iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 11h

Finally received peer reviews on an article of mine, that I submitted in April of 2025 (!). Generally positive, but they want a few revisions. But seems quite doable, so that'll be coming out!

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Why are the central characters in modern language textbooks and readers so often sports fanatics? It's always basketball this and baseball that and tennis here and football there. Isn't it possible that they are, you know, misjudging parts of their readership and user base here?

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Today I realized that yes, there are people who really do have a Reality Distortion Field (TM) – and that is often not a good thing at all.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The pure joy of leading a group in reciting the Hebrew perfect qal inflection of qāṭal over and over, and thus getting them into the wonderful art of learning paradigms by heart, is one of the great boons of my profession.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ugaritic word of the day: ảlmdk ("I will teach you").

Whiteboard with various Hebrew words and grammatical explanations in Swedish, including historical reconstructions of earier Northwest Semitic verbal forms.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Yes they do. Haṃ-so-haṃ-so-haṃ...

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Ugaritic word of the day: ảlmdk ("I will teach you").

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Coptic sentence of the day: ⲛⲧⲁⲕ ⲡⲉ ⲡⲁⲡⲗⲏⲣⲱⲙⲁ ϣⲁⲡⲧ ⲁⲣⲁⲕ Ntak pe pa-plêrôma - šap-t arak! "You are my Fullness - take me to you!"

Sun emerging through mist and trees, above spectral greenery.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Coptic sentence of the day: ⲛⲧⲁⲕ ⲡⲉ ⲡⲁⲡⲗⲏⲣⲱⲙⲁ ϣⲁⲡⲧ ⲁⲣⲁⲕ Ntak pe pa-plêrôma - šap-t arak! "You are my Fullness - take me to you!"

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Ugaritic word of the day: ḫšt ("mausoleum, grave, sepulchre"; cf. Akkadian ḫaštu[m], "grave, pit, ditch").

Red brick building, dark, dramatic skies, big light in front of the building.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

By pure coincidence, I stumbled into a number of scenes from the Fassbender film about Steve Jobs. I'm an old Mac fan, but I am certainly no fan of American corporate politics. Or of Jobs. But damn it hell, that movie is absolute awesome.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

THERE it finally is, the Festschrift for my Doktorvater, Sten Hidal, edited by Blazenka Scheuer and yours truly, and featuring contributions by scholars such as David Davage , Anders Piltz, Katarina Pålsson and others (including the editors, of course :-) ).

Book cover of "Human-ness and God-ness in Biblical and Classical Culture: That One Seems to Me a Lille Less than a God", edited by Blaženka Scheuer and Ola Wikander.

Table of contents, featuring articles on anynomous prophets, legitimization of power in Esarhaddon and Deuteronomy, the name Caleb, Jerome on the Virgin God, Neo-Gallician hymns, and Indian-style mysticism in Qoheleth and Saint-Martin.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I finally read "Last Stand of the Wreckers" (by Roberts and Roche), after having put it off for many years. And yes, it is quite as good as advertised. And as brutal, and sad. It's really excellent, but I found it quite emotionally draining, to be honest. Yeah.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

"I used to be a Homeric hero like you – then I took an arrow in the thigh."

Line from Homer's Iliad, saying:
Beblêtai de kai Eurypylos kata mêron oïstôi ("Eurypylos, too, is struck, with an arrow in his thigh").

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Man, I need to play through Ace Attorney: Conflict of Interest again soon.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Finishing up my post-review revision of this one:

Title of first page:
"Chapter 9
'What We Are, What We Were, And What We Will Be': Gnosticism, Essenes, and Martinism in Swedish Esoteric Orders and Role-Playing Games", and author name Ola Wikander.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

The butthurtness of some people online about languages in British Columbia having their own writing systems is... so utterly pathetic.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

δέξαι λογικὰς θυσίας ἁγνὰς ἀπὸ ψυχῆς καὶ καρδίας πρὸς σὲ ἀνατεταμένης, ἀνεκλάλητε, ἄρρητε, σιωπῇ φωνοῦμενε.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Agreed. And Akkadian is the Hittite of Semitic.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Hittade min 25 år gamla övers. från akkadiska av Gilgamesh på USB-sticka. Den kom aldrig ut då (andra hann precis före – I had a bad afternoon, om man säger så). När jag läser på nytt, ser jag att min tolkning inte alls var obegåvad. Kanske borde göra något av den, på något sätt?

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hittite word of the day: Keššar ("hand").

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Adam Bremer-McCollum @acbm.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Syriac wotd ܡܘܚܐ /muḥḥå/ 🧠 "brain, marrow" Def. by Bar Bahlul (1029) with Arb مخّ /muḫḫ/ & دماغ /dimāġ/. For ܡܘܚܐ (+ other Aram) and مخّ, note also Heb מוח /ˈmōaḥ/, as well as Akk /muḫḫu/ "skull, top" (+ adv & prep uses).

The top corner of a page from Bar Bahlul's Syriac-Arabic dictionary, with five lines of lemmas. A cartoon wolf face can be seen at the top right.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hittite word of the day: Keššar ("hand").

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Hittite word of the day: Alēl ("flower").

The two red-covered volumes of Mathieu Ravignat's "The Way of the Rose+Croix: History, Doctrines and Oratory Practices of the French Rosicrucian Tradition".

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Yours truly at the "Humanity and Writing" event (organized by Stolpe Publishing), last Thursday. Recited some Sumerian (Enmerkar!) , and talked about scripture and divination, Josiah's renovation, as well as current debates about religion and religious writings in Sweden.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

RIP Peter Cullen (had not seen it until now). "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings." Or as Furman would put it (and I can hear it in Cullen's voice): "In my heart of hearts I know: it never ends."

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Yours truly leading text reading seminar under the aegis of Södertörn University – guiding the crowd through the Phoenicio-Etruscan Pyrgi gold tablet bilinguals! Thanks for having me! Photo credit goes to Per Faxneld !

Several people in the right side foreground of a sitting room, poring over inscriptional material in photocopy, and myself sitting in the background talking and leading the seminar.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Intense schedule during the upcoming days: Teaching and tutoring, then going to Stockholm for (1) recording a TV appearance, (2) appearing at the "Humankind and Writing" seminar, moderated by Yukiko Duke, (3) appearing at the text reading seminar led by David Thurfjell (Södertörn).

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Off to the first Hebrew teaching session of the new term!

Self in black three-piece suit, in mirror.

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Maarten Kossmann @maartenkossmann.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Prefab Punic! I love it! (from Jongeling, handbook of Neo-Punic inscriptions, Hr. Maktar N 1, p. 91)

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Benjamin Suchard @bnuyaminim.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Includes some #Semitic (Bernard & Solans; Bjørn)

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

The writing - the music - the transcendence - the creating - the reality - calling down the lightning from the heavens! IT'S HAPPENING NOW!

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Ok, resurrecting the old "Biblical Studies and Northwest Semitic takes" thread (at least 5 ppl seem to think I should :-)! 35: The question of whether the Deir Alla dialect is Canaanite, Aramaic, "Aramaoid", or sthg in between is complicated by what may be (at least partly) orthographical choices.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Contemplating starting this old thread again :-) . Should I?

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 06/09/2025

One thing that irks me about how my native language (Swedish) is sometimes perceived is the way in which both some of its own speakers and others tend to downplay its morphological and derivational complexity. I'm like: come on guys, parse ""genomtröskandenas" for me!

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Ālak peke, ālak pekant - kyal mā kärsnāt?

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

"... For I... Am... Duhm."

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Newly (created through misspelling by yours truly) node of Semitic languages just dropped: Northweast Semitic.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Am on a bit of a social media break for a few weeks. Will return after that hiatus!

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Ugaritic word of the day: bʔ – "to enter, to reach, to come in". Cf. Hebrew בוא("come, enter"), Arabic باء ("come back"), Ge'ez boʔä ("enter"), etc.

Opened door, with desk on the other side, and a painting on the wall.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

A little push for my recent article in Ugarit-Forschungen, where I present my views on the phonetics of the PIE stop system, the substitution rules for the same in loans into Northwest Semitic, and the implications thereof for certain Ugaritic passages: www.academia.edu/117830047/St...

academia.edu

Stop Borrowing! Anatolian/Indo-European Stops, Voice, and Northwest Semitic Loans – With Notes on Ugaritic grdš, ztr, dġṯ and Other Words

The article discusses interrelated pieces of knowledge that can be gleaned by studying loans from Anatolian Indo-European (Hittite and Luwian) into North-west Semitic (mainly Ugaritic) for (a) the rec...

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

It is a truth universally acknowledged att det står många egendomliga saker å Reddit. Men en av de egendomligaste var när en figur sturskt hävdade att det inte finns någon i Sverige under 70-80-årsåldern som (wait for it...!) ... talar skånska.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Stjärnan, gryningens son. I: barockpunk och 1700-tal II: gotik och postapokalyps III: lynchianism och möbiusvridenhet

The cover of the trilogy volume "Morning Star, Son of Dawn" (a seraph with burning wings, and Lucifer falling in the background), next to a large candle.

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Because reasons, currently reading Doyle's "Study in Scarlet" for the first time in... 30 years? It really does hold up!

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Adam Bremer-McCollum @acbm.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Some U, V, W, Y, and Z words, texts, places, and names from /The Pearlsong/'s index, including @olawikander.bsky.social and @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications...

Index entries from a book for U-Z in two columns

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Ola Wikander @olawikander.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Akkadian word of the day: šagapūru(m) - "mighty, strong, majestic". Possibly reflected in the Ugaritic personal name ṯgbr, which is rendered syllabically as šag-ga-pu-ru).

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