Are the gods the good guys or the bad guys? On that note, did ancient Norse people ever worship the jötnar? This week we take a look at what it really means to be a god in the Norse mind. Two surprising sources will help inform our analysis: a horse phallus preserved in herbs and an Icelandic volcano. Don't miss it!

Sources:

• Giants” by Margaret Clunies Ross in Pre-Christian Religions of the North volume II, 2020
• “Cyclical Rituals” by Jens Peter Schjødt, also in Pre-Christian Religions of the North volume II, 2020.
• “Ritual responses to catastrophic volcanism in Viking Age iceland: Reconsidering surtshellir cave through bayesian analyses of AMS dates, tephrochronology, and texts” by Kevin Smith, et al in the Journal of Archaeological Science volume 126, 2021.
• “Lausavísa from Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar in Heimskringla 1” by Diana Whaley in “Poetry from the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to circa 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1.” 2012.
• “The Poetic Edda”, transl. by Carolyne Larrington, 2014
• “The Prose Edda”, transl. by Anthony Faulkes, 1995

Contact:

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Music:

Celebration by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com) Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/