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peanut posted:Frozen 1, Frozen 2. Discuss. Jackson Crawford consulted on Frozen 1 but not Frozen 2 so 1 is the superior source of heathen content. Source: I took his Norse Mythology class and he told us about some of the stuff he contributed to the movie (most of it was cut)
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Apr 8, 2020 22:32
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Speaking of The Troth, the thing that first brought them to my attention was Declaration 127 which calls out racism, homophobia and all other types of bigotry in the community as a whole and the Asatru Folk Assembly in particular. I'll carry a decent amount of respect for any individual or group willing to be explicit in their inclusiveness.
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Apr 16, 2020 00:30
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What do y’all think of thelongship.net as an introduction to practice?
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Apr 21, 2020 01:49
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People without even a passing understanding of the eddas and sagas is sadly pretty common from what I've seen, at least in the States. Which is just baffling, because why even use the names of those gods if you don't know who the names belong to.
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Apr 21, 2020 19:35
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I'm fourth-generation Norwegian-American on my dad's side (even have the same name as my great-grandfather and grew up in the same town he first homesteaded in) and I can confirm that having no connection to contemporary American christianity was what started me down the road to finding Heathenism. It helps that the sagas are incredible stories I've loved my entire life and that one of the gods is also a disabled veteran (Tyr, kinda) and another is a champion of the working man and loves drinking and fighting (Thor).
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Apr 23, 2020 22:38
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*shrug* it's a living
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Apr 28, 2020 21:01
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Not that the messages that he carries are from the eagle that sits on top of Yggdrasil, and the dragon Niddhoggr that chews on the roots. He spends his time running insults back and forth between them 
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Apr 30, 2020 13:43
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A note about Veðrfölnir, the only source for there being a hawk sitting on top of an eagle is, as far as I know, Snorri's Prose Edda. All of the surviving sagas alternate between words and kennings for hawk and eagle, and only ever mention one bird being there. Dr. Crawford's hypothesis is that there was only believed to be a bird of prey of some sort, and the authors of the poems just used whatever words worked for that stanza, and Snorri came up with the hawk sitting on top of the eagle to try to reconcile this (this isn't the only time when Snorri clearly just came up with some synthesis of conflicting sagas for his Prose Edda) Dwarves also commonly took the form of animals, such as in the Volsungsaga where there's a dwarf who is an otter Internet Wizard fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Apr 30, 2020 |
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Apr 30, 2020 21:14
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Double-posting because tonight was the first thunder of the year. Did what little I could without leaving my apartment because of the lockdown, meditated on my porch for a bit and offered some mead to Thor. Hopefully soon I'll be able to join the local group for some proper offerings.
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May 3, 2020 01:24
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I’ve been trying to go to my first blot for pretty much this whole year but the safety precautions haven’t really made it possible at all. Some incredible bad luck that when I finally decide to put effort into not just being a solo practitioner happens right when everybody had to become a solo practitioner.
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Jul 24, 2020 15:54
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I’m going to have to try to track down any journal articles on it, but my gut feeling is that using the words that we use now to describe trans and queer experience is misleading and doesn’t do a good job of describing how it would have been then. There’s a lot of evidence that while a feminine person acting masculine was common enough to be unremarkable, a masculine person acting feminine was not generally accepted. Even concepts like drengr and argr are deeply gendered, with argr being the negative and feminine of the two. There’s also the possibility that the reason why a man practicing seidr was so shameful was because it required cross dressing. I’d love to be wrong about all of this though.
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Aug 19, 2020 01:33
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Oh absolutely, it’s always great when evidence comes along demonstrating how, when compared to their contemporaries, the Viking age of Scandinavia was remarkably cosmopolitan and integrative. It’s infuriating how the worst elements of the heathen community have been able to dominate the conversation for so long. And they don’t even have the historical record to support them!
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Aug 19, 2020 14:22
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Yeah, Wotan=Odin=Wodan= whatever the Anglos were using that became Wednesday. There’s a lot more direct comparison between the various Germanic groups than between the Romans and Greeks. Just like they’re all from the same branch of the Indo-European language family, the Germanic, Norse, and Anglo-Saxon religions are all from the same branch of the I-E religious family.
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Aug 28, 2020 15:31
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Bhurak posted:This is a bad take because by this logic we need to throw out all the lore. My gothi often points out in literature discussions that until recently "all anyone had were three books." The old timers on this side of the pond, who I often complain about were working with the best they had at the time. We are at a good time right now because the amount of literature is exploding. I remember reading something at the beginning of the year that some never before found and translated batch of old lore was currently being translated and due to be out soon. Of course I'm a bad heathen and I can't remember what it was and when it was supposed to be out. I think it was being put into norwegian first. He's not saying the lore is problematic, he's saying the ahistorical false portrayal that Grønbech espoused specifically appealed to the Third Reich, and that it's problematic that that ahistorical and unsupported portrayal also appeals to modern American (folkish) Heathens. The extant historic lore actually runs counter to that interpretation, but does not have the same appeal to the more negative parts of the community. I'd also disagree with your portrayal of him saying his in-group is good and those outside it are bad, because it's exactly that mindset he's speaking out against in this article. Tias posted:Thanks for your perspective, honestly. US heathen politics are completely incomprehensible from the outside, and it helps a lot getting several viewpoints. The simple fact that they have to use language that didn't exist at the time to describe a concept is pretty conclusive that the concept also did not exist at the time.
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Sep 18, 2020 17:37
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It is unfortunately true that there are a lot of brosatru scum recruiting people into their white nationalist groups in the US military, but there are some groups that are some anti-folkish groups as well trying to counter that. The Troth is one of the only groups that’s officially recognized as a denomination by the Marine Corps, for example. Also if you die with heathen/troth/asatru as your religion of record you’ll get a regular military burial, and your headstone can have a mjolnir as the religious icon instead of the usual cross/star/crescent. I’m also a fan of the interpretation that Aesir/Jotunn is more a question of affiliation rather than a difference of species/race/etc. Like has been mentioned, most of the Aesir have a jotun parent or spouse.
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Oct 2, 2020 21:41
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Oct 8, 2020 01:13
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I'm really appreciating you taking the time for these writeups. Semi-related question: does anybody have any recommendations for English translations of sagas? I've got copies of the Eddas and the the Volsungsaga, but nothing for the other semi-historical and/or mythical ones.
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Oct 8, 2020 22:03
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There's also Dr Crawford's youtube channel where he retells some of the myths and sagas as well as goes into historical and linguistic stuff.Tias posted:Awesome, I'm proud of you! I never spend as much time reading them as I want to :o I saw that when I was looking up The Viking Way and now I'm contemplating dropping another $50+ on books I don't have time for right now 
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Oct 20, 2020 18:08
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The Bible passages make it clear the birth happened in the spring, so observing it in winter is just Christians trying to hang out with the fun holidays. Pretty sure the war on Christmas is entirely self inflicted at this point, and the frontline warriors are people making YouTube rants in their cars about plain red Starbucks cups.
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Nov 2, 2020 14:20
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Not every day, medieval Catholics celebrated so many saints days and holidays that they worked fewer days of the year than many modern Americans.
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Nov 22, 2020 15:56
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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.
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Dec 27, 2020 00:37
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The more heavily euhemerized versions are interesting, but are a better example of how religious/temporal outsiders looked at the myths than how believers looked at the myths. Sometimes they'll have details that didn't make it into the Poetic Edda manuscripts we have, but usually aren't see as authoritative in the same way. Snorri's Prose Edda should be looked at the same way, imo, but isn't because he does a better job of pretending to be an insider rather than being separated by hundreds of years from the belief in these stories. Also I'll never get over the way that he reconciled some poems saying there's an eagle on top of Yggdrasil, and some poems saying there's a hawk. The real reason there are differences is because different words were used to fit into different stanzas, but Snorri said "oh no, I know what's going on here. There's a hawk ON TOP of an eagle, on top of Yggdrasil."
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Feb 8, 2021 15:43
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There’s an extremely important distinction to be made between the Poetic and Prose Eddas. The Prose Edda was written by Snorri (probably), about 200 years after his country (Iceland) had officially converted to Christianity. The Prose makes an attempt to reconcile a lot of conflicting sources into a single authoritative text, and was written by a Christian. My favorite example of the weird choices made trying to reconcile conflicts is the author’s decision that because some poems refer to an eagle on top of Yggdrasil, and others refer to a hawk, that must mean that there is a hawk sitting on top of an eagle sitting on top of Yggdrasil. The Prose Edda does quote some of the poems we still have, as well as referencing poems we don’t have or only have parts of. It’s also an Icelander’s take on things, and we know because of some archaeological evidence as well as toponyms that Norway and Iceland seem to have focused more on the Aesir than Denmark and Sweden did. The Poetic Edda is the name given to the collection of poems found in what’s called the “codex reggius” a single handwritten book that compiled many different poems. It was written in the Christian Era of Iceland as well, but theres no reason to think Snorri was involved in this one. Linguistic analysis shows that some of the poems were hundreds of years old by the time they were written (due to the choice of words that used to fit into the meter but had shifted to no longer fit at the time they were written down, etc). This is definitely a much more authentic source of knowledge, but is only a portion of the poems common to the time and obviously poems leave a lot more to interpretation than prose does. It’s also Icelandic so it has the possibility of not accurately reflecting the beliefs and stories told by eastern Scandinavians.
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Mar 20, 2021 23:27
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My view and the one I've seen others have is that if my reconstructed practice is valid, than any other is equally valid. The only time I'd say somebody's practice isn't valid would be based on the quality and soundness of their reconstruction. If they're claiming something is reconstructed but don't have the evidence to support it, then I'd argue that isn't valid, just on academic grounds. However, there are also a lot of people who lean into the neo- part of neo-paganism and don't try to say their practice is a reconstruction. That's fine as well. I'd never say there's a problem with that as long as they acknowledge the neo. Rant about unsound reconstruction and how it's effected Wicca that you can feel free to ignore: This is also my main complaint with Wicca in its original form. Gardner and his compatriots claimed that Wicca was the inheritor of a long tradition of secret witchcraft cults in Europe going back centuries or possibly even millenia. They got this from the work of a particular anthropologist, even. The problem is that that work is fundamentally unsound and his little foundation in actual material evidence. I've seen many Wiccans have made an effort to embrace the neo label and to move away from this claim of either reconstruction or being an actual unbroken line of practice. I fully support that.
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Mar 25, 2021 03:13
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Yeah I’ve met a lot of syncretic neo-pagans
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Mar 29, 2021 18:07
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There’s always the chance there’s another manuscript like the Codex Regius floating around in some library, I suppose. The most likely form it would take would be a similar collection of old poetry, written after the end of the Viking Age. I don’t know how likely it will be to find any Viking Age manuscripts. There are ongoing archaeological excavations that could shed more light on the material culture. Things like more rune sticks or personal charms. There’s one excavation happening right now on one of the Danish islands that includes an old temple. I was going to try to join that one for my summer field school this year but the pandemic and all got in the way of that.
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Mar 31, 2021 01:04
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This one https://ifrglobal.org/program/denmark-sorte-muld/ (sorry if this is the same location, Danish isn’t one of my languages) Sorry if I misspoke, I only called it a temple because that’s what this page described it as. I’ll be doing a shorter stateside field school this year and then possibly applying for one of the Danish locations for next summer. Though I’m also planning on visiting Iceland next spring as a graduation present to myself before I start my graduate program.
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Mar 31, 2021 14:39
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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. There are inscriptions from that period, everything written in Elder Futhark is from around then, but no manuscripts or books as far as I know.
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Apr 1, 2021 01:00
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Alhazred posted: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. ibn Fadlan’s account of the “Rus” (considered by most to be misnamed Scandinavians last time I checked) is Viking age and a few centuries later than big scary monsters was interested in. It is a great description of Viking age practices and inspired a couple of scenes in season 1 of the History channel show, including the nose blowing.
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Apr 1, 2021 14:13
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Weka posted:I thought Rus was an endonym? Also I'm pretty sure the majority of the inhabitants of the Rus society weren't ethnic Scandinavians just the upper stratas. From what I’ve read, most scholars of Fadlan’s work believe the people he called the Rus were actually Varangians. It’s tricky trying to match up groups like this, especially when they’re so foreign to the writer that they’re probably getting details wrong. It’s possible I’m completely off base here, I’ve actually spent more time reading Fadlan and other Arab travel accounts than the other side of things until very recently. Tias posted:Well, let me know! I'll take you to see Copenhagen if you swing by on your way to the island. Whether or not I end up doing any work over there, I’m definitely planning on spending some time visiting Copenhagen and the surrounding area. A little off topic for the thread but related, is there a Scandinavian language you feel is more useful than any of the others for general travel/getting around? I’d study Danish but one of my professors (Matthias Nordvig, who is also Danish) said to never study Danish because it’s a nonsense language.
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Apr 3, 2021 14:32
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There’s also the confusion that comes from trying to figure out historical ethnonyms and toponyms. People moved around a lot and there were people who identified as multiple different affiliations that came from the same place at different times.
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Apr 20, 2021 17:55
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Fun fact: “Utiseti” is one of the most commonly banned by name forms of witchcraft in Scandinavian laws during the medieval period. “Finns” were believed to be especially good at this and all other types of magic at the time, and were viewed with suspicion. “Finn” is kind of complicated because at that point it was used somewhat interchangeably for people from Finland as well as the Sámi. The Catholic authorities were very concerned by it judging by some of the sources I’ve read lately. I recommend Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages for anybody interested in more detail. It lost prominence in laws and legal cases after the Reformation and as the Early Modern period progressed and in the minds of the legal authorities witchcraft took on a more explicitly demonological cosmology (for example the concepts in the Malleus Malleficarum, or the accusations at Salem) that spread northwards form France and Germany and the like. The actual practices that were prosecuted seem to have changed at a much slower rate, and in many cases it seemed like the witches being tried had to be fed information during the interrogations to even meet the definitions of witchcraft as demonology.
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Apr 24, 2021 14:07
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There’s a few sites around Europe like that where there’s a cathedral built on top of an older church but on an older church and on and on until at the bottom there’s a Bronze Age chieftain’s grave or similar.
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Apr 24, 2021 21:25
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My immediate gut reaction was annoyance at calling the Norse religion Ásatru. I’d love to hear your analysis. As for me my class work hasn’t really been too relevant to my heathenism, and my heathenism has definitely taken a back seat lately, which I’m trying to be more consistent about at this point.
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Oct 1, 2021 02:18
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That’s actually tangentially something that came up in some of my reading about Islam recently. It seems like viewing a religion as something that even can be granular enough for a name other than just “my beliefs” is a Christian thing, in the European tradition at least. Even words like heathen come from being used to differentiate non-Christians from the people who did most of the writing. Writers like the Romans discuss the gods of the Germans a little and some of the practices, but I haven’t really seen anything to suggest worshipping different gods was viewed as completely different belief systems. It’s an interesting paradigm shift from how I was acculturated.
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Oct 1, 2021 06:24
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I’ve always been a fan of the mentions in the literature of the Yule boar, which you would apparently eat, but also you would touch it and swear any oaths that were needed to be considered especially binding. For my wife and I this mostly just means we make sure to get some BBQ. American Christmas is vague enough that it’s easy for my wife (Wiccan) and I to fit in some of our Yuletide practices while with our Christian families. Still hoping to one day find a group to join for some blots, but Covid has other plans for me.
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Dec 23, 2021 16:06
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Really jealous of everybody who was able to go to Midgardsblot last week, but I’m making up for it by finding as many English language Archaeology Masters programs to apply to as I can. I’m taking Swedish this year and debating with myself if there’s any way I could possibly cram enough language knowledge to apply to some of the more numerous Swedish/Danish language programs.
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Aug 26, 2022 22:15
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The Ynglingsaga describes Odin as a king who came from Asia as well, and then became worshipped as a god by the Scandinavians he conquered. Snorri’s preface to his Edda tries to connect the newly Europeanized Scandinavia to the cultural heritage of the other large kingdoms by claiming that the aesir were Trojans who fled the fall of Troy. Saxo tried to make Odin a Byzantine emperor that left Byzantium after Frigg had an affair with his brothers in History of the Danes. It’s really interesting how committed medieval Scandinavians were to incorporating their heathen mythology into their still fairly new Christian society. It’s also infuriating that essentially ALL of our written sources come from people trying to remix the old beliefs into being acceptable in a medieval catholic context.
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Sep 30, 2022 13:40
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