
© Lucasfilm Ltd.
There are times when the epic seems to belong to the Norse. Perhaps it's because
Beowulf looms so large in the Anglophile culture that gropes backward in time toward its misty Anglo-Saxon roots, perhaps because the mythology created for the English (and others) by J.R.R. Tolkien owes such a great debt to the men of the North.
So it's not at all surprising that science fiction's greatest filmed space opera, the
Star Wars saga, has been
retold as an Icelandic epic.
The effort is courtesy of Old Norse scholar Jackson Crawford, a doctoral candidate studying the historical linguistics of the West Norse languages at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Crawford mused upon, and fleshed out, a hypothetical Old Norse manuscript tradition lying behind the "German" version of the story that George Lucas eventually adapted to the screen.
What's fascinating about this process is the positing of how the story would have been told differently from a Norse perspective, conditioned by both prevailing social structures and the requirements of northern epic poetry.
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The live plus same day ratings for last week's broadcast network series continued to show good numbers for for the three series airing new episodes.
- Chuck 3.8/6 (Mon 3/10, NBC)
- Ghost Whisperer 4.7/9 (Fri 3/10, CBS)
- Medium 4.9/9 (Fri 3/10, CBS)
- Smallville [r] 0.9/2 (Fri 3/10, CW)
- Supernatural [r] 0.9/1 (Thu 3/10, CW)
- Vampire Diaries [r] 0.9/2 (Thu 3/10, CW)
The top-rated regular program,
American Idol, garnered a 12.8/20.
Nielsen ratings are expressed as "ratings points/share". Given an estimated 114.9 million television households in the United States, a ratings point represents one percent of the total number, or 1,149,000 households. Share is the percentage of television sets in use tuned to the program.

Ricky Jay as "Rings Man" in the return on FlashForward.
© Michael Desmond/ABC
New episodes this week from:
Guest stars this week include
Robert Patrick on
Chuck;
Leah Gibson (
The Devil's Ground) beginning a recurring role on
Caprica.
Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (
regular or
alphabetical).
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