(Part 2) Best products from r/Norse

I'm no expert in Medieval or Old-Norse studies, however I've do have an interest in it & from some searching on various different aspects of the Vikings I come across these:

The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Volume 1. Prehistory to 1520 it's a anthological survey book consisting of both historiographical and hagiographical (biographies of saints) primary & secondary sources ranging from prehistory ( before historical events were documented) through to medieval history of Scandinavia. It's quite pricey but definitely worth the money if your serious...

>The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

The History of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Finland and Iceland) is similar to Cambridge History yet significantly cheaper

The Viking World by Stefan Brink & Neil Price is a mid-range anthological book compromising of many articles from various scholars.

>I would really appreciate material that covers linguistics.....philology, morphology and the like
As for the other categories, I would really appreciate some introductory material on archaeology.

This book will probably be the best one for you because it includes all of the above.

Myth and Religion of the North: the Religion Ancient Scandinavia this book is a good overview of the different mythologies before the christianisation of the nordics.

Women in the Viking Age is a good book on the niche subject area of Women roles within the viking age nordics & its various colonies (from Greenland to Russia). Jesch uses various pieces of evidence from archaeological finds, runic inscriptions, historical records & Old Norse literature.

I would also recommend you look into the Icelandic sagas & Eddas. I'd use SagaDB because there are many various different icelandic sagas & in a variety of languages including English, Icelandic & Old Norse. If you'd like to go about learning O.N. you check the Viking Society for Northern Research or check out the books: A New Introduction to Old Norse: I Grammar: 1 or Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas

If you're interested at all in the presence of the Vikings (and later scandinavians) in Eastern Europe check out Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe

Hopefully this helps if you have any more specific questions don't be afraid to ask :)

This paper is pretty narrow focused, but it does cover Christian symbols on rune stones in Sweden, as well as some discussion of the impacts Christianity had on viking age Sweden.

Edit: This book offers a general overview of the conversion of Northern Europe before and through the viking age. I haven't looked through all of it, but if you can get a copy, then you may find some useful material in it since it does cover Viking/Christian interactions in places like England.

Edit 2: Be careful about this source since it does come from a journal published by a Christian University, so obviosuly its coming from a biased place, but this article does offer a decent overview of the conversions of places like Iceland and things that may have been involved in those conversions. It is well written, but I would hesitite necessarily citing this as a source.

Edit 3: This thesis offers some useful discussion on Christianity in viking age Northumbria, and motivations for some of their conversions to Christianity

Edit 4: This books is very expensive, but it looks like it directly addresses your paper's topic.

The best FREE online source (http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ice/)

The most important works on the subject are the EDDAS, the poetic and prose and your collection cannot be called complete without them (http://www.amazon.ca/The-Prose-Edda-Mythology-Classics-ebook/dp/B002RI9HRU/ref=pd_sim_kinc_8?ie=UTF8&refRID=0M032MEETG0CVXAT539W) (http://www.amazon.ca/Poetic-Edda-Oxford-Worlds-Classics-ebook/dp/B00LKGBK1Q/ref=pd_sim_kinc_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1CGS5F6Q2WWB3HR2DKFR)

Sagas of the Icelanders is a pretty comprehensive book and an easier than scholarly text read (http://www.amazon.ca/Sagas-Icelanders-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0141000031/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425947217&sr=1-1&keywords=sagas+of+the+icelanders)

A great historical (a little mythology) view of the Vikings in John Clements the Vikings (http://www.amazon.ca/Brief-History-Vikings-Jonathan-Clements-ebook/dp/B00AJN9KHC/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1425947425&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=the+vikings+john+clements)

A great dictionary/listing of Viking myths can be found in Cassell's Dictionary of Norse Myth & Legend (http://www.amazon.ca/Cassells-Dictionary-Norse-Myth-Legend/dp/0304363855/ref=sr_1_cc_8?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1425947500&sr=1-8-catcorr&keywords=dictionary+of+norse+myths+and+legend)

A great source for the kings of Norway and their (mis)adventuires would be the Heimskringla but there isn't as much mythology in there, more historical (http://www.amazon.ca/Heimskringla-History-Norway-Snorri-Sturluson/dp/0292730616/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425947617&sr=1-1&keywords=heimskringla)

There's a bunch of other sagas you may want to sink your teeth into: Njal's, Grettir's, etc... If you want to listen about some Viking sagas via podcast, I'd recommend Saga thing, both entertaining and informative (https://sagathingpodcast.wordpress.com/)

You get whatever you like best. But like ProudNortherner said, you get what you pay for. If you want to go the cheaper route I'd recommend this one. For a cheap mjölnir it's good for the price, and the chain doesn't turn you green. I decided to go the cheaper route for my first hammer. Got this and was pleasantly surprised. But if you do have a little extra to spend, it'll definitely be worth it. It's also a replica of a mjölnir they found in Skåne, Sweden.

You will get more out of them without question, but is that "more" worth the effort? I don't think so, unless you want to really nerd out and/or pursue the subject academically. Get some good, recent translations by folks like Jackson Crawford or Carolyne Larrington. And then if you are still looking to squeeze some "more" out of the texts, go get some good, thorough introductive litterature to contextualize the sagas and poems you are reading, like The Vikings, A Handbook to Eddic Poetry, Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, The Viking World etc.

And this is coming from someone who do know Old Norse.

Bellows' translation annoys me because of the forced archaic language. However, it's totally free. Can't argue with free.

Hollander is better than Bellows, I think. However, his is a bit more "academic" than most - meaning it's somewhat dry.

Ursula Dronke's version is supposed to be an exemplary academic work, but it's extremely difficult (and expensive) to get. Never laid my hands on it personally.

Larrington is less academically accurate, but does a good job of capturing the "feel" of the poems while also trying to adhere to the poetics. Not great if you want an intense academic study, but pretty accessible overall.

But my favorite translation right now is Patricia Terry's. She has edited and removed chunks that she thinks don't really belong with the stories, rendering this one virtually useless from a standpoint of strict academics. However, where she has succeeded is in making the stories interesting and accessible to a modern audience.

As a skaldic performer, I value a person's attempt to create that "bridge" between the audience and the material. Is it accurate? No. Then again, no single translator is "correct" anyhow - we have to extrapolate and fill in constantly. All translation involves some amount of getting a "sense" for certain phrasing, and different translators will make different choices for different reasons.

I use Terry when I want to consider how to re-word a stanza or section to make it more accessible. More often than not, I consult multiple translations in conjunction with the original text to come to my own decision about the meaning of a given passage.

So, really, there's no definitive translation, and it really depends on your purpose. Hollander can serve as your sort of multi-purpose translation, but if you're primarily interested in the lore, Terry or Larrington might be more your speed.

That is true, in a sense, but not wholly accurate.

The idea that Ahti Saarelainen (his epithet means of the Island, the Island being a locale in Finnish mythology) is the same character as Lemminkäinen is for the most part a 19th-century literary invention. (A few poems suggest this, but it's evidently a late addition.) It is mostly the handiwork of a certain Elias Lönnrot, who, at the middle of the 19th century, compiled a number of Finnish and Karelian poems to create a Finnish national epic, the Kalevala (Finnish for "the land of Kaleva".)

In actual Finnish mythology, Lemminkäinen is a character who appears uninvited at to the feast of the gods, is killed by the host, thrown to the river of the Underworld (Tuonelan joki) and then resurrected by his mother. Since this myth includes the motif of death and rebirth and the name Lemminkäinen bears an similarity to the name Lempo and the Finnish word lempi or "love", some researchers have surmised that Lemminkäinen was actually a male god of fertility and love, somewhat akin to Freyr (or Baldr, considering the manner of his demise).

Ahti, on the other hand, is not a mythic character, but a mortal hero. Ahti is a warrior and a raider - a Viking, if you will - who swears a double oath with his newlywed wife Kyllikki that he should never again go to war, while she vows to never visit another man. A long poetic passage describes Ahti's ship lamenting its fate, having to lie on the shore while other ships bring home gold and silver. Kyllikki breaks her oath, and as a result, Ahti breaks out his weapons, assembles his old warband and sails off. He first goes to Finland to fetch Teuri, a skilled navigator. The ending of the poem is not known, since it usually trails off or merges into another narrative, such as the story of Lemminkäinen.

I hope this is helpful to you. Very little in general is known about Finnish mythology - we don't have any written pre-Christian sources for Finnish myths like we have for Norse ones, just oral poems. If you're interested in Finnish mythology, the best source is probably Wikipedia, although the quality of the articles varies heavily. There's also this paperback translation of the Kalevala, if you're willing to have a go at that.

Otherwise, English sources are practically nonexistent, which is a shame, really.




^This ^recontruction ^is ^the ^courtesy ^of ^the ^Finnish ^folklorist ^Matti ^Kuusi. ^The ^original ^poems ^are ^fragmentary ^and ^contain ^conflicting ^information, ^but ^this ^reconstructed ^version ^holds ^water ^reasonably ^well.

There's húsabœr or staðr. Both can mean "farmstead" or "farm" but húsabœr gives the connotation of the buildings that make up the farm or the dwellings for people/animals while staðr is closer to the English "-stead", meaning more of the land/location. Its also used widely to mean "place" or "spot."

There's also bú which means "farming" (like the action or business of farming) or "household" but is used for a lot of other things as well.

If you wanted to be a bit dramatic with the river bluff feature, you could use nes, which is "headland". So, for example, in Landnámabók, there's a "Herjólfsnes", which is the land taken by a man named Herjolf. I've seen a lot of personal names incorporated into geographical terms to make place names. So if your name was Aaron, say, you could then have "Aaronsnes" or "Aaron's Headland."

Edit: You could also do the same with staðr, so: "Aaronsstaðr".

You can look at Zoëga's dictionary to see more details on the terms.

In modern Icelandic, I found býli or kot (for a small cottage farm). See here and here.

Good luck and congrats on getting a farm!

Here are the books I started with that have been very helpful...

I did not start with the Eddas, I started with this book...

[The Norse Myths by Kevin Crossley-Holland](
http://www.amazon.com/Norse-Myths-Pantheon-Folklore-Library/dp/0394748468)

It is a modern launguage retelling of the Lore in an easier to follow format. I read this book first so I have an understanding of the specific myth then I dive into the Eddas.

I also purchased a few Asatru specific books that give an overview of the Gods and Goddesses, give a brief history lesson, and discuss some of the rituals of Asatru like Blots, holidays, toasts, ect.

Essential Asatru: Walking the Path of Norse Paganism

A Practical Heathens Guide to Asatru

and

Heathenry: A Study of Asatru in the Modern World This one I have not read yet so I have no idea how good it is.

I also purchased The Prose Edda: Norse Mythology

I have a really hard time reading the Eddas since I have always had a hard time with that type of poetry so I have only purchased the one Edda and I am slowly making my way through it. There are a few different Eddas out there so read reviews of them on Amazon before buying to see what everyone is saying about it.

I didnt do this with the Asatru Edda and after I bought it found out they tend to fill in holes in the myths with their own assumptions. Im not educated enough to give examples but most of the reviews mention it. I was advised not to read that version until I become more familiar with the Lore as it was written first. Also, this book is as physically large as a school text book. It is soft cover but very awkward to hold and read.

Good luck. I am very much a beginner but have found the above resources helpful.

books that i have read that you may enjoy.
"The Children of Odin"

"Myths of the Norsemen"

"The Poetic Edda"

"The Younger Edda"

also the AFA has some great recommendations on the Website

Enjoy! :)

Ok well I tried harder and I found a few on amazon, I'll share links in case someone else has trouble and googles something like the name of this thread.

Egil's saga in monolingual old norse

A series of dual language sagas I have one of these, It's ok but I should mention that while it's dual-lingual, the languages are not parallel. the Norse version is in the back. Another thing is that some of them are actually modern Icelandic, though that shouldn't make a huge difference because the language used is still archaic, just with updated spellings (og vs ok, hestur vs hestr)

Here's a good one, The poetic Edda in parallel text old-Norse and English That's the version I have and I think it's a really nice, high quality volume, but one thing I should mention is it's a scan of an older edition. Personally I don't mind that, I actually think it's kind of cool, but if that idea bugs you maybe check out this version which I don't have so I can't speak for the quality of it but it seems to be newly printed instead of scanned.

Yes, one of the prominent scholars at the moment is Neil Price. Here is a link to several of his papers. If you want something book-length, you're looking at spending textbook prices, but most beginners are steered toward the book by Davidson I have listed at the bottom to start, which covers the major theories about Vikings and their Germanic ancestors developed from archeological discoveries. You can always move on from there, and I would suggest Neil Price's full-length volumes.

Neil Price articles:

Passing into Poetry

An Eye for Odin? Divine Role-Playing in
the Age of Sutton Hoo
(This one is Anglo-Saxon based, but up your alley)

Twilight of the gods? The ‘dust veil
event’ of AD 536 in critical perspective

Davidson's book:

Gods and Myths of Northern Europe
(This has a lot more archeological evidence than it sounds like--you might need to skip the intro if you're already familiar with the mythology)

Edit: formatting

and now I've gone and bought [the book the reviewer recommended]
(http://www.amazon.com/Our-Fathers-Godsaga-Retold-Young/dp/0595299784/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1420472352&sr=1-5&keywords=you+should+buy+this+book+maybe). It looks awesome and I was sold by the reviews.

If you're looking for an intro, try Our Father's Godsaga by Viktor Rydberg. Other than that, you can't go wrong with the already mentioned one by Kevin Crossley-Holland.

Besides that, Dr. Jackson Crawford (Ph.D., Scandinavian Studies; Taught Old Norse, Norse myth, Sagas, Vikings, etc. at UCLA) is releasing a version of the Poetic Edda which is worth checking out. It's available for Pre-Order here