Nordic Heathenry A/T: My date was a huge antropomorphic moth, as is custom

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Nordic Heathenry A/T: My date was a huge antropomorphic moth, as is custom

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Tias posted:

(save for the indiginous Americans I've trained with)

So this raises a question I have coming from this comment and an earlier post ITT (I am still reading, its quite interesting). Also from some thing I read during my deeper dives into colonial history and racism in North America: some indigenous people hold that their traditional knowledge is for them, and we settlers should find our spiritual needs fulfilled within our own traditional knowledge, which made me realize that other than rare practices that distantly echo the larger knowledge system we mostly lack our traditional knowledge, so finding this thread is well timed for me.

As quick background, I'm Scandi-American, and on my way out of Protestantism I spent some time studying in a hermetic school, so I have no great problem with the idea of recreating internal landscapes from the sagas and finding personal meaning from that. But how do you separate the external landscape--the surroundings that gave rise to a tradition, from the traditional thought? What I mean is, as someone pointed out earlier, the US and Canada is stolen land that already has a living traditional knowledge system. I work in an area that is also used for vision questing by a local tribe and have had some experiences out there that the elders easily can discuss and name, because its part of the landscape they have known for a very long time. Interpreting those experiences through a Norse lens would be difficult, it seems to me. Additionally, this indigenous belief system is intimately tied with the language as well as the landscape.

I guess the tl;dr is how well does the Norse (or other Germanic) heathen system translate to new places?

(Sorry if this isn't completely clear, but I've been struggling with a migraine all day)

e.

quote:

Gimle

A place of dubious provenance as an afterlife,

I too have been to Manitoba

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 27, 2020

# ¿ Dec 27, 2020 00:14

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 20:18

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Internet Wizard posted:

On the one hand, at the peak of historic Heathen practice, the Norse culture was extremely diverse and famed for traveling across the known and unknown world, from Canada to Africa and the Middle East. Odinn is especially notorious for being a wanderer as well. So in that regard I�d say Heathenism is very well suited for traveling to new lands.

On the other hand, there are local traditions that have a better belonging to places than other traditions. If there are local elders willing to educate you and introduce you to the local spirits and forces, that could also be a part of your spiritual life. Everybody�s experience is their own individual experience.

Thanks, that helps.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2020 00:54

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Tias posted:

It's only found in �l�fs saga helga from Flateyjarb�k, which I assume is the saga you refer to! However, it is largely thought to carry a grain of truth, as archeological finds indicate horse sacrifice was an integral part of pre-heathen cults.

this gets to the question of to what degree the early Christian histories of ritual sacrifice at the Temple of Uppsala was filtered through :supaburn:

hot takes vs. how closely it hewed to actual practice. I mean I have zero problem believing that blood sacrifice was a thing, but hanging 7 of every species, including humans, horses, etc. from a single tree to rot away, well, having lifted horses with a block and tackle and a 2-tonne rated girder system I can't image many trees being able to handle a single one, let alone that many.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 20:26

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Tias posted:

Nine of each (it's always nine with us!) - and yeah, Adam's chronicle is theorycrafting of the most lurid sort.

The archeological record doesn't even show good evidence there was a temple. While there was a bronze age building below the cathedral, it looks more like a feasting hall.

Seven, nine, ugh, whatever. At 700-900 lbs each horse it would need to be a mighty tree indeed!

Its neat that they found runestones in the cathedral and have now planted them in the churchyard, but apparently they are all new runes from Christian era. Still, pretty cool!

Out at Gamla Uppsala they still do midsommar fires at the barrows, which is cool. I had hoped I would have some sort of mystical revelation as to the location of the old temple and well and tree but lol of course not.

(A propos of nothing, I just learned of and am listing to Heilung, very cool stuff)

# ¿ Feb 17, 2021 23:20

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Tias posted:

Ah, Heilung! I have a hard time getting if they're actually heathen, or a weird stone-to-iron-age faith mishmash. Still, very interesting music. If this is your jam, make sure to check out Wardruna and everything else Einar Selvik has done, as well as the skaldic traditions they draw on.

will definitely do. The music is pretty death metal without guitars and moody and haunting. The stage show is however very Vikings so whatever. Not something I am taking seriously other than be absorbed by the mood they create, its neat.

# ¿ Feb 20, 2021 02:43

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

what are the odds that more direct source material might come to light?

# ¿ Mar 30, 2021 22:41

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On the archaeology tangent (which I love) my clickbaity FB feed suggestion brought up discussion of this: https://www.ancient-origins.net/art...XyBdYoE31DTVFiM

Looking at the designs this seems very likely a shamanistic treatise written in silver. It also appears a bit syncretic between Germanic and Roman belief systems. What might your thoughts be?

# ¿ Apr 3, 2021 17:46

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Caustic Soda posted:

Dane here. Honestly I think a Scandinavian language is more nice-to-have than need-to-have, unless you'd like to settle in Scandinavia. There should be more than enough english speakers to get by, though some with rather strong accents.

If you do want to learn, I'm not sure what to reccomend, but hese are some of the factors to consider: Swedish has the most total speakers, both as a first language for Swedes and Fenno-Swedes, and IIRC also as a second language for the rest of the Finns. Norwegian has the fewest speakers, however if you can speak Oslo-Norwegian (Bokm�l), you'll find Danes and Swedes have an easier time understanding you, compared to if you try to talk to a Dane in Swedish or vice versa. Danish has the second-most speakers, and is also spoken as a second language in Greenland and the Faroes. IIRC you can also take it as a second/third language in Iceland, but I doubt people practice it as much, since Iceland is independent and the other two aren't.

Danish is a nonsense language in the sense that it has a ton of irregular verbs and declensions and silent letters and so on, but then so does (especially British) English. I've been told that our sounds are also harder to learn than Swedish/Norwegian, but that is 100% anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt.

Sj would like a word with you

As a native Anglophone I've been working on Swedish on and off for the past few months. Most of my family come from there (although we have one family from Norway) and I have active research collaborations with folks in Uppsala so I'm there on occasion. As a child I remember my elders (including some of the original immigrants because we tend to live so goddamned long) speaking Swedish and was taught some by my grandmother. The language was lost with my parents generation sadly. loving boomers. That said I never felt out of place when visiting Sweden even without my rudimentary conversational Svenska as most seem quite conversant in English. I have French as a second language and a smattering of German and Swedish seems a nice compromise between my other language competencies and it is going reasonably easily.

Now to blatantly rip off a post from the scandi thread on Danish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk&t=120s

Bilirubin fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Apr 3, 2021

# ¿ Apr 3, 2021 19:28

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Tias posted:

I doubt it's necessarily shamanistic, we have too little info to go on. I don't know who the Sweatman guy the cite is, but he seems to be making stuff up. Even the stuff about Cernunnos seems more likely.

Yeah I was just going by the iconography, the scholarly merit of AncientOrigins is not really existent

# ¿ Apr 3, 2021 19:35

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Martin posted:

This was way back in the thread, but I actually grew up like 20 minutes from this place and I�ve met the oldies who still spoke that dialect. It�s pretty loving fantastic, it feels completely disconnected from Swedish.
I�m from a small town nearby that also have a old timey kind of dialect called �Orsa-m�l� (Orsa is the small town and m�l means a kind of dialect) that I kind of understand even tho I can�t speak it. �lvdals-m�l (the dialekt from the article) is just another language!

That's amazing.

Has their folklore been documented?

# ¿ Apr 4, 2021 16:33

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Martin posted:

I�m far from knowledgeable, I just grew up close! But as far as I understand, the culture and lore wasn�t really that different from the rest of Sweden, just that their language never really evolved in the same way as the rest of the country due to isolation.
Googling a bit there�s actually a wiki in English about the language which gave me some insight that I never had

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfdalian

Never really understood the impact of this on historical research, especially languages until now. They were just our weird neighbors that had elders that talked funny.

Cool.

Actually, I would be keen to get recommendations for good books on scandi folklore. Poetic Eddas is on the list already--I have not read them in many years other than the bastardisation that Neil Gaiman shat out not too long ago. More along the lines of the unabridged Brothers Grimm

# ¿ Apr 4, 2021 17:54

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Pondex posted:

Not sure about old norse, but modern Danish uses compound words.

Boar is "vildsvin" and domesticated pig is "tamsvin"

Vild = Wild
Tam = Domesticated
Svin = Swine/hog

tam = tame

Its a wonder we aren't more mutually intelligible really

# ¿ Dec 30, 2021 06:56

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Tias posted:

I think I've mentioned before, but Scots speakers and southern jutland dialect speakers of Danish almost are.

this checks out as I absolutely cannot understand a Glaswegian once they fully ramp up after a few pints

Pondex posted:

North Jylland as well

ulmont posted:

Great Vowel Shift, mostly,

what is this?

And to make it less of a derail, Happy New Year heathen thread, just back from a walk in the neighbourhood with the dog and I always linger in the wooded area for some spiritual refreshment

# ¿ Jan 2, 2022 20:02

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ulmont posted:

To extremely oversimplify, before about 1400 English vowels were more or less the same as continental vowels. Then everyone decided to move them around in the mouth so that, for example:

bite was originally pronounced as beet today;
meat was originally pronounced as met today;
boot was originally pronounced as boat today; and
mate was originally pronounced as maht today.

Now to tag in wikipedia:

This didn't affect Northern English in Scots in quite the same way, so those dialects retain closer to original continental vowel pronunciations and thus closer to Norse/etc.

There has been a lot of work on this by English-speaking linguists, solet me just leave you with two videos for more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQNj4G5itkg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6YUEzylvp0

cool thanks for this

# ¿ Jan 2, 2022 21:41

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Good stuff! I'm quite interested in whatever information might be around about the pre-Christian cultural practices, so this is greatly appreciated

The St Lucia's connection is a nice one.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2022 20:28

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sounds cool, keep us updated

I'm overdue a trip to Uppsala and would have loved to schedule it to coincide with an event but *waves at everything* pandemics, ya know?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2023 05:47

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Tias posted:

Sure! I don't think many heathen things goes on at old Uppsala any more, but I can ask around if you're interested.

I've seen footage of Midsommar bonfires there in recent years, seems to be at least some remnant cultural memories

# ¿ Jan 13, 2023 15:22

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

Tias posted:

Well, the year of Aun seems to be some kind of 'reset' of at least the bonds of obligation between man and 'earth' (spirits, gods, and the natural world in general).

There's a lot of talk about a new find of gold that places worship of Odin further back than originally thought, and I'm digging into it now to make an effort post soon.

yeah iirc it was this https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/oldest-reference-to-norse-god-odin-found-in-danish-treasure-1.6304043

Which struck me as odd because that places Odin worship like 150-200 years before the Christian conversion (iirc like 800 in Sweden)

# ¿ Apr 6, 2023 20:42

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I add gud

Still a short time span really I would have expected much earlier evidence

# ¿ Apr 7, 2023 18:40

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 20:18

Bilirubin: Feb 16, 2014; The sanctioned action is to CHUG

who would claim to be Norwegian who isn't?

Congrats Tias on the new job also nice to see you posting again!

# ¿ Apr 10, 2024 22:16

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Nordic Heathenry A/T: My date was a huge antropomorphic moth, as is custom