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German & Celtic Women at War

Tacitus gives us some fascinating details in Books 7 and 8 of his Germania, written in about 98 CE, relating to the role of German women in war and battle. He points out that a major contribution to German military success lay in the fact that their fighting units were not made up of warriors randomly formed into motly crews. But rather are ‘composed of...
Valkyries

Valkyries – The Choosers of the Slain

Valkyrie which is composed of two words: the noun valr (referring to the slain on the battlefield) and the verb kjósa (meaning “to choose”). Together, they mean ‘chooser of the slain’. The Old Norse valkyrja is cognate to Old English wælcyrge. A malevolent female demon, a sorceress or a female witch. Among the Anglo-Saxons the valkyries were female spirits of carnage. So the nowadays picture...

Hamingja and the supernatural guardians of the North

Hamingja, as used in the sagas, stands for an abstract conception, that of something belonging to an outstanding person which is partly a matter of character and partly of personality, and partly something more than either—that strange quality of ‘luck’ or luck-lessness’ which attaches itself to certain individuals more than others. It is something which can be handed on after death, and it usually remains within one family. It is usually connected with the name, so that if a child […]...
Odin

Will the Real Odin Stand Up, Please?

Who’s Odin? To find Odin’s origins, how far back must we go? Although the most likely explanation for Snorri’s attempts to connect the Æsir with Troy is medieval literary fashion, it is tempting to see a possible source in folk memories of the migration of the Yamnaya culture from the steppes of the Caucasus and Urals into northern Europe four or five thousand years ago....

Children of Ash and Elm – A Vikings Story

Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves...
johannes bureus

The Enigmatic Johannes Bureus: Bridging Nordic Mythology and Renaissance Magic

In the annals of Northern Europe during the Renaissance, amidst the flourishing of Hermeticism, Kabbalah, and Medieval magic, emerges an intriguing figure whose life and work spanned the realms of pre-Christian mythology and esoteric Renaissance knowledge. Johannes Thomae Agrivillensis Bureus, known simply as Johannes Bureus (1568-1652), embodies this unique fusion of disparate yet intertwined traditions. Despite the scarcity of information about him, his contributions to the study of Nordic mythology and runology, alongside his engagement with Renaissance esotericism, mark him […]...
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