Girl, 8, pulls a 1,500-year-old sword from a lake in Sweden | Hacker News Reader

Girl, 8, pulls a 1,500-year-old sword from a lake in Sweden

bbc.com

169 pointsdiodorus50 comments

Instantly I thought, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" - Monty Python

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony. You can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

yeah, here's the vid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sprrQ1OLW6g

> Instantly I thought, "Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government" - Monty Python

When HN's the need to venerate Scandavia as a wonderland collides with their reverence for Monty Python, who wins out?

Guess we'll find out in this comments section :)

> who wins out?

Clearly, the ex-parrot that's pining for the fjords

Norwegian Blue, indeed.

We apologize for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible have been sacked.

We apologize again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

> who wins out?

The Møøse

Though perhaps we should give it a try.

The top few posts of the reddit CMV thread that bdz linked further down, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18144082, makes a reasonable case. Disturbingly manages to cite a relevant study too.

Hydrobintocracy might be better than some of the other approaches humanity has tried.

A leader chosen at random can only be bought if all of us are bought.

What we should have is an add on to the jury system.

Every bill before a Congressional commitee gets faxed to more than one court house around the country.

At each of these, a random selection of people from the jury pool is assigned to read it and vote it onto the floor or onto the garbage pile.

If every bill receives this treatment, I suspect legislators would be hesitant to sneak things onto legislation.

You mean can only be bought before becoming the leader? Unless maybe the leader changes annually and is guaranteed to be unable to affect the lottery process, at which point at least the benefits of greed are distributed randomly..

Help help, I'm being repressed! See the violence inherent in the system.

God I love that movie.

Well I didn't vote for you.

Check out this PBS Nova episode: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/secrets-viking-sword.ht... though the sword mentioned in the article is "pre-Viking-era".

Well I, for one, would like to congratulate the new Queen of Sweden.

Oh come on, everyone knows 8 year old girls should be given drumsticks, not swords

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cozHT9QaFJo

Surprisingly no references to Saber.

I'm somewhat disappointed

I hope she gets to keep it as part of her new quest to claim the Swedish Crown.

Does this make her queen of something now?

Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.

Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!

"Moistened bint", haha. This quote reminds me just how funny their wordplay and use of language was.

And here, all these years, I was hearing "moistened bink". Makes more sense now.

(Surely Python deserves some kind of Silly Award for widely distributing UK slang.)

...That depends on the time and the place.

> you paraphrased that from a quote in the urban dictionary (funny line)

No, it's a quote from Monty Python.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071853/quotes/qt0470593

Oh, that was the third DDG reference. Still a funny line.

The story of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone is lost on many in this thread.

The sword in the stone really isn't the right story here; you want Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake.

...her arm clad in the purest shimmering silmite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water...

(Couldn’t resist)

Honestly as I kid I thought that she would be clad in slime -- but I still would eagerly have grabbed the cutlery.

s/silmite/samite

Per Wikipedia[0]:

Samite was a luxurious and heavy silk fabric worn in the Middle Ages, of a twill-type weave, often including gold or silver thread.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samite

So is the Monty Python reference.

Oh, now we see the violence inherent in the system.

Anonymous downvoting is the violence of HN (and it's probably a lot more antisocial than we admit). Politely pointing out errors is... well, it's something else. Probably at least OK. Sorry I don't have a Monty Python line for this comment.

> probably a lot more antisocial than we admit).

More like definitely. What function does downvoting really perform anyway? And what function is it supposed to perform? I see lots of perfectly reasonable comments going grey with no explanation at all.

Yes, sigh. Cyberdisinhibitionism: accountability and boundaries are reduced, lack of impact seen for committing such repressive acts leads to it.

Next on front-page HN:

How sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes

Help, help, I'm being repressed!

Touché :)

https://old.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/4k83qf/cmvstr...

Now where did that quote come from again? Ah, yes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sprrQ1OLW6g

Oh, but you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.

Sadly, she is now just the Lady of the Lake.

It's wonderfully appropriate that her name is "Saga".

Long live Queen Saga, founder of the Second Swedish Empire. Pity about those border wars with China, though.

Yup, fear her wrath

Something, something, watery tart....

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