I was trying to find a picture of the billboards they used to advertise Atlas Shrugged and stumbled across this Wiki page. I wonder if Rand had ever heard of him?
I would say it’s entirely likely. D’Anconia’s many names are all significant, ‘Ragnar’ was the name of a viking pirate, etc.
…‘Ragnar’ was the name of a viking pirate, etc.
That I didn’t know. That makes a heck of a lot more sense than what I had associated the name with. When I first read AS about 6 years ago, I often associated “Ragnar” with “Ragnar Redbeard”, because then I had already read every book by Anton LaVey and the first part of “The Satanic Bible” is arranged and heavily drawn from Redbeard’s “Might is Right”. It’s interesting to note that Anton LaVey describes Satanism, as “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added”. In a sense, he was trying to somehow put religion into Objectivism, and some other things and get Satanism out of this mixture. This is his “codification” of Satanism. Here is the website of The Church of Satan. There you can find an article titled “Satanism and Objectivism” by Nemo under Theory and Practice. I actually discovered Ayn Rand’s works on one of the forums that I belonged to then. The (now) High Priestess of the CoS, Peggy Nadramia, told me that every word of Rand’s is worth reading. She even said that she was once in an O’ist “camp”. Well, I’ve since been banned from the forum, because after reading Rand’s novels, I came back to show them just how wrong their view of man in fact was.
‘Ragnar’ was the name of a viking pirate, etc.
Also the name of an Icelandic photographer or two, an econ professor at NTNU and another at UIO, a Nobel prize winner in medicine and one in econ, an architect, at least 3 professors at Uito, a guy who lives down the street from me, and a mythical football viking. He may or may not have been a king of Sweden and Denmark. Interestingly, Ragnar Danneskjold is or was doing time in Attica, and the family name is ‘high nobility’ in Denmark.
That I didn’t know. That makes a heck of a lot more sense than what I had associated the name with. When I first read AS about 6 years ago, I often associated “Ragnar” with “Ragnar Redbeard”, because then I had already read every book by Anton LaVey and the first part of “The Satanic Bible” is arranged and heavily drawn from Redbeard’s “Might is Right”. It’s interesting to note that Anton LaVey describes Satanism, as “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added”. In a sense, he was trying to somehow put religion into Objectivism, and some other things and get Satanism out of this mixture. This is his “codification” of Satanism. Here is the website of The Church of Satan. There you can find an article titled “Satanism and Objectivism” by Nemo under Theory and Practice. I actually discovered Ayn Rand’s works on one of the forums that I belonged to then. The (now) High Priestess of the CoS, Peggy Nadramia, told me that every word of Rand’s is worth reading. She even said that she was once in an O’ist “camp”. Well, I’ve since been banned from the forum, because after reading Rand’s novels, I came back to show them just how wrong their view of man in fact was.
I, too, played around with Satanism at a younger time. I got significantly turned off when I started reading about magik and the extreme regards for animals.
Also the name of an Icelandic photographer or two, an econ professor at NTNU and another at UIO, a Nobel prize winner in medicine and one in econ, an architect, at least 3 professors at Uito, a guy who lives down the street from me, and a mythical football viking. He may or may not have been a king of Sweden and Denmark. Interestingly, Ragnar Danneskjold is or was doing time in Attica, and the family name is ‘high nobility’ in Denmark.
How many of these were alive and significant, pre-1960’s?
I, too, played around with Satanism at a younger time. I got significantly turned off when I started reading about magik and the extreme regards for animals.
Yeah, I got into it so much that I even had a red card and everything. I still have it, too. Yes, I agree that they have a rather extreme regard for animals. Like the following for example taken from their website:
“If you have read our books, you know that Satanism isn’t about taking drugs, and it isn’t about harming animals or children. Unlike many religions and philosophies, Satanism respects and exalts life. […]animals are the purest expressions of that life force, and as such are held sacred and precious in the eyes of the Satanist.”(emphasis added)
My break was when I challenged one of the Nine Satanic Statments of LaVey’s presented in the Satanic Bible. Specifically number 7:
" Satan represents man as just another animal , sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his 'divine spiritual and intellectual development,’ has become the most vicious animal of all!" (emphasis added)
Yeah, that’s what I brought up at the forum. After reading Ayn Rand, I knew that man was not “just another animal”, and I certainly did not think that because of his intellectual development (read: due to his conceptual level of awareness), he has become the most vicious animal of all. Since I disagreed with all of that, I was consequently banned because of my view.
How many of these were alive and significant, pre-1960’s?
I suggest that you can’t take a common name, search for a historically known examplar of that name, and conclude “Oh, the character must have been named after this person”. If Rand’s notes had included a comment such as “Should name this character after mythical Swedish king”, I’d buy the association, otherwise I find it no more plausible that that she thought “Should name character after my friend Ragnar Hláþisbjörgsson, whom I admire”.