Pre-Christian Nordic mythologies

Treading softly with the soul of a Viking

Anonymous — Mon, 04 Dec 2023 22:04:40 +0000

Treading softly with the soul of a Viking Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/04/2023 - 15:04

��ƷSM��ӰƬ researcher Mathias Nordvig joins The Ampersand podcast to discuss animism, Norse mythology and what it means to live on Earth

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It’s not hard to imagine Mathias Nordvig waking up under a thatched roof that doesn’t quite block the light of early morning stars. It’s easy to envision him waking in a Viking camp and taking his place in a snekkja longship, pulling hard on the oars as waves and the old gods roar all around him.

However, Nordvig, a teaching assistant professor in the Nordic Program of the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literature, is not just the Viking guy who knows a lot about swords. He carries the past and present inside him as he treads softly on the Earth, feeling a soul-deep connection to the rocks and the plants and the animals with which we share this planet. He revels in the wild around and within him.

He's also the man who can teach you about witchcraft and magic in Scandinavia, though not, to the disappointment of some students, how to cast actual spells.

He recently joined host Erika Randall, associate dean for student success in the College of Arts and Sciences, on "The Ampersand,” the college podcast. Randall—who also is a dancer, professor, mother, filmmaker and writer—joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

In a broad-ranging discussion involving dragons, Pearl Street, Viking camps and eyes of newt, to name a few, Nordvig and Randall discussed growing up in Greenland, alt-right appropriation of Viking lore and what it means to one part of the living, universal whole. Click the link above to hear the entire conversation.

Nordvig: I did an article on this alt-right manosphere personality called Jack Donovan, and I told him that I was doing research on his material, and then I wrote an article about him, and that article has been positively received by everyone including him.

��ƷSM��ӰƬ scholar Mathias Nordvig's research encompasses not just Vikings, but thousands of years of Norse mythology and history.

From what he's said to me, he feels that it's the most fair, scholarly assessment of what he's doing and who he is, so.

Randall: Wow, that's actually incredibly beautiful,

Norvig: I think so.

Randall: Yeah. 'Cause when do we ever all agree?

Nordvig: Exactly.

Randall: Especially about hard things.

Nordvig: Yeah, and then I had very liberal, academic colleagues and friends who were like, "Oh, wow, you're really calling him out on this and this and this," and I'm like, "Well, yeah."

Randall: (laughs) That's my job. And he still felt like he was present in the conversation and not being attacked.

Nordvig: Yeah, he felt that it was a reasonable presentation of how he's thinking. There are things that he was like, "Oh, I didn't actually realize that that's something that I was doing or incorporating," but otherwise, yeah.

Randall: What is the primary language that you would use that gets usurped by alt-right when talking about your area of research?

Nordvig: Well, what we have is this set of texts, literature telling us about Nordic mythology, primarily written in Iceland, but otherwise, some of it is also written in Denmark in the medieval period. And this is a retrospective type of literature, looking back on what existed in the Viking age and before that.

Randall: Yeah, because it's badass? Is this why people are looking back all the time, not just people who are hailing from this land, but... (laughing) I love the stance that you’re doing.

Nordvig: (laughs) There's definitely a lot of people who are like, "Oh, this is badass” nowadays. Back then, in the medieval period, it was still cultural currency, even though people had converted to Christianity. It was still really important cultural material that told these people in Scandinavia something about who they were.

Randall: But then, the appropriation into the alt-right world.

Nordvig: Yeah, so what happens next is that we have a lot of historical interest at different times after the medieval period from the 1200s and onwards. In the 1600s, we have a lot of scholars in Sweden and Denmark who are very interested in this, and this has everything to do with propaganda and the emergence of nationalism in Scandinavia, where Denmark is one empire.

It's a conglomerate empire with Norway, Iceland, and then you have Sweden, that's another empire, a conglomerate empire with Finland, sometimes Estonia, parts of Poland, and even parts of Germany, and they're rivaling.

Mathias Nordvig co-hosts The Nordic Mythology Podcast with Daniel Farrand.

And so, the scholars are trying to come up with explanations for why they're the coolest... Then, what you have from that moment on is this link between national identity and the Viking age, Nordic mythology and all that stuff, and that then becomes useful in different groups that have very distinct political aims. And this is where you also see it coming into the alt-right, just like you do with the Greek history and Roman history as well.

I think with the alt-right, they're very focused on what it means to be a man, and that's the connecting point. So, they look to these old…

Randall: Kind of hyper-masculine.

Nordvig: Well, they are hyper-masculine-ing it…

Randall: Yeah, they're verbing it into hyper-masculinity.

Nordvig: Yeah, but then back then, it was a mode of existing.

Randall: It's just how you had to show up.

Nordvig: Yeah, especially like, I would say warrior ideals and not necessarily something that any man would consider being a man, really.

So, that's also important to consider that a lot of the material that we have from that past has something to do with elite culture, with warrior culture, not with everyday culture. So, we have 10% and the rest, like the 90% of the population, we don't know much about what they did and how they thought.

Randall: But you do.

Nordvig: I try to figure it out, at least.

Randall: Yeah, yeah, so you don't just stay in that realm of the warrior.

I love when we're sitting in a room face-to-face with one another, and I'm hearing these stories of these myths. And then you're kind of a larger-than-life human. Like, when you stand up, you would hit the ceiling maybe a little bit. Your tattoos make you look bigger. You are fitting in this room, like this incredible giant who cares about the 90%, not just the big Viking story, and about the land as we walk on it.

So, you're doing this beautiful translation of, you show up like someone who I might think is gonna just tell me about swords. But you know things that are a lot more delicate about the heritage of heathenism, of living on the land with care, of showing up with old-way traditions in this contemporary world. Can you talk about that? I mean, it's like a living, walking paradox from my vantage, and maybe it's not so paradoxical. Maybe it's exactly who you are and exactly just right.

Nordvig: Well first of all, thank you for this description of me. It's very flattering. I think, like so many other people, I've been through different kinds of transformations in life, figuring out who I am and what I am and how I am. And I'd say that one thing that's always been with me is love and care for nature and the natural world. If nothing else, just in appreciation of it being there and being a space I can enter.

And that comes all the way from my childhood when I lived in Greenland where there was a lot of nature around you, a space that is, even if you're living in an urban space in Greenland, you're living in what we would classify as a wild place, because there's so much happening that we're not exposed to when we live in urban spaces.

Among the books Mathias Nordvig has written is Norse Mythology for Kids.

Randall: And as a child… you had free rein; you could just go into the world.

Nordvig: Yeah, yeah, we grew up with hunting and fishing and camping out there in what we classify as the wilderness. And the reason I use these roundabout ways of talking about it is because I don't consider it wilderness in that sense. I don't wanna make that distinction between civilization and nature or civilization and wilderness. I don't like that distinction, because it alienates that world from us, and I think that's really generally problematic.

Randall: So, the term “wilderness” for you is...

Nordvig: It's either something that gives us an idea that it's dangerous or allows us to romanticize it to an extent that I would say is not appropriate. And that comes from my perspective, that, well, everything in existence belongs to a kinship with us. So, we are related to all existing entities out there. I think the best way to describe it is that if I walk out there in my world, I can encounter a rock and realize that it's a person.

That’s how it works for me, and so that means that going on a hike in the Rockies is similar to taking a walk down the street. I don't feel like a guest. I feel like, generally, I would say that I feel like I belong.

In what I classify as the animist perspective on the world, relationality that you're established with these different entities out there doesn't necessarily preclude that you can be mean to them or you kill them, right? And what it really comes down to is to maintaining balance between yourself and that community of other-than-human-beings out there. That's something that I also feel that we have generally lost in our world. And this is at the root of the climate crisis that we are experiencing, that we're seeing.

I think if we had approached the world with that perspective of relationality, which does not necessarily exclude using resources, but it does require that using resources comes with a high level of responsibility. If we had approached the world like that, then I think that we would probably be in a better place.

Randall: Yes, and you have found the vehicle for your caring is going back into the roots of yourself, your life, your family, even though it sounds like you could be an environmental scientist, you could be an urban architect, you could be, and you do, write children's books, that there are so many ways to get at this kind of care, but did you find yours in the classroom or through this particular study because of the going into the self or into your history? Or are you looking at it from a psychological perspective or from this historical, where anger has been held in the stories of...

Nordvig: Social, cultural, historical, psychological, mythological… the whole. And what I'm familiar with when it comes to going to the roots, what I'm familiar with as an alternative way of thinking about the world, and an alternative way of understanding your place as a human in the world, is this thing we call Nordic mythology. I like to call it the Nordic Story Worlds.

Randall: Great, that's what I wanted from you. That's the umbrella, the Nordic Story Worlds.

Nordvig: Yes, and the reason I like to call it that is because mythology nowadays has been merged with fantasy. And these story worlds were not fantasy to the peoples who used them in their everyday lives. I don't want to say believed in them, because that's really inessential. What is essential is that back in the day, people walked around on a piece of land and told stories like these, because they were meaningful to their existence in that plot of land.

A central aspect of Norse mythology is Yggdrasil, a sacred ash tree that encompasses all nine worlds. (Illustration: The Viking Herald)

Randall: They served the moment.

Nordvig: They served the moment, but this also served a relationship to the land. The relationship to the rock, to the tree, to the bird, to the fish, to whatever animal would come there, and of course, also to the family.

So, in that sense, these stories are expressions of our human kinship with the world.

Randall: That pulls me into that question about how you use these traditions in your life now.

Nordvig: So, the thing is that, a story can be loaded up with, I don't know, swords and horses and carts and thatched roofs, and I dunno, whatever else existed in a space way back when. But that doesn't mean that that story doesn't have what are essentially, eternal truths in a way.

Randall: Thatched roofs are not eternal truths.

Nordvig: No, they're a result of the technological level that they were at, and that's why I wouldn't wanna go back to anything, because I could probably do quite well in a hut like that, but-

Randall: Not so much.

Nordvig: No, see, that's the thing. There's some people out here that wouldn't be able to do that well in a hut like that. And also, although I've spent a lot of time in my teenage years doing Viking age reenactment and actually stayed in huts like that-

Randall: You did?

Nordvig: Yes, and tents.

Randall: And were there dragons?

Nordvig: There were no dragons, at least none that materialized…

Randall: That others could see.

Nordvig: (laughs) Yes.

Randall: But you fought them, nonetheless.

Nordvig: Yes, (laughs) and I've sailed on Viking ships and that kind of stuff, it was a lot of fun. But I don't know what that life actually was like. I have an idea, but I don't know what it was like, and that's why I wouldn't wanna go back. So, what I would like to do instead is I would like to take the wisdom that these people had back then, and then bring it into our present, because our present, when you look at it very broadly, it seems like is lacking a lot of wisdom.

Randall: Yes, so living in a modern world with traditions is not a, there's no odds there. You're not at odds with that. You just find different ways and the different things that you need. And so, I see that, like you were saying earlier, as separate and that to pull them together and to realize that you don't have to just be hardcore in a hut to be connected to things that will then change your care for the world that you live in.

Click the button below to hear the entire episode.

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Top image: Viking boat by Daniel Oxford

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��ƷSM��ӰƬ researcher Mathias Nordvig joins The Ampersand podcast to discuss animism, Norse mythology and what it means to live on Earth.

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As all things Nordic become chic, scholar steps in

Anonymous — Tue, 21 Feb 2023 20:30:44 +0000

As all things Nordic become chic, scholar steps in Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/21/2023 - 13:30

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Through scholarship and a popular podcast, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ professor Mathias Nordvig brings the Viking Age to the 21^st century

We come from the land of the ice and snow
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.
The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands.
To fight the horde
Sing and cry
Valhalla I am coming.

- “The Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin

When Robert Plant sang the opening lyrics to Led Zeppelin’s raucous, enduring, 1970 anthem “The Immigrant Song,” he was looking all the way back to 8^th century CE, when three Viking longships are believed to have first landed in the British Isles.

A half century later, the Norse appear to have invaded once more, as Viking culture and all things Nordic continue to soar in popular culture. Old Norse gods such as Thor, Loki and Odin, command the screen at multiplexes, even as hordes of Europeans and North Americans have lustily embraced their Nordic roots through music, style and even religion.

Mathias Nordvig is an educator, artist, and more. Nordvig has a PhD in Norse mythology and teaches Nordic and Arctic cultures at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“It’s funny, to be honest, as someone who was interested in all this stuff back when I was in my pre-teens,” says Mathias Nordvig, a native of Denmark who grew up in Greenland and is now teaching assistant professor and head of Nordic Studies in the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the ��ƷSM��ӰƬ and co-founder of the popular podcast, Nordic Mythology Podcast.

“We saw something similar with the Celts and Irish and Scottish culture, which became a theme in Hollywood.”

Nordvig, author of Ásatrú for Beginners: A Modern Heathen's Guide to the Ancient Northern Way and Norse Mythology for Kids: Tales of Gods, Creatures, and Quests, is gratified by the embrace of ancient Nordic culture by modern Americans and non-Nordic Europeans.

“I think one reason Nordic stuff is so popular is that it’s relatively accessible, but still the distant past. … It’s an anchor point, something people can relate to, from the old land,” he says. “There is just enough mystique around it that you can add your own flavor.”

When Nordvig was growing up, he stood out for his keen interest in ancient Nordic culture even among his fellow Danes.

“I was like the weird Viking guy,” he says. “Now, all the sudden this has become mainstream.”

Nordvig knew exactly what he wanted to study when he went off to Aarhus University, and eventually earned a BA, MA and PhD in Scandinavian Studies. His PhD thesis, later published as Volcanoes in Old Norse Mythology: Myth and Environment in Early Iceland, explores how Viking Age Scandinavian immigrants used Old Norse tales and myths to understand the active volcanoes of Iceland, a geologic anomaly unknown on the continent.

“They used traditional stories to create a framework for understanding of what was happening” in the restless, fiery belly of the Earth, he says. “That’s why the Icelandic landscape is still ‘populated’ today with so many trolls and elves. It’s entirely different from Norway, Denmark and Sweden; it’s a landscape that lives.”

As a scholar, Nordvig has also explored Nordic witchcraft and magic. The publication of the notorious Malleus Malificarum, or Hammer of the Witches, in 15^th-century Germany prescribed death for “sorcery” and “witchcraft,” setting off centuries of violence against persons accused of being witches and warlocks, including in Christianized Scandinavia.

“The ideas … trickled down to become a schematic for people to get rid of their neighbors,” he says. “It was also used as a kind of low-key ethnic cleansing.”

Magic was part of Nordic culture well before the arrival of Christianity, Nordvig says, as evidenced by archaeological discoveries of “weird magical items” such as a pouch containing a mouse skeleton, owl vomit and herbs. Women he calls “female ritual specialists” were given high honor in pre-Christian Nordic culture, but denigrated as “witches” following the adoption of Christian ideas.

In 2019, Nordvig co-founded the Nordic Mythology Podcast with Daniel Farrand, owner of Horns of Odin, a company that sells Viking- and Nordic-themed goods and gear, after “stumbling on each other on the internet.”

“We decided to make a podcast to give people proper information about the Viking Age and Nordic mythology, and regularly send the message that this is something anybody can be a part of,” Nordvig says.

Since then, they have recorded more than 150 episodes, everything from interviewing scholars to reports from the Midgardsblot heavy-metal and Viking-culture festival in Norway. More than 1 million downloads later, the podcast is a gathering place for Nordic enthusiasts.

“It’s become one of the centers of community around Viking-related stuff. We get a lot of artists, scholars and an audience, and we connect everybody with each other,” he says.

Nordvig has practiced Ásatrú, “a modern spirituality based in the traditions, folklore, and mythology of Northern Europe and particularly Scandinavia,” for most of his life. His book on the practice explores the history, traditions, gods and goddesses, ancient texts, rituals, and the use of runes as a guide to contemporary practice.

One goal of all Nordvig’s work is to dispel persistent rumors of association between Nordic culture and right-wing, fascist and white-supremacist political movements, a lingering effect of the misappropriation of Nordic ideas and symbols in the modern era, Nordvig says.

“One important thing to keep in mind is that the whole Nazi and fascist movement in Europe was much more based in Christianity than anything else,” he says. “There were also these constructions, this ‘Nordic race’ nonsense. … They were just a bunch of people living in a corner of the world.”

And he eschews the stereotypical “masculinist view” that portrays the Vikings as the most “brutal, violent figure in European history. In fact, they were no more masculine or brutal or violent at the time than anyone else.”

Nordvig also tries to dispel stereotypes from the other end of the political spectrum: the Vikings were uniquely connected to nature or that modern Scandinavian states are a socialist paradise.

But, he says, Nordic myth and culture are anything but disconnected from the rest of the world.

There are strong similarities across cultures, continents and human beings, and there is a way to cultivate a relationship to your personal heritage that can be a healthy and helpful way of being.”

“If you look at the details of Nordic mythology, you’ll realize it’s actually not that different from some mythical systems in West Africa and the vodun religion,” he says. “There are strong similarities across cultures, continents and human beings, and there is a way to cultivate a relationship to your personal heritage that can be a healthy and helpful way of being.”

Nordvig recently decided to step down from co-hosting the Nordic Mythology Podcast to devote more time to his family and other projects, although he will still be a regular guest. And on Feb. 12, he launched The Sacred Flame Podcast.

“It’s about using Nordic myth in our lives today, how we can make use of these stories to rethink the way we live in modern society,” he says.

Nordvig encourages ��ƷSM��ӰƬ students to check out the Nordic Program.

“We explore great examples of what it looks like when an isolated corner of the world is tied in globally, both in the Viking Age and the modern era,” he says.

Through scholarship and a popular podcast, ��ƷSM��ӰƬ professor Mathias Nordvig brings the Viking Age to the 21st century

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