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Hrist
In Norse mythology, a valkyrie (from Old Norse ''valkyrja'' "chooser of the fallen") is one of a host of female figures who decide who will die in battle. Selecting among half of those who die in battle (the other half go to the goddess Freyja's afterlife field Fólkvangr), the valkyries bring their chosen to the afterlife hall of the slain, Valhalla, ruled over by the god Odin. There, when the einherjar are not preparing for the events of Ragnarök, the valkyries bear them mead. Valkyries also appear as lovers of heroes and other mortals, where they are sometimes described as the daughters of royalty, sometimes accompanied by ravens, and sometimes connected to swans. The Old Norse poems ''Völuspá'', ''Grímnismál'', '' Darraðarljóð'', and the '' Nafnaþulur'' section of the ''Prose Edda'' book ''Skáldskaparmál'' provide lists of valkyrie names. Other valkyrie names appear solely outside these lists, such as Sigrún (who is attested in the poems ''Helgakviða Hundingsban ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Common Era
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the original Anno Domini (AD) and Before Christ (BC) notations used for the same calendar era. The two notation systems are numerically equivalent: " CE" and "AD " each describe the current year; "400 BCE" and "400 BC" are the same year. The expression can be traced back to 1615, when it first appears in a book by Johannes Kepler as the (), and to 1635 in English as " Vulgar Era". The term "Common Era" can be found in English as early as 1708, and became more widely used in the mid-19th century by Jewish religious scholars. Since the late 20th century, BCE and CE have become popular in academic and scientific publications on the grounds that BCE and CE are religiously neutral terms. They have been promoted as more sensitive to non-Christia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Paganism
Germanic paganism or Germanic religion refers to the traditional, culturally significant religion of the Germanic peoples. With a chronological dating, chronological range of at least one thousand years in an area covering Scandinavia, the British Isles, modern Germany, the Netherlands, and at times other parts of Europe, the beliefs and practices of Germanic paganism varied. Scholars typically assume some degree of continuity between the beliefs and practices of the Roman era and those found in Norse paganism, as well as between Germanic religion and reconstructed Indo-European religion and post-conversion folklore, though the precise degree and details of this continuity are subjects of debate. Germanic religion was influenced by neighboring cultures, including that of the Celts, the Roman people, Romans, and, later, by Christianity. Very few sources exist that were written by pagan adherents themselves; instead, most were written by outsiders and can thus present problems for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ragnarök
In Norse mythology, (also Ragnarok; or ; ) is a foretold series of impending events, including a great battle in which numerous great Norse mythological figures will perish (including the Æsir, gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdall, and Loki); it will entail a catastrophic series of natural disasters, including the burning of the world, and culminate in the submersion of the world underwater. After these events, the world will rise again, cleansed and fertile, the surviving and returning gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors, Líf and Lífþrasir. is an important event in Norse mythology and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory in the history of Germanic studies. The event is attested primarily in the ''Poetic Edda'', compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the ''Prose Edda'', written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In the ''Prose Edda'' and in a single poem in the ''Poetic Edda'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skalds
A skald, or skáld (Old Norse: ; , meaning "poet"), is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry. Skaldic poems were traditionally composed to honor kings, but were sometimes ex tempore. They include both extended works and single verses ('' lausavísur''). They are characteristically more ornate in form and diction than eddic poems, employing many kennings, which require some knowledge of Norse mythology, and heiti, which are formal nouns used in place of more prosaic synonyms. ''Dróttkvætt'' metre is a type of skaldic verse form that most often use internal rhyme and alliteration. More than 5,500 skaldic verses have survived, preserved in more than 700 manuscripts, including in several sagas and in Snorri Sturluson's ''Prose Edda'', a handbook of skaldic composition that led to a revival of the art. Many of these verses are fragments of originally longer works, and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also refer to the Scandinavian Peninsula (which excludes Denmark but includes a part of northern Finland). In English usage, Scandinavia is sometimes used as a synonym for Nordic countries. Iceland and the Faroe Islands are sometimes included in Scandinavia for their Ethnolinguistics, ethnolinguistic relations with Sweden, Norway and Denmark. While Finland differs from other Nordic countries in this respect, some authors call it Scandinavian due to its economic and cultural similarities. The geography of the region is varied, from the Norwegian fjords in the west and Scandinavian mountains covering parts of Norway and Sweden, to the low and flat areas of Denmark in the south, as well as archipelagos and lakes in the east. Most of the population ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Freyja
In Norse mythology, Freyja (Old Norse "(the) Lady") is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chariot pulled by two cats, is accompanied by the boar Hildisvíni, and possesses a cloak of falcon feathers. By her husband Óðr, she is the mother of two daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi. Along with her twin brother Freyr, her father Njörðr, and her mother ( Njörðr's sister, unnamed in sources), she is a member of the Vanir. Stemming from Old Norse ''Freyja'', modern forms of the name include Freya, Freyia, and Freja. Freyja rules over her heavenly field, Fólkvangr, where she receives half of those who die in battle. The other half go to the god Odin's hall, Valhalla. Within Fólkvangr lies her hall, Sessrúmnir. Freyja assists other deities by allowing them to use her feathered cloak, is invoked in matters of fertility and love, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odin
Odin (; from ) is a widely revered god in Norse mythology and Germanic paganism. Most surviving information on Odin comes from Norse mythology, but he figures prominently in the recorded history of Northern Europe. This includes the Roman Empire's partial occupation of Germania ( BCE), the Migration Period (4th–6th centuries CE) and the Viking Age (8th–11th centuries CE). Consequently, Odin has hundreds of names and titles. Several of these stem from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic theonym ''Wōðanaz'', meaning "lord of frenzy" or "leader of the possessed", which may relate to the god's strong association with poetry. Most mythological stories about Odin survive from the 13th-century ''Prose Edda'' and an earlier collection of Old Norse poems, the ''Poetic Edda'', along with other Old Norse items like '' Ynglinga saga''. The ''Prose Edda'' and other sources depict Odin as the head of the pantheon, sometimes called the Æsir, and bearing a spear and a ring. Wid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Völuspá
''Völuspá'' (also ''Vǫluspá'', ''Vǫlospá'', or ''Vǫluspǫ́''; Old Norse: 'Prophecy of the völva, a seeress') is the best known poem of the ''Poetic Edda''. It dates back to the tenth century and tells the story from Norse Mythology of the creation of the world, its coming end, and its subsequent rebirth that is related to the audience by a völva addressing Odin. Her name is given twice as Heiðr. The poem is one of the most important primary sources for the study of Norse mythology. Parts of the poem appear in the ''Prose Edda'', but the earliest known wholly-preserved version of the poem is in the Codex Regius and Hauksbók manuscripts. Preservation Many of stanzas of ''Völuspá'' appear first in the Prose Edda (composed , of which the oldest extant manuscript dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century () in which the stanzas are quoted or paraphrased. The full poem is found in the Icelandic Codex Regius manuscript () and in the Haukr Erlendsson ''Hauk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skáldskaparmál
''Skáldskaparmál'' (Old Norse: 'Poetic Diction' or 'The Language of Poetry'; ; ) is the second part of the ''Prose Edda'', compiled by Snorri Sturluson. It consists of a dialogue between Ægir, the divine personification of the sea, and Bragi, the god of poetry, in which both stories of the Æsir and discourse on the nature of poetry are intertwined. The work additionally includes tales of human heroes and kings. The overarching mythological setup gradually fades and the work becomes more of an early form of a poetic thesaurus of Old Norse, presumably intended for usage by skalds (Norse poets and bards of the era). Much of the work is focused on poetic phrases and descriptors. The origin of these '' kennings'' is given; Bragi delivers a systematic list of ''kennings'' for various Æsir, people, places, and things. He then goes on to discuss poetic language in some detail, in particular '' heiti'', essentially poetic synonyms or alternate words. For example, the simple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norse Mythology
Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The North Germanic languages, northernmost extension of Germanic mythology and stemming from Proto-Germanic folklore, Norse mythology consists of tales of various deities, beings, and heroes derived from numerous sources from both before and after the pagan period, including medieval manuscripts, archaeological representations, and folk tradition. The source texts mention numerous gods such as the thunder-god Thor, the Huginn and Muninn, raven-flanked god Odin, the goddess Freyja, and List of Germanic deities, numerous other deities. Most of the surviving mythology centers on the plights of the gods and their interaction with several other beings, such as humanity and the jötnar, beings who may be friends, lovers, foes, or family members of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prose Edda
The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's 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 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''. The ''Prose Edda'' consists of four sections: The Prologue (Prose Edda), Prologue, a euhemerism, euhemerized account of the Norse gods; ''Gylfaginning'', which provides a question and answer format that details aspects of Norse mythology (consisting of approximately 20,000 words), ''Skáldskaparmál'', which continues this format before providing lists o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Old Norse
Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their Viking expansion, overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with the Viking Age, the Christianization of Scandinavia, and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not precise, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects: Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as ''Old Norse''), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish. Old West Norse and O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
