Thirty-Third Issue: Brigitta Scherzenfeldt, Boy, Boanthropy, and Missed Calls

This issue is just a bunch of random stories and anecdotes I’ve found on Wikipedia lately. Sorry it's a bit shorter than usual. I think the next issue may be about Ibn Sina and Ibn Battuta. Fascinating guys.

This first story is about Brigitta Christina Scherzenfeldt. Brigitta was born in Sweden and married a military man in 1699. She lied with him for a few years but when he died she married another military officer. She and her husband were taken prisoner to Moscow after a battle was lost, and her husband soon died. She married for a third time to a German lieutenant, who was also a prisoner of war, and they were both sent to Siberia. Her husband joined the Russian army to gain their freedom, but he was killed in battle and Brigitta was taken by the Dzungar, a Mongolian tribe.

Brigitta was beat with iron and ropes, stripped, and almost raped, but she fought back so fiercely she injured her attacker, who tried to kill her. Another man stopped him, and she was taken to the Khan, where she was presented along with the other slaves. The Khan gave Brigitta as a gift to one of his wives, a Tibetan Princess, who gave her clothes to wear. Brigitta became a weaving and knitting teacher. She knew a lot about these topics and had good manners, so she was appointed knitting instructor to the Khan’s favorite daughter. She lived in China for a while, and became more of a lady in waiting than a slave, and she used her position to advocate for better conditions for other slaves.

Another slave was a Swedish man named Johan Gustaf Renat, a Dutch Jewish man, who worked for the Khan making cannons and printing books, as well as making some of the looms for Brigitta’s weaving. The Princess wanted Brigitta to come with her when she went off to marry another Khan, but Brigitta said no because she was afraid she’d never see Sweden again, so she married Johan and left. Soon after, the Khan died, and everyone involved in the Princess’s court was accused of poisoning him. They were tortured and executed. Brigitta managed to escape this, and she actually got the new Khan to agree to free the 18 Swedish slaves and 134 Russian slaves. Brigitta and her husband left Central Asia in 1733 with 20 Dzungar slaves, and were expected to only visit their home country and come back. In Moscow, Brigitta told a British woman about her life and she wrote them in a book about Russia. The three Dzungar slaves that were left by the time they got home (some stayed in Russia, some died on the way) were baptized and their names were changed from Altan, Iamakiss and Zara to Anna Catharina, Maria Stina, and Sara Greta. They became maids for Brigitta and her husband. Brigitta died in Stockholm in 1736. Sadly I could find no painting of Brigitta, but here is her outfit she wore in Asia, still preserved in a museum in Sweden.

 

 

Another interesting Wikipedia page I stumbled upon was the one for boanthropy. This is a psychological condition where a person thinks they’re a cow (bovine). It happened historically, Nebuchadnezzar II apparently “ate grass as oxen” but maybe this was a metaphor and the writer was just making fun of him. In Persia, Prince Majd al-Dawla suffered from boanthropy. He moo-ed and asked to be killed so he could be eaten. He was cured by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), a famous scientist and doctor. I’ll write about him in another issue.

Somehow from boanthropy I got to Boy (also spelled Boye) who was a famous white hunting poodle of the 17^th century. He belonged to Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Even though he was called Boy he might have been female. The propaganda at the time said that Boy had ‘dark powers’ and was a ‘dog-witch’. He was famous enough that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Murad IV, asked that a similar dog be found for him. Basically, he went into battle with Prince Rupert and people thought he was either a witch’s familiar or the Devil in disguise. Others mocked people who believed in this, and it was all just very wild. Some said Boy was a lady who was transformed into a dog. Others said that Boy could “find hidden treasure, was invulnerable to attack, could catch bullets fired at Rupert in his mouth, and prophesy”. He was promoted to the rank of Sergeant Major General.
Sadly Boy died in battle in 1644. He was left tied up, but he escaped and chased after Rupert, who was in battle. He was killed in the fighting. He was immortalized in woodcut scenes of the battle. Here's a painting of Boy.

 

 

Finally, I found the Wikipedia article on ‘missed calls’ to be very interesting. In Bangladesh, people give each other missed calls all the time but I don’t see them doing it here in the United States. Much to my surprise there is a whole article about the cultural significance of missed calls. Missed calls are more common in places where people have phones that have limited outgoing calls. Since the call doesn’t actually complete and connect, you don’t lose any prepaid credit. Missed calls are known as “beeping”, “memancing”, “flashing”, and “miskol” in various Asian and African countries.

Missed calls are used to communicate pre-agreed information, for example if someone doesn’t have credit but someone else does they might give them a missed call so that they then call them back. They can use missed calls to say that they’ve arrived someplace or that their food order is ready for pickup.  In 2013, a missed call protest was organized in Bangladesh. The mobile internet rates were too high so people exchanged millions of missed calls to overload the network. Interesting and creative concept.