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The Goths-a rumored people first known by history around the river Vistula in present Poland-was the people that more than other contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire. It was however also the Goths who preserved the Roman culture against other Germanic tribes. Earlier it has been generally assumed the Goths originated in Scandinavia but during the 20th c. many scholars have grown skeptical. The author has, using both Classical and Nordic sources and supplementary sciences, made probable there is an intimate connection between the Goths and the Nordic countries. Consequently it is quite possible that at least part of the Goths have a Nordic origin. The book rests on the basic hypothesis...
March and live with the Gothic tribes as they soar across Europe and struggle against their enemies. Join them in their battles, their joys and sorrows, the horrific wars against the Roman Empire and their search for a permanent homeland. These are stories told by the Goths themselves, each in his or her own words, placing you in their midst as a first-hand observer of one of the most violent epochs of change in European history.
This book presents a new window on the legal system of Ancient Israel. Building on the understanding that Israel was a society where writing was the medium for some forms of discourse but not others, where written texts were performed orally and rewritten from oral performances, Robert D. Miller II, OFS, examines law and jurisprudence in this oral-and-literate world. Using Iceland as an ethnographic analogy, Miller shows how law was practiced, performed, and transmitted; the way written artifacts of the law fit into oral performance and transmission; and the relationship of the detritus of law that survives in the Hebrew Bible, both Torah and Proverbs, to that earlier social world.
This book examines the sustained interest in legends of the pagan and peripheral North, tracing and analyzing the use of an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend (Scandinavia as an ancestral homeland) in a wide range of medieval texts from all over Europe, with a focus on the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The pagan North was an imaginative region, which attracted a number of conflicting interpretations. To Christian Europe, the pagan North was an abject Other, but it also symbolized a place from which ancestral strength and energy derived. Rix maps how these discourses informed ‘national’ legends of ancestral origins, showing how an ‘out-of-Scandinavia’ legend can be found in works by several fam...
This book analyses the Nordic pre-Christian ideology of rulership, and its confrontation with, survival into and adaptation to the European Christian ideals during the transition from the Viking to the Middle Ages from the ninth to the thirteenth century.
In An Arena for Higher Powers Olof Sundqvist investigates ceremonial buildings and religious ruler strategies in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (i.e. AD 550-1050/1100). The author offers here an account of the role played by religion in political undertakings among the pre-Christian ruling elites at halls and cultic buildings. Sundqvist applies a regional approach, so as to be able to account for the specific historical, cultural and social contexts. The focus is mainly on three regions, the Lake Mälaren area in Sweden, Trøndelag in Norway, and Iceland. Since the political structure and other contextual aspects partly differed in the three regions, the religious strategies for gaining legitimacy and authorization at the sanctuaries also varied to some extent in these areas.
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Focusing on visual sources and the cultural landscape, Kersti Markus offers a fresh perspective on the Baltic crusades in Visual Culture and Politics in the Baltic Sea Region, 1100-1250. The book examines how visual propaganda was used by the Danish rulers as an instrument in establishing supremacy in the Baltic Sea region. In recent decades, Danish historians have highlighted the central role of the Valdemar dynasty and the bishops supporting them in the Baltic crusades, but visual sources show how the entire society was mentally prepared for a journey with redemption waiting at the end. A New Jerusalem was being built in Scandinavia, and the crusade to Livonia was conducted under the banner of Christ. See inside the book.
The End of the World in Scandinavian Mythology is a detailed study of the Scandinavian myth on the end of the world, the Ragnarök, and its comparative background. The Old Norse texts on Ragnarök, in the first place the 'Prophecy of the Seeress' and the Prose Edda of the Icelander Snorri Sturluson, are well known and much discussed. However, Anders Hultgård suggests that it is worthwhile to reconsider the Ragnarök myth and shed new light on it using new comparative evidence, and presenting texts in translation that otherwise are available only to specialists. The intricate question of Christian influence on Ragnarök is addressed in detail, with the author arriving at the conclusion of an independent pre-Christian myth with the closest analogies in ancient Iran. People in modern society are concerned with the future of our world, and we can see these same fears and hopes expressed in many ancient religions, transformed into myths of the future including both cosmic destruction and cosmic renewal. The Ragnarök myth can be said to be the classical instance of such myths, making it more relevant today than ever before.
In Identity Formation and Diversity in the Early Medieval Baltic and Beyond, the Viking World in the East is made more heterogeneous. Baltic Finnic groups, Balts and Sami are integrated into the history dominated by Scandinavians and Slavs. Interaction in the region between Eastern Middle Sweden, Finland, Estonia and North Western Russia is set against varied cultural expressions of identities. Ten scholars approach the topic from different angles, with case studies on the roots of diversity, burials with horses, Staraya Ladoga as a nodal point of long-distance routes, Rus’ warrior identities, early Eastern Christianity, interaction between the Baltic Finns and the Svear, the first phases of ar-Rus dominion, the distribution of Carolingian swords, and Dirhams in the Baltic region. Contributors are Johan Callmer, Ingrid Gustin, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, Valter Lang, John Howard Lind, Marika Mägi, Mats Roslund, Søren Sindbaek, Anne Stalsberg, and Tuukka Talvio.