H R Ellis Davidson (1914–2006)

A man's heroic deeds will win renown, and his fine qualities will be passed on to his descendents. Such is the noblest form of immortality, and the great gods themselves achieved no more. [217]

Readable and clear, Davidson's slim narrative is not shallow summary but a muscular outline of the achievement and character of Norse mythology. The emphasis is analytic: Davidson identifies themes across myths and deities, summarises archaeological evidence and source materials, traces broad show more influences in modern belief and religion. Myths are not retold so much as characterised, and the people who believed and lived these stories are considered at the level of individual tribes and communities. Davidson avoids glossing over discrepancies, pointing out contradictory aspects of stories and especially of deities, reinforcing the major gaps in the historical record. For example, in the case of almost any deity except Odin, Thor, and Freyr, there is virtually no archaeological evidence of worship or cults, making clear how oversimplified are the popular characterizations of Heimdall, Loki, Balder, and others.

We find in the myths no sense of bitterness at the harshness and unfairness of life, but rather a spirit of heroic resignation: humanity is born to trouble, but courage, adventure, and the wonders of life are matters for thankfulness, to be enjoyed while life is still granted to us. [...] The dangers of this view of the world lay in a tendency towards lack of compassion for the weak, an over-emphasis on material success, and arrogant self-confidence: indeed the heroic literature contains frank warning against such errors. [218-19]

Undoubtedly some conclusions are dated but it should be fairly easy to determine which, based on where new evidence or sources became available since 1964. I suspect that Davidson will be wrong, when she is wrong, because pertinent source materials simply aren't available: she'll be wrong for what's requisite yet missing, and not wrong for making an untenable reading, or for neglecting some pertinent theme. All considered, a fine entry point for my renewed interest in the Norse tradition.

Man must not take himself or even his gods too seriously, and this is an attitude which goes deeper than the wit of Snorri, it is part of the spirit of the myths themselves. The exuberant exaggerations of the Irish sagas are not for the northern gods; Freyja, Thor, Loki have the robust common sense which the Vikings themselves admired hugely. [...] This sense of proportion ... helps to preserve in the myths a keen realization of the strength of fate. [217]

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To be confirmed: apart from Valhalla, open to a select minority, there is no afterlife for Vikings, nor immortality for their gods. There is, however, a conviction that life follows a cycle, that the Nine Worlds will be destroyed (including Valhalla) only to make way for something new, once again with Yggdrasill at the center.

Extensive notes, glossary, and bibliography suggest further reading and avenues of exploration. show less

We can see the myths as a vigorous, heroic comment on life, life as men found it in hard and inhospitable lands. The gods never cease their struggle against the creatures of cold and darkness. Thor, perhaps the best-loved deity of the north, is characteristic of the Vikings in his resolute pertinacity. The values for which he stood—law and order in the free community, the keeping of faith between men—were those by which the Vikings set great store, even though they themselves often show more appeared to the outside world as the forces of destruction unleashed. Odin represented the other side of life, the inspiration granted to the warrior and the poet, and the secret wisdom won by communication with the dead. In his cult and in the religion of the Vanir we see most clearly the shamanistic tendencies of northern religion, the emphasis on man's powers to reach out beyond this harsh and limited world. Above all, the northern myths are clear-sighted in their recognition of the reality of the forces of destruction. The fight in a narrow place against odds, which has been called the ideal of heroic literature in the north, is given cosmic stature in the conception of Ragnarok, the doom of the gods, when Odin and his peers go down fighting against monsters and the unleashed fury of the elements.

I have just finished a re-read of this book, which I first read in 1995/6. It was published in 1964, so there are probably more up to date books on the same subject, but it is a very interesting study of the Norse Gods and their Germanic counterparts.

Starting with what Snorri Sturluson wrote about the Gods and Giants and the structure of the mythological worlds linked by the World Tree Yggdrasill, the authors discusses what is known about each of the main Gods and some of the more obscure ones, how they may have developed from what was known about the Gods of the Germanic tribes on the borders of the Roman Empire, links to the Shamanism of Northern Europe and Asia, and the ways in which the representation of the myths may have been affected by contact with the new religion of Christianity.

I am left wanting to visit the Viking Age Gosforth Cross in Cumbria, and the Old Manor House at Knaresborough in Yorkshire, which was built round an oak tree whose branches used to form ceiling beams until they had to be removed in the late 20th century due to rot. show less

The great Scandinavian ship-burials must have been planned with deliberate use of religious symbolism, and one contemporary account by an Arab writer of the early tenth century certainly confirms this. In Ibn Fadlan’s detailed account of a cremation funeral on the Volga by Swedish merchant-adventurers in 921, we find reference to complex funeral rites, including songs, ritual actions and animal and human sacrifice. Of especial interest is his description of the ceremony where the girl who show more was to be offered up as a sacrifice as the bride of the dead chief was made to look through a frame into what appears to represent the Otherworld; she described it as green and fair, claiming to see her husband and her dead kinsfolk awaiting her.

This book attempts to answer the question of how we should "approach a religion of the past when it has left no creed for us to study, no sacred books or descriptions of rituals, no life of its founder and, indeed, little trace of the religious leaders and thinking minds who contributed to its development?" The author's answer is to put together a jigsaw puzzle from archaeological finds, extant myths and legends, sagas and poetry, the sparse historical descriptions of religious practices left by Tacitus, Ibn Fadlan and others, and tales of Christian saints destroying temples and toppling idols.

One of the archaeological finds mentioned is the Viking Age memorial stones of Gotland, which include this picture of Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ardre_Odin_Sleipnir.jpg

An interesting book that makes it clear how incomplete our picture of the pagan religions of Northern European and their entanglement with Dark Ages Christianity actually is. show less

These weapons have had a place in both literature and the history of technology since the second millenium BCE. The killing in the Iliad is mostly done with spears but there are enough mentions to believe the weapons were around by 800 BCE, if not before. Mr. Davidson concentrates on the weapon in England, with some mention of Ireland, Wales and Scotland. The references are well assembled, and the processes he surmises and describes are quite likely, so it is no surprise this book has been show more reprinted in this millenium. The prose is not lively. show less