scholarly journals Child abandonment as an indicator of Christianization in the Nordic countries

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 72-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juha Pentikäinen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
Child Abandonment ◽  
Far North ◽  
Social Tradition ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the Nordic countries, child abandonment seems to have been a commonly accepted social tradition until the acceptance of Christianity. When Christian influences reached the Far North, this old practice was gradually criminalized. When the old practice was criminalized by Christian sanctions and norms, the abandoned, murdered or aborted unbaptized children were experienced supernaturally. Their supranormal manifestations are described in Nordic folk beliefs and narratives concerning dead children; in Old Norse sagas, Swedish and Norwegian provincial and ecclesiastical laws and in Finnish runic poetry, all stemming from the Middle Ages.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
John Lindow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Norse Mythology ◽  
Poetic Edda ◽  
The Middle Ages

The title, Old Norse Mythology recognizes the fact that the mythology in question is recorded almost exclusively in the manuscripts of Old Norse literary tradition—that is, in manuscripts primarily from thirteenth-century Iceland. Since Iceland had converted to Christianity in the year 1000CE, the scribes who recorded the myths were Christians, and the myths can hardly have been sacred in their eyes. Nevertheless, there were mythographers such as Snorri Sturluson, who composed Edda, a handbook of poetics that includes a synopsis of the mythology, and such as the anonymous redactor of what we now call the Poetic Edda, a collection of mythic and heroic poems, and myths are displaced into history in the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. This chapter discusses the progression from the oral mythology of the Viking Age (c. 800-1100) to the written mythology of the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Monastic Musical Fragments from Iceland

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 416
Author(s):  
Gisela Attinger
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Monastic Community ◽  
Musical Traditions ◽  
The Middle Ages

Little has survived from medieval liturgical books in the Nordic countries other than fragments. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to state their exact provenance, but the contents sometimes indicate that they once belonged to a monastic institution. The article presents some of these sources, focusing on two fragments with music for the celebration of St Olav from Iceland and Sweden which show how an already established sequence of songs was adapted to fit the liturgical needs of a monastic community. In addition, it briefly presents two other Icelandic sources that follow monastic use and can shed more light on musical traditions in the Icelandic monasteries in the Middle Ages.

scholarly journals Der Runen-Stein von Rök und Snorri Sturluson - oder 'Wie aussagekräftig sind unsere Quellen zur Religionsgeschichte der Wikingerzeit?'

1990 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
Preben Meulengracht Sørensen
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
The Common ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

The article contributes to the discussion on source criticism within the research field of Old Norse religion. It examines the common assumption that archaeological sources are always to prefer above written sources from the Middle Ages where the Viking Era is described as such accounts are invariably tendentious and biased. Influenced by theories from the field of social anthropology, however, the article argues for the worth of written sources as a complement to the material ones. As an example, the effort to interpret the inscriptions on the runic stone from Rök are introduced. The article suggests that different kinds of source material offer a spectrum of possibilities out of which none alone, but rather all taken together, can deepen the researcher’s knowledge about the object under study.

Climatological Analysis of Old Norse Sailing Directions for North Atlantic Routes

2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard A. Power
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Middle Ages

The navigational feats of the Vikings and Norse in the Middle Ages have excited much interest and admiration, and we are fortunate that actual sailing directions for their various North Atlantic routes have been passed down to us in the Icelandic sagas. Using statistical data of modern wind conditions, this paper examines the sailing directions to determine whether the sailing times quoted are reasonable for a type of ship that was making these voyages in the Middle Ages. The findings show very good correlation between the calculated times and those of the sagas. The paper goes on to study an apparent anomaly for a particular route quoted in the sagas and concludes that the departure and destination points have probably been misinterpreted in the past.

Women and Images of Women in the Spanish Civil War

1991 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 213-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Lannon
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Virgin Mary ◽  
The Other ◽  
Far North ◽  
Spanish Women ◽  
The Military ◽  
Images Of Women ◽  
The Middle Ages

At the end of the Spanish Civil War in the spring of 1939, General Franco celebrated his victory by decreeing that full military honours be accorded to two statues of the Virgin Mary. The first was Our Lady of Covadonga, patron of the first great reconquest of Spain through the expulsion of Islam in the middle ages. Now, after removal by her enemies ‘the Reds’ during the Civil War, she had been restored to her northern shrine in Asturias, marking the completion of what the decree described as the second reconquest. The other statue was of Our Lady of the Kings (de los Reyes) in Seville, invoked—so the decree ran—during the battle of Lepanto against the Turks in 1571 and the battle of Bailén agaínst the French in 1808, and invoked once more in the first desperate days of the military rising in July 1936, when a victory for the ‘Red hordes’ in Seville might have changed the whole course of the war. In Covadonga and Seville, in the undefeated stronghold of the Virgin of the Pillar in Zaragoza, and across the length and breadth of the country, the Virgin Mary had saved Spain and deserved every honour and tribute. It was equally true that from far north to far south, Franco and his armies and his Nazi, Fascist, and Islamic allies had made Spain safe for the Virgin Mary. There would be no more desecrated churches, no more burned statues, no more banned processions, just as there would be no more socialists, anarchists, communists or democrats. Spain would be Catholic and authoritarian, and Spanish women could concentrate their energies on emulating Mary, and being good wives and mothers or nuns.

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