FROM ARCHITECTURE DAILY (archdaily.com):

” ‘The Vanished House’ was a work created for the second East Lake International Ecological Sculpture Biennale held in Wuhan in 2021.  The venue for the exhibition was Wuhan Shimenfeng Memorial Park, a cemetery with a beautiful environment and a tranquil spatial atmosphere.  A place where the deceased rest peacefully, the venue has an ambiance suitable for memorial and mourning activities.  ‘The Vanished House’ was created as an echo of this special attribute of the venue.  The work presents a house covered in sprawling ivies. A symbol of hearth and home, this house, as detached, leaves a space formed by the wrapping creepers.  It is the remembrance of a vanished living space and thus of the people and things of the past.  ‘The Vanished House’ is a memorial space that invites visitors to participate in and experience.”

FROM THE UKRAINIAN CANADIAN CONGRESS:

The HOLODOMOR (Great Hunger)

In the Spring of 1933 the number of deaths inflicted by the Soviet regime’s forced starvation of Ukraine escalated significantly. It was the Holodomor’s deadliest year. By Spring there was nothing left to eat because many villages had all their food removed by decree. Deaths increased from 12,000 people per day in February to nearly 20,000 deaths per day in April of 1933.

In April each year, Ukrainians worldwide traditionally visit cemeteries to remember the dead with special memorial ceremonies held the week after Easter, when victims of the Holodomor are specifically remembered.

April Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month is recognized in Canada annually through a historic motion passed in 2015. During this month, we honour the memory of the victims of genocide whose survivors Canada has welcomed along with the descendants of those who perished in the atrocities. The Holodomor is one of 9 global genocides recognized by the Government of Canada and 6 of it’s provincial legislatures. 

GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE TODAY

Few can watch in silence the horrific attacks and unimaginable barbarity launched by Russia against Ukraine since February 24, 2022 in an unprovoked invasion violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and in blatant disregard of international laws. There are no NATO troops in Ukraine, Ukrainians are fighting alone. Cities and villages are being indiscriminately shelled daily with bombs, illegal cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons, missiles and artillery. This has resulted in the complete destruction of residential areas, schools, hospitals, museums, landmarks and sites of cultural and historic importance, as well as military facilities and economic infrastructure. The massive loss of innocent Ukrainian lives, of children, women and the elderly, continues to mount daily, while well over a hundred thousand are living terrorized and starving in basements and bomb shelters without water, food, heat or electricity, blockaded by Russian forces from humanitarian aid reaching them or being able to leave through humanitarian corridors.

For years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has publicly questioned the very legitimacy of Ukrainian statehood and declared that he does not accept the existence of Ukrainians or a sovereign Ukrainian state. Putin has brutally invaded Ukraine because he deems it should belong to Russia. Putin wants Ukrainians to accept a Russian identity or be destroyed. As happened with Stalin when he perpetrated the Holodomor against Ukraine, both men fear an independent Ukrainian state, deny Ukrainians their identity, language, religion, traditions and historic memory. Stalin wanted Ukrainians to deny their own identity and become Soviet citizens with Russian language and culture. Stalin’s solution was to starve to death millions of Ukrainians into submission to destroy Ukrainian national aspirations for independence. This is known as the Holodomor genocide of 1932-1933. Today in 2022, as Putin attempts to eradicate the Ukrainian nation, annex Ukraine to Russia and rewrite the history on the origins of both, another state-sponsored genocide unfurls now before our very eyes. This is an attack on every democracy, every country that wants to remain sovereign, and an assault on the international rules based order. 

The Above Text is from the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

The ‘VANISHED HOUSE’ in Shimenfeng Memorial Park, Wuhan, Hubei, China

It is a memorial, but it is so much more:

It is English Residential Architecture During the Viking Period of King Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ Ivarson and his son, King Canute ‘the Great’ Sweynson, who both razed so much of the Anglish and Saxon countryside in their conquest of England.

It is the Kievan Rus’ and Russian Household Architecture During the Mongol Period when the sons of Ghengus Khan, Batu Khan and the Mongols, raped and ravaged and slaughtered in the Rus’ and Russian cities of Kiev and Moskva.

It is Ukraine Architecture after Stalin and his thugs perpetrated the ‘Great Hunger’ of 1932-33 and starved 6,000,000 Ukrainians to death while selling their ‘Fields of Gold’, their grain, to the west to feed the Industrialization efforts of Moscow.

It is German Residential Architecture after Hitler and his thugs perpetrated the ‘Holocaust’ of 1939-45 and murdered 6,000,000 Jewish Germans while trying to steal ‘Lebensraum’, the land to the east to feed the ‘World Domination’ efforts of Berlin.

And, unfortunately, it is now Ukraine Residential Architecture during the Present Period of Russian President Vlad ‘the Mad Murdering Idiot’ Putin and his plans for World Domination, Soviet Style.  You can get Vlad ‘the Mad’ out of the KGB, but you can’t get the KGB out of Vlad ‘the Mad’.

Thank You, Wuhan, for this Amazing Memorial!

It says so much, with so little.

It is a Gift to Wuhan, but can be so much more: A Gift to the World!

Perhaps it can serve to remind those who think of starting wars of all the death and destruction they will be perpetrating by doing so.

As the Beatles were so wont to say: “Peace and Love!”

I’ve worked with Russians in Canada and they are good people. Perhaps that is why they left. Stand up against Putin, Russia! Show the world that you aren’t all Siberian Units! I just want you to Count, Vlad, on my assistance in taking you to the Hague for your crimes! At least there, you’ll get a rope!

I promised to add Hector H. Munro’s history book ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’ to my website, SeiberTeck.com, so that President Putin can conveniently brush up on his own Russian history.

The book, ‘The Rise of the Russian Empire’ is now public domain, having been published circa 1900, so, I brushed the dust off it, updated just a few areas and formatted it for web publishing. The book covers the history of Scythia, Kievan Rus’ and then Russia from prehistory to 1618 AD.  The book is a concise history so, please give it a perusal. It’s header can be found at the top of the SeiberTech.com website home page so, just click and go. I think you’ll find that Hector Munro did a fine bit of writing with this one, given it was written over a hundred years ago! And please feel free to let me know what you think of it.

“The VARANGIANS” Series:

‘The Varangians’ series of five books is about the Danish Varangian Princes of early Rus’ (Russia), based on The Nine Books of Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus and the Russian Primary Chronicle of Nestor.  The Russian monk Nestor asserts that Rus’ was founded by three brothers, Rurik, Sineus and Truvor, but the Danish names in Book 5 of Saxo’s work are Erik, Sigfrodi (King Frodi) and Roller, three brothers from Denmark and Norway.

Book One of the five book Varangians Series places the Saga of King Frodi the Peaceful from Book Five of The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1200) into its proper chronological location in history.  In 1984, when I first started the book, I had placed the main character, Erik’s (Hraerik’s) birth at circa 800 CE, but have since revised it to 810 to better fit with the timelines of the following books in the series.  Saxo had originally placed the saga at the time of Christ’s birth and later experts have placed the story at about 400 CE to correspond with the arrival of the Huns on the European scene but when Attila was driven back to Asia, the Huns didn’t just disappear, they joined the Khazar Empire north of the Caspian Sea and helped the Khazars control the western end of the famous Silk Road trade route.

When King Frodi’s Danes started their ninth century ‘Southern Way’ incursions into the rivers of present day Russia, they ran into the Khazar Khaganate that was controlling Silk Road trade there and cooperation looked promising when he married King Hun’s daughter, Princess Hanund.  But she cheated on him and he sent her back to Khazaria in disgrace and things got ugly, fast.  Two Norwegian princes, Hraerik and Hraelauger Hraegunarson, sons of the famous Hraegunar Lothbrok, visited Frodi’s court in Liere with a dangerous plan to protect their own Nor’Way trade route to Khazaria, but that plan changed when Prince Hraerik fell in love with and married Princess Gunwar, King Frodi’s sister.

When news arrived in Liere that the Huns planned to attack Denmark, Prince Hraerik convinced King Frodi to assemble a Varangian Army of the North and lead a pre-emptive strike against the Khazar Empire.  Following the capture of Kiev, the three brothers, Frodi, Hraerik and Hraelauger established the Hraes’ (Rus’) Trading Company and built an empire that exists in many forms to this very day, including Russia, Normandy, Great Britain and L’Anse Aux Meadows in America.  The wealth of the Hraes’ Trading Empire they created powered the prolific Viking expansion in Medieval Europe that still fascinates us today.

Book One, “The Saga of Hraerik ‘Bragi’ Hraegunarson,” recreates Book Five of Saxo’s work to illuminate the origins of the name Rus’ and how it evolved from Hraes’ in ninth century Russia and how the name Varangians originally meant Va Rangers or Way Wanderers of the Nor’Way.  The book examines the death of Princess Gunwar (Hervor) at the hands of the Hunnish Prince Hlod and how it drives Prince Hraerik ‘Bragi the Old’ Hraegunarson to write a famous poem of praise that both saves his head and rallies the northern kingdoms to fight the infamous Battle of the Goths and the Huns on the Don Plain of Gardariki (Gnita Heath of Tmutorokan).

Book Two, “The Saga of Helgi ‘Arrow Odd’ Hraerikson,” recreates Arrow Odd’s Saga of c. 1200 to illustrate how Arrow Odd was Prince Helgi (Oleg in Slavic) Hraerikson of Kiev, by showing that their identical deaths from the bite of a snake was more than just coincidence.  The book investigates the true death of Hraegunar Lothbrok by poisoned blood-snakes and how his curse of ‘calling his young porkers to avenge the old boar’ sets up a death spiral between swine (Sveinald) and snakes (Gorm ‘the Old’) that lasts for generations.  It then goes on to depict the famous Battle of the Berserks on Samso, where Arrow Odd and Hjalmar the Brave slay the twelve berserk grandsons of King Frodi on the Danish Island of Samso, setting up a death struggle that takes the Great Pagan Army of the Danes from the ravaged coast of Norway to England and on to Helluland in Saint Brendan’s Newfoundland.

Book Three, “The Saga of Ivar ‘the Boneless’ Hraerikson,” reveals how Ivar the Boneless Ragnarson was actually Prince Eyfur (Igor in Slavic) Hraerikson of Kiev and then King Harde Knute of Denmark.  By comparing a twenty year lacuna in the reign of Prince Igor in the Russian Chronicles with a coinciding twenty year appearance of a King Harde Knute I (Hard Knot) of Denmark in European Chronicles, Prince Igor’s death by sprung trees, which reportedly tore his legs off, may have rather just left him a boneless and very angry young king.  Loyal Danes claimed, “It was a hard knot indeed that sprung those trees,” but his conquered English subjects, not being quite as polite, called him, “Ivar the Boneless”.

Book Four, “The Saga of Svein ‘the Old’ Ivarson,” demonstrates how Prince Sviatoslav ‘the Brave’ of Kiev was really Prince Svein Eyfurson of Kiev, who later moved to Norway and fought to become King Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark and England.  But before being forced out of Russia, the Swine Prince sated his battle lust by crushing the Khazars and attacking the great great grandfather of Vlad the Impaler in a bloody campaign into the Heart of Darkness of Wallachia that seemed to herald the coming of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with the 666 Salute of the Army of the Impalers.  The campaign was so mortifying that the fifteen thousand pounds of gold that the Emperor of Constantinople paid him to attack the Army of the Impalers seemed not nearly enough, so Prince Svein attacked the Eastern Roman Empire itself.  He came so close to defeating the greatest empire in the world, that later Danish Christian Kings would call his saga, and the sagas of his kin, “The Lying Sagas of Denmark” and would set out to destroy them, claiming that, “true Christians will never read this saga”.

Book Five, “The Saga of Valdamar ‘the Great’ Sveinson”, establishes how Grand Prince Vladimir ‘the Great’ of Kiev was also known as Prince Valdamar Sveinson of Gardar, who supported his father, Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’, in attacks upon England and later became King Canute ‘the Great’ of England and also King Knute ‘the Great’ of Denmark and Norway.  Unlike his father, he came to the aid of a Roman Emperor, leading six thousand picked Varangian cataphracts against Anatolian rebels, and was rewarded with the hand of Princess Anna Porphyrogennetos, a true Roman Princess born of the purple who could trace her bloodline back to Julius and Augustus Caesar.  She was called Czarina, and after her, all Rus’ Grand Princes were called Czars and their offspring were sought matrimonially by European royalty.

Conclusion:

By recreating the lives of four generations of Russian Princes and exhibiting how each generation, in succession, later ascended to their inherited thrones in Denmark, the author proves the parallels of the dual rules of Russian Princes and Danish Kings to be cumulatively more than just coincidence.  And the author proves that the Danish Kings Harde Knute I, Gorm ‘the Old’ and Harald ‘Bluetooth’ Gormson/Sweyn ‘Forkbeard’ were not Stranger Kings, but were Danes of the Old Jelling Skioldung Fridlief/Frodi line of kings who only began their princely careers in Rus’ and returned to their kingly duties in Denmark with a lot of Byzantine Roman ideas and heavy cavalry and cataphracts.