Warrior Nation2024-03-29T12:19:12ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoruhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2537164240?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://warriornation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor?groupUrl=seven-celtic-nations&user=2xu3p78gsrhv7&feed=yes&xn_auth=noAll the Norse Gods and Their Roles (A to Z) - Norse Mythologytag:warriornation.ning.com,2024-02-20:6193495:Topic:6673792024-02-20T13:15:37.640ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Z3wpJuDjnlg?si=GSuu_St5vtMBO1_9&wmode=opaque" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Basques and the American Indianstag:warriornation.ning.com,2018-10-24:6193495:Topic:5876672018-10-24T19:06:40.217ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
<p>I read an article that described Basques as the Indians of Europe. I’d never thought about it that way before. Was there something to it?</p>
<p>In the way the writer intended, maybe there was. Basques and Indians were in their places for a very long time, probably before anyone else. Archaeologists have found Navajo tools and Basque skulls dating long before Columbus or the Romans. Both groups had ways of living and speaking that didn’t seem to come from anywhere else, and both lived that…</p>
<p>I read an article that described Basques as the Indians of Europe. I’d never thought about it that way before. Was there something to it?</p>
<p>In the way the writer intended, maybe there was. Basques and Indians were in their places for a very long time, probably before anyone else. Archaeologists have found Navajo tools and Basque skulls dating long before Columbus or the Romans. Both groups had ways of living and speaking that didn’t seem to come from anywhere else, and both lived that way for millennia. Then outsiders and time came in and cleared it all away.</p>
<p>Photo by wikipedia</p>
<p>The Basques are the Indians of Europe: I liked the idea. I’d grown up in the Western United States with Basque ancestry, and I suppose I felt a kind of solidarity with Indians. But when I did my own amateur archaeology and dug into it, the solidarity crumbled. I looked at my own life. Shoshone and Bannock tribes lived close to my childhood home in Boise, Idaho. They might have been on the same spot where I played as a kid. What happened to them? Looking even further back in history, I knew Basques had a role in Spanish colonization in the Americas. It’s hard to stand with the indigenous when you’ve had all the advantages as a descendant of the newcomers.</p>
<p>That was the history. I couldn’t change it. When I looked at the present, Basques and Indians seemed even less alike. In my experience, Basques have been a living people, filled with energy. I went to a festival in Tolosa in the Basque Country or in Elko, Nevada and had the time of my life. Everyone was happy. There was a lot to be happy about. The worst was behind them. Everything was ahead. They had a government. Kids spoke Basque. The ATM spoke Basque. There was a past, present, and future.</p>
<p>Growing up in the West, Indians seemed only to have a past. Their past was also their present and their future. The kids from the Duck Valley Indian Reservation in southwest Idaho had a football team. They’d come to Boise on Saturday morning to play our team, and we beat them 56-0. We felt a little bad about it. What could we do? We didn’t think about their trip home.</p>
<p>Photo by wikipedia</p>
<p>It was just one of all the ghosts. Another came one afternoon years ago, when I worked at a bar in downtown Boise. I unlocked the door at 3, and a tall man with black hair was waiting to come in. We were alone, and we talked as he drank and I set up for the day. A bar with only one customer is a confessional. The customer tells the bartender everything. He told me he was Shoshone, a construction worker out of work but looking. It wasn’t easy, he said, and I agreed, although I knew by then that reality is different for people in a bar at 3 in the afternoon. And as he talked, his reality seemed ever more different. We hit it off. When he was out of bills and started to count change, I bought him a beer. Maybe I shouldn’t have, because he didn’t need it. It was probably a small reparation. Then people started to come in for happy hour, and he left without saying goodbye.</p>
<p>Later, when I finished work, I saw him alone in the alley, standing against a brick wall that was covered with peeled paint advertising a store that closed eight decades ago. He looked like somebody who wasn’t sure where to go.</p>
<p>I haven’t forgotten that. Right or not, in your mind one person can be millions. I drew a line from that alley to every wrong that had ever been inflicted on Indians. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. It was a forced relocation. The Choctaw, Seminole, Creek, and Chickasaw tribes were cleared out and sent to Oklahoma. U.S. forces rounded up 13,000 Cherokees and sent them west during winter. It was a thousand-mile walk. Many were barefoot. They drank stagnant water from ponds along the way. About 4,000 died of disease and exposure. It’s called the Trail of Tears.</p>
<p>Photo by wikipedia</p>
<p>You can go on for days and not come to an end. What about Basques? On April 25, 1937, more than 10,000 people were in Gernika for market day. In the afternoon, the German Condor Legion dropped bombs on them for hours. The town disappeared. The fires continued through the night and into the next day. They found the remains of 33, including two nuns, in the burning ruins of a Red Cross facility. They found the bodies of an engaged couple along the railroad where they had been shot as they tried to escape.</p>
<p>You can go on for days and not come to an end. But remembering only does so much good.</p>
<p>The Basques are the Indians of Europe: I think there’s something to it. The idea has made one thing clear to me. I was wrong about the Shoshone in the alley and the Duck Valley Reservation football team. I didn’t know them. They have a past, present, and future. Some tribes are wealthy, some are impoverished, some are active, some have living languages, and others are barely there. In 2008, the last speaker of the Eyak language died in Alaska. The Siletz tribe in western Oregon only has a few hundred speakers of its Athabaskan language, but now a few of them are teaching it in their schools.</p>
<p>A German doesn’t have to do anything to be a German. A Basque or an Indian has to do something more. That can be a blessing or a curse. An Apache woman can move into a city, do nothing, and a piece of the tribe dissolves. Or she can do something else. Basques and Indians, separated by thousands of miles and years, actually might have a few things in common, a similar past and some of the same questions: Does your background mean something to you? And if it means something, what are you doing about it?</p> Wolf Song Celtic Versiontag:warriornation.ning.com,2018-07-25:6193495:Topic:5797792018-07-25T22:22:01.005ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
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<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5FQMslKy_6I?wmode=opaque" allowfullscreen="" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe> Top 10 Gods and Goddesses of Celtic Mythologytag:warriornation.ning.com,2018-07-25:6193495:Topic:5798612018-07-25T22:09:59.579ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
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<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qW4W8BelQ5k?wmode=opaque" allowfullscreen="" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe> CELTIC MUSIC - FLUTE ( flauta celta )tag:warriornation.ning.com,2018-07-25:6193495:Topic:5798592018-07-25T21:38:35.918ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
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<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ePz3QSfJiuc?wmode=opaque" allowfullscreen="" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0"></iframe> WHO WERE THE HISTORICAL VIKINGS?tag:warriornation.ning.com,2017-11-28:6193495:Topic:5476242017-11-28T18:03:15.014ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
<p>WHO WERE THE HISTORICAL VIKINGS?</p>
<p>The prow of the Oseberg ship in the Viking Ship Museum in Olso, Norway (photo by Grzegorz Wysocki)<br></br> Many hundreds of years ago, warlords and warriors from agrarian, pagan Scandinavia set out from their rugged homeland as raiders, conquerors, explorers, settlers, and traders. Their efforts made such a decisive mark on the surrounding lands and societies that that period in history has been named after them: the Viking Age.</p>
<p>Historians have…</p>
<p>WHO WERE THE HISTORICAL VIKINGS?</p>
<p>The prow of the Oseberg ship in the Viking Ship Museum in Olso, Norway (photo by Grzegorz Wysocki)<br/> Many hundreds of years ago, warlords and warriors from agrarian, pagan Scandinavia set out from their rugged homeland as raiders, conquerors, explorers, settlers, and traders. Their efforts made such a decisive mark on the surrounding lands and societies that that period in history has been named after them: the Viking Age.</p>
<p>Historians have traditionally considered the Viking Age to have begun in 793, the year of the first major recorded Viking raid, which targeted a monastery in Lindisfarne, England. This is as convenient a date to use as any other, although Viking raids surely occurred earlier in the eighth century as well; English kings who ruled coastal areas had already begun organizing defenses against attacks by “seagoing pagans,” as one medieval English document puts it, before 793</p>
<p>The conventional date for the end of the Viking Age is 1066, the year of the last major Viking battle (the Battle of Stamford Bridge, also in England). By that time, the Vikings’ neighbors had figured out how to ward off their attacks, and the Scandinavian societies had largely been brought into the European cultural, political, and religious mainstream</p>
<p>A map of the Vikings’ raids, conquests, settlements, and journeys<br/> Between those two dates, the Vikings instilled dread and wonder in the minds and hearts of every people with whom they came into contact, who referred to them with epithets like “fearful wolves” and “stinging hornets. The Vikings invaded and plundered countless settlements along the coasts and rivers of the British Isles, continental Europe, and North Africa. They conquered and ruled much of England, Scotland, and Eastern Europe, founding the Rus dynasty from which Russia gets its name. They journeyed westward across the North Atlantic all the way to the eastern coast of Canada, discovering North America five hundred years before Christopher Columbus. Along the way, they founded the societies of Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and established settlements in Greenland that survived for centuries thereafter. They served as the elite guard of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul, Turkey), and maintained lucrative trade partnerships with the Arab world, which sometimes took them as far east and south as Baghdad.</p>
<p>Despite these tremendous accomplishments, the Vikings’ lives weren’t all glory and riches. Most Viking Age Scandinavians spent most of their time on their farms, where they had to undertake seemingly endless hard manual labor just to survive in their pre-industrial society in a cold climate. Starvation, disease, and attacks on their villages and hamlets were ever-present dangers.</p>
<p>The Viking social structure consisted of three main classes, with nobles (earls) at the top, ordinary free men in the middle, and slaves at the bottom. The rulers were chieftains, warlords who amassed their power through a combination of military victories and wealth. Men and women both had particular gender roles that they were expected to live up to. They spoke the Old Norse language, which, like modern English, was a member of the Germanic family of languages. Before they were converted to Christianity toward the end of the Viking Age, they practiced their own traditional polytheistic religion, of which what we today call “Norse mythology” was a part.</p>
<p>The word “Viking” is first attested in English in the ninth century. It seems to have come from the Old Norse word víkingr, which referred to a man who went on an overseas military expedition as a member of a group under the leadership of a chieftain or king. The English word “Viking” can be used in two different senses: in the stricter sense, it refers only to the Norse raiders of the Viking Age, and in the looser sense, it refers to all Scandinavians of the period. On this site, the word is primarily used in that second, looser sense.</p>
<p>The Vikings were called by many other names throughout Eurasia. Western Europeans most commonly referred to them as “Northmen,” “Danes” (even when they weren’t from Denmark specifically), or simply “pagans.” Those who settled in Eastern Europe were called “Varjags” or “Rus.” “Rus” seems to be derived from Roslagen, the name of a region in eastern Sweden from which many of them may have set out. “Varjag” comes from the Old Norse Væringr, which was probably a form of the title given to the Viking mercenaries who protected the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople. Væringr, in turn, likely comes from the Old Norse word vár, “oath,” a reference to the oath that such mercenaries would have sworn to defend the emperor. As with the word “Viking,” its usage would have expanded from that relatively narrow original meaning to refer to any and all Scandinavians of the period</p> LOKI BOUNDtag:warriornation.ning.com,2017-11-28:6193495:Topic:5474232017-11-28T18:01:15.586ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
<p>LOKI BOUND</p>
<p>“Loki” by Mårten Eskil Winge (1890)<br></br> Loki had always been more of a burden than a help to the other gods and goddesses. But after his contriving the death of Baldur and ensuring that that fair god would remain in the underworld until the cosmos was destroyed during Ragnarok, he went about slandering the gods at every opportunity. At last, the gods decided that his abuse had become too much, and they went to capture him.</p>
<p>Loki ran far away from Asgard. At the peak…</p>
<p>LOKI BOUND</p>
<p>“Loki” by Mårten Eskil Winge (1890)<br/> Loki had always been more of a burden than a help to the other gods and goddesses. But after his contriving the death of Baldur and ensuring that that fair god would remain in the underworld until the cosmos was destroyed during Ragnarok, he went about slandering the gods at every opportunity. At last, the gods decided that his abuse had become too much, and they went to capture him.</p>
<p>Loki ran far away from Asgard. At the peak of a high mountain, he built for himself a house with four doors so that he could watch for his pursuers from all directions. By day he turned himself into a salmon and hid beneath a nearby waterfall. By night he sat by his fire and weaved a net for fishing for his food.</p>
<p>The far-seeing Odin perceived where Loki now dwelt, and the gods went after him. When Loki saw his former friends approaching, he threw the net in the fire and hid himself in the stream in his salmon form so as to leave no traces of himself or his activities. When the gods arrived and saw the net smoldering in the fire, they surmised that the wily shapeshifter had changed himself into the likeness of those he intended to catch for himself. The gods took up the twine Loki had been using and crafted their own net, then made their way to the stream. Several times they cast their net into the stream, and each time the salmon barely eluded them. At last, the fish made a bold leap downstream to swim to the sea, and while in the air he was caught by Thor. The salmon writhed in the war-god’s grasp, but Thor held him fast by his tail fins. This is why, to this day, the salmon has a slender tail.</p>
<p>Loki was then taken, in his regular form, to a cave. The gods then brought in Loki’s two sons and turned one into a wolf, who promptly killed his brother, strewing his entrails across the cave floor. Loki was then fastened to three rocks in the cave with the entrails of his slain son, which the gods had turned into iron chains. Skadi placed a poisonous snake on a rock above his head, where it dripped venom onto his face. But Loki’s faithful wife, Sigyn, sat by his side with a bowl that she held up to the snake’s mouth to catch the poison. But every so often, the bowl became full, and Sigyn would have to leave her husband’s side to dispose of its contents, at which point the drops that fell onto the unrepentant god’s face would cause him to shake violently, which brought about earthquakes in Midgard, the world of humanity. And this was the lot of Loki and Sigyn until, as destined, Loki broke free from his chains at Ragnarok to assist the giants in destroying the cosmos</p> GODS AND CREATUREStag:warriornation.ning.com,2017-11-28:6193495:Topic:5474202017-11-28T17:59:18.376ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
<p>GODS AND CREATURES<br></br> Norse mythology is populated by a fascinating variety of beings. For the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples, humans were far from the only intelligent or conscious life forms in the world. Every animal, plant, rock, river, lake, and other element of what we today would call the “natural world” had its particular animating spirit. The world was also filled with countless beings who were strictly invisible, and most of the beings who are considered in the…</p>
<p>GODS AND CREATURES<br/> Norse mythology is populated by a fascinating variety of beings. For the pre-Christian Norse and other Germanic peoples, humans were far from the only intelligent or conscious life forms in the world. Every animal, plant, rock, river, lake, and other element of what we today would call the “natural world” had its particular animating spirit. The world was also filled with countless beings who were strictly invisible, and most of the beings who are considered in the articles in the “Gods and Creatures” section of this site fall into this category. These invisible beings include:</p>
<p>The Aesir gods and goddesses, the main tribe of deities. They live in the celestial fortress Asgard and maintain the order of the cosmos. Among them are: Odin, the wisest and most magically powerful of the gods; Thor, the fiery-tempered defender of Asgard; Loki, the cunning trickster; the youthful and universally popular Baldur; the loving sorceress Frigg; Heimdall, the ever-vigilant watchman; Tyr, the upholder of law and justice; Idun, the keeper of the apples of perpetual youth; Bragi, the court poet; and many other lesser-known gods and goddesses such as Vili and Ve, Forseti, Gefjun, Sif, Fjorgynn and Fjorgyn, Jord, Sol and Mani, Ullr, Hoenir, Vidar, Hodr, Vali, Hermod, and Lodurr.<br/> The Vanir gods and goddesses, the second tribe of deities. They tend to be more associated with the “natural world” than the Aesir. Among them are Freya, the most popular goddess among the heathen Norse, and Freyr, Njord, and Nerthus, the keepers and bringers of peace and wealth. The obscure figures Gullveig and Odr should probably be grouped with the Vanir as well.<br/> The giants, more properly called the “devourers,” the chaotic spirits of night, darkness, winter, and death, who are often the enemies of the Aesir. Among them are: Hel, the ruler of the underworld; the huntress Skadi; Aegir and Ran, the rulers of the sea; the hermaphroditic Ymir, the first being in the Norse creation narrative; Fenrir, the wolf who consumes Odin during Ragnarok; Jormungand, the sea serpent who encircles the land mass where humanity lives; Nidhogg, the snake who gnaws at the roots of the world-tree Yggdrasil; Skoll and Hati, the wolves who hunt the sun and the moon; Surt, whose flaming sword burns the world during Ragnarok; and Garm, an obscure canine who seems to have been, for all practical purposes, synonymous with Fenrir.<br/>
The elves, light, beautiful, demigod-like beings.<br/>
The dwarves, master craftspeople who live underground.<br/>
The land spirits, the animating spirits of a particular locality.<br/>
Human ancestors, the worship of whom was an integral part of the pre-Christian Germanic religion.<br/>
The valkyries, female helping spirits of Odin who influenced the outcome of battles and bore some of the dead back to Valhalla.<br/>
Ask and Embla, the first two humans to be created and the archetypes of masculinity and femininity.<br/>
The Norns, three extremely wise and powerful women who have more influence over the course of destiny than any other beings.<br/>
Others of Odin’s helping spirits, including the eight-legged horse Sleipnir and the ravens Hugin and Munin.<br/>
The Disir, female spirits whose precise identity is highly ambiguous and varies from source to source.<br/>
Lif and Lifthrasir, the human couple who survive Ragnarok and who are essentially synonymous with Ask and Embla.<br/>
Kvasir, the wisest of all beings, who was murdered and had his blood brewed into the Mead of Poetry.</p> Creation as Ongoing and Participatorytag:warriornation.ning.com,2017-11-28:6193495:Topic:5477222017-11-28T17:56:31.941ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
<p>Creation as Ongoing and Participatory</p>
<p>In the view of Aristotle and the authors of Genesis, creation was an event that happened only once at a specific time in the past and is now over forever. It was accomplished by a single being – Elohim, Yahweh, God, the “Unmoved Mover” – who by virtue of this act is the sole being in the universe who possesses any cosmogonic powers worth mentioning.</p>
<p>In the heathen Norse perspective, however, creation is ongoing and participatory. The Norse…</p>
<p>Creation as Ongoing and Participatory</p>
<p>In the view of Aristotle and the authors of Genesis, creation was an event that happened only once at a specific time in the past and is now over forever. It was accomplished by a single being – Elohim, Yahweh, God, the “Unmoved Mover” – who by virtue of this act is the sole being in the universe who possesses any cosmogonic powers worth mentioning.</p>
<p>In the heathen Norse perspective, however, creation is ongoing and participatory. The Norse creation myth tells only of the initial shaping of the world. As I describe in detail in the article on Yggdrasil and the Well of Urd, however, the character of the cosmos is always being reshaped. All of the inhabitants of the Nine Worlds have some role, some agency, in this process, however great or small. Even in the above tale, we see that the “initial” shaping of the cosmos was an act that occurred gradually and in numerous stages, and was accomplished by a very wide variety of beings building from the accomplishments of those who came before them. As the famous Scottish-American naturalist and preservationist John Muir wrote, “I used to envy the father of our race, dwelling as he did in contact with the new-made fields and plants of Eden; but I do so no more, because I have discovered that I also live in creation’s dawn.</p> THE CREATION OF THE COSMOStag:warriornation.ning.com,2017-11-28:6193495:Topic:5477172017-11-28T17:54:30.695ZLady Boruhttps://warriornation.ning.com/profile/LadyBoru
<p>THE CREATION OF THE COSMOS</p>
<p>Ymir being slain by Odin and his brothers (Lorenz Frølich)<br></br> The Norse creation myth or cosmogony (a view on the origins of the cosmos) is perhaps one of the richest of such accounts in all of world literature. Not only is it an exceptionally colorful and entertaining story – it’s also bursting with subtle meanings. Some of these meanings will be discussed below. First, here’s the tale itself:</p>
<p>The Origin of the Cosmos</p>
<p>Before there was soil,…</p>
<p>THE CREATION OF THE COSMOS</p>
<p>Ymir being slain by Odin and his brothers (Lorenz Frølich)<br/> The Norse creation myth or cosmogony (a view on the origins of the cosmos) is perhaps one of the richest of such accounts in all of world literature. Not only is it an exceptionally colorful and entertaining story – it’s also bursting with subtle meanings. Some of these meanings will be discussed below. First, here’s the tale itself:</p>
<p>The Origin of the Cosmos</p>
<p>Before there was soil, or sky, or any green thing, there was only the gaping abyss of Ginnungagap. This chaos of perfect silence and darkness lay between the homeland of elemental fire, Muspelheim, and the homeland of elemental ice, Niflheim.</p>
<p>Frost from Niflheim and billowing flames from Muspelheim crept toward each other until they met in Ginnungagap. Amid the hissing and sputtering, the fire melted the ice, and the drops formed themselves into Ymir, the first of the godlike giants. Ymir was a hermaphrodite and could reproduce asexually; when he sweated, more giants were born.</p>
<p>As the frost continued to melt, a cow, Audhumbla, emerged from it. She nourished Ymir with her milk, and she, in turn, was nourished by salt-licks in the ice. Her licks slowly uncovered Buri, the first of the Aesir tribe of gods. Buri had a son named Bor, who married Bestla, the daughter of the giant Bolthorn. The half-god, half-giant children of Bor and Bestla were Odin, who became the chief of the Aesir gods, and his two brothers, Vili and Ve.</p>
<p>Odin and his brothers slew Ymir and set about constructing the world from his corpse. They fashioned the oceans from his blood, the soil from his skin and muscles, vegetation from his hair, clouds from his brains, and the sky from his skull. Four dwarves, corresponding to the four cardinal points, held Ymir’s skull aloft above the earth.</p>
<p>The gods eventually formed the first man and woman, Ask and Embla, from two tree trunks, and built a fence around their dwelling-place, Midgard, to protect them from the giants.</p>
<p>Life Comes from Death</p>
<p>The first of the three conceptual meanings embedded in this myth that we’ll be considering in this article is that creation never occurs in a vacuum. It necessitates the destruction of that which came before it. New life feeds on death, a principle which is recapitulated every time we eat, to cite but one example. This constant give-and-take, one of the most basic principles of life, features prominently in the Norse creation myth. The world was not created ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), as it is in the Judeo-Christian creation myth, for example. Rather, in order to create the world, the gods first had to slay Ymir, the representative of primal chaos, whose undifferentiated state is shown by his being a hermaphrodite. As such, he is essentially an extension of Ginnungagap itself. After all, Ymir’s kin, the giants, are constantly attempting to drag the cosmos back toward the chaotic nothingness of Ginnungagap (and, during Ragnarok, they succeed).</p>
<p>Whenever they ate, cleared land for settlements, or engaged in combat, the Norse could look back to this tale of the gods killing Ymir as the archetype upon which their own efforts were patterned.</p>