It wasn’t dramatic or anything, it just came as a random thought. I was eating a mango while thinking about how my site address wouldn’t match my new initials. As I took a break from thinking about it and went to rinse the knife and cutting board, an image appeared in my mind. It was like a blank book with old pages, and something was written there, diagonally in the middle of a page. I had to read it, because I didn’t know what it was. It read “Victor «Víkþórr» Berrjod”. I thought: “What a great solution!” It didn’t feel like I had thought of it, however. More like someone told me, and I knew who did it. ;)

Up until now, I was glad God helped me with that simple problem even without my asking about it. Even a problem of such little importance! However, then it hit me: What if it is important that I keep writing on this blog (which I need vvb.no for)? It is a great way to process information and organize my experiences with the Lord, and I could even help some people find Jesus in the same way I did. That makes such a detail very important.

God does have an eye for details (figuratively speaking, at least), and the Bible says that, to God, one day is like thousand years, and thousand years are like one day. This makes me think about real time strategy games like Age of Empires II, where you can pause the game and order your units around for as long as you want, micromanage enormous battles, and everything stands still until you unpause the game and everyone carries out their orders simultaneously. In this particular game, years pass fast, so a thousand years easily pass within one day, except if you pause the game. I do not think God is playing games, though. He is waging war against the forces of evil, but the comparison is a good one. After all, who can give thousand of millions of different “orders” simultaneously, if not God? No, not the devil. ;) Satan is not a god, so I don’t think he can give all those orders a the same time. Instead, he relies on his demons to assist him. He rules Earth through his minions, but God can just “pause” everything and “nudge” his units without anyone noticing.

The Holy Spirit be with you. :)

1. Stopped Cursing

This was the one I heard about most frequently. I thought it was caused by people wanting to be “good Christians” by using willpower to refrain from using certain words, but when I experienced it myself, I realized I was wrong. I accepted Jesus as Lord in my life one night, then a couple of days later, while talking to a friend of mine, I felt something was wrong. I realized that he was swearing a lot, and that it felt unfamiliar. During the course of the conversation, I suddenly used a cursing word myself, and I noted how foreign it felt. I thought about it, and I found I hadn’t cursed at all since that night. That was definitely a positive sign for me – I used to swear as much as my friend. :)

2. Feeling at Peace

This developed more over time, rapidly when I spent my time doing stuff related to God, and slower when I didn’t. When I had gotten rid of my pendulum yesterday, I was thinking about this as I walked home. The most convincing proof for me is that I’m currently reading a book and enjoying it, even though it’s frankly a below average bokmål translation of an American novel. All the obvious word-for-word translations and the numerous typos would have driven me crazy if it were not for this peace – and I’m sure most people I know well can verify that. Instead of pointing it out for everyone to hear, I find myself chuckling a little, translating it into English in my head while I’m thinking “now I know what it says in the original”.

3. Being Attacked

This might sound like I’m not making any sense, but I can assure you that I am. :) This is the only negative consequence I’ve experienced, and it’s more than worth it. Satan hates it when things go Jesus’s way and not his. When I quit the New Age-y stuff I was doing before and filled the void with Christ, I turned my back on Satan. Being the devil he is, he tries to get revenge by sending me thoughts of doubt, other negative thoughts, and more bad luck than usual. However, I do not stand unarmed – I have the most powerful ally in the whole universe, the Almighty Living God, and His promise that He will give you what you ask for. This means that as long as it is not contrary to God’s plan, I can basically ask for and get anything. I’ll probably write more about that as I learn more, but since I’m talking about Satan and his demons now, I’ll just say that my weapon is prayer. The thing that sets prayer apart from, say, a gun, is that it’s a weapon of peace. I can meet the attacks of the enemy with peace… and nothing will piss him off more than that. ;)

4. Feeling Grateful

This is connected to the feeling of peace, but it’s not the same. I feel grateful for a lot of things, and the list (which I haven’t written yet, but am concidering) grows every day. I’m grateful for little things like the food I eat, to bigger things like the fact that God is not only saving my soul – He is also saving the lives of my brother and father (the latter of whom has been saved more than once) while they are still on Earth. I’m even grateful for feeling grateful! :) I express this feeling through a prayer of thanks, often several times a day. It helps me connect to the Lord, but it also passes the time while I’m waiting for the metro, sitting on the train, or heating some food I brought back from Sokndal. I love feeling grateful. :)

5. Feeling Happy

I had a very good time in Sokndal, and I didn’t really look forward to going back to Oslo and the university. Nevertheless, the last day I spend at Berrjod was a very happy day. I told Grandma this: “Today is the last day before I leave, so I should logically be depressed. However, I feel incredibly happy! I’m probably filled with the Holy Spirit!” – and when I got up early to catch the train, only to realize too late that my real train was to leave eight hours later, I was still happy and laughed about it. I got off on the first stop, more than half an hour away from the original station, waited there for 1,5 hour, took another train back, and spent the day with my mom on her job, talking about Jesus while she drove around in the truck. We had a lot of fun. :)

There is probably a lot more that I haven’t even realized yet – actually I didn’t think of the feeling grateful or happy ones before I started writing today; I just felt very inspired to write about it. :)

The Holy Spirit be with you.

Now, being spiritually reborn, I have started to learn a lot about Jesus’s work, and I’m also starting to change dramatically. I realized that I almost had made food a religion, so I decided I would allow myself to eat anything. Whether I want to eat it is a different matter, however, and I will most likely eat a lot of raw fruit and vegetables. I’m used to that, and it’s so easy to prepare. I am experimenting a little right now, but I haven’t eaten any meat yet. I don’t know if I will, but I might do it symbolically to prove that I’m not religious about it. I’m also stopping my current exercise schedule because I made it in coöperation with Satan, and I’m going to pray for a new one. In the meantime, I will simply exercise when I feel like it. I feel very free now that I have accepted Jesus as my savior and lord. :)

I’m planning on changing my name to symbolize the new course of my life, in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, the law forbids me to change my name in 9 more years. However, I can at any time revert my name to an older one, and I can at any time change the spelling, which means that I can indeed change my name into Victor Berrjod. Note the following reasons:

• The people who actually put any effort into calling me “Víkþórr” can, depending on the amount of fingers, be counted on one hand. :þ I think people would call me “Victor” no matter what I changed to.
• I chose “c” over “k” primarily for puristic reasons, but it’s also more aesthetic appealing to me. That, and most people I know are used to it.
• I’ll remove my middle name because I don’t define myself by the label of “vegetarian” any more.
• I modernized the last name because of practical reasons, but also since my first name will no longer be Old Norse. The present name of the farm I come from is Berrjod.

I plan on writing about my quest in getting to know Jesus on this blog from now on. I brought lots of books from Sokndal, so I’ll be busy reading. Good thing I did all my homework before going home! :) I’m also currently trying to get my hands on a printed version of the 1938 Norwegian Bible. It’s an awesome translation.

Peace be with you. :)

When I started writing in French on a computer, I discovered that I lacked ç and œ, but I substituted them with c and æ (found on Norwegian keyboards by default). I lacked even more characters when I started to learn Old Norse – þ, ð, and ǫ, as well. The ǫ wasn’t even in the character map in Windows, so I had to substitute with the modern Icelandic ö, or copy-paste from Wikipedia. Sure, I could change to the Icelandic keyboard, but that was a pain in the ass – especially since Windows thought changing them randomly was fun.

A couple of years later, when I got into Linux, my problems were suddenly gone. Now I have every single character I need (and a lot that I don’t need yet) on the same keyboard. For example, I have œ, đ, ḷ, ṁ, ǫ, š, ı, ō, ŋ, ů… You name it. No need to copy anything. The reason for this is that Odin taught me how to use Xmodmap. After that, I figured out the rest myself. This might work on a Mac as well, but not in Windows.

The Compose Key (Method 1)

The first way to easily make your keyboard a sexy, lean, mean character machine is to go to System => Preferences => Keyboard (I’m using Ubuntu 8.10).  Go to Layout, and click the “Other Options” button. Find “Compose key position” and choose one – for example the useless Win-key. (The screen shots are – mostly – in Norwegian, sorry.)

(Picture lost.)

The Compose Key (Method 2 – Recommended)

The second (and recommended) way to go about it is to implement the Compose Key directly into you .Xmodmap file. Press alt + f2 and enter:

gedit .Xmodmap

Your .Xmodmap file is probably empty, but we’ll fix that. Let’s say you want to assign the Compose Key to the Left Win-key. To do that, you need to know its keycode number. Open a terminal, and enter:

xmodmap -pke

You’ll now see a long list of keycode numbers. The Left Win-key is called “Super_L”. You should see something like:

keycode 133 = Super_L NoSymbol Super_L NoSymbol Super_L

You can see that in my case, the Left Win-key has the keycode 133. In your .Xmodmap file, enter this:

keycode 133 = Multi_key Multi_key Multi_key Multi_key Multi_key Multi_key

(You can probably just write “Multi_key” once, but I want it to be the same key no matter what other buttons are being pressed.) Save the file, then go to the terminal and enter:

xmodmap .Xmodmap

Now you can test the Compose Key by pressing it and entering a combination of characters. For example, try combining o + e = œ.

More Characters:

If you want more characters, the same rules apply as the second method for adding the Compose Key, but with other names for the buttons – for example:

(Picture lost.)

dead_ogonek (ǫ), dead_macron (ā), dead_breve (ĕ), dead_caron (š), dead_cedilla (ç)*, eng (Ŋ/ŋ), dead_belowdot (ṇ), dead_abovedot (ṅ), clear lock (removes caps lock – recommended!).

* The character ç is available by default (at least on my Norwegian Dvorak keyboard), but not as a capital letter. There is also a (hidden) dead_cedilla, but you might find it more convenient to simply use the Compose Key => , + c. With a dead_cedilla, you can combine it with more characters, however: ģ, ç, ŗ, ļ, ḑ, ḩ, ţ, ņ, ş, ķ.

Remember that a lot of other characters are standard in Linux (at least Ubuntu 8.10), like alt gr + D = Ð/ð, alt gr + P = Þ/þ, alt gr + S = ß, alt gr + Y = ¥, and so on. Have fun taking control over your keyboard, just remember to enter xmodmap .Xmodmap to reload the keymap.