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The Ledberg Runestone

Author : Patrick Donovan

Publisher : Diversion Books

Page : 241 pages

File Size : 32,62 MB

Release : 2018-01-30

Category : Fiction

ISBN : 1635761778

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The author of Demon Jack delivers the first novel ina daring Southern urban fantasy adventure perfect for fans of Jim Butcher and M.D. Massey. Magic: To some, it’s spectacle. To Jonah, it’s pure profit. A shaman for hire, Jonah can tap into his powers as easily as turning on a light switch, but the real money is in putting on a show. And after putting himself in debt to the Carver brothers, Asheville’s version of a mafia, in order to save his father’s business, he’s in need of some real money. Then a mysterious woman makes Jonah a staggering offer: $20,000—to find and deliver the Ledberg runestone, a legendary artifact of Norse myth. He’s suspicious of the case and the buyer, but when the Carvers threaten Jonah’s father if they don’t get their payment within the month, Jonah starts his investigation. As he explores Asheville’s seedy magical underbelly, Jonah discovers he’s not alone on the hunt. Will Jonah survive long enough to save his father, or will his past of swindling mortals and dodging debt collectors finally catch up with him? “The plot itself is fun . . . We have twists and an exceptional one at the end; but what holds it together is this unique character and the foundations it lays for something truly epic to come.”—Fangs for the Fantasy



Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages

Author : Stephen A. Mitchell

Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press

Page : 384 pages

File Size : 24,37 MB

Release : 2011-06-06

Category : History

ISBN : 0812203712

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Book Description

Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.



The Viking King’s Golden Treasure

Author : Sven Rosborn

Publisher : Rivengate AB

Page : 364 pages

File Size : 38,51 MB

Release : 2021-05-17

Category : History

ISBN : 9198678116

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Book Description

A newly discovered material rewrites early Danish Viking history. In 2014 a 11-year-old girl, Maja Sielski, and her younger sister Julia, made a sensational discovery among their deceased grandmother's belongings. They found a small golden plate with a Latin script telling the story of the legendary Viking king Harald Bluetooth. It soon turned out that the golden plate was once placed in the king's tomb and this tomb contained world's largest known golden treasure of Viking-era. A transcript of a previously unknown chronicle, "Gesta Wulinensis ecclesiae pontificum" from the 990s has also been found. The manuscript was written by the king’s own priest Avico, probably in an attempt to canonize the king after his death in year 985. Avico has been in the service of the king since the 950s. His extensive account gives a remarkable and dramatic picture of the Viking age Scandinavia during the 10th century. Here is a story of the struggle for power and the foundation of the future dynasties in Denmark, Sweden and Norway as well as Viking raids in Ireland and England. The account also tells of the founding of the legendary Viking fortress of Jomsborg and the fortress’s powerful mercenaries. The book describes in detail these unique facts, but it also gives an overall picture of the Viking Age era for those who are not familiar with the subject. The Curmsun Disc The Curmsun Disc is a concave gold disc of a weight of 25.23 grams (0.890 oz) and a diameter of 4.5 centimetres (1.8 in). The Danish Viking king Harald Bluetooth and the name of the stronghold of Jomsborg is mentioned in the latin inscription on the disc. The disc was reportedly found as part of a Viking Age hoard discovered in 1841 in the cellar crypt of the ruined chapel at Groß-Weckow village in Pomerania. This location is just east of the bank of the river Dievenow and near the place where the semi-legendary Viking stronghold of Jomsborg stood between the 960's and 1043. According to the author the entrance to the crypt was accidentally discovered by a 12-year-old Heinrich Boldt (actor Ben Affleck's said-to-be maternal great-great grandfather), who was playing with some younger children at a construction site near the ruined chapel.



Rune Stones

Author : Jan Paul Strid

Publisher :

Page : 128 pages

File Size : 26,95 MB

Release : 1991

Category : Inscriptions, Runic

ISBN :

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The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century

Author : Judith Jesch

Publisher : Boydell Press

Page : 384 pages

File Size : 20,41 MB

Release : 2012

Category : History

ISBN : 1843837285

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Book Description

Ethnographic studies trace the background to and impact of urbanisation and Christianisation, and the development of royal power, which stimulated the transition from the Viking age to the medieval period. Using the evidence of archaeology, poetry, legal texts and annals, this volume investigates the social, economic and symbolic structures of early Scandinavia at the time of the Viking expansion. The contributors provide an outlineethnography, covering dwellings and settlements, kinship and social relations, law, political structures and external relations, rural and urban economies, and the ideology of warfare. The topics are discussed through case-studies, illustrating the changing scholarly interpretations of this formative period in Scandinavian history. By addressing these key research questions, the contributions trace the background to and the impact of urbanisation and Christianisation, and the development of royal power, which stimulated the transition from the Viking age to the medieval period in Scandinavia. JUDITH JESCH is Professor in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham. Contributors: LENA HOLMQUIST OLAUSSON, BENTE MAGNUS, E. VESTERGAARD, BIRGIT ARRHENIUS, STEFAN BRINK, LISE BENDER JORGENSEN, SVEND NIELSEN, FRANDS HERSCHEND, NIELS LUND, DAVID N. DUMVILLE, JUDITH JESCH, DENNIS H. GREEN.



The End of the World in Scandinavian Mythology

Author : Anders Hultgård

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 474 pages

File Size : 18,5 MB

Release : 2022-10-08

Category :

ISBN : 0192867253

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Book Description

"A myth about the end of the world, the Ragnarok, was told among Viking Age Scandinavians. It is here reconsidered against a comparative background. The signs of the end, the final battle, the destruction and renewal of the world are the main themes distinguished. The myth was handed down in a Christian medieval context and the problem of Christian influence is thoroughly discussed. Particular attention is given to the Old Norse homilies as instruments of conveying Christian teachings to both the elites and the common people. The comparative framework is set up by traditions on the end of the world in early Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Graeco-Roman world, Celtic Europe as well as ancient Iran and India. The geographical area covered by these traditions formed a network of cultural contacts providing possibilities of various influences. These texts are studied in their own right to avoid superficial paralleling. The analogies with Iranian traditions are striking and include the idea of the cosmic tree, the role of number 'nine', and the myth of the heavenly warriors"--



God's Viking: Harald Hardrada

Author : Nic Fields

Publisher : Pen and Sword

Page : 549 pages

File Size : 23,9 MB

Release : 2020-02-19

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1473889901

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Book Description

An epic historical biography of the Norwegian king who laid claim to the thrones of Denmark and England. Harald Hardrada is perhaps best known as the inheritor of “seven feet of English soil” in that year of fateful change, 1066. But Stamford Bridge was the terminal point of a warring career that spanned decades and continents. Thus, prior to forcibly occupying the Norwegian throne, Harald had an interesting (and lucrative) career in the Varangian Guard, and he remains unquestionably the most notable of all the Varangians who served the Byzantine emperors. In the latter employment he saw active service in the Aegean, Sicily, Italy, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, and Bulgaria, while in Constantinople he was the hired muscle behind a palace revolution. A man of war, his reign in Norway was to be taken up with a wasteful, vicious, and ultimately futile conflict against Denmark, a kingdom (like England) he believed was his to rule. We follow Harald’s life from Stiklestad, where aged fifteen he fought alongside his half-brother, King Olaf, through his years as a mercenary in Russia and Byzantium, then back to Norway, ending with his death in battle in England. Praise for God’s Viking “A gripping story of the last great Viking who is remembered most for his boast to the Saxons that he had come to conquer their land and ended up with just enough to contain his body . . . . Most highly recommended.” —Firetrench



How Thor Lost His Thunder

Author : Declan Taggart

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 224 pages

File Size : 28,24 MB

Release : 2017-11-15

Category : History

ISBN : 1351674218

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Book Description

How Thor Lost his Thunder is the first major English-language study of early medieval evidence for the Old Norse god, Thor. In this book, the most common modern representations of Thor are examined, such as images of him wreathed in lightning, and battling against monsters and giants. The origins of these images within Iron Age and early medieval evidence are then uncovered and investigated. In doing so, the common cultural history of Thor’s cult and mythology is explored and some of his lesser known traits are revealed, including a possible connection to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Iceland. This geographically and chronologically far-reaching study considers the earliest sources in which Thor appears, including in evidence from the Viking colonies of the British Isles and in Scandinavian folklore. Through tracing the changes and variety that has occurred in Old Norse mythology over time, this book provokes a questioning of the fundamental popular and scholarly beliefs about Thor for the first time since the Victorian era, including whether he really was a thunder god and whether worshippers truly believed they would encounter him in the afterlife. Considering evidence from across northern Europe, How Thor Lost his Thunder challenges modern scholarship’s understanding of the god and of the northern pantheon as a whole and is ideal for scholars and students of mythology, and the history and religion of medieval Scandinavia.



Runic Amulets and Magic Objects

Author : Mindy MacLeod

Publisher : Boydell Press

Page : 300 pages

File Size : 13,61 MB

Release : 2006

Category : History

ISBN : 9781843832058

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Book Description

A fresh examination of one of the most contentious issues in runic scholarship - magical or not? The runic alphabet, in use for well over a thousand years, was employed by various Germanic groups in a variety of ways, including, inevitably, for superstitious and magical rites. Formulaic runic words were inscribed onto small items that could be carried for good luck; runic charms were carved on metal or wooden amulets to ensure peace or prosperity. There are invocations and allusions to pagan and Christian gods and heroes, to spirits of disease, and even to potential lovers. Few such texts are completely unique to Germanic society, and in fact, most of the runic amulets considered in this book show wide-ranging parallels from a variety of European cultures. The question ofwhether runes were magical or not has divided scholarship in the area. Early criticism embraced fantastic notions of runic magic - leading not just to a healthy scepticism, but in some cases to a complete denial of any magical element whatsoever in the runic inscriptions. This book seeks to re-evaulate the whole question of runic sorcery, attested to not only in the medieval Norse literature dealing with runes but primarily in the fascinating magical texts of the runic inscriptions themselves. Dr MINDY MCLEOD teaches in the Department of Linguistics, Deakin University, Melbourne; Dr BERNARD MEES teaches in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne.



Vikings

Author : Tristan Mueller-Vollmer

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Page : 342 pages

File Size : 32,64 MB

Release : 2022-03-29

Category : History

ISBN :

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Book Description

For three centuries, the Vikings changed the political world of northern and western Europe. This encyclopedia explores exactly how they did it in a highly readable and informative resource volume. How did the Vikings know when to strike? What were their military strengths? Who were their leaders? What was the impact of their raids? These and many more questions are answered in this volume, which will benefit students and general readers alike. The only encyclopedia devoted specifically to the topic of conflict, invasions, and raids in the Viking Age, this book presents detailed coverage of the Vikings, who are infamous for their violent marauding across Europe during the early Middle Ages. Featuring extracts of poetry and prose from the Viking Age, the book provides cultural context in addition to an in-depth analysis of Viking military practices.