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This 1943 book uses a variety of evidence from archaeology and literature concerning Norse funeral customs to reconstruct their conception of future life.
Surveys the pre-Christian beliefs of the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples. Provides an introduction to this subject, giving basic outlines to the sagas and stories, and helps identify the charachter traits of not only the well known but also the lesser gods of the age.
One of a series about world myths and legends, this book describes the many myths associated with the Vikings. Through an examination of archaeological artifacts, history and literature, it reveals the ancient beliefs in the old Norse gods and the legends of the Viking world.
While much work has been done on goddesses of the ancient world and the male gods of pre-Christian Scandinavia, the northern goddesses have been largely neglected. Roles of the Northern Goddess presents a highly readable study of the worship of these goddesses by men and women. With its use of evidence from early literature, popular tradition, legend and archaeology, this book investigates the role of the early hunting goddess and the local goddesses who were involved in all aspects of the household and the farm. What emerges is that the goddess was both benevolent and destructive, a powerful figure closely concerned with birth and death and with destiny of individuals.
Fragments of ancient belief mingle with folklore and Christian dogma until the original tenets are lost in the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson illustrates how pagan beliefs have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition, and throws light on the nature of pre-Christian beliefs and how they have been preserved. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating the lost religious beliefs of Northern Europe.
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This study concerns the importance of the sword in Anglo-Saxon and Viking society, with reference to surviving swords and literary sources, especially Beowulf.
The Viking Road to Byzantium (1976) is a major study of the Vikings who travelled east, based on the evidence of written sources and archaeology. Clues to the movements of the eastern Vikings may be found not only in Icelandic skaldic verse and runic inscriptions on memorial stones, but in such unexpected places as a Romanian chalk quarry near the Black Sea, among the carved stones of ancient Thrace and in Constantinople itself, the Miklagard of northern literature.