hello! at my high school, students can teach elective classes, and i want to teach a class about norse religion and mythology. i've only been researching it for around 5 months, but i definitely want to teach a class at some point, and this happens to be something that i'm very passionate about right now!

i've only just started brainstorming, but here are some things i thought i could talk about in my class:

• history of the norse peoples/getting oriented to the environment we're talking about: settlement of scandinavia and iceland, language, norse activities in other areas (the arab world, eastern europe, the celtic isles), and daily life for someone in norse society
• eddas and sagas/where a lot of our info comes from
• diversity in religious beliefs, some places worshipped a certain god more than other places
• creation myth, cosmology, worldview: vǫluspá, important beings like ymir, hávamál, yggdrasill, the different realms, animism, ontology, urðr/wyrd and ørlǫg, death, dreams
• the pantheon: æsir and vanir; mostly the gods who we have the most information for, but also maybe some of the more misty figures
• other beings: landvættir, ancestors, dísir, jötnar, álfar, etc.
• women's role in mythology: dísir, valkyrjur, fate, spinning, seiðr, goddesses' connection to these ideas
• religious practices: places of worship, religious/ritual objects, sprinkling blood on altars, sacrifices, etc.
• symbols: animals like horses and boar, ship symbolism, etc.
• magic: seiðr, galdr
• the conversion - changing social structures, adaptation, and preservation/remnants of some pagan beliefs: folklore, folk magic, witch trials, icelandic magical staves; modern etymology like nynorsk "orlog" and icelandic "fylgja"
• modern times: religious reconstruction, nazis coopting things like runes (if i don't have enough time in the semester i'll probably cut this part out)

so, i have a max of about a year and a half to plan this class. i'm mostly looking for suggestions about what sort of assignments to give (presentations, traditional tests, short/long answer questions, essays, readings, other things?), things i should do extra research on, and which sources would be good for teaching, but any advice is welcome! thank you :)

During my stay in Minnesota, I visited the Minnesota History Center. To my surprise, a display case - containing a horned helmet, a Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt, and a replica of the Kensington Runestone - also held one of the swords I recognized from Petersen’s publication. It turns out that this sword has been in the U.S. since 1949 and has never before been featured in a publication with photographs. I am therefore presenting its first publication here. Incidentally, it is a very interesting hybrid sword: it features a Type H hilt combined with a added Mannheim-type pommel. Read the full article here.

Hey yall!

I hope you’re having an amazing day!

I just wanted to ask, do you have any recommendations for good podcasts/audiobooks for learning runes/norse mythology?

Since i was little i had trouble focusing while reading instead i have the best focus when i listen to something

Thank you in advance everyone!

I came across something interesting while reading about Norse mythology.

In Lokasenna, stanza 9, Loki reminds Odin that they once mixed their blood and that Odin had promised not to drink unless Loki was offered a drink too.

I knew Odin and Loki were connected in the stories, but I hadn't realized this particular relationship was mentioned in the poem.

What I'm curious about is how much we can really conclude from that one passage. Are there other surviving Old Norse sources that help explain their bond, or is most of the familiar idea of their blood-brotherhood based on this stanza?

I'd love to hear how people here interpret it.

I'm genuinely curious about the role of völvas in Scandinavian society, and I want to separate historical reality from the pop-culture image. I'm trying to understand what we actually know from the sources and archaeology.

1. Social status: Were they respected, feared, or marginalized? Did their status differ depending on whether they were free women, slaves, or outsiders?

2. Rituals: What do we know about how they performed seidr? Are there descriptions of the actual process (trance, chanting, etc.) in the sagas?

3. Ritual objects and clothing: I've heard about staffs, cloaks, and specific garments. What were these objects, and what was their symbolic meaning?

I'm especially interested in any archaeological evidence and how it connects to the literary descriptions.

Thanks in advance for any sources or insights!

Hello, fellow beard enthusiasts.

I need a good book recommendation from you all. To be specific, I’m looking for a book that illustrates and explains the various types of weapons used by the Norse in the early Middle Ages.

It can be comprehensive, but I don’t want to be overwhelmed by pages and pages of text.

Basically, I need it to create a weapons list for a game I’m working on. I want to be as historically accurate as possible and need some inspiration, but it doesn’t have to be a doctoral dissertation. Thanks in advance for your replies. :)

I would also be very grateful for any information regarding weapon types from the British Isles, Franconia, and other cultures that may have played a role in the lives of the Norsemen.

Hi, sorry to bother, but my uni does not currently have access to Oxford Bibliographies in Medieval Studies. Does any of you have access and could send me the pdfs on Old Norse literary studies. Would be much indebted.

Sagas and Tales of Icelanders

Religious Instruction (Homilies, Sermons, etc.)

Contemporary Sagas (Bishops’ sagas and Sturlunga saga)

Rímur

Historical Literature (Íslendingabók, Landnámabók)

Kings’ Sagas

Saints’ Lives

Learned and Scientific Literature

Skaldic Poetry

Romances (East and West Norse)

Old Norse-Icelandic Sagas

Fornaldarsögur

Nordic Laws

Snorra Edda

Eddic Poetry

Vikings

Sermons

Rus in Medieval Europe

In the Prologue to the Prose Edda, Snorri presents the Æsir as men from Troy who travelled north and were later worshipped as gods. Thor is identified with Trór, a grandson of Priam, and Asgard is "Troy."

Snorri wasn't working in a vacuum. Around the same time, Icelanders were reading Trójumanna saga, a prose retelling of the Trojan War built mainly from the Latin "eyewitness" account credited to Dares Phrygius. Some things that stand out:

• The classical gods are given Norse names. Jupiter becomes Thor, and Priam builds a hall to him.
• Kassandra and Andromache take refuge in the temple of Frigg.
• Penthesilea's warriors are framed like shield-maidens.
• It reads like a saga: lineage, oaths, honor and feud, not Homeric epic.

Taken together, the Prologue and the saga show Christian Icelanders tying their pagan past to classical history, which made the old gods respectable ancestors rather than demons.

How do you read the Troy-origin idea? Straight euhemerism, a learned way to keep the myths in circulation, flattery of Norse kings, or something else?

Hey everyone,

I recently rewatched "The Northman" and it sparked a historical question. In the film, there's a male sorcerer who is dressed in women's clothing and practices magic.

From what I know about Old Norse culture, seidr (magic) was predominantly practiced by women (völvas). So I'm curious: how accurate was this portrayal?

Was it common for men to practice seidr, and if so, was wearing women's clothing a mandatory part of the ritual, or was it just a cinematic choice by Robert Eggers?

I'd love to hear your thoughts or any sources you might have on this. Thanks!

I'd written a paper about Loki's shoes, intending for it to be short, and asked folks on Reddit if they were curious a while back. I got some excellent feedback. So I've been working on that, and once again I have what I hope is a final (working) draft.

I thought I'd offer it up here for your enjoyment. I do have to give fair warning, though if you're interested. The working draft is full of my personality. Obviously anything I would submit to a journal would be stripped of most of that and sadly bare.

I'm open to questions and feedback, especially if something is confusing.

It's at my blog temporarily.

https://therivershaman.com/air-jotuns/

Hi, all! Sagas of the Icelanders was recommended on this sub, so i bought it as my first foray into Norse history, but i saw the pages were torn in some kind of triangular pattern. I just wanted to check with any of you who also have the book so i know if this is intentional or not. Thanks in advance!

I'm an American with norwegian family on both sides. On my moms side my great grandparents were always relatively connected with their norwegian blood, and it's always made me want to connect with that part of me too. There's a lot of ways I want to do that- but one of those methods is learning the old Norse mythology along with learning Norse magic practices (down the line.) I know the best place to start is reading the prose and poetic eddas however when starting they've been pretty hard for me to digest. Are there any sources that can help me learn in a way thats a bit clearer?

Where can I find authentic looking Norse Viking gear for a good cosplay!

I've been trying to recite the poetic edda in the same way they would have done it back in the day, but im having a hard time understanding how, like the tempo, structure, which frases to say when.

Thanks for any guidance!

I do have Jackson Crawford’s ‘The poetic edda’ but I’ve been trying to find some stories online for Skaði and Baldr. But can’t quite figure out what’s hocus or not. I’m at work and can’t watch the regular YouTubers I watch.

In Vǫluspá we're told that the world began with Ymir living in an empty gap ginnunga with no sand, sea, waves, earth or grass; Burr's sons raise up or otherwise reveal the ground, and they create or at least shape Miðgarð. Somehow in this process the Sun (which is in the south?), the Moon and the sky come into being, and the gods get to work ordering the cosmos.

Then in Vafþrúðnismál we get the extra details that all the different parts of the world were made from Ymir's flesh—but also that Aurgelmir, Bergelmir, Þrúðgelmir and apparently Vafþrúðnir were all born before then, and that Aurgelmir (same person as Ymir?) formed from the drops of atter from Élivágar. So here there's some kind of preëxistence before Ymir, which seems to contradict the former myth.

Snorri's account is a little more coherent, but even here I'm puzzled. He also starts his account with Ginnungagap (now a proper noun?); but also Niflheim and Muspell already exist, and the nine Élivágar flow from Niflheim, by some extremely convoluted process these combining to create Ymir, a cow called Auðumbla, and some leftover ice/poison/stones/salt (???).

Now to me this seems like a conflation of multiple stories on Snorri's part, because the actual process of what's going on is utterly incoherent. Daniel Sävborg's view is that Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál are completely separate stories that Snorri put together to make a coherent mythology—which sounds plausible enough—but then, they don't really make sense separately either.

In Vǫluspá there's somehow at least one living being present before any solid ground has been made, and then suddenly the earth was there the whole time and just needed to be lifted up by Búri's sons from... somewhere? I guess the implication could be that the seeress is leaving out the part where they kill Ymir and make the ground out of his body—but then, where on earth did they come from?

And in Vafþrúðnismál the world is very explicitly made from Ymir's flesh, but also he seems to have had several children before dying (who must have lived on some sort of surface?), and somewhere in the picture we have the Élivágar generating more jǫtnar out of poison (notably not Ymir's direct progeny.

Which makes me question Sävborg's confidence that these accounts have nothing to do with each other, and that Snorri's account was a complete innovation of his, since they both seem to have gaps the other fills. But Snorri's Edda doesn't seem like it could be the whole picture either, since it really does read like several unrelated stories jammed crudely together. If there is one story that connects the two, it seems to me that Snorri was at least partly in the dark about it, too.

I know the real answer is "No one knows," so I'm not expecting a satisfying explanation really. I'm assuming there were probably several different Norse creation myths in circulation, most of which are probably lost forever? But I feel like you can just make out the shape of a coherent narrative somewhere in there, even if it's too fragmented to be decipherable. Moreover, there are so many elements that are almost like other creation myths we know—Búri (?) is almost an earth-diver, Ginnungagap and Élivágar are sort of like Chaos or Abzu, Ymir and Óðinn are kind of *Yemo and *Manu—but different enough that you can't really draw any 1:1 correspondences.

It just makes me curious if there's any more scholarship trying to figure this out! Or any other Old Norse sources with any other accounts. Thanks for reading!

As many of you probably know, in 1964, the US Congress authorized the country’s president to “officially proclaim October 9 in each year as Leif Erikson Day.” Meaning they did not make it an official holiday that happens every year, but they let the president proclaim it as such annually. The purpose is not only to honor the Norse explorer, but also Nordic Americans and their contributions to American society.

A proclamation has been issued annually by every president since 1964, however I noticed this year that no such proclamation from Trump showed up on the White House’s website. After doing some digging on their website, I found that the White House did release a “statement/message on Leif Erikson Day" in which the president congratulated himself for a recent agreement with Greenland and Denmark. However, the statement included no proclamation of the day as Leif Erikson Day (e.g. something like: “by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 9, 2026, as Leif Erikson Day”).

Statements are not “Presidential Actions,” additionally, they are not preserved in the Federal Register. It is a technicality, but a technicality that means there was no official, nationwide Leif Erikson Day in the United States in 2026. Somebody in the Trump Administration messed that up; although they did make sure to proclaim Columbus Day as such this year.

Here is the 2026 Leif Erikson Day statement: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/10/presidential-message-on-leif-erikson-day/

Compare that to Trump's 2025 Leif Erikson Day proclamation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/leif-erikson-day-2025/

Reminder that submissions for the Medieval North conference are due on November 1st.

The conference shall be held from April 19-21, 2027 in the Edda auditorium at Háskóli Íslands and online.
This conference is an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate applicants at the master's and doctoral level and for early career researchers working in the field of medieval northern studies, e.g. postdoctoral fellows. Independent academics are also welcome to apply.
Applicants who have not presented papers at an academic conference before are especially encouraged to submit.
Our theme this year is "Between Worlds."
Interested scholars should submit an Outlook form with personal details (name, email, institution, etc.) and an abstract of 250-300 words by November 1st, 2026. Additionally, please indicate whether you intend to attend the conference online or in person. Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by a panel of specialists (PhD candidates and higher level). This selection committee reserves the right to make selections based on the quality of written abstracts, adherence to submission guidelines, and timely submission. For more information on the submission guidelines see our website: https://histudentconference.wordpress.com/.

The conference is held in both Icelandic and English. Individual paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes for discussion. In addition to presentations, poster sessions will be available for applicants to present their material in poster form. Applicants may apply for either a paper or a poster. The selection committee may offer a poster presentation to some paper applicants. Please direct any further inquiries to the conference committee via email: conference-mn2027@hi.is. 

After the conclusion of the conference, presenters will have the opportunity to submit their papers to the conference proceedings volume, which will be published as an e-book in the autumn of 2027.