Odin

This essay is a comparative study of certain elements in the three texts named in the subtitle above: Havamal, from the Elder Edda; The Dream of the Rood; and The Lord of the Rings. The paper will focus on selected passages, to examine their nature as turning points, cruces, within their narratives. The passages, and the works as a whole, have several similarities, for example each -Norse Myth, Anglo-Saxon poem, and twentiethcentury prose fiction -embodies aspects of the northern heroic ethos that so attracted Tolkien. (St. Clair) Moreover, each work presents one culture through the filter of another's world-view. Tolkien and the author of the Dream of the Rood both present Christian virtues through the veil of the northern heroic tradition, while Snorri Sturlason looks back at the Norse pagan tradition from a Christianised northland (Fouracre 498-9) much as Tolkien argued was the case with the Beowulf-poet. (MC, 26-27) However, the focus of this essay will be upon similarities of narrative structures and shaping within the texts.

Published in the heathen journal Ringhorn in the autumn of 2020. The article appeared in German, however I also added an English and Hungarian version. My main goal here is to introduce the reader into the basic ethical ideas of paganism, which rather leads to existentialphilosophy than strict morality. As an example to demonstrate these principles I give an analysis of Odin's lovephilosophy.

An updated and edited edition (Nov 2018) of the fully bilingual translation and commentary of the Old Norse poem Havamal. The poem of 164 stanzas has been translated from a more contemporary and poetic standpoint and is a work of both academia and poetry.

The purpose of this dissertation is to deepen the understanding of the Vendel period helmets, their meaning and who wore them. With the use of a modern theoretical framework and an updated list of helmets, and other sources like images and literature, we can understand that some parts of the helmets were more important than others in a larger picture. While the images probably had much meaning, it is the comb, eyebrows and animalhead that have been treated with special care. In the grave material, we can also see that the use of helmets in boat graves probably were to make the individual more anonymous and the role as a helmetbearer more apparent, with one exception in the Ultuna grave. In most of the cremation graves the helmets have been treated so that only some types of fragments have been left, leaving the bearer more as an individual with claims of power. Mainland cremation graves with helmets have mounds, with some exceptions. The helmet graves on Gotland are under flat land.

The aim of the paper is to examine the transformation of the Norse myths concerning Búri and Óðinn in the Marvel comics, and how it results in a distorted and quite erroneous impression among the readers with no substantial knowledge of the subject. This in turn makes us wonder to what extent the evidence in the Eddas and Sagas, themselves artistic forms from a later period, reflects the authentic myths and beliefs.

Undergraduate Dissertation- Grade 1:2

A comparison between Odin and Loki, focusing on the similarities in character and how these similarities seem to change in face of changing society, religion and belief. Focusing on a number of issues such as eschatology and cultural themes in religious literature.

So-called horned figures have intrigued scholars for a long time, these being anthropomorphic figures depicted on, or in the shape of artefacts which can be associated with speakers of early Germanic languages during the Younger Iron Age (550–1050).
Even though such artefacts have been known in scholarly circles since the middle of the 19th century, little has been published that focuses specifically on the horned figures, and most of what has been published treats them as little more than a side note. The number of discovered artefacts depicting horned figures has increased significantly in recent decades, which has led to publications on such artefacts becoming increasingly scattered and lacking in any clear overview. This development has led to some scholars basing their research on incomplete and out-of-date data. In connection with this development, it has become increasingly popular to identify the horned figures with Óðinn or other entities known from the Old Icelandic sources, a trend which is built on weak evidence.In reaction to this development, this MA-thesis aims to present an updated overview of all the relevant and scholarly published artefacts.
The figures under discussion are depicted with horn-shaped projections that are reminiscent of cattle-like horns. A total of 62 images depicted on a total of 60 artefacts are examined in this thesis. These artefacts have been found in a relatively large area including Anglo-Saxon England, the Viken region of Norway, Denmark, and Skåne, Öland, Gotland and Uppland in Sweden, along with isolated finds in Germany, Hungary and Russia.
The research has shown that the horned figures were a decidedly pre-Christian phenomenon. This phenomenon can possibly be traced to real-world ritual specialists in connection with social elites. The distribution of horned figures, however, is limited to certain areas in a Norse context, and nothing in the Old Icelandic sources can be connected with them with any certainty. It is therefore possible to conclude that the horned figures are a testament to the diversity of pre-Christian religions of the north, a phenomenon that was related to, but not the same as the picture preserved in the Old Icelandic sources.

The cult surrounding the complex and seemingly core Old Norse deity Óðinn encompasses a barely known group who are further disappearing into the folds of time. This thesis seeks to shed light upon and attempt to understand a motif that appears to be well recognised as central to the worship of this deity but one rarely examined in any depth: the motivations for, the act of and the resulting image surrounding the act of human sacrifice or more specifically, hanging and the hanged body. The cult of Óðinn and its more violent aspects has, with sufficient cause, been a topic carefully set aside for many years after the Second World War. Yet, with the ever present march of time, we appear to have reached a point where it has become possible to discuss such topics in the light of modernity. To do so, I adhere largely to a literary studies model, focusing primarily upon eddic and skaldic poetry and the consistent underlying motifs expressed in conjunction with descriptions of this seemingly ritualistic act. To these, I add the study of legal and historical texts, linguistics and contemporary chronicles. I further include the results of modern archeology and toponymy, with additional examples drawn from directly related and comparative time periods and cultures.

The primary chapters first assess Óðinn in connection with men and specifically, trees. These three elements (god, worshiper and object) can be seen to link into the overarching motif and practice of hanging, as observed in theophoric places-names of Scandinavia. It then follows to link the deity and the motif and practice of hanging more specifically, through close analysis of the gods’ own hanging and how that related to, or created, ritual practice. It is also essential to understand how methods of execution were understood in the Viking Age and as such, evaluate hanging’s social reputation in order to bring the effects of cultic practice into Viking reality.
Through contemporary poetic and historical examples, I examine the method and academically suggested motivations for this practice and by highlighting the specific factors of proper death, reputation, personal honour and essentially, lasting memory, find that the two do not match. Lastly, I examine the social response to death and the importance of entering the afterlife correctly and additionally, being left to rest peacefully. With hanging lying in direct opposition to this belief, it is possible to show that the practice of hanging, dedicated to Óðinn, is not a sacrifice of an individual to a war deity, but a multipurpose wartime sacrifice of knowledge as well as performing the role of highly destructive and dangerous political and social weapon.

This document is available in an edited/adapted format as the Kindle ebook entitled "The Deathly Gallows".

This thesis is a study of the cult of Óðinn as it seems to have evolved within the newly emerging warrior-based aristocracy of southern Scandinavia during the centuries prior to the Viking Age. By approaching sources critically and focusing on archaeological evidence, it looks specifically at how the deity developed within the said milieu and at the uses his cult may have served for those who worshipped him. It subsequently seeks to address other related questions such as when Óðinn came to become associated with warrior-kings in Scandinavia, where this seems to have occurred, and how it might have happened, including an examination of the social and political influences that might have been involved in the development. By means of this process, the study attempts to provide contextual insight into the relationship that seems to have existed between rulers and religion in pre-Christian southern Scandinavia. As is well known, the later medieval literary sources often portray Óðinn as being the ultimate sovereign, ruling over other gods and earthly rulers alike. This thesis attempts to shed some new light on the centuries prior to these accounts, offering a model of an earlier manifestation of the god who would become the “alfǫðr”.

"Odin: Myth, Sacrifice and Initiation" is first Czech monograph devoted solely to Old Norse Religion. It provides the reader on the one hand with an introductory overview of the cultural context, myths and rituals of pre-Christian Scandinavia of the Viking Age (as seen through the lens of post-christianization writing) and on the other hand an exposition focusing on the most prominent Norse deity - Odin. The author presents various myths, where Odin plays the role of the protagonist, and links various structural and motivic parallels into a network of meaningful connections. Apparently dissimilar myths - e.g. Odin's solitary self-sacrifice on the Cosmic Tree and his adventurous quest for the Mead of Poetry - are shown to revolve around common semantic and structural core, Monomyth, which is the common denominator of sacrificial and initiatory structure and of the "cosmogony by murder" pattern.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, UNCED), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, held 3rd-14th June 1992, launched the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) which operates through its annual roadshow the UN Conference of Parties (COP) that seeks to establish sustainable management of the global climate system.

The  'Earth Summit' by UN in 1992 brought the problems  in climate to the attention of even some of the world's most remote and isolated nations. One of these nations was the Hopi Nation in Arizona, a non-sovereign nation - which the UN labels as 'indigenous peoples'. In a long chain of events beginning from the League of Nations' decision in 1926 to deny the First Nations of Americas and the small island nations' representation in that international forum, its successor the United Nations, turned down four attempts by the Hopi Nation to raise the issue between 1948 and 1992. Finally, in the immediate aftermath of the Rio Earth Summit (1992), the United Nations Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar authorised the Hopi Nation to table the matter to the floor of UN General Assembly 10th-11th December 1992.

The First Nations of Americas Ethnoclimatology Motion and the Tradition-Keepers ('Faith-Keepers') background to that motion is elaborated here in this UNFCCC submission with further points were raised in 1st-2nd October 2018 at CRIAS conference. This contextualises the First Nations of Americas UN General Assembly Investigation Request 101292 which was the Concluding Plea of the World Indigenous Peoples' Joint Summit with the United Nations Parties ('Member States') Delegations to open the first UN Year of the Indigenous People (1993) to other ethnoclimatologies appearing world wide. The Geophysical Annotations were discussed at the Cochabamba-Tiquipaya Climate Summit (CMPCC1) in aftermath of the collapsed Copenhagen Climate Summit COP15 (2009) with the request from the UNESCO Delegation of the Plurinational State of Bolivia on 7th January 2010 and His Excellency President Evo Morales Ayma.

The key tenents of the Geophysical Annotations being:

(1) A signal noise from a substantial radiocarbon-dilution effect due to major sea level retreats and rises during the Ice Ages that depressurised methane clathrates - releasing copious amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into air from depressurised seabed clathrates and also from thawing terra firma permafrost; this results in regressive, or sideway, 14C  readings in tree rings ("tree rings in a wrong order"). Thus, the Ice Ages era (the last glacial maxium to holocene thermal maximum period) cores of the tree trunks can appear substantially 14C-younger than the tree trunks' latest (outermost) tree-rings which cannot be the case due to the extreme steadiness of the radiocarbon's decay rate.

(2) Methane accumulates to upper troposphere, stratosphere, and mesosphere: hence any methane signature in the ice cores is only from methane-in-transit. Additionally the global warming episode that ended the ice ages had heavy methane loads that warmed and melted away most of the era's recent ice surfaces, thus obliterating the-then-most recently laid down snow stratum (leaving behind the earlier less methane rich snow layers). This caused incomplete records (time gaps) in the ice cores, and hence "global warming" always appears "before" higher atmospheric CO2 or CH4 levels (hence appearing as if them being 'respondents', rather than the drivers of climate warning).

(3) Noting that the partial melting equations can also be run inverse direction, it is proposed that the Pleistocene glaciations resulted in damage to Peridotite which partially melted producing basalt deposition in a large scale onto the seafloor in vast effusive eruptions with field emission of heat rather than radial spot emission of heat like in modern-day Surtseyan eruptions that have only a minimal heat crossing to sea surface due to small spatial extent of hot subsea surface. The vaporisation of sea water in field emission is vast due to spatial extent of hot subsea surface greatly exceeding the thickness of overlying water column, leading to runaway snowfalls. This caused an inflated size hydrological cycle which effectively washed out atmosphere-generated radiocarbon while geological seabed-associated depressurised carbon-12 was being released en masse leading to negligible carbon-14 readings (the radiocarbon-dilution effect by the Pleistocene's hydrological cycle / sea bed depressurisation).

On these three premises, the First Nations of Americans Ethnoclimatology Motion at the United Nations General Assembly on 10th-11th December 1992 is proposed as a variant possibility to the climate theories advocated aggressively by the Western Group of Nations and their influential academia. Its implications to present-day climate change suggest that the Polar Ice Caps will continue on their much-faster-than-anticipated loss trajectory to violent collapses. This aspect was highlighted in Sea Research Society's Evidence Giving at the UK Houses of Parliament in Environmental Audit Committee evidence giving on 5th and 24th April 2017. The urgency of situation is underlined by the fact that despite world-wide economic shut down by covid-19, carbon dioxide has continued its rapid rise to 417 parts per million indicating that time to act is running out as the remaining North Pole marine ice cap is soon to melt away and then destabilise the surrounding glaciers post Arctic sea ice (most notably the Greenland Ice Sheet).

Despite being an uncomfortable film to try and analyse due to its viscerality, Nicholas Windig Refn's 2009 film "Valhalla Rising" piqued my interest for two main reasons; the film is largely atmospheric and is very obscure, in that it is mostly bereft of dialogue.  In fact its central character, played by Mads Mikkelsen, does not utter a single word throughout its entire 1 hour and 33 minute duration.

This maintained ambiguity of the character and his silence throughout the film allows the audience and the other characters to project their own assumptions onto all aspects of his character, from his motives, to his past, to his nature.  The Director does provide some framing for how to view the story, such as the setting of the film as a transitional point between Paganism and Christianity, but largely the film is open to a wide frame of interpretation, based on one's specific cultural situation. ...

http://www.whenthenewsstops.org/2017/07/valhalla-rising-cinematic-invocation-of.html

Abstract for The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman
Kitsune Books
April 20, 2012

Author
Lynn Gelfand

Title of essay
“The End of the World as We Know It: Neil Gaiman and the Future of Mythology”

A story about a struggle between old and new deities is not particularly modern. Many of our oldest religious texts and mythic traditions address this theme. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, however, depicts not simply a battle between old gods and new gods in a fight for survival. It demonstrates that if the pace of technology continues to accelerate at an exponential rate, old gods are not the only ones threatened; new and powerful gods can become obsolete within a matter of decades rather than centuries. American Gods aligns neatly with the theories of American inventor and author Ray Kurzweil who has argued that at the current rate of technological development, the next 100 years of human achievement will be the equivalent of 10,000 years of progress. If myths define and support a culture, as Gaiman’s body of work suggests, what happens when a culture evolves so rapidly and continuously that a multitude of traditional myths are in danger of being rendered irrelevant almost overnight, while newer myths are overturned long before they can take root? In a globally connected world that is subject to an ever increasing rate of change, will the very notion of myth itself become obsolete? An examination of Gaiman’s Sandman comic book series, his short stories (“Nicholas Was…,” “Sunbird,” “A Study in Emerald,” and “Goliath”) and his novel American Gods, in conjunction with Kurzweil’s theories, offers some provocative answers regarding the fluid nature of myth and its role in a world driven by technological change.

Ritgerð til BA-prófs í Íslensku sem öðru máli (Háskóli Íslands):

Fyrirliggjandi ritgerð er ætluð til þess að grannskoða hlutverk hrafna í norrænni goða-fræði og þá sérstaklega kanna sambandið á milli þeirra og Óðins. Reynt er að leita svara við spurningu um hvort hrafnar séu óaðskiljanlega tengdir Óðni eða ef þeir komi fram sem sjálfstætt goðmagn.
Tekist er á við rannsóknina úr tveimur áttum: Annars vegar eru greindar norrænar fornbókmenntir og fornleifar norrænu og germönsku járn- og víkingaaldarinnar hins vegar. Fyrst er fjallað um goðafræðilega hlið hrafna sem birtist í eddukvæðum, ritum Snorra Sturlusonar, dróttkvæðum og í þjóðsögulegri frásögn í Morkinskinnu. Svo er litið á samband hrafna við trúariðkun og hlutverk þeirra sem tákn í konungasögum, Landnámabók og Íslendingasögum. Loks er sjónum beint að fornleifafundum sem sýna, eða eru taldir sýna, hrafna, s.s. á veggteppum, steinristum, styttum, brjóstnálum, myntum og öðrum afurðum myntsláttu.
Í niðurstöðum er bent á helstu kenningar fræðimanna um eðli hrafna í norrænni goðafræði og lögð áhersla á fjölbreytni, mótsagnir og brotakennda arfsögn frumheimilda. Niðurstaðan er sú að hlutverk hrafna virðist vera fjölbreyttara en í kenningum flestra fræðimanna hingað til og að hrafnar eru ekki bara tengdir Óðni heldur einnig valkyrjum og e.t.v. öðru goðmagni. Þar að auki geta hrafnar einnig sinnt yfirnáttúrulega hlutverki sínu óháð öðru goðmagni.

Ez egy tanulmány és nem regény… habár sok történet szerepel benne, de elsődlegesen ezek elemzésével foglalkozom. Itt Odiné a főszerep, de nem csak az Eddákból ismert történeteivel, hanem a későbbi korok irodalmi alkotásait is szemügyre veszem.

Így kerülhet egymás mellé Odin (az Eddákból) Wotan (a Ring tetralógiából) és a Vad Falka vezetője (Herne vadász, Mikuás és egyéb zivatatdémon) egymás mellé.

Be akartam mutatni, hogy észak istenei nem haltak meg a vikingek távozásával, hanem megragadtak a népi folklórban és irodalmi művekben, hogy átadják nekünk azt, amit eddig is tanítani akartak.

Az hogy ez mennyire sikerült mindenki döntse el maga.

Az MTA SZAB 2011. évi pályázatán ennek a műnek egy rövidebb változata II. helyezést ért el…

The items found represent the high status equipment belonging to elite warriors who were mounted on horseback. Video from the excavations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lznKbpUULIE
These exclusive, often gilded, weapons and horse equipment are extremely fragmented, but at the same time they are very well preserved.
The artefacts are richly ornamented with both abstract and zoomorphic figures. A whole world of symbols is presented within these
small artefacts. This paper will examine the interrelationship of the figures and consider how they should be interpreted in relation to
the religious disputes of the period in which they were created. 350-550 AD. Keywords: War-booty, offering site, Migration Period, mounted warriors, warlords, Odin, divine leadership, Christianity, Norse religion,
animal style, symbols, identity

Scientists who consider myths as an expression of events that had really took place in the distant history try to turn the myths into more reasonable accounts by eliminating the “holiness” of myths and to uncover the hidden truths underlying them. According to them, the gods of legends are human beings who lived in the past. The kings who reigned in the past and heroes are narrated by deifying them in the legends. Our topic is Odin (Woden) which is the supreme god of Scandinavian mythology that portrays gods and superhuman beings and narrates the events in a fantastic and adventurous way, and which is the one who endowed people with the holy scripts (runic script) and taught them the arts. Snorri Sturluson (13th century), an Icelandic medieval historian, priest and statesman, describes Odin as a real historical character (not a god) that knows magic and sorcery, and as a real ruler (the king of As people), thus considered as a god wherever he goes in his saga corpus (Heimskringla); and the migration of Odin with his people from Asia, Turkland to Scandinavia is narrated at the introductory part of the same saga, the Ynglinga Saga). Saxo Grammaticus also presents Odin as a real character and a real king of ancient times in his work Gesta Danorum (13th century). Nowadays some historians consider the narratives about Odin as total legends, thus fabrication, while some others try to prove that Odin is a real personality, that the As people existed in history, and that a real migration took place, based on the data of Snorri Sturluson and Saxo Grammaticus. These scholars try to find out places (Asaland, Turkland) and identities of the folks mentioned in the Ynglinga Saga and Prose Edda. Various views co-exist about the ethnic affiliations of the As people and the real location of their motherland. A view identifies them with Turkic people that appeared as Az Budun in the Orkhon inscriptions, and proposes that this Turkic folk spread from Western Asia to Northern Europe. If this thesis is correct, Odin and his people had to have cultural properties peculiar to the As (Turkic) people and the migrated locations had to have elements related to Turkic culture. With a focus on this topic, in this paper, Turkic cultural elements are sought for; the similarities and compliance with Turkic social order and the notion of ruler-arch priest (secular leader, warrior leader as well as a person who functions as a fortune teller) in the image of high-class people (Odin, Jarl, Kon, Rig) in Scandinavian culture and Turkish shamanist elements in Odin are uncovered by considering Scandinavian mythology, Edda and Sagas; runic script culture is reviewed; and the etymology of the names of Scandinavian mythological heroes based on Turkish language is explained.

Nel Walhalla, il palazzo dorato degli Asi, durante i banchetti non si beve nettare, ma idromele. In questo palazzo sono portati anche i guerrieri caduti, gli Einherier, che affiancheranno Odino, il giorno della fine del mondo, nella lotta contro i Giganti. Il condottiero dei Giganti è Surtur, che avanza con il lupo Fenrir e con il serpente Midgard, e la sua spada brilla «più chiara di mille soli». Senza l'uomo non potrebbero esserci né gli Asi, né gli Olimpi. Il Walhalla confina con il bosco incantato di Glasor. Verso questo luogo cavalcano gli Einherier, dopo avere bevuto una prima volta l'idromele, e si preparano per l'estrema lotta. Gli Einherier, i «combattenti solitari», sono invitati al tavolo di Odino, amici e nemici, qualunque sia la causa terrena per la quale sono caduti. Viene in mente la massima di Nietzsche: ciò che conta non è la buona causa, ma la buona guerra. Nel bosco di Glasor si combatte duramente: i colpi sono mortali. Ma alla sera le ferite si richiudono; gli Einherier si riuniscono di nuovo intorno alla tavola di Odino e vien loro offerto l'idromele in coppe d'oro.

In my essay I will outline a brief history of the runes, the mythological and occult origins, how they are viewed as tools for self-improvement, How the people that practice them online view themselves. How they are represented online in the broader sense, what technology has done and will do to the future of these practices and why my thoughts on it as a positive step in tactile self-improvement are justified.

As Miguel A. Gomes Gargamala says in the introduction to the special issue, “A Pandemonium of Borges”: “Further references to Góngora are found in Philip Lavender's ‘Ludic skalds, Odinic visitors and the Origins of Jorge Luis Borges' Antiguas literaturas germánicas,ʼ an exploration of the genesis and the circumstances under which Borges' first extended study of medieval matters was published in 1951. Lavender builds on research by Vladimir Brljak and Jane Toswell, and entertains the possibility that Ímaz Echeverría's Spanish translation (1943) of Johan Huizinga's Homo ludens (1938) could have acted as a catalyst for Borges' Ancient Germanic literatures. Lavender, who rightly places Borges' early interest in the sagas within the context of the translations by William Morris and Eiríkur Magnússon he accessed as a young man, identifies Huizinga's understanding of the potential of playful poetic language to preserve old myths as of clear interest to Borges. The second half of Lavender's contribution examines with insight Borges' idiosyncratic use of his unacknowledged sources in his tale of Odin's visit to the court of Olaf Tryggvason, a favourite since he published his version several times.”

In this article the earliest scholarly reception of Beowulf, namely that produced in Denmark in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, is considered. Humfrey Wanley’s catalogue entry is used as a starting point to then consider how Jakob Langebek and Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin, the first editor, conceived of the poem. In particular, Thorkelin’s claim that the poem is a version of the story of Boe who died in AD 340 is taken up. While many have criticised and rejected this claim (as does this author too), nobody has investigated the full extent of what Thorkelin was proposing by making it or tried to understand how he might have arrived at the date and identification. Thorkelin’s source, Peter Friderich Suhm’s Historie af Danmark, based on Saxo and translated into German by Friedrich David Gräter, tells the story of Boe, son of Odin, born to avenge his brother Baldr’s death at the hands of Höðr. Thorkelin may have been influenced by Langebek’s genealogical linking of Odin and Beav (i.e. Beowulf) and thus accepted Suhm/Gräter’s version of their narrative, assuming that Beowulf represented a garbled version of the same: wishful thinking, misreadings and perhaps conscious obfuscation seem to have played a role in Thorkelin’s being able to see (or at least claim to see) a link between the two texts.