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BattyKiara posted:
There's Brage the of god poetry who might be based on a real person called Brage Boddason who was the earliest skaldic poet we know of. He was married to Idunn who kept the gods eternal young by giving them her golden apples. In Norway there's a ketchup brand named after her. There was also a norwegian search engines named after the wisest god of them all, Kvasir. When the vanir and aesir made peace they signed the deal by spitting in a vat. Not letting good spit go to waste the gods then made Kvasir out of it. The dwarfs Fjalar and Galar killed Kvasir and mead out of his blood, everyone who drank this mead became master poets. Odin then stole the mead, who was by then owned by Suttungr, by swallowing it and turning into an eagle. Suttungr chased after Odin and in order to escape Odin had to piss out some of the mead. Thus, all the good poets were said to have sipped of Kvasir's mead and all the lovely ones were said to have drunken Odin's piss. People also seems to forget that Odin had two brothers named Vilje and Ve. When humans were created Vilje gave them intelligence and Ve gave them speech. When Odin were away they ruled in his stead and also, according to Loke, bedded his wife. The vikings also believed in different afterlives. Vikings who drowned at sea went to Ran who was the wife of Ægir who was a sea jotun. Half of the slain in a battlefield went to Fólkvangr which were Freyja's place: Fôlkvang is the ninth, there Freyia directs the sittings in the hall. She half the fallen chooses each day, but Odin th' other half.
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Feb 15, 2020 13:18
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 00:48 |
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Tias posted:There is some trading routes and linguistic arguments that suggest he could be Poseidon brought to the north by Greeks before the migration period, but we don't really know.
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Feb 17, 2020 11:43
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Tias posted:Oh hey, I've lived on Hermodsgade in Copenhagen! A lot of places in Scandinavia is named after norse gods. Especially Frøya, Tor and Odin.
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Feb 17, 2020 19:28
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BattyKiara posted:Also, where do women go? My guess is most women didn't get the chance to die in combat?
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Feb 20, 2020 12:32
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Tias posted:This area has moved quite a lot since. At least the Oseberg woman is considered to have been a professional warrior now. Do you have any links? As far as I know there wasn't any weapons In her grave and that she's believed to be queen Åsa, grandmother og Harald Fairhair.
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Feb 20, 2020 15:37
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Angry Salami posted:I love this.
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Feb 27, 2020 17:11
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As an aside, the coat of arms of the norwegian church is a cross and two axes: This is because the one that started the christianisation of Norway, Olav the Holy (formerly known as Olav the Huge), was a viking who spent much of his life killing other people with axes.
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Feb 28, 2020 19:28
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It was a lot like that in Norway too. Olav Tryggvason for example was a fan of forcing vipers down the throat of people that didn't want to convert.
Alhazred fucked around with this message at 17:19 on Mar 2, 2020 |
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Mar 2, 2020 13:48
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Håvamål in general is full of good practical advice. Like don't drink too much and make a fool out of yourself and treat guests good.
Alhazred fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Mar 4, 2020 |
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Mar 4, 2020 11:42
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BattyKiara posted:Aka, how can a country with 5 million people spawn 8 million dialects? Lots of isolated places.
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Mar 12, 2020 06:04
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Tias posted:Yeah, Scandinavia is, uh, polarised Having a variety of dialects is also a conscious choice. In 1878 for example a law was ratified that said that all education had to be done in the students dialects. If a teacher didn't speak the dialect of the students he, by law, had to learn it.
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Mar 14, 2020 16:39
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Tias posted:For an abridged list, check the wiki page: My favorite will always be Utgards-Loke dunking on the gods.
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Apr 1, 2020 16:43
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peanut posted:Frozen 1, Frozen 2. Discuss. It's cool to have sami representation in media.
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Apr 3, 2020 15:45
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Bhurak posted:My child is not yet old enough where I must look the beast in the eye. My time will come.
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Apr 4, 2020 19:45
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Cyrano4747 posted:You sound like a person who really needs to let it go. 
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Apr 5, 2020 11:10
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Tias posted:
Alhazred fucked around with this message at 11:34 on May 4, 2020 |
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May 4, 2020 11:30
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Even so, there's little reason to believe that the norsemen were that dogmatic. People who lived up north with sami people practiced both religion because they believed it made them more powerful.
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May 4, 2020 15:41
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Epicurius posted:This is more a question about old Norse Heathenry rather than reconstructionist Heathenry, but I'm hoping someone will know. Did the old Norse have a tradition of individual worship of the gods? I'm maybe not asking the question well, but I'm more familiar with Greco-Roman paganism, but there worship was communal and contractual, which is to say that rituals were the community coming together and saying to a god or gods, "We're going to conduct this ritual/make this sacrifice to you/do you honor, and in exchange, you're going to give us a good harvest/make our animals fertile/give us success in battle/whatever. It wasn't a matter of individual belief so much as it was of community responsibility and shared practice. An individual might say, "Mercury, if I come back safe from this trip, i'll sacrifice a sheep to you", but you don't have people going around saying "I worship Mercury", or even spending much time thinking about Mercury outside public festivals to him. We don't know that much since the vikings didn't write that much about their religion (or anything really). What we do know is that the man/ of the house usually lead the daily rituals. We don't really know to what degree people thought of their religion outside public festivals.
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May 4, 2020 19:23
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Epicurius posted:Do we know what the daily rituals were that a family would perform? Not really? Norse religion were not an organized religion so each family was more or less free to perform the rituals they wanted in the way wanted to do it.
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May 4, 2020 19:41
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Tias posted:All of that is spot on, IMHO. Odin himself is half jotunn, as is Thor (iirc). As I mention in the OP, and probably since, popular ways of explaining the Aesir-Jotunn dichotomy isn't good vs. evil (though a lot of brosatru and christian converts definitely see it that way), but 'inside the gates vs. outside the gates', 'lawful vs. chaotic' or 'civilization vs. untamed creation'. For example, the super duper aesir god Tyr's father is the Jotunn Hymer, who is an able fisherman and goes with Thor on his trip to catch and kill Jormundgandr (the world-serpent) - Hymer is bullied into going, and ably tracks and baits the serpent even though he doesn't want to. I liked Erik Madsen interpretation in his Valhall comic. In that comic Tyr is ashamed of his jotunn heritage and tries to hide it, he also becomes forced to confront Hymer who was abusive to him when he was a kid. It also helps that Madsen is really good at making comics:  
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Oct 2, 2020 19:24
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Tias posted:For instance, there's a story of Harald Bluetooth (IIRC, the guy who led Denmarks conversion to christianity), was cornered by his hirdmen at Roskilde and asked if he would not raise his glass to the old gods. Realizing that he was in trouble, he did so and prompty got out of of the city under armed escort.
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Nov 18, 2020 17:27
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Tias posted:In general, forcing jarls to toast and eat stuff seems to have been a way to ensure compliance with heathen mores. In the case of Håkon the Good it almost caused a civil war. He did indeed gather an army and planned to match them against those who had forced him to eat the horseliver. But again Sigurd Jarl proved to be the most sensible one. He asked the king if it really was worth to fight about when they could join forces to kill some other guys instead.
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Nov 19, 2020 12:28
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Cyrano4747 posted:So what was so special about the soup that eating it or not eating it was a big deal? It was eaten to honor the gods, plus Håkon the Good insisted on blessing everything he ate or drank with the sign of the cross. Things were also tense because right before Håkon had made a speech about how everybody should convert to christianity. So basically you had a room where people where looking for an excuse to start trouble, they were at least a little bit drunk and had easy access to weapons.
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Nov 19, 2020 16:48
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Tias posted:Yeah, Gregory (IIRC) recognized it as a pagan practice and banned it in the early middle ages. Basically if it was fun or tasted good it was a pagan practice and banned. Good christians should live bland lives while eating bland food.
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Nov 22, 2020 11:40
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Internet Wizard posted:Not every day, medieval Catholics celebrated so many saints days and holidays that they worked fewer days of the year than many modern Americans. To be fair, one of the main arguments the norse had against christianity was that there was just too many holidays.
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Nov 22, 2020 17:14
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Tias posted:Are you taking the piss? If not, I'd love to hear more about this. From the saga of Håkon the Good: King Håkon came to the Frostating, where a large number of peasants were gathered. When the thing was settled, King Håkon spoke. He first said that it was his command and prayer to peasants and settlers [farmers], great people and small people, and thus to all the people - young and old, rich and poor, women and men - that all should become Christians and believe in one God, Christ, the Son of Mary, give up all mere and pagan gods, do not work every seventh day and fast one day a week. But as soon as the king had said this, there was great unrest: the peasants grumbled that the king wanted to take the work from them, and said that in that way they could not build the land. Workers and slaves shouted that they could not work when they did not get food, and they also said that it was a hereditary trait in King Håkon, who came from his father [Harald Hårfagre] and his family, that they were stingy on the food, though they were generous on gold.
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Nov 27, 2020 17:31
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And then you have to explain to small kids that the buns we eat are cats and pretend that it makes sense.
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Dec 16, 2020 21:46
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Tias posted:
Also, a cinema in Norway.
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Dec 27, 2020 12:55
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Tias posted:
Sometimes the norse buried their dead under their house (archaeologists have found remains of infants in hearths and postholes), which may suggest some sort of death cult. But there's also stories from the sagas about people haunting their previous homes because they were buried there. Hrapp for example asked to be buried standing by the front door. But they had to move his body when Hrapp started haunting the place.
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Jan 13, 2021 19:29
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Tias posted:A little busy, but I'd like to offer some of the latest discussion in heathen circles. Do they know what the heathens did to the christians around the same time?
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Mar 13, 2021 10:55
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Cessna posted:Does this ever lead to a form of syncreticism? When Rollo died he gave 100 pounds of gold to the church and 100 prisoners of war to Odin.
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Mar 30, 2021 10:21
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Internet Wizard posted:There are some Roman writings that talk about the Germanic practices and gods, but I’m not very familiar with them. They’re also written from an outsider’s perspective so they’re not ideal. Probably the most reliable source is Ahmad ibn Fadlan's eyewitness account. But considering it only describes one society (the rus) it's not ideal either.
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Apr 1, 2021 11:16
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Epicurius posted:True, but remember, its also an outsider account, and one where ibn Fadlan is specifically contrasting the "barbarity" of the Vikings to the enlightenment of Islam. So he stresses their filthiness and their use of alcohol and practice of having sex in public and general immodesty and human sacrifice and such. It is also a description of the rus society, it's far from certain that every viking society had the same customs and beliefs. For example, Ibn Fadlan writes that they burn the body and make fun of Fadlan because his custom is to bury bodies in the ground. But in Scandinavia there's a lot of graves found with buried bodies.
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Apr 1, 2021 16:19
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Bilirubin posted:It also appears a bit syncretic between Germanic and Roman belief systems. What might your thoughts be? From what I read the nordic nisse descends from the roman Lar Familiares.
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Apr 3, 2021 17:55
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Weka posted:So in The Tale of Bygone Years aka the Primary Chronicle of the Kievan Rus, Rurik is described as a Varangian and as a Rus. Varangian as you say was a Greek term and Rus seems to have been a Finnic one, whether identical in meaning to or as a sub category of Varangian I'm not sure. Of course ethnic groups change and wiki tells me a couple of centuries later the Slavicized upper classes were called Rus and the identifiably Scandinavians were called some variant of Varangian. The brits on the other hand just called every vaguely norse person a "dane".
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Apr 4, 2021 11:21
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Tias posted:There's a paywall, but yeah, some vikings definitely claimed to be 'Danes' and to come from the 'Dania', which we now think is in southern Sweden. People generally didn't care or know weather or not the vikings were norwegian or danish. Rollo for example is described as both a dane and a norwegian.
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Apr 20, 2021 17:15
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 00:48 |
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Jul 24, 2022 10:57
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