The Northern Path

The second edition of Neil Price’s The Viking Way: Religion and War in the Later Iron Age of Scandinavia is now available on Amazon. This is a groundbreaking study of the archaeological evidence for Heathen religious practices, and I’ve been eagerly awaiting the second edition. Here’s a description from Oxbow books:

The Viking Way: Religion and War in the Later Iron Age of Scandinavia, second edition. by Neil Price

Magic, ritual and sorcery are prevalent themes in medieval Icelandic sagas, but do they reflect reality or are they a literary and poetic construct? Neil Price’s thesis examines the literary and archaeological evidence for Old Norse sorcery and especially the important link between religion and war. He traces evidence for Viking mytholgy and cosmology, for the function, practice and practitioners of sorcery and war rituals. What he reveals is that violence played a crucial role in early medieval power systems in Scandinavia and in particular where there existed `a gender-encoded control of organised violence’. The evidence is placed within the context, and in comparison with, Germanic and circumpolar societies, and the archaeological evidence is accompanied by many excellent illustrations. second edition (Oxbow Books, forthcoming 2007)

Praise for the first edition of The Viking Way
“One of the most important contributions to Viking studies in recent years, quite possibly in recent decades … an exceptional book … essential reading” Dr. Matthew Townend, Antiquity

“This will be the starting point for any discussion of early northern religion from now on … this book is about to become famous … it is the sense of being invited back-stage in history to discover not magic realism, but the reality behind the magic” Professor Martin Carver, Fornvännen

“Takes the reader on an exciting journey … anyone reading Price’s book will never again be able to romanticise the Vikings and their time … here the terror and madness of the Viking Age Odin cult and its war-fixation emerge unvarnished … a book that is going to be debated for a long time to come” Professor Gro Steinsland, Collegium Medievale

“A big, packed, inspirational book … one of those that moves archaeology forwards, gives it nourishment and opens new avenues” Professor Else Roesdahl, Kuml

“This refreshing, thoroughly researched and inspirational book sheds exciting new light on the Viking Age. I am already recommending it to all my students” Dr. Terry Gunnell, University of Iceland

“A fresh and stimulating analysis which unites archaeology and ethnography and makes excellent use of both” Professor Richard Bradley, University of Reading

“A ground-breaking work of research in archaeology and the humanities, with an impact that will be felt for many years … it has turned our view of this period upside down” Professor Helle Vandkilde, University of Aarhus

In Sweden the book has received prizes from the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities and the Royal Gustav Adolf Academy, and in 2005 the author was awarded the prestigious King Oscar II Prize from Uppsala University.

The Troth’s reference work Our Troth: Vol. 2: Living the Troth is now available at Amazon.com. According to the Amazon blurb, “Volume 2 covers the Heathen holy year, lore and rites for the major holidays, and ways to work Heathenry into every facet of life. It includes an extensive glossary and reading list for further study.”

The trailer for the new Beowulf movie is out, and the producers are leading off with the most titillating scene they could come up with: a sultry CGI-enhanced Angelina Jolie, rising from a shimmering pool and murmuring seductive offers to the hero Beowulf.

Angelina Jolie seems to have developed a tail and a very pleasant mostly-Danish accent that sounds exactly like Mrs. Olsen in the old Folger’s coffee commercials. Alas, in the original poem Grendel’s mother (aka ‘Grendel’s dam’) was not a hot ticket but a repulsive monster whom Beowulf dispatched directly. But it’s always fun to rewrite your sources to draw a new audience. Hot dam!

The other day I was listening to a replay of a Fresh Air interview with a recently departed televangelist, who was lamenting, as though she lived a life of hardship, that her multiple homes were really very small — in fact the home in Texas was really just a cabin.

I snapped off the radio in disgust, grousing about how there are no Heathen interviews to listen to — and then smacked my forehead in a “coulda had a V8″ gesture, because of course there are! Ravencast is an Asatru podcast site featuring interviews on a wide variety of topics, from the practical to the spiritual. They interview everyone from newcomers to representatives of national organizations. There are also numerous thoughtful essay pieces on subjects ranging from fine points of lore to how to find a compatible group.

I always come away from this site feeling as though I’ve learned something new. Now that’s what I call fresh air!

The reconstructed Viking ship Havhingsten, or Sea Stallion from Glendalough, has reached Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands. The ship was towed most of the way across the North Sea from Norway.

The Sea Stallion is a reproduction of a 30 meter long Viking warship from Roskilde, Denmark. A team of 65 men and women is sailing the ship to Dublin. The project has a research goal of understanding how the Vikings accomplished their voyages. So far the project seems to be providing an additional lesson in how difficult sailing the North Sea really was: the weather has not been cooperating, and several crew members have been treated for hypothermia. Going on from Orkney, the Sea Stallion will have only a small support ship, so they will have to be more self reliant.

The voyage can be followed on several websites with journal entries, expert commentary, maps and videos, including the Havhingsten site and the BBC Viking Voyage site.

A Glad Midsommar to Heathens all over the world from the Northern Path.

Today I give thanks to Sunna for her warming rays, and for the summer’s bounty. This is a wonderful point on the wheel of the year, and a time for light and laughter.

Hail Sunna!

I’ve just finished Land of Wooden Gods, the first book in Jan Fridegård’s trilogy set in Viking-era Sweden. This trilogy should provide a bracing antidote for tendencies to romanticize Viking-era Heathen religion or tribal society. The story takes place near ninth-century Birka, and there is action and drama aplenty, including raids, fights, and one of the great nine-year blots at Uppsala.

However, the heroes are the household thralls, and we are given a very unsentimental view of their lives and challenges. The chieftain is not a noble warrior who doles out rings, but a bowlegged bully with food in his beard and a penchant for exposing babies. Holme the smith, the male protagonist, is trying to make a living and protect his family in a savage era. Fridegård narrates the tale with a cool, dispassionate, almost clinical tone that provides an ironic contrast to the vivid plot.

Religion certainly looms large in the story, where the Heathen majority are visited by eager Christian missionaries. But the overall view of religion of any sort is largely cynical, as befits a work of social realism.

The translation by Robert Bjork includes a lengthy essay placing Fridegård and his smith-hero in the larger context of Scandinavian literature. The book is out of print, but there are plenty of used copies at Amazon.com. It should provide an interesting read for anyone seeking an imaginative but unsentimental view of what it might have been like to live in a Heathen society on the verge of conversion.

The Norwegian paper Aftenposten reports that the Viking graves from the famous Oseberg and Gokstad ship burials will be reopened in September for further study.

Experts fear the human remains from Viking times may be in the process of disintegrating, if they haven’t already. They want to try to extract them to apply new methods of studying bone matter that can yield new information on the Vikings’ genetics and background.

Bone fragments from one of the Oseberg women were subjected to DNA analysis earlier this year. The tests showed a link to the Black Sea area.

Both ships can be seen at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

Swedish archaeologist Dr. Martin Rundkvist has written up a brief article on a gold foil figure die that his team found in April. He has published the preprint on his blog.

The die would have been used to make small gold foil figures known as guldgubbar. Guldgubbar, which are only found in Scandinavia, date from the Vendel period and depict men and women singly and in pairs. The figures have been interpreted as gods or heroes, although contemporary scholars are beginning to dispute this interpretation.

This piece depicts a single woman. The line drawing at left shows the woman’s dress and posture; she may be sitting on a low stool. Although the meaning of their iconography is unclear, guldgubbar are the expression of a high Heathen aristocratic culture. Rudolph Simek’s paper Rich and Powerful: the Image of the Female Deity in Migration Age Scandinavia is a detailed interpretation of exactly this type of figure. Simek’s student Sharon Ratke has a website where she shares her own research, along with more information such as maps, a bibliography, and lots of pictures.

In November 2006, the Danish Asatru group Forn Siðr dedicated a contemporary runestone outside the Danish village of Jelling. Jelling is the site of the famous runestone erected by Harald Bluetooth to announce the Christianization of Denmark. With the modern stone, Forn Siðr celebrated their ninth anniversary and their recognition by the Danish government — choosing Jelling as a location to “tell the world that we’re back, and that Harald failed in his mission.”

The Forn Siðr website features an informative account of the runestone project in English. The account includes a translation of chairman Linda Nørgaard’s dedication speech, which details the mixed reception that met this project:

…We’ve also heard from many Danes that rejoyce and look forward to the unveiling of this stone. People that regard Forn Siðr and the stone project as interesting, even sympathetical, and certainly not provocative. The anger we’ve met during this project, has almost exclusively been from christians. We have no perception of any anger coming from ordinary Danes regarding this celebration of our anniversary, only from christians. So I’m forced to say, short and simple, in a language everyone understands: We really can’t be bothered with it.

She also gives a vision for Asatru in Denmark:

That is why I hope that the work of art you’ll be seeing in a moment will bring people joy, and bring pleasure not only to the members of Forn Siðr, but to all people locally and nationally, who enjoys an exciting work of art and believes that there is room for The Old Ways in this country. Forn Siðr is non-missionary, which means that Asatru is a belief that everyone needs to find and embrace by themselves. But I personally believe that many more are ready to embrace Asatru, if only they can find the strength to free themselves of their given limitations and of other people’s expectations. So it’s not the purpose of the stone to facilitate mass conversion of people to Asatru, or in any other way force something upon people, but only to act as an inspiration in many ways.