When not one, but two 8th century mass graves emerged on the beaches of Salme in Saaremaa, Estonia, it marked a new chapter in scholarly inquiry into the Viking Era. Thoughtfully propped up in two military rowing vessels, sitting side by side, and stacked on top of each other, respectively, these 40 or so Scandinavian raiders received graves as shallow as they were ritualistic.
The finds brought renewed interest in the historical origins of viking piracy. A culture that came of age with the professionalization of the Germanic warband in the Roman Iron Age, which led to the emergence of a self-insistent aristocratic class, who built their identity around war, feasting, and huge halls. But their primitive adolescence goes even further back, to a dim past of steppe raiding-economies, and eerie coming of age rituals. And yet, one may discern the glimmer of an influence not quite of this world, of a new religion with the promise of a shimmering afterlife in the presence of the Lord.
In this episode, Brute Norse attempts to trace the idea of Valhalla, from the darkest of pasts, to the light in the end of the tunnel.
Hail Herjan! Hail Wodanaz!
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Some sources, reading, and mentions for this episode:
- Kershaw, Priscilla (2000). The One-eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-) Germanic Männerbünde. Journal of Indo-European studies Monograph No. 36.
- Ligotti, Thomas (2010). The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. Viking Press: New York.
- Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben (1983). The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society. Odense University Press.
- Moynihan, Michael (2017). From Householder to War-Lord to Heavenly Hero: Naming God in the Early Continental Germanic Languages. University of Massachussets Amherst.
- Nordberg, Andreas (2004). Krigarna i Odins sal. Dödsföreställningar och krigarkult i fornnordisk religion. University of Stockholm.
- Opedal, Arnfrid (1998). De glemte skipsgravene: makt og myter på Avaldsnes. Arkeologisk museum i Stavanger.
- Price, Douglas et. al. (2016). Isotopic provenancing of the Salme ship burials in Pre-Viking Age Estonia. Antiquity, 90. Cambridge Journals: Cambridge.
- Russel, James C. (1996). The Germanization of Early Medieval Christianity. Oxford University Press.
- Ystgaard, Ingrid (2014). Krigens praksis: Organisert voldsbruk og materiell kultur i Midt-Norge ca. 100-900 e.kr. NTNU.
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