Gap var ginnunga

gap var ginnunga

Yeah, I know that looks like gibberish, but give me a minute and I'll explain it. Right now I'm taking this course on Scandinavian mythology. This phrase - gap var ginnunga - is found in the third verse of The Seeress' Prophecy, also known as Voluspa. It's translated in many ways: great emptiness, gaping void, black void, you get the idea. But as we discussed it in class, these translations don't exactly capture the meaning.

Gap is a gap, a chasm, an empty space, a void. So that part's okay. Var... I don't know what that is exactly, but it's not the important part.

Ginnunga. Ginnunga is the key. Ginnunga is a unique word. It only occurs once in the writings that we have in that time. So we don't know exactly what it means. But linguists, or at the least the teacher, have/has some ideas on the matter. "Gin" is like "begin" - the roots are the same and this is borne out linguistically. So it is theorized that "Ginnunga" means "before the beginning" when things are ready to start happening. (I know my reasoning is missing a few steps, but this is what I have been taught, go with it for now.) The term we used in class is "charged with potentiality."

Charged with potentiality. I like that. It's poetic. It's beautiful. It.... doesn't at all seem to relate to the stated purpose of this blog.

But it does. Because right now I feel all ginnunga. There's so much potential and things are about to start beginning.

I'm (very almost) ready to start writing. Next week I am planning to pound out the first half of my thesis. I'm doing a little rounding out of things this weekend and come Monday I mean business. The first half of my thesis will address the question: "Why should museums blog?" and tries to answer that question from the point of communication theory, learning theory, and public relations theory. But, at this very moment, it's all ginnunga.

The other ginnunga is my future. Particularly my future job. Certain popular museum listservs have been atwitter telling me that there are (almost) no jobs. Well, I've got two phone interviews next week and I plan to rock them. I'm a little scared, but mostly I'm excited. My future is crackling with the energy of potentiality. As overly optimistic as it may be, I feel like everything is possible right now. And I'm ready to face it.