Sheepherders in Northern Nevada came largely from Basque country back in the day. They brought with them a tradition of making arborglyphs, carving text and images into living trees. You can see pictures of 175 Nevada arborglyphs here, 73 of which have companion videos showing a bit more of the surrounding. The unquestioned expert on Nevadan arborglyphs, Professor Joxe Mallea-Olaetxe, has written a great deal on the subject and in 2001 he wrote a good overview article in Forest History Today called Carving Out History: The Basque Aspens. Another good introductory article by journalist Emma Nichols in the Sacramento News & Review, Mystery of the Arborglyphs, with a focus on the more salacious arborglyphs. Basque Tree Carving: Legend in Nevada is an 18 minute documentary. Here is a video of Professor Mallea speaking about the arborglyphs and here is an interview with him. [all videos asx format]
posted by Kattullus on Apr 7, 2009 - 14 comments

In Parentheses is a collection of many ancient, medieval and classic texts from all over the world, many of whom are hard to find anywhere, let alone on the internet. There are translations from Greek, Old Norse, Medieval Irish, Japanese, Incan, Old French, Medieval Latin and many more! As well as all that they have papers in medieval studies and vaguely decadent and orientalism series. Adding to that there's a linguistics section with wordlists and language flash cards in languages such as Icelandic, Quechua, Basque, Classical Armenian and a whole bunch more. [flashcard links go to pdf files]
posted by Kattullus on Jul 10, 2008 - 18 comments