Theorizing Old Norse Myth

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Theorizing Old Norse Myth

Author : Stefan Brink,Lisa Collinson
Publisher : Brepols Publishers
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Mythology
ISBN : 2503553036

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Theorizing Old Norse Myth by Stefan Brink,Lisa Collinson Pdf

This collection explores the theoretical and methodological foundations through which we understand Old Norse myths and the mythological world, and the medieval sources in which we find expressions of these. Some contributions take a broad, comparative perspective; some address specific details of Old Norse myths and mythology; and some devote their attention to questions concerning either individual gods and deities, or more topographical and spatial matters (such as conceptions of pagan cult sites). The elements discussed provide an introductory and general overview of scholarly enquiry into myth and ritual, as well as an attempt to define myth and theory for Old Norse scholarship. The articles also offer a rehabilitation of the comparative method alongside a discussion of the concept of 'cultural memory' and of the cognitive functions that myths may have performed in early Scandinavian society. Particular subjects of interest include analyses of the enigmatic god Heimdallr, the more well-known Oðinn, the deities, the female asynjur, and the 'elves' or alfar. Text-based discussions are set alongside recent archaeological discoveries of cult buildings and cult sites in Scandinavia, together with a discussion of the most enigmatic site of all: Uppsala in Sweden. The key themes discussed throughout this volume are brought together in the concluding chapter, in a comprehensive summary that sheds new light on current scholarly perspectives.

From Asgard to Valhalla

Author : Heather O'Donoghue
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 54,5 Mb
Release : 2008-09-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780857730435

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From Asgard to Valhalla by Heather O'Donoghue Pdf

Whether they focus on Thor's powerful hammer, the wailing Valkyrie, the palatial home of the gods - Asgard - or ravenous wolves and fierce elemental giants, the Norse myths are packed with rowdy incident. But at the centre of their cosmos stands a gnarled old ash tree, Yggdrasil, from which all distances and times are measured. When the old tree creaks, Ragnarok - the end of the world and of the gods themselves - is at hand. It is from this tree that Odin, father of the gods, hanged himself in search of the wisdom of the dead: a disturbing image of divine sacrifice far removed from the feasting and fighting of his otherworld home, Valhalla. And an image so problematic for thirteenth century Christians that they left it out when they wrote the myths down. From Asgard to Valhalla is the first book to show how and why the Norse myths have so powerfully resonated from era to era: from Viking-age stories of ice and fire to the epic poetry of Beowulf; and from Wagner's Ring to Marvel Comics' Mighty Thor. Heather O'Donoghue, who is an expert on Old Norse culture, shows in what ways the Norse myths have impacted on the western mind, across the fields of literature, art, music and politics. She considers the wider contexts of Norse mythology, including its origins, medieval expression and reception in post-medieval societies right up to the present. From Asgard to Valhalla is a book that will intrigue and delight anyone who is keen to understand how the Norse myths have so profoundly shaped, and continue to shape, the western cultural heritage.

Reflections on Old Norse Myths

Author : Pernille Hermann,Jens Peter Schjødt,Rasmus Tranum Kristensen
Publisher : Brepols Publishers
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : STANFORD:36105131715091

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Reflections on Old Norse Myths by Pernille Hermann,Jens Peter Schjødt,Rasmus Tranum Kristensen Pdf

When seeking to understand the function of mythology in the pagan past and in medieval Iceland scholars are confronted with the problem of how sources from the Middle Ages can properly be used. The articles in this volume demonstrate diverse angles from which Old Norse mythological texts can be viewed. Many discuss methodological problems in dealing with the texts and draw on expertise from different fields of study such as history, philology, literary studies, and history of religions. The authors are all established experts in the field, but demonstrate new approaches to the study of Old Norse mythology, and offer insights into possible new directions for research.

Old Norse Mythology

Author : John Lindow
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2020-12-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780190852276

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Old Norse Mythology by John Lindow Pdf

An innovative and accessible overview of how ancient Scandinavians understood and made use of their mythological stories. Old Norse Mythology provides a unique survey of the mythology of Scandinavia: the gods Þórr (Thor) with his hammer, the wily and duplicitous Óðinn (Odin), the sly Loki, and other fascinating figures. They create the world, battle their enemies, and die at the end of the world, which arises anew with a new generation of gods. These stories were the mythology of the Vikings, but they were not written down until long after the conversion to Christianity, mostly in Iceland. In addition to a broad overview of Nordic myths, the book presents a case study of one myth, which tells of how Þórr (Thor) fished up the World Serpent, analyzing the myth as a sacred text of the Vikings. Old Norse Mythology also explores the debt we owe to medieval intellectuals, who were able to incorporate the old myths into new paradigms that helped the myths to survive when they were no longer part of a religious system. This superb introduction traces the use of the mythology in ideological contexts, from the Viking Age until the twenty-first century, as well as in entertainment.

Old Norse Mythology

Author : John Lindow
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2020
Category : History
ISBN : 9780190852252

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Old Norse Mythology by John Lindow Pdf

"This book treats from the perspective of the series "World mythologies in theory and in everyday life" the body of texts from medieval Scandinavia, mostly Iceland, usually known as "Norse mythology" or "Scandinavian mythology." Specifically, it constitutes a case study of a "literary or textual mythology," that is, a mythology from the past that we know only through written texts that have been left to us, augmented in a few cases by artifacts and images. This case is particularly interesting because the texts (with a tiny handful of enigmatic exceptions) were recorded centuries after the Nordic peoples had abandoned the religion associated with the mythology and converted to Christianity. The mythology lived on without direct connection to ritual activity or religious conviction. Drawing both on sources from before the conversion and on comparative analysis, it is certainly possible to reach informed inferences about the mythology before the conversion to Christianity-that is, when it existed as part of the pre-Christian religion of the Nordic peoples and their successors. From the perspective of the mythologies of the world, what is perhaps most important about these inferences is that this pre-Christian mythology was not a canonical mythology, since it almost certainly lacked a canon of sacred texts such as one finds in the great world religions of today. The focus of the book is not the mythology in and of itself, as would be true of a handbook, but rather how particular historical and intellectual circumstances formed conceptions about it."--

Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth

Author : Nickolas P. Roubekas,Thomas Ryba
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 405 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2020-07-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789004435025

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Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth by Nickolas P. Roubekas,Thomas Ryba Pdf

Taking its cue from Robert A. Segal’s work, Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth: Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal offers a set of essays by renowned scholars addressing the persisting question of how to approach religion and myth as academic categories.

Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas

Author : Pernille Hermann
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2022-08-22
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783110674958

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Mnemonic Echoing in Old Norse Sagas and Eddas by Pernille Hermann Pdf

This book brings together Old Norse-Icelandic literature and critical strategies of memory, and argues that some of the particularities of this vernacular textual tradition are explained by the fact that this literature derives from, represents, and incorporates into its designs mnemonic devices of different kinds. Even if Old Norse-Icelandic manuscript culture is relatively silent about the mnemonic context of the literature, the texts themselves exhibit multiple reminiscences of memory. By showing that this literature reveals glimpses of mnemonic technologies at the same time as it testifies to a cultural memory, this study demonstrates how ‘the past’, and narrative traditions about the past, were constructed in a dynamic relationship with ideas that existed at the time the texts were written. Moreover, the book deals with the function of memory in early book-culture, with metaphors of memory, and with mnemonic cues such as spatiality and visuality. With its new readings of canonical texts like the Íslendingasǫgur, the Prose Edda and selected eddic poems, as well as of less widely studied branches of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, such as the sagas of bishops and religious texts, this book will be of interest to Old Norse scholars and to scholars interested in medieval Scandinavia and memory studies.

Prolonged Echoes: The reception of Norse myths in medieval Iceland

Author : Margaret Clunies Ross
Publisher : University Press of Southern Denmark
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 51,6 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Fiction
ISBN : UOM:39015047590073

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Prolonged Echoes: The reception of Norse myths in medieval Iceland by Margaret Clunies Ross Pdf

Prolonged Echoes is the second volume in the two volume study of Old Norse myths and their meaning both for us and for medieval Scandinavians, -- some of whom we should thank for the myths' written transmission through the Middle Ages and into modern times. The subject of Vol. 2 is the reception and use of Old Norse myths by the Cristian community of medieval Iceland. It requires us to consider a wider range of Old Icelandic texts, including those studied in volume one but extending to works that, while not taking myth as their subject, utilise it and references to it in their larger discourse. A number of excellent general studies that are available to assist readers unfamiliar with recent writing on early medieval Scandinavia are listed as an addendum.

Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies

Author : Jürg Glauser,Pernille Hermann,Stephen A. Mitchell
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 1152 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2018-11-19
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783110431360

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Handbook of Pre-Modern Nordic Memory Studies by Jürg Glauser,Pernille Hermann,Stephen A. Mitchell Pdf

In recent years, the field of Memory Studies has emerged as a key approach in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and has increasingly shown its ability to open new windows on Nordic Studies as well. The entries in this book document the work-to-date of this approach on the pre-modern Nordic world (mainly the Viking Age and the Middle Ages, but including as well both earlier and later periods). Given that Memory Studies is an ever expanding critical strategy, the approximately eighty contributors in this volume also discuss the potential for future research in this area. Topics covered range from texts to performance to visual and other aspects of material culture, all approached from within an interdisciplinary framework. International specialists, coming from such relevant fields as archaeology, mythology, history of religion, folklore, history, law, art, literature, philology, language, and mediality, offer assessments on the relevance of Memory Studies to their disciplines and show it at work in case studies. Finally, this handbook demonstrates the various levels of culture where memory had a critical impact in the pre-modern North and how deeply embedded the role of memory is in the material itself.

Theorizing Myth

Author : Bruce Lincoln
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 328 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0226482014

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Theorizing Myth by Bruce Lincoln Pdf

In Theorizing Myth, Bruce Lincoln traces the way scholars and others have used the category of "myth" to fetishize or deride certain kinds of stories, usually those told by others. He begins by showing that mythos yielded to logos not as part of a (mythic) "Greek miracle," but as part of struggles over political, linguistic, and epistemological authority occasioned by expanded use of writing and the practice of Athenian democracy. Lincoln then turns his attention to the period when myth was recuperated as a privileged type of narrative, a process he locates in the political and cultural ferment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, he connects renewed enthusiasm for myth to the nexus of Romanticism, nationalism, and Aryan triumphalism, particularly the quest for a language and set of stories on which nation-states could be founded. In the final section of this wide-ranging book, Lincoln advocates a fresh approach to the study of myth, providing varied case studies to support his view of myth—and scholarship on myth—as ideology in narrative form.

Death Doesn't Discriminate

Author : Taylor Hathcock
Publisher : Covenant Books, Inc.
Page : 81 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2022-10-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9798886443226

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Death Doesn't Discriminate by Taylor Hathcock Pdf

Death Doesn't Discriminate is a preliminary study into Scandinavian women of the Viking age. The book examines the religious motivations that Scandinavian women had to convert to Christianity. Namely, the study seeks to answer why women found Christianity appealing and chose to become Christian, setting aside pagan belief systems. The depictions of women in each belief system is explored both in daily life and in the mythology that underpinned both beliefs. The argument is made that what appealed most to Scandinavian women was the Christian afterlife.

Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum

Author : Grzegorz Bartusik,Radosław Biskup,Jakub Morawiec
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 344 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2022-07-26
Category : History
ISBN : 9781000610383

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Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum by Grzegorz Bartusik,Radosław Biskup,Jakub Morawiec Pdf

Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum is one of the most important accounts documenting the history, geography and ethnology of Northern and Central-Eastern Europe in the period between the ninth and eleventh centuries. Its author, a canon of the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen, remains an almost anonymous figure but his text is an essential source for the study of the early medieval Baltic. However, despite its undisputed status, past scholarship has tended to treat Adam of Bremen’s account as, on the one hand, an historically accurate document, or, alternatively, a literary artefact containing few, if any, reliable historical facts. The studies collected in this volume investigate the origins and context of the Gesta and will enable researchers to better understand and evaluate the historical veracity of the text.

The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think

Author : Carolyne Larrington
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 346 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2023-05-23
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780500778470

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The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think by Carolyne Larrington Pdf

A fresh look at the stories at the heart of Norse mythology, exploring their cultural impact up to the present day. This brilliantly original and accessible guide explores how Valhalla and its Valkyries have inspired our cultural landscape, from Wagner to the Marvel Universe. Carolyne Larrington’s elegantly written retellings capture the beauty of the original myths, while also delving deeper into the history of their meanings, offering the reader an intelligent and up-to-date take on these powerful stories. A ruggedly handsome blond man swings his huge hammer. Gaunt-faced figures with icicle crowns and frost-rimmed cheekbones march from the north through an endless winter. These strange supernatural figures might sound familiar—and also like creatures of myth and legend. Yet they haven’t stepped straight off the vellum of ancient manuscripts. Rather, these compelling characters are contemporary reimaginings of mythic figures from Old Norse mythology. All speak to our contemporary hopes and fears, bridging the gap between a vanished medieval past and a vibrant, living present. Larrington guides us on an enchanting journey through centuries of heroism, cruelty, and magic, while also exploring how these stories speak to the enduring human condition. This book is for anyone who wants a deeper understanding of Norse mythology and its cultural resonances through the centuries.

The Norse Myths

Author : Carolyne Larrington
Publisher : Thames & Hudson
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2017-02-02
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780500773772

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The Norse Myths by Carolyne Larrington Pdf

Who were the Norse gods the mighty Æsyr, led by Óðinn, and the mysterious Vanir? In The Norse Myths we meet this passionate and squabbling pantheon, and learn of the mythological cosmos they inhabit. Passages translated from the Old Norse bring this legendary world to life, from the myths of creation to ragnarök, the prophesied end of the world at the hands of Lokis army of monsters and giants, and everything that comes in between: the problematic relationship between the gods and the giants, in which enmity and trickery are punctuated by marriages and seductions; the (mis) adventures of human heroes and heroines, with their family feuds, revenges, marriages and murders; and the interaction between the gods and mortals, as Óðinn, the Allfather, betrays his human protégés in order to recruit (dead) heroes for his army. Carolyne Larrington describes the myths origins in pre-Christian Scandinavia and Iceland, and their survival in artefacts and written sources, from Old Norse sagas and poems to the less approving accounts of medieval Christian writers. She traces their influences into the work of Wagner, William Morris and J.R.R. Tolkien, and even the recent Game of Thrones in the resurrection of the Fimbulvetr, or Mighty Winter.

Myths of the Pagan North

Author : Christopher Abram
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 44,8 Mb
Release : 2011-03-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9781441102003

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Myths of the Pagan North by Christopher Abram Pdf

As the Vikings began to migrate overseas as raiders or settlers in the late eighth century, there is evidence that this new way of life, centred on warfare, commerce and exploration, brought with it a warrior ethos that gradually became codified in the Viking myths, notably in the cult of Odin, the god of war, magic and poetry, and chief god in the Norse pantheon. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when most of Scandinavia had long since been converted to Christianity, form perhaps the most important era in the history of Norse mythology: only at this point were the myths of Thor, Freyr and Odin first recorded in written form. Using archaeological sources to take us further back in time than any written document, the accounts of foreign writers like the Roman historian Tacitus, and the most important repository of stories of the gods, old Norse poetry and the Edda, Christopher Abram leads the reader into the lost world of the Norse gods.