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I guess my question, or first question would be, why heathenry? Like you said, the religion is reconstructionist and not the same as the religion that the ancient Scandanavians practiced. It's not an old tradition passed down, its modern. So, when it was set up, why did the original practitioners decide they were going to do it? When they did decide to do it, were they concerned that it might get conflated with the old Norse religion? Or did they want it to be conflated with the old Norse religion?
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Feb 13, 2020 15:49
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Tias posted:Who is Marcel Mauss and should we care about him? He was a French sociologist who wrote about what was, in his time, called "primitive socieities". He wrote two things that tend to get a bunch of attention..."The Gift", which was about gift-economies and the social and communal aspects of gift giving, and "A General Theory of Magic", which looked at the way different societies looked at magic, and the social understanding of magic, religion and ritual as a way to reinforce social cohesion.
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Apr 21, 2020 18:46
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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.
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May 4, 2020 19:08
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Alhazred posted: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. Do we know what the daily rituals were that a family would perform?
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May 4, 2020 19:32
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So the story is, basically, "The gods sabotage a contract, then kill the guy they screwed over"? Like, I'm trying to figure out how it's the gods who were duped and not the jotunn.
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Oct 1, 2020 11:46
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It's not that simple, though? Is it? Loki was a Jotun, and a lot of gods had jotunn as wives or consorts, even Thor himself. And Odin goes to Mimir for wisdom. So the God's relationship to the Jotunn isn't necessarily antagonistic, and the Jotunn aren't wholly destructive. It sort of seems to me, and I admit I dont know a lot about your religion, that not just Loki, but the Jotunn in general are chaotic forces, and sort of represent precivilization. They're almost always isolated, not living in communities, and live in barren or inhospitable places. A lot of their names seem associated with primal forces...fire, ice, wind. Some of them are wise and learned, but it's a kind of natural wisdom, not learning passed down.
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Oct 2, 2020 03:36
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I'm not sure, but if the horse had been sacrificed to Odin, Christians aren't allowed to eat meat from animals sacrificed to other gods,
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Nov 20, 2020 16:01
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Tias posted:Also, a blanket ban on eating horse meat was in effect in the christian world at the time. Wasn't that because the Pope considered eating horse meat to be pagan?
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Nov 20, 2020 19:07
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Cessna posted:If you're going by the Prose Edda Thor is half African. He's son of Mennon, an Ethiopian king, and a Trojan princess. Yep. Of course, Mennon was also King of Persia and India, so... Also, while not a heathen myself, I doubt many would agree with the explicitly Christian origin story of the gods in the beginning of the Prose Edda.
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Mar 16, 2021 23:26
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Internet Wizard posted: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. 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.
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Apr 1, 2021 16:00
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That being said, as late as 1490, there were still remenants of the Viking presence in England. Caxton talks about a Northern English merchant in Southern England who asks a woman if he can buy some "egges" (derived from the old Norse), and she thinks he's speaking French, because she knows them as "eyern" (from the old English).quote:And he asked specifically for eggs, and the good woman said that she spoke no French, and the merchant got angry for he could not speak French either, but he wanted eggs and she could not understand him. And then at last another person said that he wanted ‘eyren’. Then the good woman said that she understood him well.
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Jan 2, 2022 22:09
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Tias posted:I got it completely reversed. Since the old Danish word is "Kryds" and the Angles said "Rood" beforehand, how could it come via the Irish? I think the idea is Crux (Latin)--->Cros (Old Irish)--->Kross (Old Norse)---->Cross (English)
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Jan 4, 2022 22:12
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 21:25 |
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Tias posted:The anglo-saxons called this Weōdmōnaţ (my own translation would be "Weed-month", the significance of which I am not certain of). I think the idea was that this is the month where weeds and grass grow most.
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Aug 9, 2022 16:23
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