Download or read book Freyr written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-02-20 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes Norse accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading "Nj�rdr in N�at�n begot afterward two children: the son was called Freyr, and the daughter Freyja; they were fair of face and mighty. Freyr is the most renowned of the �sir; he rules over the rain and the shining of the sun, and therewithal the fruit of the earth; and it is good to call on him for fruitful seasons and peace." Much of what is known of the Norse myths comes from the 10th century onwards. Until this time and, indeed, for centuries afterwards, Norse culture (particularly that of Iceland, where the myths were eventually transcribed) was an oral culture. In fact, in all Scandinavian countries well into the thirteenth century laws were memorized by officials known as "Lawspeakers" who recited them at the "Thing." The Thing was the legislative assembly in Scandinavia "held for judicial purposes." The Prose Edda is a collection of Norse Myths split into three sections, the Gylfaginning (the Deluding of Gylfi), the Sk�ldskaparm�l (the Language of Poetry) and the H�ttatal (the Enumeration of Meters). The first has a frame story that entails a Swedish King, Gylfi, disguising himself as an old man, Gangleri, when he journeys to Asgard to meet the gods. When he arrives, he meets three men - "High One, Just-As-High, and Third" - who reveal to him stories of the world and the gods. The second section contains a warning for Christians not to believe in the Norse gods, specifically the two families, the �sir and the Vanir, but also refutes the notion that they were demons, which was a common supposition among some Christians at the time. The Prose Edda begins in this line of thought with a euhemeristic prologue, which traces the history of the Norse Gods as human heroes of Troy, making Thor one of King Priam's sons. The Norse Myths also appear to follow a chronological narrative, which the historian John Lindow describes as having a "Mythical Past, Present and Future." Loki features in each of these literary "epochs" and it helps to understand the complexity of his character, as well as the belief system, to view the myths in this way. Freyr was son to sea-god Nj�rdr and twin brother to love goddess Freyja, all of whom were part of the Vanir, a less warlike, divine family. As part of a hostage exchange between warring families, Nj�rdr and Freyr were sent to live with the �sir. As a member of the Vanir, his integration into the warlike family gave Freyr relatively little to do in surviving mythology. Many of the surviving stories involve Thor exercising his physical strength while Loki and Odin exercise their cunning. Freyr was not noted for either of these attributes, nor did he have a love of besting the Giants, the gods' eternal enemies. Freyr's role as a fertility god-a recurring theme in the Vanir-meant that his relatively rare appearences in the myths weighed heavily on the dominant, cult role he performed across Scandinavia from a surprisingly early time. That being said, there are few superfluous characters in Norse myth, and Freyr is present at two major moments of the gods' history: the union of the two families (although there are very few surviving texts describing this exact moment) and Ragnar�k, the apocalyptic end. Freyr: The Origins and History of the Norse God of Love and Fertility looks at the stories about the legendary Norse deity. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Freyr like never before.
Download or read book Freyr s Offspring written by Olof Sundqvist and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study elucidates the relationship among rulers and religion of the Svear in Eastern Scandinavia during the Late Iron Age.
Download or read book The New Comparative Mythology written by C. Scott Littleton and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1973 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jihadism Online Discourses and Representations written by Rüdiger Lohlker and published by V&R unipress GmbH. This book was released on 2013 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jihadi online media try to mobilize, recruit, and disseminate the messages of jihadi subcultures. Understanding the mechanisms and structures of the products of these online media is essential for understanding jihadism in general. Original research into visual representations of jihadi media outlets, the subtleties of jihadi videos, the specific ways jihadis use Islamic religious language, into jihadi poetry, and the ways jihadis stage their concepts in videos of kangaroo trials is presented in this volume. Jihadis as part of the imaginary of global media production is another aspect of representations of jihadism described in one of the contributions.
Download or read book The Downfall of God written by S. T. Joshi and published by Pitchstone Publishing (US&CA). This book was released on 2024-11-12 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atheism has been on the rise in the West for several decades, but its roots, including those relating to secularism, agnosticism, and freethought, run deep in Western history, philosophy, and thought. Drawing on a multitude of sources from a number of disciplines, S. T. Joshi outlines the natural origins of religious belief in primitive times and charts the slow development of secular accounts of natural phenomena in the Greco-Roman world. Adopting the "Christ myth" theory, he surveys the emergence of a new faith— Christianity— that grew out of Judaism and explores its evolution through the medieval period. He then examines the increasing schisms within the church and conflicts between religious and political entities that caused a fracturing of the monolith of Christianity and the birth of the Renaissance, which not only brought to light the literary glories of the Greco-Roman world but also led to a scientific resurgence and the development of a secular view of the cosmos. Throughout this study, Joshi paints a portrait of emerging secularism that extends well beyond the work of philosophers and scientists and covers literary figures, social and political changes, and even developments in art, architecture, and music whereby religion was increasingly shorn of its dominance in Western culture. By the end of the sixteenth century, the stage was set for the emergence of a worldview free of religion.
Download or read book Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages written by Gro Steinsland and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses the Nordic pre-Christian ideology of rulership, and its confrontation with, survival into and adaptation to the European Christian ideals during the transition from the Viking to the Middle Ages from the ninth to the thirteenth century.
Download or read book More Than Mythology written by Catharina Raudvere and published by Nordic Academic Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The religion of the Viking Age is conventionally identified through its mythology: the ambiguous character Odin, the forceful Thor, and the end of the world approaching in Ragnarök. But pre-Christian religion consisted of so much more than mythic imagery and legends, and lingered for long in folk tradition. Studying religion of the North with an interdisciplinary approach is exceptionally fruitful, in both empirical and theoretical terms, and in this book a group of distinguished scholars widen the interpretative scope on religious life among the pre-Christian Scandinavian people. The authors shed new light on topics such as rituals, gender relations, social hierarchies, and inter-regional contacts between the Nordic tradition and the Sami and Finnish regions. The contributions add to a more complex view of the pre-Christian religion of Scandinavia, with relevant new questions about the material and a broad analysis of religion as a cultural expression.
Download or read book The Prose Edda written by Snorri Sturluson and published by . This book was released on 1916 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Prose Edda, also known as the Younger Edda, Snorri's Edda (Icelandic: Snorra Edda) or, historically, simply as Edda, is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often considered to have been to some extent written, or at least compiled, by the Icelandic scholar, lawspeaker, and historian Snorri Sturluson c. 1220. It is considered the fullest and most detailed source for modern knowledge of Norse mythology, the body of myths of the North Germanic peoples, and draws from a wide variety of sources, including versions of poems that survive into today in a collection known as the Poetic Edda.
Download or read book The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturlson written by Unknown and published by Library of Alexandria. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Seed of Yggdrasill written by Maria Kvilhuag and published by The Three Little Sisters. This book was released on 2023-03-27 with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive guide to Norse literature, historical folk lore and more. Kvilhaug peels back the layers of the Eddas, Poems and Sagas to reveal hidden truths within Maria's background in research and archaeology is visible throughout with full illustrations, timelines and beautiful translations of passages providing the key to unlocking and deciphering the hidden wisdom within. Her exploration of modern interpretations, past parables, and related cultural mythos provides a deeper layer into the mysteries of Old Norse practices.
Download or read book Saga Six Pack written by Jennie Hall and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2016-05-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Saga Six Pack' brings together six classic sagas: 'Beowulf, ' 'The Prose Edda, ' 'The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue and Raven The Skald, ' 'Eric The Red, ' 'The Sea Fight' and 'Sigurd The Volsung.' There is also an introductory essay, 'What The Sagas We
Download or read book Ancestor Worship and the Elite in Late Iron Age Scandinavia written by Triin Laidoner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancestor worship is often assumed by contemporary European audiences to be an outdated and primitive tradition with little relevance to our societies, past and present. This book questions that assumption and seeks to determine whether ancestor ideology was an integral part of religion in Viking Age and early medieval Scandinavia. The concept is examined from a broad socio-anthropological perspective, which is used to structure a set of case studies which analyse the cults of specific individuals in Old Norse literature. The situation of gods in Old Norse religion has been almost exclusively addressed in isolation from these socio-anthropological perspectives. The public gravemound cults of deceased rulers are discussed conventionally as cases of sacral kingship, and, more recently, religious ruler ideology; both are seen as having divine associations in Old Norse scholarship. Building on the anthropological framework, this study introduces the concept of ‘superior ancestors’, employed in social anthropology to denote a form of political ancestor worship used to regulate social structure deliberately. It suggests that Old Norse ruler ideology was based on conventional and widely recognised religious practices revolving around kinship and ancestors and that the gods were perceived as human ancestors belonging to elite families.
Download or read book The Waning Sword Conversion Imagery and Celestial Myth in Beowulf written by Edward Pettit and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The image of a giant sword melting stands at the structural and thematic heart of the Old English heroic poem Beowulf. This meticulously researched book investigates the nature and significance of this golden-hilted weapon and its likely relatives within Beowulf and beyond, drawing on the fields of Old English and Old Norse language and literature, liturgy, archaeology, astronomy, folklore and comparative mythology. In Part I, Pettit explores the complex of connotations surrounding this image (from icicles to candles and crosses) by examining a range of medieval sources, and argues that the giant sword may function as a visual motif in which pre-Christian Germanic concepts and prominent Christian symbols coalesce. In Part II, Pettit investigates the broader Germanic background to this image, especially in relation to the god Ing/Yngvi-Freyr, and explores the capacity of myths to recur and endure across time. Drawing on an eclectic range of narrative and linguistic evidence from Northern European texts, and on archaeological discoveries, Pettit suggests that the image of the giant sword, and the characters and events associated with it, may reflect an elemental struggle between the sun and the moon, articulated through an underlying myth about the theft and repossession of sunlight. The Waning Sword: Conversion Imagery and Celestial Myth in 'Beowulf' is a welcome contribution to the overlapping fields of Beowulf-scholarship, Old Norse-Icelandic literature and Germanic philology. Not only does it present a wealth of new readings that shed light on the craft of the Beowulf-poet and inform our understanding of the poem’s major episodes and themes; it further highlights the merits of adopting an interdisciplinary approach alongside a comparative vantage point. As such, The Waning Sword will be compelling reading for Beowulf-scholars and for a wider audience of medievalists.
Download or read book The Prose Edda Tales from Norse Mythology written by Snorri Sturluson and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2011-03-23 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text contains 'The Prose Edda' - the wellspring of modern knowledge of Norse Mythology. From the dawn of the world's creation to its ultimate destruction, these enthralling Norse stories chronicle the victories and tragedies of both gods and men. Rich with picturesque poetry and human drama, these stories constitute a vivid pictures of the characters' personalities, intertwined with the comic and injurious results of passion and ambition. This text will appeal to those with an interest in Norse mythology and ancient legends in general, and would make for a worthy addition to any bookshelf. The chapters of this book include: 'Snorri Sturluson', 'Introduction', 'Prologue', 'Here Begins the Beguiling of Gylfi', and 'The Poesy of Skalds'. We are republishing this antiquarian book now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a new biography of the author.
Download or read book Belief in the Past written by Timothy Insoll and published by British Archaeological Reports Oxford Limited. This book was released on 2004 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twelve papers, the proceedings of a conference on archaeology and religion held in Manchester in 2002, aims to bring together these two fields which have had an unhappy relationship in the past.
Download or read book Viking Goddesses and Seeresses written by E. Kaman and published by Lokay. This book was released on 2019-04-19 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first of the Forbidden Knowledge series. Where did the power of Viking seeresses, dazzling goddesses, the Nornir, or Fates and the formidable Valkyries come from? To find the answer to this question the authors first examine the Old Norse mythology in order to decipher the ancient wisdom of women. Following this survey, the second part of the book explores what became of these mighty female figures, how their powers were transformed over time. The book is closing with a look at several questions related to the modern day: “How is ‘feminine lore’ understood today?” “What are its roots and how do they still affect humankind?” “How is what this book terms ‘the legacy of sight’ still useful?” The responses will both pinpoint what it is that the Norse women left behind them, and demonstrate how that legacy is still woven into the fabric of the present. This non-fiction book provides an outstanding analysis and a careful reinterpretation of Icelandic sagas and poems for properly understand the nature and power of the first mistresses of the Icy North. The research presented here goes deep to unveil the real meaning of the medieval chroniclers’ handiwork. Every detail of every Icelandic saga and poem cited in this book has been translated by the authors uniquely from the original manuscripts. The book contains more than 60 colourful illustrations, an Appendix with nearly 70 separate encyclopaedia articles and hyperlinks to 21 original Icelandic manuscripts and 17 referred websites.
Download or read book Essential Asatru written by Diana L. Paxson and published by Citadel. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Filled with clear, concise instructions on living Ásatrú every day, this truly accessible guide takes you on a journey from Ásatrú's origins in Scandinavian and German paganism to its recognition as an official religion in the 1970s and its widespread acceptance today."--Back cover.
