For example :

‘Valhalla : in Norse mythology, the hall of slain warriors, who live there blissfully under the leadership of the god Odin. Valhalla is depicted as a splendid palace, roofed with shields, where the warriors feast on the flesh of a boar slaughtered daily and made whole again each evening. They drink liquor that flows from the udders of a goat, and their sport is to fight one another every day.’

Encyclopaedia Britannica

 

On Tresco, in the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall's coast, a small museum named Valhalla houses figure heads taken from ships that were wrecked on the British island.

 

 

In book XXIII of the Iliad, Achilles threw games to honour his friend Patroclus on the occasion of his funerals.

 

As they painfully wrestled, Ajax and Ulysses 'girded themselves and went into the middle of the ring. They gripped each other in their strong hands like the rafters which some master-builder frames for the roof of a high house to keep the wind out.' (translated by Samuel Butler)

 

It is said that for the Etruscans too funeral games had a ritual function. They made the passage of the deceased easier.

 

The International Olympic Committee once intended to drop wrestling from the core group of olympic sports. Wrestling had everything going against it : it's been here since the very origin of the ancient games; it's sacred; it doesn't bring much money.

 

But Providence kept an eye on this outrage : Iran, the US and Russia temporarily put aside their geopolitical quarrels and worked toward a satisfying solution. Together with many other nations, they made the IOC impostors overturn their decisions.

 

Black Camargue bulls are a rather light-weight breed, unlike the massive Spanish bulls raised for corridas.

 

They live semi-wild.

 

Their often lyre-shaped horns point up.

 

Technically, males are bullocks for the arena, but the term sounds less romantic than bulls.

Yet their condition as eunuchs is fully compatible with their bravery in front of razetteurs.

 

They spread panic when they charge into the audience, hurt them badly, do a lot of damage with their horns and hooves, and escape.

 

They contrast beautifully the little white Camargue horses (which should never be shrunk further into poneys.)

 

Not long ago, before the era of television, mobile phones, electronic devices of all sorts, etc., you lived in a mostly immediate world with slower circulations of people and ideas.

 

The second nature echoes this world, but is not nostalgic about it.

 

The illustration here is a detail from work by Rodolphe Julian for Ompdrailles, le tombeau des lutteurs (1879) (= The Wrestlers' Grave) by Léon Cladel. Nobody resists Albe Ompdrailles, but he falls into the clutches of la Scorpione, a femme fatale.

 

Ompdrailles' world existed before those of ubiquitous football and Le Tour de France barnum.