Footnotes to The Florentine Part One

NOTE ONE- Oighrig is a small island to the north of the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, Western Europe. Its last remaining inhabitants left in 1901 following a poor harvest and a decline of interest in crofting there. It is comparable to another, more famed Scottish isle, St Kilda, for its remote location, fierce weather and geological formations.

NOTE TWO-Lord Leverhulme, born William Lever, began using a West African palm oil to make his companies soap in the early 1900s, culminating in his visit to the Belgian Congo in 1911, where he obtained another source of the product using King Leopold II’s methods of slavery, brutality and genocide to obtain the oil.  

NOTE THREE-Draugrs are the undead in Norse mythology. Unlike versions of the resurrected or ‘living’ dead found in other cultures’ mythology, the Draugr is a spirit that inhabits the body or grave of the dead person, inhabiting the body and making it invulnerable to conventional attack. Dr Gellas would later correctly identify these Draugr to be infact 'haugbui', a form of Draugr that only attacks those that trespass on its place of burial and is bound to that location.

NOTE FOUR- Leverhume settled in Scotland.

NOTE FIVE- With the estimated appearance of homo sapien in the African continent estimated at 200, 000 years ago, the construction of this door at this age is unlikely. The possibility of the original wood of the door surviving that length of time is also nigh on impossible without advanced techniques.

NOTE SIX- “One can't believe impossible things," Alice said. 
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. 

NOTE SEVEN-Agoraphobia is clearly caused by the creation and symbology of the ‘hysterical woman’ rather than a spatial definition or cognition problem. I have heard rumour to the contrary yet it is unlikely as only the female graduate archeologists of the team suffered from the problem.

NOTE EIGHT-This particular illusion in the library was initially thought to be a mere trick of lighting: by over exposing the amount of light onto the obscure shape of the doorway, the door would remain hidden. However, it has subsequently been supposed by D.L. Lowry, a doctor no less, that the door corresponds to a weak Lagrangian principle (sic) based upon maximization of probability distribution. Consequently, the door corresponds to a series of equations that determine the probability of a human seeing the door at various shapes and dimensions. The resulting door is one who’s frame is a non-standard, irregular shape with a lack of parallel lines. Similar equations are used in the field of consumer economics to predict price maximization and shadow pricing.