck"s 15-inch shells caused a magazine explosion. Only three men survived.
The first battlecruiser to see action in the Pacific War was "Repulse" when she was sunk by Japanese torpedo bombers north of Singapore on 10 December 1941 whilst in company with "Prince of Wales". She was lightly damaged by a single bomb and near-missed by two others in the first Japanese attack. Her speed and agility enabled her to avoid the other attacks by level bombers and dodge 33 torpedoes. The last group of torpedo bombers attacked from multiple directions and "Repulse" was struck by five torpedoes. She quickly capsized with the loss of 27 officers and 486 crewmen; 42 officers and 754 enlisted men were rescued by the escorting destroyers. The loss of "Repulse" and "Prince of Wales" conclusively proved the vulnerability of capital ships to aircraft without air cover of their own.
Returning to Japan after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, "Kongō" was torpedoed and sunk by the American submarine on 21 November 1944. "Haruna" was moored at Kure, Japan when the naval base was attacked by American carrier aircraft on 24 and 28 July 1945. The ship was only lightly damaged by a single bomb hit on 24 July, but was hit a dozen more times on 28 July and sank at her pier. She was refloated after the war and scrapped in early 1946. Large cruisers or "cruiser killers". A late renaissance in popularity of ships between battleships and cruisers in size occurred on the eve of World War II. Described by some as battlecruisers, but never classified as capital ships, they were variously described as "super cruisers", "large cruisers" or even "unrestricted cruisers". The Dutch, American, and Japanese navies all planned these new classes specifically to counter the heavy cruisers, or their counterparts, being built by their naval rivals. The first such battlecruisers were the Dutch Design 1047, designed to protect their colonies in the East Indies in the face of Japanese aggression. Never officially assigned names, these ships were designed with German and Italian assistance. While they broadly resembled the German "Scharnhorst" class and had the same main battery, they would have been more lightly armoured and only protected against eight-inch gunfire. Although the design was mostly completed, work on the vessels never commenced as the Germans overran the Netherlands in May 1940. The first ship would have been laid down in June of that year.
The only class of these late battlecruisers actually built were the United States Navy's "large cruisers". Two of them were completed, and ; a third, , was cancelled while under construction and three others, to be named "Philippines", "Puerto Rico" and "Samoa", were cancelled before they were laid down. The USN classified them "large cruisers" instead of battlecruisers. These ships were named after territories or protectorates, while battleships were named after states and cruisers after cities. With a displacement of and a main armament of nine 12-inch guns in three triple turrets, they were twice the size of s and had guns some 50% larger in diameter. The "Alaska"s design was a scaled-up cruiser rather than a lighter/faster battleship derivative, as they lacked the thick armoured belt and intricate torpedo defence system of contemporary battleships. However, unlike World War I-era battlecruisers, the "Alaska"s were considered a balanced design according to cruiser standards as their protection could withstand fire from their own caliber of gun, albeit only in a very narrow range band. They were designed to hunt down Japanese heavy cruisers, though by the time they entered service most Japanese cruisers had been sunk by American aircraft or submarines. Like the contemporary fast battleships, their speed ultimately made them more useful as carrier escorts and bombardment ships than as the surface combatants they were developed to be.
The Japanese started designing the B64 class, which was similar to the "Alaska" but with guns. News of the "Alaska"s led them to upgrade the design, creating Design B-65. Armed with 356 mm guns, the B65s would have been the best armed of the new breed of battlecruisers, but they still would have had only sufficient protection to keep out eight-inch shells. Much like the Dutch, the Japanese got as far as completing the design for the B65s, but never laid them down. By the time the designs were ready the Japanese Navy recognized that they had little use for the vessels and that their priority for construction should lie with aircraft carriers. Like the "Alaska"s, the Japanese did not call these ships battlecruisers, referring to them instead as super-heavy cruisers. Cold War–era designs. In spite of the fact that most navies abandoned the battleship and battlecruiser concepts after World War II, Joseph Stalin's fondness for big-gun-armed warships caused the Soviet Union to plan a large cruiser class in the late 1940s. In the Soviet Navy, they were termed "heavy cruisers" ("tyazhelny kreyser"). The fruits of this program were the Project 82 ("Stalingrad") cruisers, of standard load, nine guns and a speed of . Three ships were laid down in 1951–1952, but they were cancelled in April 1953 after Stalin's death. Only the central armoured hull section of the first ship, "Stalingrad", was launched in 1954 and then used as a target.
The Soviet is sometimes referred to as a battlecruiser. This description arises from their over displacement, which is roughly equal to that of a First World War battleship and more than twice the displacement of contemporary cruisers; upon entry into service, "Kirov" was the largest surface combatant to be built since World War II. The "Kirov" class lacks the armour that distinguishes battlecruisers from ordinary cruisers and they are classified as heavy nuclear-powered missile cruisers ("Тяжелый Атомный Ракетный Крейсер" (ТАРКР)) by Russia, with their primary surface armament consisting of twenty P-700 Granit surface to surface missiles. Four members of the class were completed during the 1980s and 1990s, but due to budget constraints only the is operational with the Russian Navy, though plans were announced in 2010 to return the other three ships to service. As of 2021, was being refitted, but the other two ships are reportedly beyond economical repair.
Bob Hawke Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. He held office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as the president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions from 1969 to 1980 and president of the Labor Party national executive from 1973 to 1978. Hawke was born in Border Town, South Australia. He attended the University of Western Australia and went on to study at University College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. In 1956, Hawke joined the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) as a research officer. Having risen to become responsible for national wage case arbitration, he was elected as president of the ACTU in 1969, where he achieved a high public profile. In 1973, he was appointed as president of the Labor Party. In 1980, Hawke stood down from his roles as ACTU and Labor Party president to announce his intention to enter parliamentary politics, and was subsequently elected to the Australian House of Representatives as a member of parliament (MP) for the division of Wills at the 1980 federal election. Three years later, he was elected unopposed to replace Bill Hayden as leader of the Australian Labor Party, and within five weeks led Labor to a landslide victory at the 1983 election, and was sworn in as prime minister. He led Labor to victory a further three times, with successful outcomes in 1984, 1987 and 1990 elections, making him the most electorally successful prime minister in the history of the Labor Party.
The Hawke government implemented a significant number of reforms, including major economic reforms, the establishment of Landcare, the introduction of the universal healthcare scheme Medicare, brokering the Prices and Incomes Accord, creating APEC, floating the Australian dollar, deregulating the financial sector, introducing the Family Assistance Scheme, enacting the Sex Discrimination Act to prevent discrimination in the workplace, declaring "Advance Australia Fair" as the country's national anthem, initiating superannuation pension schemes for all workers, negotiating a ban on mining in Antarctica and overseeing passage of the Australia Act that removed all remaining jurisdiction by the United Kingdom from Australia. In June 1991, Hawke faced a leadership challenge by the Treasurer, Paul Keating, but Hawke managed to retain power; however, Keating mounted a second challenge six months later, and won narrowly, replacing Hawke as prime minister. Hawke subsequently retired from parliament, pursuing both a business career and a number of charitable causes, until his death in 2019, aged 89. Hawke remains his party's longest-serving Prime Minister, and Australia's third-longest-serving prime minister behind Robert Menzies and John Howard. He is also the only prime minister to be born in South Australia and the only one raised and educated in Western Australia. Hawke holds the highest-ever approval rating for an Australian prime minister, reaching 75% approval in 1984. Hawke is frequently ranked within the upper tier of Australian prime ministers by historians.
Early life and family. Bob Hawke was born on 9 December 1929 in Border Town, South Australia, the second child of Arthur "Clem" Hawke (1898–1989), a Congregationalist minister, and his wife Edith Emily (Lee) (1897–1979) (known as Ellie), a schoolteacher. His uncle, Bert, was the Labor premier of Western Australia between 1953 and 1959. Hawke's brother Neil, who was seven years his senior, died at the age of seventeen after contracting meningitis, for which there was no cure at the time. Ellie Hawke subsequently developed an almost messianic belief in her son's destiny, and this contributed to Hawke's supreme self-confidence throughout his career. At the age of fifteen, he presciently boasted to friends that he would one day become the prime minister of Australia. At the age of seventeen, Hawke had a serious crash while riding his Panther motorcycle that left him in a critical condition for several days. This near-death experience acted as his catalyst, driving him to make the most of his talents and not let his abilities go to waste. He joined the Labor Party in 1947 at the age of eighteen.
Education and early career. Hawke was educated at West Leederville State School, Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia, graduating in 1952 with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees. He was also president of the university's guild during the same year. The following year, Hawke won a Rhodes Scholarship to attend University College, Oxford, where he began a Bachelor of Arts course in philosophy, politics and economics (PPE). He soon found he was covering much the same ground as he had in his education at the University of Western Australia, and transferred to a Bachelor of Letters course. He wrote his thesis on wage-fixing in Australia and successfully presented it in January 1956. In 1956, Hawke accepted a scholarship to undertake doctoral studies in the area of arbitration law in the law department at the Australian National University in Canberra. Soon after his arrival at ANU, he became the students' representative on the University Council. A year later, he was recommended to the President of the ACTU to become a research officer, replacing Harold Souter who had become ACTU Secretary. The recommendation was made by Hawke's mentor at ANU, H. P. Brown, who for a number of years had assisted the ACTU in national wage cases. Hawke decided to abandon his doctoral studies and accept the offer, moving to Melbourne with his wife Hazel.
World record beer skol (scull). Hawke is well known for a "world record" allegedly achieved at Oxford University for a beer skol (scull) of a yard of ale in 11 seconds. The record is widely regarded as having been important to his career and ocker chic image. A 2023 article in the "Journal of Australian Studies" by C. J. Coventry concluded that Hawke's achievement was "possibly fabricated" and "cultural propaganda" designed to make Hawke appealing to unionised workers and nationalistic middle-class voters. The article contends that "its location and time remain uncertain; there are no known witnesses; the field of competition was exclusive and with no scientific accountability; the record was first published in a beer pamphlet; and Hawke's recollections were unreliable." Australian Council of Trade Unions. Not long after Hawke began work at the ACTU, he became responsible for the presentation of its annual case for higher wages to the national wages tribunal, the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. He was first appointed as an ACTU advocate in 1959. The 1958 case, under previous advocate R.L. Eggleston, had yielded only a five-shilling increase. The 1959 case found for a fifteen-shilling increase, and was regarded as a personal triumph for Hawke. He went on to attain such success and prominence in his role as an ACTU advocate that, in 1969, he was encouraged to run for the position of ACTU President, despite the fact that he had never held elected office in a trade union.
He was elected ACTU President in 1969 on a modernising platform by the narrow margin of 399 to 350, with the support of the left of the union movement, including some associated with the Communist Party of Australia. He later credited Ray Gietzelt, General Secretary of the FMWU, as the single most significant union figure in helping him achieve this outcome. Questioned after his election on his political stance, Hawke stated that "socialist is not a word I would use to describe myself", saying instead his approach to politics was pragmatic. His commitment to the cause of Jewish Refuseniks purportedly led to a planned assassination attempt on Hawke by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and its Australian operative Munif Mohammed Abou Rish. In 1971, Hawke along with other members of the ACTU requested that South Africa send a non-racially biased team for the rugby union tour, with the intention of unions agreeing not to serve the team in Australia. Prior to arrival, the Western Australian branch of the Transport Workers' Union, and the Barmaids' and Barmens' Union, announced that they would serve the team, which allowed the Springboks to land in Perth. The tour commenced on 26 June and riots occurred as anti-apartheid protesters disrupted games. Hawke and his family started to receive malicious mail and phone calls from people who thought that sport and politics should not mix. Hawke remained committed to the ban on apartheid teams and later that year, the South African cricket team was successfully denied and no apartheid team was to ever come to Australia again. It was this ongoing dedication to racial equality in South Africa that would later earn Hawke the respect and friendship of Nelson Mandela.
In industrial matters, Hawke continued to demonstrate a preference for, and considerable skill at, negotiation, and was generally liked and respected by employers as well as the unions he advocated for. As early as 1972, speculation began that he would seek to enter the Parliament of Australia and eventually run to become the Leader of the Australian Labor Party. But while his professional career continued successfully, his heavy drinking and womanising placed considerable strains on his family life. In June 1973, Hawke was elected as the Federal President of the Labor Party. Two years later, when the Whitlam government was controversially dismissed by the Governor-General, Hawke showed an initial keenness to enter Parliament at the ensuing election. Harry Jenkins, the MP for Scullin, came under pressure to step down to allow Hawke to stand in his place, but he strongly resisted this push. Hawke eventually decided not to attempt to enter Parliament at that time, a decision he soon regretted. After Labor was defeated at the election, Whitlam initially offered the leadership to Hawke, although it was not within Whitlam's power to decide who would succeed him. Despite not taking on the offer, Hawke remained influential, playing a key role in averting national strike action.
During the 1977 federal election, he emerged as a strident opponent of accepting Vietnamese boat people as refugees into Australia, stating that they should be subject to normal immigration requirements and should otherwise be deported. He further stated only refugees selected off-shore should be accepted. Hawke resigned as President of the Labor Party in August 1978. Neil Batt was elected in his place. The strain of this period took its toll on Hawke and in 1979 he suffered a physical collapse. This shock led Hawke to publicly announce his alcoholism in a television interview, and that he would make a concerted—and ultimately successful—effort to overcome it. He was helped through this period by the relationship that he had established with writer Blanche d'Alpuget, who, in 1982, published a biography of Hawke. His popularity with the public was, if anything, enhanced by this period of rehabilitation, and opinion polling suggested that he was a more popular public figure than either Labor Leader Bill Hayden or Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser.
Informer for the United States. During the period of 1973 to 1979, Hawke acted as an informant for the United States government. According to Coventry, Hawke as concurrent leader of the ACTU and ALP informed the US of details surrounding labour disputes, especially those relating to American companies and individuals, such as union disputes with Ford Motor Company and the black ban of Frank Sinatra. The major industrial action taken against Sinatra came about because Sinatra had made sexist comments against female journalists. The dispute was the subject of the 2003 film "The Night We Called It a Day". Hawke was described by US diplomats as "a bulwark against anti-American sentiment and resurgent communism during the economic turmoil of the 1970s", and often disputed with the Whitlam government over issues of foreign policy and industrial relations. US diplomats played a major role in shaping Hawke's consensus politics and economics. Although Hawke was the most prolific Australian informer for the United States in the 1970s, there were other prominent people at that time who secretly gave information. Biographer Troy Bramston rejects the view that Hawke's prolonged, discreet involvement with known members of the Central Intelligence Agency within the US Embassy amounted to Hawke being a CIA "spy".
Member of Parliament. Hawke's first attempt to enter Parliament came during the 1963 federal election. He stood in the seat of Corio in Geelong and managed to achieve a 3.1% swing against the national trend, although he fell short of ousting longtime Liberal incumbent Hubert Opperman. Hawke rejected several opportunities to enter Parliament throughout the 1970s, something he later wrote that he "regretted". He eventually stood for election to the House of Representatives at the 1980 election for the safe Melbourne seat of Wills, winning it comfortably. Immediately upon his election to Parliament, Hawke was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet by Labor Leader Bill Hayden as Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations. Hayden, after having led the Labor Party to narrowly lose the 1980 election, was increasingly subject to criticism from Labor MPs over his leadership style. To quell speculation over his position, Hayden called a leadership spill on 16 July 1982, believing that if he won he would be guaranteed to lead Labor through to the next election. Hawke decided to challenge Hayden in the spill, but Hayden defeated him by five votes; the margin of victory, however, was too slim to dispel doubts that he could lead the Labor Party to victory at an election. Despite his defeat, Hawke began to agitate more seriously behind the scenes for a change in leadership, with opinion polls continuing to show that Hawke was a far more popular public figure than both Hayden and Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. Hayden was further weakened after Labor's unexpectedly poor performance at a by-election in December 1982 for the Victorian seat of Flinders, following the resignation of the sitting member, former deputy Liberal leader Phillip Lynch. Labor needed a swing of 5.5% to win the seat and had been predicted by the media to win, but could only achieve 3%.
Labor Party power-brokers, such as Graham Richardson and Barrie Unsworth, now openly switched their allegiance from Hayden to Hawke. More significantly, Hayden's staunch friend and political ally, Labor's Senate Leader John Button, had become convinced that Hawke's chances of victory at an election were greater than Hayden's. Initially, Hayden believed that he could remain in his job, but Button's defection proved to be the final straw in convincing Hayden that he would have to resign as Labor Leader. Less than two months after the Flinders by-election result, Hayden announced his resignation as Leader of the Labor Party on 3 February 1983. Hawke was subsequently elected as Leader unopposed on 8 February, and became Leader of the Opposition in the process. Having learned that morning about the possible leadership change, on the same that Hawke assumed the leadership of the Labor Party, Malcolm Fraser called a snap election for 5 March 1983, unsuccessfully attempting to prevent Labor from making the leadership change. However, he was unable to have the Governor-General confirm the election before Labor announced the change.
At the 1983 election, Hawke led Labor to a landslide victory, achieving a 24-seat swing and ending seven years of Liberal Party rule. With the election called at the same time that Hawke became Labor leader this meant that Hawke never sat in Parliament as Leader of the Opposition having spent the entirety of his short Opposition leadership in the election campaign which he won. Prime Minister of Australia (1983–1991). Leadership style. After Labor's landslide victory, Hawke was sworn in as the Prime Minister by the Governor-General Ninian Stephen on 11 March 1983. The style of the Hawke government was deliberately distinct from the Whitlam government, the Labor government that preceded it. Rather than immediately initiating multiple extensive reform programs as Whitlam had, Hawke announced that Malcolm Fraser's pre-election concealment of the budget deficit meant that many of Labor's election commitments would have to be deferred. As part of his internal reforms package, Hawke divided the government into two tiers, with only the most senior ministers sitting in the Cabinet of Australia. The Labor caucus was still given the authority to determine who would make up the Ministry, but this move gave Hawke unprecedented powers to empower individual ministers.
After Australia won the America's Cup in 1983 Hawke said "any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum", effectively declaring an impromptu national public holiday. In particular, the political partnership that developed between Hawke and his Treasurer, Paul Keating, proved to be essential to Labor's success in government, with multiple Labor figures in years since citing the partnership as the party's greatest ever. The two men proved a study in contrasts: Hawke was a Rhodes Scholar; Keating left high school early. Hawke's enthusiasms were cigars, betting and most forms of sport; Keating preferred classical architecture, Mahler symphonies and collecting British Regency and French Empire antiques. Despite not knowing one another before Hawke assumed the leadership in 1983, the two formed a personal as well as political relationship which enabled the Government to pursue a significant number of reforms, although there were occasional points of tension between the two. The Labor Caucus under Hawke also developed a more formalised system of parliamentary factions, which significantly altered the dynamics of caucus operations. Unlike many of his predecessor leaders, Hawke's authority within the Labor Party was absolute. This enabled him to persuade MPs to support a substantial set of policy changes which had not been considered achievable by Labor governments in the past. Individual accounts from ministers indicate that while Hawke was not often the driving force behind individual reforms, outside of broader economic changes, he took on the role of providing political guidance on what was electorally feasible and how best to sell it to the public, tasks at which he proved highly successful. Hawke took on a very public role as Prime Minister, campaigning frequently even outside of election periods, and for much of his time in office proved to be incredibly popular with the Australian electorate; to this date he still holds the highest ever AC Nielsen approval rating of 75%.
Economic policy. The Hawke government oversaw significant economic reforms, and is often cited by economic historians as being a "turning point" from a protectionist, agricultural model to a more globalised and services-oriented economy. According to the journalist Paul Kelly, "the most influential economic decisions of the 1980s were the floating of the Australian dollar and the deregulation of the financial system". Although the Fraser government had played a part in the process of financial deregulation by commissioning the 1981 Campbell Report, opposition from Fraser himself had stalled this process. Shortly after its election in 1983, the Hawke government took the opportunity to implement a comprehensive program of economic reform, in the process "transform(ing) economics and politics in Australia". Hawke and Keating together led the process for overseeing the economic changes by launching a "National Economic Summit" one month after their election in 1983, which brought together business and industrial leaders together with politicians and trade union leaders; the three-day summit led to a unanimous adoption of a national economic strategy, generating sufficient political capital for widespread reform to follow. Among other reforms, the Hawke government floated the Australian dollar, repealed rules that prohibited foreign-owned banks to operate in Australia, dismantled the protectionist tariff system, privatised several state sector industries, ended the subsidisation of loss-making industries, and sold off part of the state-owned Commonwealth Bank.
The taxation system was also significantly reformed, with income tax rates reduced and the introduction of a fringe benefits tax and a capital gains tax; the latter two reforms were strongly opposed by the Liberal Party at the time, but were never reversed by them when they eventually returned to office in 1996. Partially offsetting these imposts upon the business community—the "main loser" from the 1985 Tax Summit according to Paul Kelly—was the introduction of full dividend imputation, a reform insisted upon by Keating. Funding for schools was also considerably increased as part of this package, while financial assistance was provided for students to enable them to stay at school longer; the number of Australian children completing school rose from 3 in 10 at the beginning of the Hawke government to 7 in 10 by its conclusion in 1991. Considerable progress was also made in directing assistance "to the most disadvantaged recipients over the whole range of welfare benefits." Social and environmental policy. Although criticisms were leveled against the Hawke government that it did not achieve all it said it would do on social policy, it nevertheless enacted a series of reforms which remain in place to the present day. From 1983 to 1989, the Government oversaw the permanent establishment of universal health care in Australia with the creation of Medicare, doubled the number of subsidised childcare places, began the introduction of occupational superannuation, oversaw a significant increase in school retention rates, created subsidised homecare services, oversaw the elimination of poverty traps in the welfare system, increased the real value of the old-age pension, reintroduced the six-monthly indexation of single-person unemployment benefits, and established a wide-ranging programme for paid family support, known as the Family Income Supplement.
A number of other new social security benefits were introduced under the Hawke-Keating Government. In 1984, for instance, a remote area allowance was introduced for pensioners and beneficiaries residing in special areas of Tax Zone A, and in 1985 a special addition to family allowances was made payable (as noted by one study) “to certain families with multiple births (three children or more) until the children reach six years of age.” The following year, rent assistance was extended to unemployment beneficiaries, together with a young homeless allowance for sickness and unemployment beneficiaries under the age of 18 who were homeless and didn’t have parental or custodial support. However, the payment of family allowances for student children reaching the age of 18 was discontinued except in the case of certain families on low incomes. During the 1980s, the proportion of total government outlays allocated to families, the sick, single parents, widows, the handicapped, and veterans was significantly higher than under the previous Fraser and Whitlam governments.
In 1984, the Hawke government enacted the landmark Sex Discrimination Act 1984, which eliminated discrimination on the grounds of sex within the workplace. In 1989, Hawke oversaw the gradual re-introduction of some tuition fees for university study, setting up the Higher Education Contributions Scheme (HECS). Under the original HECS, a $1,800 fee was charged to all university students, and the Commonwealth paid the balance. A student could defer payment of this HECS amount and repay the debt through the tax system, when the student's income exceeds a threshold level. As part of the reforms, Colleges of Advanced Education entered the university sector by various means. by doing so, university places were able to be expanded. Further notable policy decisions taken during the Government's time in office included the public health campaign regarding HIV/AIDS, and Indigenous land rights reform, with an investigation of the idea of a treaty between Aborigines and the Government being launched, although the latter would be overtaken by events, notably the Mabo court decision.
The Hawke government also drew attention for a series of notable environmental decisions, particularly in its second and third terms. In 1983, Hawke personally vetoed the construction of the Franklin Dam in Tasmania, responding to a groundswell of protest around the issue. Hawke also secured the nomination of the Wet Tropics of Queensland as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, preventing the forests there from being logged. Hawke would later appoint Graham Richardson as Environment Minister, tasking him with winning the second-preference support from environmental parties, something which Richardson later claimed was the major factor in the government's narrow re-election at the 1990 election. In the Government's fourth term, Hawke personally led the Australian delegation to secure changes to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, ultimately winning a guarantee that drilling for minerals within Antarctica would be totally prohibited until 2048 at the earliest. Hawke later claimed that the Antarctic drilling ban was his "proudest achievement".
Industrial relations policy. As a former ACTU President, Hawke was well-placed to engage in reform of the industrial relations system in Australia, taking a lead on this policy area as in few others. Working closely with ministerial colleagues and the ACTU Secretary, Bill Kelty, Hawke negotiated with trade unions to establish the Prices and Incomes Accord in 1983, an agreement whereby unions agreed to restrict their demands for wage increases, and in turn the Government guaranteed to both minimise inflation and promote an increased social wage, including by establishing new social programmes such as Medicare. Inflation had been a significant issue for the previous decade prior to the election of the Hawke government, regularly running into double-digits. The process of the Accord, by which the Government and trade unions would arbitrate and agree upon wage increases in many sectors, led to a decrease in both inflation and unemployment through to 1990. Criticisms of the Accord would come from both the right and the left of politics. Left-wing critics claimed that it kept real wages stagnant, and that the Accord was a policy of class collaboration and corporatism. By contrast, right-wing critics claimed that the Accord reduced the flexibility of the wages system. Supporters of the Accord, however, pointed to the improvements in the social security system that occurred, including the introduction of rental assistance for social security recipients, the creation of labour market schemes such as NewStart, and the introduction of the Family Income Supplement. In 1986, the Hawke government passed a bill to de-register the Builders Labourers Federation federally due to the union not following the Accord agreements.
Despite a percentage fall in real money wages from 1983 to 1991, the social wage of Australian workers was argued by the Government to have improved drastically as a result of these reforms, and the ensuing decline in inflation. The Accord was revisited six further times during the Hawke government, each time in response to new economic developments. The seventh and final revisiting would ultimately lead to the establishment of the enterprise bargaining system, although this would be finalised shortly after Hawke left office in 1991. Foreign policy. Arguably the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Government took place in 1989, after Hawke proposed a south-east Asian region-wide forum for leaders and economic ministers to discuss issues of common concern. After winning the support of key countries in the region, this led to the creation of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The first APEC meeting duly took place in Canberra in November 1989; the economic ministers of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and the United States all attended. APEC would subsequently grow to become one of the most pre-eminent high-level international forums in the world, particularly after the later inclusions of China and Russia, and the Keating government's later establishment of the APEC Leaders' Forum.
Elsewhere in Asia, the Hawke government played a significant role in the build-up to the United Nations peace process for Cambodia, culminating in the Transitional Authority; Hawke's Foreign Minister Gareth Evans was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiations. Hawke also took a major public stand after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre; despite having spent years trying to get closer relations with China, Hawke gave a tearful address on national television describing the massacre in graphic detail, and unilaterally offered asylum to over 42,000 Chinese students who were living in Australia at the time, many of whom had publicly supported the Tiananmen protesters. Hawke did so without even consulting his Cabinet, stating later that he felt he simply had to act. The Hawke government pursued a close relationship with the United States, assisted by Hawke's close friendship with US Secretary of State George Shultz; this led to a degree of controversy when the Government supported the US's plans to test ballistic missiles off the coast of Tasmania in 1985, as well as seeking to overturn Australia's long-standing ban on uranium exports. Although the US ultimately withdrew the plans to test the missiles, the furore led to a fall in Hawke's approval ratings. Shortly after the 1990 election, Hawke would lead Australia into its first overseas military campaign since the Vietnam War, forming a close alliance with US President George H. W. Bush to join the coalition in the Gulf War. The Royal Australian Navy contributed several destroyers and frigates to the war effort, which successfully concluded in February 1991, with the expulsion of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The success of the campaign, and the lack of any Australian casualties, led to a brief increase in the popularity of the Government.
Through his role on the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Hawke played a leading role in ensuring the Commonwealth initiated an international boycott on foreign investment into South Africa, building on work undertaken by his predecessor Malcolm Fraser, and in the process clashing publicly with Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Margaret Thatcher, who initially favoured a more cautious approach. The resulting boycott, led by the Commonwealth, was widely credited with helping bring about the collapse of apartheid, and resulted in a high-profile visit by Nelson Mandela in October 1990, months after the latter's release from a 27-year stint in prison. During the visit, Mandela publicly thanked the Hawke government for the role it played in the boycott. Election wins and leadership challenges. Hawke benefited greatly from the disarray into which the Liberal Party fell after the resignation of Fraser following the 1983 election. The Liberals were torn between supporters of the more conservative John Howard and the more liberal Andrew Peacock, with the pair frequently contesting the leadership. Hawke and Keating were also able to use the concealment of the size of the budget deficit by Fraser before the 1983 election to great effect, damaging the Liberal Party's economic credibility as a result.
However, Hawke's time as Prime Minister also saw friction develop between himself and the grassroots of the Labor Party, many of whom were unhappy at what they viewed as Hawke's iconoclasm and willingness to cooperate with business interests. Hawke regularly and publicly expressed his willingness to cull Labor's "sacred cows". The Labor Left faction, as well as prominent Labor backbencher Barry Jones, offered repeated criticisms of a number of government decisions. Hawke was also subject to challenges from some former colleagues in the trade union movement over his "confrontationalist style" in siding with the airline companies in the 1989 Australian pilots' strike. Nevertheless, Hawke was able to comfortably maintain a lead as preferred prime minister in the vast majority of opinion polls carried out throughout his time in office. He recorded the highest popularity rating ever measured by an Australian opinion poll, reaching 75% approval in 1984. After leading Labor to a comfortable victory in the snap 1984 election, called to bring the mandate of the House of Representatives back in line with the Senate, Hawke was able to secure an unprecedented third consecutive term for Labor with a comfortable victory in the double dissolution election of 1987. Hawke was subsequently able to lead the nation in the bicentennial celebrations of 1988, culminating with him welcoming Queen Elizabeth II to open the newly constructed Parliament House.
The late-1980s recession, and the accompanying high interest rates, saw the Government fall in opinion polls, with many doubting that Hawke could win a fourth election. Keating, who had long understood that he would eventually succeed Hawke as prime minister, began to plan a leadership change; at the end of 1988, Keating put pressure on Hawke to retire in the new year. Hawke rejected this suggestion but reached a secret agreement with Keating, the so-called "Kirribilli Agreement", stating that he would step down in Keating's favour at some point after the 1990 election. Hawke subsequently won that election, in the process leading Labor to a record fourth consecutive electoral victory, albeit by a slim margin. Hawke appointed Keating as deputy prime minister to replace the retiring Lionel Bowen. By the end of 1990, frustrated by the lack of any indication from Hawke as to when he might retire, Keating made a provocative speech to the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. Hawke considered the speech disloyal, and told Keating he would renege on the Kirribilli Agreement as a result. After attempting to force a resolution privately, Keating finally resigned from the Government in June 1991 to challenge Hawke for the leadership. His resignation came soon after Hawke vetoed in Cabinet a proposal backed by Keating and other ministers for mining to take place at Coronation Hill in Kakadu National Park. Hawke won the leadership spill, and in a press conference after the result, Keating declared that he had fired his "one shot" on the leadership. Hawke appointed John Kerin to replace Keating as Treasurer.
Despite his victory in the June spill, Hawke quickly began to be regarded by many of his colleagues as a "wounded" leader; he had now lost his long-term political partner, his ratings in opinion polls were beginning to fall significantly, and after nearly nine years as Prime Minister, there was speculation that it would soon be time for a new leader. Hawke's leadership was ultimately irrevocably damaged at the end of 1991; after Liberal Leader John Hewson released 'Fightback!', a detailed proposal for sweeping economic change, including the introduction of a goods and services tax, Hawke was forced to sack Kerin as Treasurer after the latter made a public gaffe attempting to attack the policy. Keating duly challenged for the leadership a second time on 19 December, arguing that he would better placed to defeat Hewson; this time, Keating succeeded, narrowly defeating Hawke by 56 votes to 51. In a speech to the House of Representatives following the vote, Hawke declared that his nine years as prime minister had left Australia a better and wealthier country, and he was given a standing ovation by those present. He subsequently tendered his resignation to the Governor-General and pledged support to his successor. Hawke briefly returned to the backbench, before resigning from Parliament on 20 February 1992, sparking a by-election which was won by the independent candidate Phil Cleary from among a record field of 22 candidates. Keating would go on to lead Labor to a fifth victory at the 1993 election, although he was defeated by the Liberal Party at the 1996 election.
Hawke wrote that he had very few regrets over his time in office, although stated he wished he had been able to advance the cause of Indigenous land rights further. His bitterness towards Keating over the leadership challenges surfaced in his earlier memoirs, although by the 2000s Hawke stated he and Keating had buried their differences, and that they regularly dined together and considered each other friends. The publication of the book "Hawke: The Prime Minister", by Hawke's second wife, Blanche d'Alpuget, in 2010, reignited conflict between the two, with Keating accusing Hawke and d'Alpuget of spreading falsehoods about his role in the Hawke government. Despite this, the two campaigned together for Labor several times, including at the 2019 election, where they released their first joint article for nearly three decades; Craig Emerson, who worked for both men, said they had reconciled in later years after Hawke grew ill. Retirement and later life. After leaving Parliament, Hawke entered the business world, taking on a number of directorships and consultancy positions which enabled him to achieve considerable financial success. He avoided public involvement with the Labor Party during Keating's tenure as prime minister, not wanting to be seen as attempting to overshadow his successor. After Keating's defeat and the election of the Howard government at the 1996 election, he returned to public campaigning with Labor and regularly appearing at election launches. Despite his personal affection for Queen Elizabeth II, boasting that he had been her "favourite Prime Minister", Hawke was an enthusiastic republican and joined the campaign for a Yes vote in the 1999 republic referendum.
In 2002, Hawke was named to South Australia's Economic Development Board during the Rann government. In the lead up to the 2007 election, Hawke made a considerable personal effort to support Kevin Rudd, making speeches at a large number of campaign office openings across Australia, and appearing in multiple campaign advertisements. As well as campaigning against WorkChoices, Hawke also attacked John Howard's record as Treasurer, stating "it was the judgement of every economist and international financial institution that it was the restructuring reforms undertaken by my government, with the full cooperation of the trade union movement, which created the strength of the Australian economy today". In February 2008, after Rudd's victory, Hawke joined former Prime Ministers Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating in Parliament House to witness the long anticipated apology to the Stolen Generations. In 2009, Hawke helped establish the Centre for Muslim and Non-Muslim Understanding at the University of South Australia. Interfaith dialogue was an important issue for Hawke, who told "The Adelaide Review" that he was "convinced that one of the great potential dangers confronting the world is the lack of understanding in regard to the Muslim world. Fanatics have misrepresented what Islam is. They give a false impression of the essential nature of Islam."
In 2016, after taking part in Andrew Denton's Better Off Dead podcast, Hawke added his voice to calls for voluntary euthanasia to be legalised. Hawke labelled as 'absurd' the lack of political will to fix the problem. He revealed that he had such an arrangement with his wife Blanche should such a devastating medical situation occur. He also publicly advocated for nuclear power and the importation of international spent nuclear fuel to Australia for storage and disposal, stating that this could lead to considerable economic benefits for Australia. In late December 2018, Hawke revealed that he was in "terrible health". While predicting a Labor win in the upcoming 2019 federal election, Hawke said he "may not witness the party's success". In May 2019, the month of the election, he issued a joint statement with Paul Keating endorsing Labor's economic plan and condemning the Liberal Party for "completely [giving] up the economic reform agenda". They stated that "Shorten's Labor is the only party of government focused on the need to modernise the economy to deal with the major challenge of our time: human induced climate change". It was the first joint press statement released by the two since 1991.
In March 2022, Troy Bramston, a journalist for "The Australian" and a political historian, wrote an unauthorised biography of Hawke titled "Bob Hawke: Demons and Destiny". Hawke gave Bramston full access to his previously unavailable personal papers and granted a series of interviews for the book. Bramston was the last person to interview Hawke before his death. The book, drawing on extensive Australian and international archives, and interviews with more than 100 people, is regarded as "definitive" and was shortlisted for the Australian Political Book of the Year Award. On 16 May 2019, two days before the election, Hawke died at his home in Northbridge at the age of 89, following a short illness. His family held a private cremation on 27 May at Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium where he was subsequently interred. A state memorial was held at the Sydney Opera House on 14 June; speakers included Craig Emerson as master of ceremonies and Kim Beazley reading the eulogy, as well as Paul Keating, Julia Gillard, Bill Kelty, Ross Garnaut, and incumbent Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.
Personal life. Hawke married Hazel Masterson in 1956 at Perth Trinity Church. They had three children: Susan (born 1957), Stephen (born 1959) and Roslyn (born 1961). Their fourth child, Robert Jr, died in early infancy in 1963. Hawke was named Victorian Father of the Year in 1971, an honour which his wife disputed due to his heavy drinking and womanising. The couple divorced in 1994, after he left her for the writer Blanche d'Alpuget, and the two lived together in Northbridge, a suburb on the North Shore of Sydney. The divorce estranged Hawke from some of his family for a period, although they had reconciled by the 2010s. Hawke was a supporter of National Rugby League club the Canberra Raiders. Alcoholism and abstinence. Throughout his life before politics, Hawke was a heavy drinker. Hawke eventually suffered from alcohol poisoning following the death of his and Hazel's infant son in 1963. He publicly announced in 1980 that he would abstain from alcohol to seek election to Parliament, in a move which garnered significant public attention and support. It is popularly stated that Hawke began to drink again following his retirement from politics, although to a more manageable extent; on several occasions, in his later years, videos of Hawke downing beer at cricket matches would frequently go viral. There is evidence that Hawke did drink alcohol while in office, provided by then Vice-President of the United States of America, George H. W. Bush, who later recalled shared drunken behaviour during Hawke's 1983 first official visit to the United States.
Religious views. On the subject of religion, Hawke wrote, while attending the 1952 World Christian Youth Conference in India, that "there were all these poverty stricken kids at the gate of this palatial place where we were feeding our face and I just (was) struck by this enormous sense of irrelevance of religion to the needs of people". He subsequently abandoned his Christian beliefs. By the time he entered politics he was a self-described agnostic. Hawke told Andrew Denton in 2008 that his father's Christian faith had continued to influence his outlook, saying "My father said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily, and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me." Legacy. A biographical television film, "Hawke", premiered on the Ten Network in Australia on 18 July 2010, with Richard Roxburgh playing the title character. Rachael Blake and Felix Williamson portrayed Hazel Hawke and Paul Keating, respectively. Roxburgh reprised his role as Hawke in the 2020 episode "Terra Nullius" of the Netflix series "The Crown".
The Bob Hawke Gallery in Bordertown, which contains memorabilia from his life, was opened by Hawke in 2002. Hawke House, the house in Bordertown where Hawke spent his early childhood, was purchased by the Australian Government in 2021 and opened as an accommodation and function space in May 2024. A bronze bust of Hawke is located at the town's civic centre. In December 2020, the Western Australian Government announced that it had purchased Hawke's childhood home in West Leederville and would maintain it as a state asset. The property will also be assessed for entry onto the State Register of Heritage Places. The Australian Government pledged $5 million in July 2019 to establish a new annual scholarship—the Bob Hawke John Monash Scholarship—through the General Sir John Monash Foundation. Bob Hawke College, a high school in Subiaco, Western Australia named after Hawke, was opened in February 2020. In March 2020, the Australian Electoral Commission announced that it would create a new Australian electoral division in the House of Representatives named in honour of Hawke. The Division of Hawke was first contested at the 2022 federal election, and is located in the state of Victoria, near the seat of Wills, which Hawke represented from 1980 to 1992. Honours. Orders Foreign honours Awards. Fellowships Honorary degrees
Baldr Baldr (Old Norse also Balder, Baldur) is a god in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, he is a son of the god Odin and the goddess Frigg, and has numerous brothers, such as Thor and Váli. In wider Germanic mythology, the god was known in Old English as ', and in Old High German as ', all ultimately stemming from the Proto-Germanic theonym ('hero' or 'prince'). During the 12th century, Danish accounts by Saxo Grammaticus and other Danish Latin chroniclers recorded a euhemerized account of his story. Compiled in Iceland during the 13th century, but based on older Old Norse poetry, the "Poetic Edda" and the "Prose Edda" contain numerous references to the death of Baldr as both a great tragedy to the Æsir and a harbinger of Ragnarök. According to "Gylfaginning", a book of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Baldr's wife is Nanna and their son is Forseti. Baldr had the greatest ship ever built, "Hringhorni", and there is no place more beautiful than his hall, Breidablik. Name. The Old Norse theonym "Baldr" ('brave, defiant'; also 'lord, prince') and its various Germanic cognates – including Old English "Bældæg" and Old High German "Balder" (or "Palter") – probably stems from Proto-Germanic "*Balðraz" ('Hero, Prince'; cf. Old Norse "mann-baldr" 'great man', Old English "bealdor" 'prince, hero'), itself a derivative of "*balþaz", meaning 'brave' (cf. Old Norse "ballr" 'hard, stubborn', Gothic "balþa*" 'bold, frank', Old English "beald" 'bold, brave, confident', Old Saxon "bald" 'valiant, bold', Old High German "bald" 'brave, courageous').
This etymology was originally proposed by Jacob Grimm (1835), who also speculated on a comparison with the Lithuanian "báltas" ('white', also the name of a light-god) based on the semantic development from 'white' to 'shining' then 'strong'. According to linguist Vladimir Orel, this could be linguistically tenable. Philologist Rudolf Simek also argues that the Old English "Bældæg" should be interpreted as meaning 'shining day', from a Proto-Germanic root *"bēl"- (cf. Old English "bæl", Old Norse "bál" 'fire') attached to "dæg" ('day'). Old Norse also shows the usage of the word as an honorific in a few cases, as in "baldur î brynju" (Sæm. 272b) and "herbaldr" (Sæm. 218b), in general epithets of heroes. In continental Saxon and Anglo-Saxon tradition, the son of Woden is called not "Bealdor" but "Baldag" (Saxon) and "Bældæg, Beldeg" (Anglo-Saxon), which shows association with "day", possibly with Day personified as a deity. This, as Grimm points out, would agree with the meaning "shining one, white one, a god" derived from the meaning of Baltic "baltas", further adducing Slavic "Belobog" and German "Berhta".
Attestations. Merseburg Incantation. One of the two Merseburg Incantations names "Balder" (in the genitive singular "Balderes"), but also mentions a figure named "Phol", considered to be a byname for Baldr (as in Scandinavian "Falr", "Fjalarr"; (in Saxo) "Balderus" : "Fjallerus"). The incantation relates of "Phol ende Wotan" riding to the woods, where the foot of Baldr's foal is sprained. Sinthgunt (the sister of the sun), Frigg and Odin sing to the foot in order for it to heal. The identification with Balder is not conclusive. Modern scholarship suggests that the god Freyr might be meant. "Poetic Edda". Unlike the Prose Edda, in the Poetic Edda the tale of Baldr's death is referred to rather than recounted at length. Baldr is mentioned in "Völuspá", in "Lokasenna", and is the subject of the Eddic poem "Baldr's Dreams". Among the visions which the Völva sees and describes in Völuspá is Baldr's death. In stanza 32, the Völva says she saw the fate of Baldr "the bleeding god": In the next two stanzas, the Völva refers to Baldr's killing, describes the birth of Váli for the slaying of Höðr and the weeping of Frigg:
In stanza 62 of Völuspá, looking far into the future, the Völva says that Höðr and Baldr will come back, with the union, according to Bellows, being a symbol of the new age of peace: Baldr is mentioned in two stanzas of Lokasenna, a poem which describes a flyting between the gods and the god Loki. In the first of the two stanzas, Frigg, Baldr's mother, tells Loki that if she had a son like Baldr, Loki would be killed: In the next stanza, Loki responds to Frigg, and says that he is the reason Baldr "will never ride home again": The Eddic poem "Baldr's Dreams" opens with the gods holding a council discussing why Baldr had had bad dreams: Odin then rides to Hel to a Völva's grave and awakens her using magic. The Völva asks Odin, who she does not recognize, who he is, and Odin answers that he is Vegtam ("Wanderer"). Odin asks the Völva for whom are the benches covered in rings and the floor covered in gold. The Völva tells him that in their location mead is brewed for Baldr, and that she spoke unwillingly, so she will speak no more:
Odin asks the Völva to not be silent and asks her who will kill Baldr. The Völva replies and says that Höðr will kill Baldr, and again says that she spoke unwillingly, and that she will speak no more: Odin again asks the Völva to not be silent and asks her who will avenge Baldr's death. The Völva replies that Váli will, when he will be one night old. Once again, she says that she will speak no more: Odin again asks the Völva to not be silent and says that he seeks to know who the women that will then weep be. The Völva realizes that Vegtam is Odin in disguise. Odin says that the Völva is not a Völva, and that she is the mother of three giants. The Völva tells Odin to ride back home proud, because she will speak to no more men until Loki escapes his bounds. "Prose Edda". In "Gylfaginning", Baldr is described as follows: Apart from this description, Baldr is known primarily for the story of his death, which is seen as the first in a chain of events that will ultimately lead to the destruction of the gods at Ragnarök.
Baldr had a dream of his own death and his mother, Frigg, had the same dream. Since dreams were usually prophetic, this depressed him, and so Frigg made every object on earth vow never to hurt Baldr. All objects made this vow, save for the mistletoe—a detail which has traditionally been explained with the idea that it was too unimportant and nonthreatening to bother asking it to make the vow, but which Merrill Kaplan has instead argued echoes the fact that young people were not eligible to swear legal oaths, which could make them a threat later in life. When Loki, the mischief-maker, heard of this, he made a magical spear from this plant (in some later versions, an arrow). He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Baldr, which would bounce off without harming him. Loki gave the spear to Baldr's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it (other versions suggest that Loki guided the arrow himself). For this act, Odin and the "ásynja" Rindr gave birth to Váli, who grew to adulthood within a day and slew Höðr.
Baldr was ceremonially burnt upon his ship Hringhorni, the largest of all ships. On the pyre he was given the magical ring Draupnir. At first the gods were not able to push the ship out onto sea, and so they sent for Hyrrokin, a giantess, who came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook. As he was carried to the ship, Odin whispered something in his ear. The import of this speech was held to be unknowable, and the question of what was said was thus used as an unanswerable riddle by Odin in other sources, namely against the giant Vafthrudnir in the Eddic poem "Vafthrudnismal" and in the riddles of Gestumblindi in "Hervarar saga". Upon seeing the corpse being carried to the ship, Nanna, his wife, died of grief. She was then placed on the funeral fire (perhaps a toned-down instance of Sati, also attested in the Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan's account of a funeral among the Rus'), after which it was set on fire. Baldr's horse with all its trappings was also laid on the pyre.
As the pyre was set on fire, Thor blessed it with his hammer Mjǫllnir. As he did a small dwarf named Litr came running before his feet. Thor then kicked him into the pyre. Upon Frigg's entreaties, delivered through the messenger Hermod, Hel promised to release Baldr from the underworld if all objects alive and dead would weep for him. All did, except a giantess, Þökk (often presumed to be the god Loki in disguise), who refused to mourn the slain god. Thus Baldr had to remain in the underworld, not to emerge until after Ragnarök, when he and his brother Höðr would be reconciled and rule the new earth together with Thor's sons. Besides these descriptions of Baldr, the Prose Edda also explicitly links him to the Anglo-Saxon "Beldeg" in its prologue. "Gesta Danorum". Writing during the end of the 12th century, the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tells the story of Baldr (recorded as "Balderus") in a form that professes to be historical. According to him, Balderus and Høtherus were rival suitors for the hand of Nanna, daughter of Gewar, King of Norway. Balderus was a demigod and common steel could not wound his sacred body. The two rivals encountered each other in a terrific battle. Though Odin and Thor and the other gods fought for Balderus, he was defeated and fled away, and Høtherus married the princess.
Nevertheless, Balderus took heart of grace and again met Høtherus in a stricken field. But he fared even worse than before. Høtherus dealt him a deadly wound with a magic sword, named Mistletoe, which he had received from Mimir, the satyr of the woods; after lingering three days in pain Balderus died of his injury and was buried with royal honours in a barrow. Utrecht Inscription. A Latin votive inscription from Utrecht, from the 3rd or 4th century C.E., has been theorized as containing the dative form "Baldruo", pointing to a Latin nominative singular *"Baldruus", which some have identified with the Norse/Germanic god, although both the reading and this interpretation have been questioned. "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". In the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Baldr is named as the ancestor of the monarchy of Kent, Bernicia, Deira, and Wessex through his supposed son Brond. Toponyms. There are a few old place names in Scandinavia that contain the name "Baldr". The most certain and notable one is the (former) parish name Balleshol in Hedmark county, Norway: "a Balldrshole" 1356 (where the last element is "hóll" m "mound; small hill"). Others may be (in Norse forms) "Baldrsberg" in Vestfold county, "Baldrsheimr" in Hordaland county "Baldrsnes" in Sør-Trøndelag county—and (very uncertain) the Balsfjorden fjord and Balsfjord Municipality in Troms county. In Copenhagen, there is also a Baldersgade, or "Balder's Street". A street in downtown Reykjavík is called Baldursgata (Baldur's Street). In Sweden there is a Baldersgatan (Balder's Street) in Stockholm. There is also Baldersnäs (Balder's isthmus), Baldersvik (Balder's bay), Balders udde (Balder's headland) and Baldersberg (Balder's mountain) at various places.
Breidablik <noinclude> Breiðablik (sometimes anglicised as Breithablik or Breidablik) is the home of Baldr in Nordic mythology. Meaning. The word has been variously translated as 'broad sheen', 'Broad gleam', 'Broad-gleaming' or 'the far-shining one', Attestations. Grímismál. The Eddic poem Grímnismál describes Breiðablik as the fair home of Baldr: Gylfaginning. In Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning, Breiðablik is described in a list of places in heaven, identified by some scholars as Asgard: Later in the work, when Snorri describes Baldr, he gives another description, citing "Grímnismál", though he does not name the poem: Interpretation and discussion. The name of Breiðablik has been noted to link with Baldr's attributes of light and beauty. Similarities have been drawn between the description of Breiðablik in Grímnismál and Heorot in Beowulf, which are both free of 'baleful runes' ( and respectively). In Beowulf, the lack of refers to the absence of crimes being committed, and therefore both halls have been proposed to be sanctuaries.
Bilskirnir Bilskirnir (Old Norse "lightning-crack") is the hall of the god Thor in Norse mythology. Here he lives with his wife Sif and their children. According to "Grímnismál", the hall is the greatest of buildings and contains 540 rooms, located in Asgard, as are all the dwellings of the gods, in the kingdom of Þrúðheimr (or Þrúðvangar according to "Gylfaginning" and "Ynglinga saga").
Brísingamen In Norse mythology, Brísingamen (or Brísinga men) is the torc or necklace of the goddess Freyja, of which little else is known for certain. Etymology. The name is an Old Norse compound "brísinga-men" whose second element is "men" "(ornamental) neck-ring (of precious metal), torc". The etymology of the first element is uncertain. It has been derived from Old Norse "brísingr", a poetic term for "fire" or "amber" mentioned in the anonymous versified word-lists ("þulur") appended to many manuscripts of the Prose Edda, making Brísingamen "gleaming torc", "sunny torc", or the like. However, "Brísingr" can also be an ethnonym, in which case "Brísinga men" is "torc of the Brísings"; the Old English parallel in "Beowulf" supports this derivation, though who the Brísings (Old Norse "Brísingar") may have been remains unknown. Attestations. "Beowulf". Brísingamen is referred to in the Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf" as "Brosinga mene". The brief mention in "Beowulf" is as follows (trans. by Howell Chickering, 1977):
The "Beowulf" poet is clearly referring to the legends about Theoderic the Great. The "Þiðrekssaga" tells that the warrior Heime ("Háma" in Old English) takes sides against Ermanaric ("Eormanric"), king of the Goths, and has to flee his kingdom after robbing him; later in life, Hama enters a monastery and gives them all his stolen treasure. However, this saga makes no mention of the great necklace. "Poetic Edda". In the poem "Þrymskviða" of the "Poetic Edda", Þrymr, the king of the jǫtnar, steals Thor's hammer, Mjölnir. Freyja lends Loki her falcon cloak to search for it; but upon returning, Loki tells Freyja that Þrymr has hidden the hammer and demanded to marry her in return. Freyja is so wrathful that all the Æsir’s halls beneath her are shaken and the necklace Brísingamen breaks off from her neck. Later Thor borrows Brísingamen when he dresses up as Freyja to go to the wedding at Jǫtunheimr. "Prose Edda". "Húsdrápa", a skaldic poem partially preserved in the "Prose Edda", relates the story of the theft of Brísingamen by Loki. One day when Freyja wakes up and finds Brísingamen missing, she enlists the help of Heimdallr to help her search for it. Eventually they find the thief, who turns out to be Loki who has transformed himself into a seal. Heimdallr turns into a seal as well and fights Loki (trans. Byock 2005):
After a lengthy battle at Singasteinn, Heimdallr wins and returns Brísingamen to Freyja. Snorri Sturluson quoted this old poem in "Skáldskaparmál", saying that because of this legend Heimdallr is called "Seeker of Freyja's Necklace" ("Skáldskaparmál", section 8) and Loki is called "Thief of Brísingamen" ("Skáldskaparmál", section 16). A similar story appears in the later "Sörla þáttr", where Heimdallr does not appear. "Sörla þáttr". Sörla þáttr is a short story in the later and extended version of the "Saga of Olaf Tryggvason" in the manuscript of the "Flateyjarbók", which was written and compiled by two Christian priests, Jon Thordson and Magnus Thorhalson, in the late 14th century. In the end of the story, the arrival of Christianity dissolves the old curse that traditionally was to endure until Ragnarök. The battle of Högni and Heðinn is recorded in several medieval sources, including the skaldic poem "Ragnarsdrápa", "Skáldskaparmál" (section 49), and "Gesta Danorum": king Högni's daughter, Hildr, is kidnapped by king Heðinn. When Högni comes to fight Heðinn on an island, Hildr comes to offer her father a necklace on behalf of Heðinn for peace; but the two kings still battle, and Hildr resurrects the fallen to make them fight until Ragnarök. None of these earlier sources mentions Freyja or king Olaf Tryggvason, the historical figure who Christianized Norway and Iceland in the 10th Century.
Archaeological record. A Völva was buried with considerable splendour in Hagebyhöga in Östergötland, Sweden. In addition to being buried with her wand, she had received great riches which included horses, a wagon and an Arabian bronze pitcher. There was also a silver pendant, which represents a woman with a broad necklace around her neck. This kind of necklace was only worn by the most prominent women during the Iron Age and some have interpreted it as Freyja's necklace Brísingamen. The pendant may represent Freyja herself. Modern influence. Alan Garner wrote a children's fantasy novel called "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", published in 1960, about an enchanted teardrop bracelet. Diana Paxson's novel "Brisingamen" features Freyja and her necklace. Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has a perfumed oil scent named Brisingamen. Freyja's necklace Brisingamen features prominently in Betsy Tobin's novel "Iceland", where the necklace is seen to have significant protective powers. The Brisingamen feature as a major item in Joel Rosenberg's Keepers of the Hidden Ways series of books. In it, there are seven jewels that were created for the necklace by the Dwarfs and given to the Norse goddess. She in turn eventually split them up into the seven separate jewels and hid them throughout the realm, as together they hold the power to shape the universe by its holder. The book's plot is about discovering one of them and deciding what to do with the power they allow while avoiding Loki and other Norse characters.
In Christopher Paolini's "The Inheritance Cycle", the word "brisingr" means fire. This is probably a distillation of the word "brisinga". Ursula Le Guin's short story "Semley's Necklace", the first part of her novel "Rocannon's World", is a retelling of the Brisingamen story on an alien planet. Brisingamen is represented as a card in the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" Trading Card Game, "Nordic Relic Brisingamen". Brisingamen was part of MMORPG "Ragnarok Online" lore, which is ranked as "God item". The game is heavily based from Norse mythology. In the "Firefly Online" game, one of the planets of the Himinbjörg system (which features planets named after figures from Germanic mythology) is named Brisingamen. It is third from the star, and has moons named Freya, Beowulf, and Alberich. The Brisingamen is an item that can be found and equipped in the video game, "". In the French comics "Freaks' Squeele", the character of Valkyrie accesses her costume change ability by touching a decorative torc necklace affixed to her forehead, named Brizingamen.
Borsuk–Ulam theorem In mathematics, the Borsuk–Ulam theorem states that every continuous function from an "n"-sphere into Euclidean "n"-space maps some pair of antipodal points to the same point. Here, two points on a sphere are called antipodal if they are in exactly opposite directions from the sphere's center. Formally: if formula_1 is continuous then there exists an formula_2 such that: formula_3. The case formula_4 can be illustrated by saying that there always exist a pair of opposite points on the Earth's equator with the same temperature. The same is true for any circle. This assumes the temperature varies continuously in space, which is, however, not always the case. The case formula_5 is often illustrated by saying that at any moment, there is always a pair of antipodal points on the Earth's surface with equal temperatures and equal barometric pressures, assuming that both parameters vary continuously in space. The Borsuk–Ulam theorem has several equivalent statements in terms of odd functions. Recall that formula_6 is the "n"-sphere and formula_7 is the "n"-ball:
History. According to , the first historical mention of the statement of the Borsuk–Ulam theorem appears in . The first proof was given by , where the formulation of the problem was attributed to Stanisław Ulam. Since then, many alternative proofs have been found by various authors, as collected by . Equivalent statements. The following statements are equivalent to the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. With odd functions. A function formula_16 is called "odd" (aka "antipodal" or "antipode-preserving") if for every formula_17, formula_18. The Borsuk–Ulam theorem is equivalent to each of the following statements: (1) Each continuous odd function formula_19 has a zero. (2) There is no continuous odd function formula_20. Here is a proof that the Borsuk-Ulam theorem is equivalent to (1): (formula_21) If the theorem is correct, then it is specifically correct for odd functions, and for an odd function, formula_22 iff formula_10. Hence every odd continuous function has a zero. (formula_24) For every continuous function formula_25, the following function is continuous and odd: formula_26. If every odd continuous function has a zero, then formula_16 has a zero, and therefore, formula_28.
To prove that (1) and (2) are equivalent, we use the following continuous odd maps: The proof now writes itself. formula_32 We prove the contrapositive. If there exists a continuous odd function formula_33, then formula_34 is a continuous odd function formula_35. formula_36 Again we prove the contrapositive. If there exists a continuous odd function formula_37, then formula_38 is a continuous odd function formula_39. Proofs. 1-dimensional case. The 1-dimensional case can easily be proved using the intermediate value theorem (IVT). Let formula_16 be the odd real-valued continuous function on a circle defined by formula_26. Pick an arbitrary formula_17. If formula_10 then we are done. Otherwise, without loss of generality, formula_44 But formula_45 Hence, by the IVT, there is a point formula_46 at which formula_47. General case. Algebraic topological proof. Assume that formula_48 is an odd continuous function with formula_49 (the case formula_50 is treated above, the case formula_51 can be handled using basic covering theory). By passing to orbits under the antipodal action, we then get an induced continuous function formula_52 between real projective spaces, which induces an isomorphism on fundamental groups. By the Hurewicz theorem, the induced ring homomorphism on cohomology with formula_53 coefficients [where formula_53 denotes the field with two elements],
sends formula_56 to formula_57. But then we get that formula_58 is sent to formula_59, a contradiction. One can also show the stronger statement that any odd map formula_60 has odd degree and then deduce the theorem from this result. Combinatorial proof. The Borsuk–Ulam theorem can be proved from Tucker's lemma. Let formula_8 be a continuous odd function. Because "g" is continuous on a compact domain, it is uniformly continuous. Therefore, for every formula_62, there is a formula_63 such that, for every two points of formula_64 which are within formula_65 of each other, their images under "g" are within formula_66 of each other. Define a triangulation of formula_64 with edges of length at most formula_65. Label each vertex formula_69 of the triangulation with a label formula_70 in the following way: Because "g" is odd, the labeling is also odd: formula_73. Hence, by Tucker's lemma, there are two adjacent vertices formula_74 with opposite labels. Assume w.l.o.g. that the labels are formula_75. By the definition of "l", this means that in both formula_76 and formula_77, coordinate #1 is the largest coordinate: in formula_76 this coordinate is positive while in formula_77 it is negative. By the construction of the triangulation, the distance between formula_76 and formula_77 is at most formula_66, so in particular formula_83 (since formula_84 and formula_85 have opposite signs) and so formula_86. But since the largest coordinate of formula_76 is coordinate #1, this means that formula_88 for each formula_89. So formula_90, where formula_91 is some constant depending on formula_92 and the norm formula_93 which you have chosen. The above is true for every formula_62; since formula_64 is compact there must hence be a point "u" in which formula_96. Equivalent results. Above we showed how to prove the Borsuk–Ulam theorem from Tucker's lemma. The converse is also true: it is possible to prove Tucker's lemma from the Borsuk–Ulam theorem. Therefore, these two theorems are equivalent.
Bragi Bragi (Old Norse) is the skaldic god of poetry in Norse mythology. Etymology. The theonym Bragi probably stems from the masculine noun "bragr", which can be translated in Old Norse as 'poetry' (cf. Icelandic "bragur" 'poem, melody, wise') or as 'the first, noblest' (cf. poetic Old Norse "bragnar" 'chiefs, men', "bragningr" 'king'). It is unclear whether the theonym semantically derives from the first meaning or the second. A connection has been also suggested with the Old Norse "bragarfull", the cup drunk in solemn occasions with the taking of vows. The word is usually taken to semantically derive from the second meaning of "bragr" ('first one, noblest'). A relation with the Old English term "brego" ('lord, prince') remains uncertain. "Bragi" regularly appears as a personal name in Old Norse and Old Swedish sources, which according to linguist Jan de Vries might indicate the secondary character of the god's name. Attestations. Snorri Sturluson writes in the "Gylfaginning" after describing Odin, Thor, and Baldr:
In "Skáldskaparmál" Snorri writes: That Bragi is Odin's son is clearly mentioned only here and in some versions of a list of the sons of Odin (see Sons of Odin). But "wish-son" in stanza 16 of the "Lokasenna" could mean "Odin's son" and is translated by Hollander as "Odin's kin". Bragi's mother is possibly Frigg. In that poem Bragi at first forbids Loki to enter the hall but is overruled by Odin. Loki then gives a greeting to all gods and goddesses who are in the hall save to Bragi. Bragi generously offers his sword, horse, and an arm ring as peace gift but Loki only responds by accusing Bragi of cowardice, of being the most afraid to fight of any of the Æsir and Elves within the hall. Bragi responds that if they were outside the hall, he would have Loki's head, but Loki only repeats the accusation. When Bragi's wife Iðunn attempts to calm Bragi, Loki accuses her of embracing her brother's slayer, a reference to matters that have not survived. It may be that Bragi had slain Iðunn's brother. A passage in the "Poetic Edda" poem "Sigrdrífumál" describes runes being graven on the sun, on the ear of one of the sun-horses and on the hoofs of the other, on Sleipnir's teeth, on bear's paw, on eagle's beak, on wolf's claw, and on several other things including on Bragi's tongue. Then the runes are shaved off and the shavings are mixed with mead and sent abroad so that Æsir have some, Elves have some, Vanir have some, and Men have some, these being speech runes and birth runes, ale runes, and magic runes. The meaning of this is obscure.
The first part of Snorri Sturluson's "Skáldskaparmál" is a dialogue between Ægir and Bragi about the nature of poetry, particularly skaldic poetry. Bragi tells the origin of the mead of poetry from the blood of Kvasir and how Odin obtained this mead. He then goes on to discuss various poetic metaphors known as "kennings". Snorri Sturluson clearly distinguishes the god Bragi from the mortal skald Bragi Boddason, whom he often mentions separately. The appearance of Bragi in the "Lokasenna" indicates that if these two Bragis were originally the same, they have become separated for that author also, or that chronology has become very muddled and Bragi Boddason has been relocated to mythological time. Compare the appearance of the Welsh Taliesin in the second branch of the Mabinogi. Legendary chronology sometimes does become muddled. Whether Bragi the god originally arose as a deified version of Bragi Boddason was much debated in the 19th century, especially by the scholars Eugen Mogk and Sophus Bugge. The debate remains undecided.
In the poem "Eiríksmál" Odin, in Valhalla, hears the coming of the dead Norwegian king Eric Bloodaxe and his host, and bids the heroes Sigmund and Sinfjötli rise to greet him. Bragi is then mentioned, questioning how Odin knows that it is Eric and why Odin has let such a king die. In the poem "Hákonarmál", Hákon the Good is taken to Valhalla by the valkyrie Göndul and Odin sends Hermóðr and Bragi to greet him. In these poems Bragi could be either a god or a dead hero in Valhalla. Attempting to decide is further confused because "Hermóðr" also seems to be sometimes the name of a god and sometimes the name of a hero. That Bragi was also the first to speak to Loki in the "Lokasenna" as Loki attempted to enter the hall might be a parallel. It might have been useful and customary that a man of great eloquence and versed in poetry should greet those entering a hall. He is also depicted in tenth-century court poetry of helping to prepare Valhalla for new arrivals and welcoming the kings who have been slain in battle to the hall of Odin.
Skalds named Bragi. Bragi Boddason. In the "Prose Edda" Snorri Sturluson quotes many stanzas attributed to Bragi Boddason the old ("Bragi Boddason inn gamli"), a Norwegian court poet who served several Swedish kings, Ragnar Lodbrok, Östen Beli and Björn at Hauge who reigned in the first half of the 9th century. This Bragi was reckoned as the first skaldic poet, and was certainly the earliest skaldic poet then remembered by name whose verse survived in memory. Snorri especially quotes passages from Bragi's "Ragnarsdrápa", a poem supposedly composed in honor of the famous legendary Viking Ragnar Lodbrok ('Hairy-breeches') describing the images on a decorated shield which Ragnar had given to Bragi. The images included Thor's fishing for Jörmungandr, Gefjun's ploughing of Zealand from the soil of Sweden, the attack of Hamdir and Sorli against King Jörmunrekk, and the never-ending battle between Hedin and Högni. Bragi son of Hálfdan the Old. Bragi son of Hálfdan the Old is mentioned only in the "Skjáldskaparmál". This Bragi is the sixth of the second of two groups of nine sons fathered by King Hálfdan the Old on Alvig the Wise, daughter of King Eymund of Hólmgard. This second group of sons are all eponymous ancestors of legendary families of the north. Snorri says:
Bragi, from whom the Bragnings are sprung (that is the race of Hálfdan the Generous). Of the Bragnings as a race and of Hálfdan the Generous nothing else is known. However, "Bragning" is often, like some others of these dynastic names, used in poetry as a general word for 'king' or 'ruler'. Bragi Högnason. In the eddic poem "Helgakviða Hundingsbana II", Bragi Högnason, his brother Dag, and his sister Sigrún were children of Högne, the king of East Götaland. The poem relates how Sigmund's son Helgi Hundingsbane agreed to take Sigrún daughter of Högni as his wife against her unwilling betrothal to Hodbrodd son of Granmar the king of Södermanland. In the subsequent battle of Frekastein (probably one of the 300 hill forts of Södermanland, as "stein" meant "hill fort") against Högni and Granmar, all the chieftains on Granmar's side are slain, including Bragi, except for Bragi's brother Dag. In popular culture. In the 2002 Ensemble Studios game "Age of Mythology", Bragi is one of nine minor gods Norse players can worship.
Blaise Pascal Blaise Pascal (19June 162319August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. His earliest mathematical work was on projective geometry; he wrote a significant treatise on the subject of conic sections at the age of 16. He later corresponded with Pierre de Fermat on probability theory, strongly influencing the development of modern economics and social science. In 1642, he started some pioneering work on calculating machines (called Pascal's calculators and later Pascalines), establishing him as one of the first two inventors of the mechanical calculator. Like his contemporary René Descartes, Pascal was also a pioneer in the natural and applied sciences. Pascal wrote in defense of the scientific method and produced several controversial results. He made important contributions to the study of fluids, and clarified the concepts of pressure and vacuum by generalising the work of Evangelista Torricelli. Following Torricelli and Galileo Galilei, in 1647 he rebutted the likes of Aristotle and Descartes who insisted that nature abhors a vacuum.
He is also credited as the inventor of modern public transportation, having established the carrosses à cinq sols, the first modern public transport service, shortly before his death in 1662. In 1646, he and his sister Jacqueline identified with the religious movement within Catholicism known by its detractors as Jansenism. Following a religious experience in late 1654, he began writing influential works on philosophy and theology. His two most famous works date from this period: the and the "Pensées", the former set in the conflict between Jansenists and Jesuits. The latter contains Pascal's wager, known in the original as the "Discourse on the Machine", a fideistic probabilistic argument for why one should believe in God. In that year, he also wrote an important treatise on the arithmetical triangle. Between 1658 and 1659, he wrote on the cycloid and its use in calculating the volume of solids. Following several years of illness, Pascal died in Paris at the age of 39. Early life and education. Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, which is in France's Auvergne region, by the Massif Central. He lost his mother, Antoinette Begon, at the age of three. His father, Étienne Pascal, also an amateur mathematician, was a local judge and member of the "Noblesse de Robe". Pascal had two sisters, the younger Jacqueline and the elder Gilberte.
Move to Paris. In 1631, five years after the death of his wife, Étienne Pascal moved with his children to Paris. The newly arrived family soon hired Louise Delfault, a maid who eventually became a key member of the family. Étienne, who never remarried, decided that he alone would educate his children. The young Pascal showed an extraordinary intellectual ability, with an amazing aptitude for mathematics and science. Etienne had tried to keep his son from learning mathematics; but by the age of 12, Pascal had rediscovered, on his own, using charcoal on a tile floor, Euclid’s first thirty-two geometric propositions, and was thus given a copy of Euclid's "Elements". "Essay on Conics". Particularly of interest to Pascal was a work of Desargues on conic sections. Following Desargues' thinking, the 16-year-old Pascal produced, as a means of proof, a short treatise on what was called the "Mystic Hexagram", "Essai pour les coniques" ("Essay on Conics") and sent it — his first serious work of mathematics — to Père Mersenne in Paris; it is known still today as Pascal's theorem. It states that if a hexagon is inscribed in a circle (or conic) then the three intersection points of opposite sides lie on a line (called the Pascal line).
Pascal's work was so precocious that René Descartes was convinced that Pascal's father had written it. When assured by Mersenne that it was, indeed, the product of the son and not the father, Descartes dismissed it with a sniff: "I do not find it strange that he has offered demonstrations about conics more appropriate than those of the ancients," adding, "but other matters related to this subject can be proposed that would scarcely occur to a 16-year-old child." Leaving Paris. In France at that time offices and positions could be—and were—bought and sold. In 1631, Étienne sold his position as second president of the "Cour des Aides" for 65,665 livres. The money was invested in a government bond which provided, if not a lavish, then certainly a comfortable income which allowed the Pascal family to move to, and enjoy, Paris, but in 1638 Cardinal Richelieu, desperate for money to carry on the Thirty Years' War, defaulted on the government's bonds. Suddenly Étienne Pascal's worth had dropped from nearly 66,000 livres to less than 7,300.
Like so many others, Étienne was eventually forced to flee Paris because of his opposition to the fiscal policies of Richelieu, leaving his three children in the care of his neighbour Madame Sainctot, a great beauty with an infamous past who kept one of the most glittering and intellectual salons in all France. It was only when Jacqueline performed well in a children's play with Richelieu in attendance that Étienne was pardoned. In time, Étienne was back in good graces with the Cardinal and in 1639 had been appointed the king's commissioner of taxes in the city of Rouen—a city whose tax records, thanks to uprisings, were in utter chaos. Pascaline. In 1642, in an effort to ease his father's endless, exhausting calculations, and recalculations, of taxes owed and paid (into which work the young Pascal had been recruited), Pascal, not yet 19, constructed a mechanical calculator capable of addition and subtraction, called "Pascal's calculator" or the "Pascaline". Of the eight Pascalines known to have survived, four are held by the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris and one more by the Zwinger museum in Dresden, Germany, exhibit two of his original mechanical calculators.
Although these machines are pioneering forerunners to a further 400 years of development of mechanical methods of calculation, and in a sense to the later field of computer engineering, the calculator failed to be a great commercial success. Partly because it was still quite cumbersome to use in practice, but probably primarily because it was extraordinarily expensive, the Pascaline became little more than a toy, and a status symbol, for the very rich both in France and elsewhere in Europe. Pascal continued to make improvements to his design through the next decade, and he refers to some 50 machines that were built to his design. He built 20 finished machines over the following 10 years. Mathematics. Probability.
"Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle". Pascal's "Traité du triangle arithmétique", written in 1654 but published posthumously in 1665, described a convenient tabular presentation for binomial coefficients which he called the arithmetical triangle, but is now called Pascal's triangle. The triangle can also be represented: He defined the numbers in the triangle by recursion: Call the number in the ("m" + 1)th row and ("n" + 1)th column "t""mn". Then "t""mn" = "t""m"–1,"n" + "t""m","n"–1, for "m" = 0, 1, 2, ... and "n" = 0, 1, 2, ... The boundary conditions are "t""m",−1 = 0, "t"−1,"n" = 0 for "m" = 1, 2, 3, ... and "n" = 1, 2, 3, ... The generator "t"00 = 1. Pascal concluded with the proof, In the same treatise, Pascal gave an explicit statement of the principle of mathematical induction. In 1654, he proved "Pascal's identity" relating the sums of the "p"-th powers of the first "n" positive integers for "p" = 0, 1, 2, ..., "k". That same year, Pascal had a religious experience, and mostly gave up work in mathematics.
Cycloid. In 1658, Pascal, while suffering from a toothache, began considering several problems concerning the cycloid. His toothache disappeared, and he took this as a heavenly sign to proceed with his research. Eight days later he had completed his essay and, to publicize the results, proposed a contest. Pascal proposed three questions relating to the center of gravity, area and volume of the cycloid, with the winner or winners to receive prizes of 20 and 40 Spanish doubloons. Pascal, Gilles de Roberval and Pierre de Carcavi were the judges, and neither of the two submissions (by John Wallis and Antoine de Lalouvère) were judged to be adequate. While the contest was ongoing, Christopher Wren sent Pascal a proposal for a proof of the rectification of the cycloid; Roberval claimed promptly that he had known of the proof for years. Wallis published Wren's proof (crediting Wren) in Wallis's "Tractus Duo", giving Wren priority for the first published proof. Physics. Pascal contributed to several fields in physics, most notably the fields of fluid mechanics and pressure. In honour of his scientific contributions, the name "Pascal" has been given to the SI unit of pressure and Pascal's law (an important principle of hydrostatics). He introduced a primitive form of roulette and the roulette wheel in his search for a perpetual motion machine.
Fluid dynamics. His work in the fields of hydrodynamics and hydrostatics centered on the principles of hydraulic fluids. His inventions include the hydraulic press (using hydraulic pressure to multiply force) and the syringe. He proved that hydrostatic pressure depends not on the weight of the fluid but on the elevation difference. He demonstrated this principle by attaching a thin tube to a barrel full of water and filling the tube with water up to the level of the third floor of a building. This caused the barrel to leak, in what became known as Pascal's barrel experiment. Vacuum. By 1647, Pascal had learned of Evangelista Torricelli's experimentation with barometers. Having replicated an experiment that involved placing a tube filled with mercury upside down in a bowl of mercury, Pascal questioned what force kept some mercury in the tube and what filled the space above the mercury in the tube. At the time, most scientists including Descartes believed in a plenum, i. e. some invisible matter filled all of space, rather than a vacuum ("Nature abhors a vacuum)." This was based on the Aristotelian notion that everything in motion was a substance, moved by another substance. Furthermore, light passed through the glass tube, suggesting a substance such as aether rather than vacuum filled the space.
Following more experimentation in this vein, in 1647 Pascal produced "Experiences nouvelles touchant le vide" ("New experiments with the vacuum"), which detailed basic rules describing to what degree various liquids could be supported by air pressure. It also provided reasons why it was indeed a vacuum above the column of liquid in a barometer tube. This work was followed by "Récit de la grande expérience de l'équilibre des liqueurs" ("Account of the great experiment on equilibrium in liquids") published in 1648. First atmospheric pressure vs. altitude experiment. The Torricellian vacuum found that air pressure is equal to the weight of 30 inches of mercury. If air has a finite weight, Earth's atmosphere must have a maximum height. Pascal reasoned that if true, air pressure on a high mountain must be less than at a lower altitude. He lived near the Puy de Dôme mountain, tall, but his health was poor so could not climb it. On 19 September 1648, after many months of Pascal's friendly but insistent prodding, Florin Périer, husband of Pascal's elder sister Gilberte, was finally able to carry out the fact-finding mission vital to Pascal's theory. The account, written by Périer, reads:
Pascal replicated the experiment in Paris by carrying a barometer up to the top of the bell tower at the church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, a height of about 50 metres. The mercury dropped two lines. He found with both experiments that an ascent of 7 fathoms lowers the mercury by half a line. Note: Pascal used "pouce" and "ligne" for "inch" and "line", and "toise" for "fathom". In a reply to Étienne Noël, who believed in the plenum, Pascal wrote, echoing contemporary notions of science and falsifiability: "In order to show that a hypothesis is evident, it does not suffice that all the phenomena follow from it; instead, if it leads to something contrary to a single one of the phenomena, that suffices to establish its falsity." Blaise Pascal Chairs are given to outstanding international scientists to conduct their research in the Ile de France region. Adult life: religion, literature, and philosophy. Religious conversion. In the winter of 1646, Pascal's 58-year-old father broke his hip when he slipped and fell on an icy street of Rouen; given the man's age and the state of medicine in the 17th century, a broken hip could be a very serious condition, perhaps even fatal. Rouen was home to two of the finest doctors in France, Deslandes and de la Bouteillerie. The elder Pascal "would not let anyone other than these men attend him...It was a good choice, for the old man survived and was able to walk again..." However treatment and rehabilitation took three months, during which time La Bouteillerie and Deslandes had become regular visitors.
Both men were followers of Jean Guillebert, proponent of a splinter group from Catholic teaching known as Jansenism. This still fairly small sect was making surprising inroads into the French Catholic community at that time. It espoused rigorous Augustinism. Blaise spoke with the doctors frequently, and after their successful treatment of his father, borrowed from them works by Jansenist authors. In this period, Pascal experienced a sort of "first conversion" and began to write on theological subjects in the course of the following year. Pascal fell away from this initial religious engagement and experienced a few years of what some biographers have called his "worldly period" (1648–54). His father died in 1651 and left his inheritance to Pascal and his sister Jacqueline, for whom Pascal acted as conservator. Jacqueline announced that she would soon become a postulant in the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal. Pascal was deeply affected and very sad, not because of her choice, but because of his chronic poor health; he needed her just as she had needed him.
By the end of October in 1651, a truce had been reached between brother and sister. In return for a healthy annual stipend, Jacqueline signed over her part of the inheritance to her brother. Gilberte had already been given her inheritance in the form of a dowry. In early January, Jacqueline left for Port-Royal. On that day, according to Gilberte concerning her brother, "He retired very sadly to his rooms without seeing Jacqueline, who was waiting in the little parlor..." In early June 1653, after what must have seemed like endless badgering from Jacqueline, Pascal formally signed over the whole of his sister's inheritance to Port-Royal, which, to him, "had begun to smell like a cult." With two-thirds of his father's estate now gone, the 29-year-old Pascal was now consigned to genteel poverty. For a while, Pascal pursued the life of a bachelor. During visits to his sister at Port-Royal in 1654, he displayed contempt for affairs of the world but was not drawn to God. "Memorial". On the 23 of November, 1654, between 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Pascal had an intense religious experience and immediately wrote a brief note to himself which began: "Fire. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and the scholars..." and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: "I will not forget thy word. Amen." He seems to have carefully sewn this document into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes; a servant discovered it only by chance after his death. This piece is now known as the "Memorial". The story of a carriage accident as having led to the experience described in the "Memorial" is disputed by some scholars.
His belief and religious commitment revitalized, Pascal visited the older of two convents at Port-Royal for a two-week retreat in January 1655. For the next four years, he regularly travelled between Port-Royal and Paris. It was at this point immediately after his conversion when he began writing his first major literary work on religion, the "Provincial Letters". Literature. In literature, Pascal is regarded as one of the most important authors of the French Classical Period and is read today as one of the greatest masters of French prose. His use of satire and wit influenced later polemicists. The "Provincial Letters". Beginning in 1656–57, Pascal published his memorable attack on casuistry, a popular ethical method used by Catholic thinkers in the early modern period (especially the Jesuits, and in particular Antonio Escobar). Pascal denounced casuistry as the mere use of complex reasoning to justify moral laxity and all sorts of sins. The 18-letter series was published between 1656 and 1657 under the pseudonym Louis de Montalte and incensed Louis XIV. The king ordered that the book be shredded and burnt in 1660. In 1661, in the midst of the formulary controversy, the Jansenist school at Port-Royal was condemned and closed down; those involved with the school had to sign a 1656 papal bull condemning the teachings of Jansen as heretical. The final letter from Pascal, in 1657, had defied Alexander VII himself. Even Pope Alexander, while publicly opposing them, nonetheless was persuaded by Pascal's arguments.
Aside from their religious influence, the "Provincial Letters" were popular as a literary work. Pascal's use of humor, mockery, and vicious satire in his arguments made the letters ripe for public consumption, and influenced the prose of later French writers like Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is in the "Provincial Letters" that Pascal made his oft-quoted apology for writing a long letter, as he had not had time to write a shorter one. From Letter XVI, as translated by Thomas M'Crie: 'Reverend fathers, my letters were not wont either to be so prolix, or to follow so closely on one another. Want of time must plead my excuse for both of these faults. The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.' Charles Perrault wrote of the "Letters": "Everything is there—purity of language, nobility of thought, solidity in reasoning, finesse in raillery, and throughout an "agrément" not to be found anywhere else." Philosophy. Pascal is arguably best known as a philosopher, considered by some the second greatest French mind behind René Descartes. He was a dualist following Descartes. However, he is also remembered for his opposition to both the rationalism of the likes of Descartes and simultaneous opposition to the main countervailing epistemology, empiricism, preferring fideism.
In terms of God, Descartes and Pascal disagreed. Pascal wrote that "I cannot forgive Descartes. In all his philosophy he would have been quite willing to dispense with God, but he couldn't avoid letting him put the world in motion; afterwards he didn't need God anymore". He opposed the rationalism of people like Descartes as applied to the existence of a God, preferring faith as "reason can decide nothing here". For Pascal the nature of God was such that such proofs cannot reveal God. Humans "are in darkness and estranged from God" because "he has hidden Himself from their knowledge". He cared above all about the philosophy of religion. Pascalian theology has grown out of his perspective that humans are, according to Wood, "born into a duplicitous world that shapes us into duplicitous subjects and so we find it easy to reject God continually and deceive ourselves about our own sinfulness". Philosophy of mathematics. Pascal's major contribution to the philosophy of mathematics came with his "De l'Esprit géométrique" ("Of the Geometrical Spirit"), originally written as a preface to a geometry textbook for one of the famous Petites écoles de Port-Royal ("Little Schools of Port-Royal"). The work was unpublished until over a century after his death. Here, Pascal looked into the issue of discovering truths, arguing that the ideal of such a method would be to found all propositions on already established truths. At the same time, however, he claimed this was impossible because such established truths would require other truths to back them up—first principles, therefore, cannot be reached. Based on this, Pascal argued that the procedure used in geometry was as perfect as possible, with certain principles assumed and other propositions developed from them. Nevertheless, there was no way to know the assumed principles to be true.
Pascal also used "De l'Esprit géométrique" to develop a theory of definition. He distinguished between definitions which are conventional labels defined by the writer and definitions which are within the language and understood by everyone because they naturally designate their referent. The second type would be characteristic of the philosophy of essentialism. Pascal claimed that only definitions of the first type were important to science and mathematics, arguing that those fields should adopt the philosophy of formalism as formulated by Descartes. In "De l'Art de persuader" ("On the Art of Persuasion"), Pascal looked deeper into geometry's axiomatic method, specifically the question of how people come to be convinced of the axioms upon which later conclusions are based. Pascal agreed with Montaigne that achieving certainty in these axioms and conclusions through human methods is impossible. He asserted that these principles can be grasped only through intuition, and that this fact underscored the necessity for submission to God in searching out truths.
Pensées. Pascal's most influential theological work, referred to posthumously as the "Pensées" ("Thoughts") is widely considered to be a masterpiece, and a landmark in "French prose". When commenting on one particular section (Thought #72), Sainte-Beuve praised it as the finest pages in the French language. Will Durant hailed the Pensées as "the most eloquent book in French prose". The "Pensées" was not completed before his death. It was to have been a sustained and coherent examination and defense of the Christian faith, with the original title "Apologie de la religion Chrétienne" ("Defense of the Christian Religion"). The first version of the numerous scraps of paper found after his death appeared in print as a book in 1669 titled "Pensées de M. Pascal sur la religion, et sur quelques autres sujets" ("Thoughts of M. Pascal on religion, and on some other subjects") and soon thereafter became a classic. One of the "Apologie"s main strategies was to use the contradictory philosophies of Pyrrhonism and Stoicism, personalized by Montaigne on one hand, and Epictetus on the other, in order to bring the unbeliever to such despair and confusion that he would embrace God.
Last works and death. T. S. Eliot described him during this phase of his life as "a man of the world among ascetics, and an ascetic among men of the world." Pascal's ascetic lifestyle derived from a belief that it was natural and necessary for a person to suffer. In 1659, Pascal fell seriously ill. During his last years, he frequently tried to reject the ministrations of his doctors, saying, "Don't pity me, sickness is the natural state of Christians, because in it we are, as we should always be, in the suffering of evils, in the deprivation of all the goods and pleasures of the senses, free from all the passions that work throughout the course of life, without ambition, without avarice, in the continual expectation of death." Desiring to imitate Jesus’ poverty of spirit, in his spirit of zeal and charity, Pascal said if God allowed him to recover from his illness, he would be resolved to "have no other employment or occupation for the rest of my life than the service of the poor." Louis XIV suppressed the Jansenist movement at Port-Royal in 1661. In response, Pascal wrote one of his final works, "Écrit sur la signature du formulaire" ("Writ on the Signing of the Form"), exhorting the Jansenists not to give in. Later that year, his sister Jacqueline died, which convinced Pascal to cease his polemics on Jansenism.
Inventor of public transportation. Pascal's last major achievement, returning to his mechanical genius, was inaugurating one of the first land-based public transport services, the carrosses à cinq sols, a network of horse-drawn multi-seat carriages that carried passengers on five fixed routes. Pascal also designated the operation principles which were later used to plan public transportation - the carriages had a fixed route, fixed price (five sols, hence the name), and left even if there were no passengers. The lines were not commercially successful, and the last one closed by 1675. Nonetheless, he has been described as the inventor of public transportation. Illness and death. In 1662, Pascal's illness became more violent, and his emotional condition had severely worsened since his sister's death. Aware that his health was fading quickly, he sought a move to the hospital for incurable diseases, but his doctors declared that he was too unstable to be carried. In Paris on 18 August 1662, Pascal went into convulsions and received extreme unction. He died the next morning, his last words being "May God never abandon me," and was buried in the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
An autopsy performed after his death revealed grave problems with his stomach and other organs of his abdomen, along with damage to his brain. Despite the autopsy, the cause of his poor health was never precisely determined, though speculation focuses on tuberculosis, stomach cancer, or a combination of the two. The headaches which affected Pascal are generally attributed to his brain lesion. Legacy. One of the Universities of Clermont-Ferrand, FranceUniversité Blaise Pascalis named after him. Établissement scolaire français Blaise-Pascal in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo is named after Pascal. The 1969 Eric Rohmer film "My Night at Maud's" is based on the work of Pascal. Roberto Rossellini directed a filmed biopic, "Blaise Pascal", which originally aired on Italian television in 1971. Pascal was a subject of the first edition of the 1984 BBC Two documentary, "Sea of Faith", presented by Don Cupitt. The chameleon in the animated film "Tangled" is named for Pascal. A programming language is named for Pascal. In 2014, Nvidia announced its new Pascal microarchitecture, which is named for Pascal. The first graphics cards featuring Pascal were released in 2016.
The 2017 game "" has multiple characters named after famous philosophers; one of these is a sentient pacifistic machine named Pascal, who serves as a major supporting character. Pascal creates a village for machines to live peacefully with the androids they are at war with and acts as a parental figure for other machines trying to adapt to their newly-found individuality. The otter in the "Animal Crossing" series is named for Pascal. The minor planet 4500 Pascal is named in his honor. Pope Paul VI, in encyclical "Populorum progressio", issued in 1967, quotes Pascal's "Pensées": In 2023, Pope Francis released an apostolic letter, "Sublimitas et miseria hominis", dedicated to Blaise Pascal, in commemoration of the fourth centenary of his birth. Pascal influenced both French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who named his "Pascalian Meditations" (1997) after him, and French philosopher Louis Althusser.
Brittonic languages The Brittonic languages (also Brythonic or British Celtic; ; ; and ) form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name "Brythonic" was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word , meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael. The Brittonic languages derive from the Common Brittonic language, spoken throughout Great Britain during the Iron Age and Roman period. In the 5th and 6th centuries emigrating Britons also took Brittonic speech to the continent, most significantly in Brittany and Britonia. During the next few centuries, in much of Britain the language was replaced by Old English and Scottish Gaelic, with the remaining Common Brittonic language splitting into regional dialects, eventually evolving into Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Cumbric, and probably Pictish. Welsh and Breton continue to be spoken as native languages, while a revival in Cornish has led to an increase in speakers of that language. Cumbric and Pictish are extinct, having been replaced by Goidelic and Anglic speech. The Isle of Man and Orkney may also have originally spoken a Brittonic language, but this was later supplanted by Goidelic on the Isle of Man and Norse on Orkney. There is also a community of Brittonic language speakers in (the Welsh settlement in Patagonia).
Name. The names "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" are scholarly conventions referring to the Celtic languages of Britain and to the ancestral language they originated from, designated Common Brittonic, in contrast to the Goidelic languages originating in Ireland. Both were created in the 19th century to avoid the ambiguity of earlier terms such as "British" and "Cymric". "Brythonic" was coined in 1879 by the Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word . "Brittonic", derived from "Briton" and also earlier spelled "Britonic" and "Britonnic", emerged later in the 19th century. "Brittonic" became more prominent through the 20th century, and was used in Kenneth H. Jackson's highly influential 1953 work on the topic, "Language and History in Early Britain". Jackson noted by that time that "Brythonic" had become a dated term: "of late there has been an increasing tendency to use Brittonic instead." Today, "Brittonic" often replaces "Brythonic" in the literature. Rudolf Thurneysen used "Britannic" in his influential "A Grammar of Old Irish", although this never became popular among subsequent scholars.
Comparable historical terms include the Medieval Latin and and the Welsh . Some writers use "British" for the language and its descendants, although, due to the risk of confusion, others avoid it or use it only in a restricted sense. Jackson, and later John T. Koch, use "British" only for the early phase of the Common Brittonic language. Before Jackson's work, "Brittonic" and "Brythonic" were often used for all the P-Celtic languages, including not just the varieties in Britain but those Continental Celtic languages that similarly experienced the evolution of the Proto-Celtic language element to . However, subsequent writers have tended to follow Jackson's scheme, rendering this use obsolete. The name "Britain" itself comes from , via Old French and Middle English , possibly influenced by Old English , probably also from Latin , ultimately an adaptation of the native word for the island, . An early written reference to the British Isles may derive from the works of the Greek explorer Pytheas of Massalia; later Greek writers such as Diodorus of Sicily and Strabo who quote Pytheas' use of variants such as (), "The Britannic [land, island]", and (), "Britannic islands", with being a Celtic word that might mean 'painted ones' or 'tattooed folk', referring to body decoration.
Evidence. Knowledge of the Brittonic languages comes from a variety of sources. The early language's information is obtained from coins, inscriptions, and comments by classical writers as well as place names and personal names recorded by them. For later languages, there is information from medieval writers and modern native speakers, together with place names. The names recorded in the Roman period are given in Rivet and Smith. Characteristics. The Brittonic branch is also referred to as "P-Celtic" because linguistic reconstruction of the Brittonic reflex of the Proto-Indo-European phoneme is "p" as opposed to Goidelic "k". Such nomenclature usually implies acceptance of the P-Celtic and Q-Celtic hypothesis rather than the Insular Celtic hypothesis because the term includes certain Continental Celtic languages as well. Other major characteristics include: Initial "s-": Lenition: Voiceless spirants: Nasal assimilation: Classification. The family tree of the Brittonic languages is as follows: Brittonic languages in use today are Welsh, Cornish and Breton. Welsh and Breton have been spoken continuously since they formed. For all practical purposes Cornish died out during the 18th or 19th century, but a revival movement has more recently created small numbers of new speakers. Also notable are the extinct language Cumbric, and possibly the extinct Pictish. One view, advanced in the 1950s and based on apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions, was that the Picts may have also used a non-Indo-European language. This view, while attracting broad popular appeal, has virtually no following in contemporary linguistic scholarship.
History and origins. The modern Brittonic languages are generally considered to all derive from a common ancestral language termed "Brittonic", "British", "Common Brittonic", "Old Brittonic" or "Proto-Brittonic", which is thought to have developed from Proto-Celtic or early Insular Celtic by the 6th century BC. A major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain in the middle to late Bronze Age, during the 500-year period 1,300–800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul. During 1,000–875 BC, their genetic markers swiftly spread through southern Britain, but not northern Britain. The authors describe this as a "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less inward migration during the Iron Age, so it is likely that Celtic reached Britain before then. Barry Cunliffe suggests that a Goidelic branch of Celtic may already have been spoken in Britain, but that this middle Bronze Age migration would have introduced the Brittonic branch.
Brittonic languages were probably spoken before the Roman invasion throughout most of Great Britain, though the Isle of Man later had a Goidelic language, Manx. During the period of the Roman occupation of what is now England and Wales (AD 43 to ), Common Brittonic borrowed a large stock of Latin words, both for concepts unfamiliar in the pre-urban society of Celtic Britain such as urbanization and new tactics of warfare, as well as for rather more mundane words which displaced native terms (most notably, the word for 'fish' in all the Brittonic languages derives from the Latin rather than the native – which may survive, however, in the Welsh name of the River Usk, ). Approximately 800 of these Latin loan-words have survived in the three modern Brittonic languages. Pictish may have resisted Latin influence to a greater extent than the other Brittonic languages.
Decline. The Brittonic languages spoken in what are now Scotland, the Isle of Man, and England began to be displaced in the 5th century through the settlement of Irish-speaking Gaels and Germanic peoples. Henry of Huntingdon wrote that Pictish was "no longer spoken". The displacement of the languages of Brittonic descent was probably complete in all of Britain except Cornwall, Wales, and the English counties bordering these areas such as Devon, by the 11th century. Western Herefordshire continued to speak Welsh until the late nineteenth century, and isolated pockets of Shropshire speak Welsh today. Sound changes. The large array of Brittonic sound changes has been documented by Schrijver (1995), building upon Jackson (1953). Changes to long vowels and diphthongs. Brittonic has undergone an extensive remodeling of Proto-Celtic diphthongs and long vowels. All original Proto-Celtic diphthongs turned into monophthongs, albeit a number of these re-diphthongized at later stages. Changes to short vowels. The distribution of Proto-Celtic short vowels were reshuffled by various processes in Brittonic, such as the two i-affections, a-affection, raisings, and contact with lenited consonants like "*g" > and "*s" > "*h".
The default outcomes of stressed short vowels in Brittonic are as follows: Raisings of "*e" and "*o". Welsh exhibits raisings of "*e" to "*i" > ' > ' and "*o" > before a nasal followed by a stop. It is difficult to determine whether the raising from "*o" to "*u" also affected Cornish and Breton, since both of those languages generally merge "*o" with "*u". The raising of "*e" to "*i" occurred in all three major Brittonic languages: Other raising environments identified by Schrijver include: This raising preceded a-affection, since a-affection reverses this raising whenever it applied. All these raisings not only affected native vocabulary, but also affected Latin loanwords. Interactions of vowels followed by "*g". Multiple special interactions of vowels occurred when followed by "*g". Assimilation of "*oRa" to "*aRa". Closely paralleling the common Celtic change of "*eRa" > "*aRa" (Joseph's rule) is the change of "*oRa" to "*aRa" in Brittonic, with "R" standing for any lone sonorant. Unlike Joseph's rule, "*oRa" to "*aRa" did not occur in Goidelic. Schrijver demonstrates this rule with the following examples:
Assuming that Welsh "manach" (borrowed from Latin "monachus" "monk") also underwent this assimilation, Schrijver concludes that this change must predate the raising of vowels in "*mVn-" sequences, which in turn predates a-affection (an early fifth-century process). /je/ > /ja/. In Brittonic, Celtic "*ye" generally became /ja/. Some examples cited by Schrijver include: "*wo". The sequence "*wo" was quite volatile in Brittonic. It originally manifested as "*wo" in unlenited position and "*wa" in lenited position. Word-initially, this allomorphy was gone in medieval times, leveled out in various ways. Whichever of "*o" or "*a" to be generalized in the reflexes of a word in a given Brittonic language is completely unpredictable, and occasionally both "o" and "a" reflexes have been attested within the same language. Southwest Brittonic languages like Breton and Cornish usually generalize the same variant of "*wo" in a given word while Welsh tends to have its own distribution of variants. The distribution of "*wo/wa" is also complicated by an Old Breton development where "*wo" that had not turned to "*gwa" would split into "go(u)-" (Old Breton "gu-") in penultimate post-apocope syllables and "go-" in monosyllables.