Dreamwidth's place for all heathens

I've been looking at the illustrations in 3 compendious Icelandic paper manuscripts, all of which include both the Prose and Poetic Eddas plus a lot of other material—eddic poems not in the Codex Regius but usually included in editions, some skaldic poetry such as "Sonatorrek", texts about runes ... They're quite endearing; the details suggest we're seeing entirely enlightenment thought about the gods and goddesses based on educated people reading the lore texts, and the clothing is a mix of the then modern and Renaissance ideas about sorcerors' garb, but who knows what inherited knowledge lurks. AM 738 4to, c. 1680 (Wikipedia page), is oddly tall and thin—13" x 41/12"—and so is known as the "Oblong Edda". It contains a group of 13½ illustration pages; several of these pages include 2 or 3 different people, and Hœnir is in the margin on the facing page to Bragi and Loki. The illustrations are within the Prose Edda text. NKS 1867 4º is dated 1760 (very short Wikipedia page), and SÁM 66 is dated 1765–66 (even less useful Wikipedia page, mostly pictures) and until its recent donation, was in the possession of an Icelandic-Canadian family. These are by different scribes, but each includes 16 illustrations, and although the order is a bit different, many of them are similar between the two books and only one has a different subject: NKS 1867 has Þjazi meeting his end, while SÁM 66 has the beginning of the Þjazi story, when he prevents Odin, Loki, and Hœnir from cooking their dinner. The same artist may have worked on both, or they may have a common source.

The illustrations in AM 738 4to at first glance look extremely naive in style by comparison to the later two, but I think that's because the artist was bad at human figures. And at least they've attempted three females, while the later two have nobody of the female sex except Heiðrun and Auðhumbla. The later two also have symbolic details that appear to come from either Icelandic galdr sigils, or Hermetic symbols, or Freemasonry; I don't know. ( The rest of the post is under the cut; there are 18 images. )

Most of us wear a hammer; a few, I know, wear something else around our necks, like an Irminsûl or a valknut. But my impression is that modern heathens are extremely likely to wear a heathen pendant, more likely to wear a religious pendant than any other religion I can think of except specific Desert God sects. Yet the scholars argue that hammer pendants were only adopted in reaction to cross pendants, or were only really used as grave goods, again in reaction to cross pendants in graves.

Some of us also have statuettes of some of the gods and goddesses, in some cases based on archaeological discoveries. The archaeological finds in this case are one of the groups that are expanding as metal detectorists sweep more and more of the North, but they're largely dismissed or doubted by scholars. I can think of two mentions in the sagas of such miniature god-images, both describing them as kept in one's belt-pouch (the old-time precursor of the pants pocket). One is part of a reported calumny in a Xian conversion story: Hallfreðr vandræðaskáld accepts baptism, although he knows the gods will be angry with him (as a skald, he mentions Óðinn in particular) but enemies try to get him killed by falsely reporting that he has an ivory image of Thor in his pouch (walrus ivory, before you wonder whether they had easy access to elephants in 10th-century Norway) and continues to blót to it. This little story, which the choice of Thor suggests is indeed false, is told in one version of the saga about him, Hallfreðar saga, and of course in the compendious Great Saga of Óláfr Tryggvason, which includes every scurrilous anecdote and purported Xian miracle the compiler could scrape up. The other is in Landnámabók and Vatnsdæla saga: Ingimundr the Old lost his silver pouch image of Freyr and as foretold by a vǫlva or a Lapp woman (depending on which source you read), found it again, buried, when he had emigrated to Iceland and was digging the holes to set up his ǫndvegissúlur (high-seat pillars). This bears several indications of being a genuine legend: it's one of a markedly smaller group of accounts in Landnámabók of settlers particularly devoted to Freyr, rather than Thor, and it varies from the several stories of settlers throwing the pillars themselves overboard for Thor to guide them to the right spot to settle; plus the image being of silver corresponds to the fact that all the miniature images that have been found are metal, although of course a metal detector is not going to find an ivory object. But scholars have been skeptical or dismissive about these objects, partly because they are skeptical about the fulltrúi relationship, which carrying around an image of one god kind of implies; in fact some scholars dismiss out of hand any idea that heathens could have a "personal relationship" with the gods, as opposed to going through the motions of ritual when society expected it. And partly because being skeptical that objects represent what they appear to represent is a good way to score points in academia for being an original thinker. There's also still a gulf between the historians of religion and literature and the archaeologists, although the internet has reduced it. So, since two recent discoveries haven't yet been factored in and since they are both obviously pendants, I thought I'd gather up the material and my thoughts in a blog post.
( There are twelve pics back here in addition to much prose, so, cut to save your reading page. )

Hail all!

Two or three weeks ago, the Hávamál discussion list on Yahoo came to a very quiet end. The list presented a bunch of translations of each verse for discussion; it was started in December 2001 and I took it over in 2013, but it was never as lively as it had been the first time they went through the poem. However, one person has expressed interest in doing Vǫluspá in a similar manner, and I was wondering whether anyone else wants that. I'm prepared to do it, one verse a week again, but it would take a bit of my time so I'm sounding out the idea first.

There is an existing Vǫluspá list on Yahoo, started by the same person (Matt R.), but I don't want to take that over. If I do this, it will be a closed list; people will have to join to see the posts; and I'm inclined to do it here on DW as a dedicated journal rather than as another Yahoo list. One reason is that since Yahoo revamped its e-mail and groups, I'm not sure everybody can read and write in Yahoo groups; the Hávamál list had a fall-off in participation when the change happened from which it never recovered. Also since the change Yahoo groups work even worse than they did before. And the business news about Yahoo is all pretty much bad. Doing it here would mean people would have to create accounts here and message me with who they are in order to join and be able to see and respond to the weekly posts, and it has the disadvantage compared to an e-list that you wouldn't receive the posts in your in-box, but it's far more stable and I think easier to use, plus people could post responses to the entry on any verse at any time, which would be helpful for anyone joining the group after it starts. I'd rather not use LJ because I don't want to support the current owners and because it's not very reliable, while DW is, although far fewer people have joined. I've posted similar messages to this one in the All Heathens group on LJ and to the Heathenthing list on Yahoo. Can anyone think of a better place? I'm not on Facebook and never intend to be, and in any case I don't think that can be used for discussions; I used to use Google groups but haven't gone back since they became so creepy about identifying people. But there may be some other venue I'm not thinking of.

And in any case, would anybody be interested? If two or three people would post every once in a while, I think it would be worth doing (and I'll then advertise it on Asatruar on LJ, since more people are members there). But if nobody has the time or the interest, I understand and won't bother.

So what are your thoughts?

Frith,
M

Edit to above: Now created here, as voluspa_discussion

I wish you all a happy and safe Yule amidst your loved ones, and a great new year.

There is now an article on heathen hofs on Wikipedia.

Can you guys see this link? http://roskilde.lokalavisen.dk/et-unikt-fund-af-odin-fra-lejre/20091113/artikler/711139709

If not, put Odin Lejre in the "søk" box in the top right, and click on what comes up.

Today marks the two thousand year anniversary of the first day of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. On September 9 in the year 9 C.E., under the leadership of Arminius (Hermann or Irmin the Cheruscan) warriors from several Germanic tribes sprang an ambush on a column of three legions of Roman soldiers (approxinately 18,000 men). When the battle ended on September 11, the Romans had been annihilated (approximately 16,500 dead in battle, almost all the survivors subsequently sacrificed to the gods) and only about 500 Germanic warriors lay dead. The former governor of Gaul and designated governor of Germania, Varus, fell on his sword. The news drove the Emperor Augustus half mad. For the first time, Rome turned back from a projected conquest. They withdrew to the Rhine (Julius Cæsar's earlier border), and erected a wall, the limes, to keep the Germanic tribes from attacking their territories. They contented themselves with the Alpine and Danubian territories and with the Rhineland and left the rest of the continental Germanic peoples alone.

This was a great victory by ancient heathens who came together against a common foe of immense power.

On the voluspa.org lore site (which I recommend anyway), there is a special Teutoburg portal. If your connection can stand a slideshow, the main page is here; the first of seven essays on the background to the battle, the battle itself, and how it has reverberated through history can be found here.

Hail the heroes!