Ygdrassil, Pagan Gods and Christian Women.S:2, E:3

 As a kid, did you ever wish you could live in the ultimate tree house? Well, according to Norse mythology, you're living in one. Ygdrassil, with its nine worlds, branches that tangle with clouds, gods sliding down rainbows and wells that are just, well, wyrd. We talk in this episode about all of that and so much more. Gudrid The Well-Traveled remains our tour guide this episode through her Viking world. Thank you for listening!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Okay. Okay. Welcome to episode three, season two, episode three. We were just talking before we introduce it all. We were just talking about how last week and the week before went and our and uh more mine than yours struggle with pronunciation in all things in my life. Always, let alone, you know, Icelandic and all the things we're gonna tackle this season, right? So you have a friend that was listening to our podcast. So Flyger. Fliga is the what I thought was the fourth part of the human, which is the female who, which it is, it's your female ancestor that everybody has. It's the fourth feminine part of every man, woman, everybody who's like your guide.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

So tell me what she so she is like us, and so she sent me, she was driving this morning listening to us, and she sent me this help because she it sent her down a rabbit trail.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Okay, which is awesome. Um I'll sit in my car, and I was just listening to your podcast, and I think that word Oh shoot.

SPEAKER_05 1:19

Oh shoot, dang it.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Dang because it's spelled F I was coming she should just come on. She can be like our our segment, our pronunciation segment.

SPEAKER_05 1:40

Okay, let me try it again.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

And I was just listening to the podcast, and I think that word is pronounced Phil.

SPEAKER_03 2:10

Okay. So we have we are starting to have our our listeners see that. I love it because I was worried about our pronunciation as well. I mean, we want to at least get it right.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

So feel j.

SPEAKER_02 2:28

So F Y L G J A. So F Y L is a feel, feel sound, feel, feel and then G J.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

Yeah, just have to almost ja. I'm like, okay, I like that. That's yeah, that's your bossy feel job. That's your bossy bossy coming.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

That's that voice in your head. You now you have a a name for it.

SPEAKER_03 2:59

Yeah. So thank you to that listener. And um that's awesome. And yeah, we're always here to we're learning, so that's good. Get ready for more in this episode. Thanks for listening. So we are continuing with Gudrid, Thjorn Barn daughter. And where we left off last episode, episode two, you were starting to explain this idea of the Fuja. And also you were talking about the dis the other.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Yeah, which is more of the, oh, that's what we were going heading down. Yeah. That's what it was, because that is more in the realm of your, then you really get into your Norse, pagan elves, dwarves, giants, land spirits, sea spirits, and then you had your dister, your dis. Um, and those are female spirits and they're very similar. They're and they can be ancestral, but they're not part of your actual makeup of who you are. So a field ja is what is part of you. And I was thinking about that. When you die, then she goes to your next children. Um I was having really weird deep thoughts on that, like with reincarnation and stuff like that, but and how that would work. And then you don't have to go like spend a lot of time on it because how does any of it work? But um just kind of cool that that if you are pulling one thread is made up of lots of different strands, you know, going back to that image of pulling and then how that could be like each generation the same kind of ancestral spirit or whatever, going with I got woo-woo right away. You know, but that's that's the flight field ja and that um this stir is more of a religious female spirit. She can be your guide, she can whisper things about your past, your future, she can be in battle, she can be at childbirth. I mean, it's just kind of so there's kind of a difference there. And that's why I wanted to start maybe introducing the pagan side of things, the Norse religion, because that was directly involved with the Christianity, you know, migration or uh influence that was happening then too. These people were let's talk about splintered souls, you know, like they literally were having the the most opposite, and yet not. That's the interesting thing. These two religions, paganism and Christianity are different, absolutely, and yet when you step back at the human experience, there's a lot of similarities.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

But that's what I think's important because um Gudrid's story to understand it on you know a linear level or chronological level, but more, and then uh we're trying to see her through her eyes and what her understanding would have been this little Iceland microcosm of early Christianity, um, late paganism, different types of paganism. You've got enslavement issues, you've got, you know, economic issues going on, things like that. And um I think it's important to talk about who, what spirits Gudrid was hearkening to. Yeah. Very good. What was what filled up her world that way a little bit? And I think you're the perfect person to talk to us about that. Let's see.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

I mean, it's just you think about yourself, and here I'm at my age and our age and everybody, just think of where you are in your life at this moment and what brought you to this moment, and all the different voices and experiences and stories and music and and threatening things, you know, or or goals that have brought you to be this certain person. And for Gudrid, in that moment, she wasn't very old. I mean, she's a young person venturing off, you know, with her dad, which we'll talk about. Um, but she's carrying with her, in my mind, she's carrying with her this Norse religion, this this the old world, right? It's not, it's about it, it's going to die soon, or it's going to be categorized as an evil, terrible thing for the rest of history, basically. I mean, the word pagan now, you just picture devil horns and and blood rituals and all these terrible things. Um, and like with anything, sure, that could be a part of it. Everything has can be used for evil or whatever. But when you really start reading about it, that's a very nature-based religion. And for her, it did have um spiritual benefits to believing that way, right?

SPEAKER_03 8:28

It wasn't just well, and and as you'll explain, um, I mean, that the mechanism of fate in a Celtic woman's life and is also a Norse woman's life, right? That mechanism, once you come to earth with that fate, it doesn't matter what religion you're you come to, you are a seer or you're a diviner or you you're a fool or whatever you are. Um, Gudrid has to navigate this changing world with this thread that in her eyes, I guess. Am I right? In her eyes, this this fate is gonna happen to you. You're gonna wash up on the beach, like you described, whether the waves are smooth and gonna roll you in, or whether you're gonna tumble who's gonna end up on that beach. So, yeah, it's it's an idea of how did she armed with spiritually to navigate the rest of her life.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

So, okay, so I'll just give a little brief history then of Norse pagan religion.

SPEAKER_03 9:41

Okay, and and why there's no preference um Norse. Because that's an Asian okay, and then what and Celtic would have been what she might have been raised with as well.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Okay, so worry about that. So let's go super far back then. Oh you go where you want. Let's go to Pi. Pi stands for oh, am I doing it right? Maybe it's PG. PG is proto-Germanic, but I need to go even further back. I want to go to Pi. Pi, pause for a moment. I love two of us. You can take us back. Okay. P I E. Oh, Proto-Indo-European. Okay, so you have to go super far back. P-I-E, Proto-Indo-European. And it answers a lot of questions because it is you have to go back thousands and thousands of years to this group of people known as the Proto-Indo-European. They will say it's the Germanic people that came from there, but really the area that it covered was, and um, the languages that it influenced were a blend of English, Greek, Hindu, and many others. So the Hindu part, I've heard that before.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

Um Do we know um approximate date? Like, is it this BC a million or it would be BC, BC not a million, but you're not far off.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

BC way back, and I can find out later. But yeah, we're talking, we're talking, it had influence. If you need to answer the flood, why so many different cultures have a flood story, you could go back to kind of this time and say, well, they all have a story, it started in this time, or why is why is the word hell in the Bible also the word, the name of the woman that guards the land of the dead in the Norse religion, right? Hell, H-E-L. Um, you could say it's because Christians translate it or whatever. You could also say, well, um, you can go back to this time period. If you want to ask, why does the Bible have giants? Why does Norse pagan religion have giants? Why are there giants? You know, why does be you could go back to, well, it could have started with this mythology or this event, or you know, you can play with that's a really exciting place to go play. Yeah. You know, you couldn't go to Gobly Tech, Goldley Tech, and uh, you know, you can go wild with it. Um which we have, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 12:27

We we both have, I think.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Oh, yeah. Many, many, many, many, many winter nights watching. So anyway, that kind of explains then how if you want to say that, then the Celtics and the Norse paganism has similarities too, because now we're giving ourselves freedom to even say um Sumerian stories match scan uh Swedish stories, right? Because you established that this group of people from way long ago either had shared words, shared stories, shared beliefs, whatever that can trickle in now to these different religions.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

Okay, that that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 13:14

That is very helpful. And then we located oh yeah, go ahead. I just have a bunch of teenagers.

SPEAKER_05 13:20

Okay, teenagers.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Shoot, it might be loud.

SPEAKER_05 13:29

That's okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Young girls here, I better behave. I know they might call you a witch. If you look at them wrong, I know.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

Okay, so that explains that's how you can kind of start there.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

And as far as they know now, and the all it's always changing archaeologically, but we're thinking that place um the proto-Indo-European is around Turkey or Iran.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Yeah, so that yeah, okay, so Mesopotamia, the um Levan, you know, um, yeah, your you could yeah, your um breadbasket or whatever. But the thing we all use, the Neolithic, whatever. Yes, yeah. That um when they started agriculture, that that I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 14:28

It's so hard to No, I just need a general idea. It's not so picture.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

I wish I had my I have a map of Norway and I keep looking at it for the world, and it's not, but um, yeah, picture where we were told and where you'd find the Dead Sea Sea scrolls and the Bible and all of that, um, come up through Syria, um, that whole area. You get the Hindu involved because it's it's still your stands, your stand area. Yeah, yeah, that. And then they would have migrated.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

Even way back in the we're discovering, even way back BC, um, they were interacting all over the place in ways that we don't, we're just learning now.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

I think we're very egotistic or very uh conceited or something to think that travel didn't exist because we would never get on a boat. We would never travel that way, so no way, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:34

Well, and in my mind, I feel like the way I have to open my brain, or when I recognize my modern brain, I feel like we all pictured them in a cave. And like that Plato's idea of you're just watching the shadows on the cave. No, they were outside making the shadows, like they weren't just hunkered down waiting for God to be nice or mean, you know. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

So we're told they're living in caves, and at some point maybe they did, but yeah, um, yeah, these were people with language and with stories and with hopes and dreams enough to have very basic truths um still speaking to us this day. Like, so then I started, okay, well, who's their god or whatever? And and they don't have an actual god. Again, they have a group of gods, but Odin is their all-father, and and it's not the same Christian term. Sorry. It's not their sorry. That's okay. So Odin is the all-father, but not in the way that Christians think of God as the all-knowing God, you know, the omnipotent God. It basically just means like he's the all-father. It's kind of when you read about, when you read the story of the gods and the mythology of the gods from beginning to end, they're just basic funny, troubled gods. And they have they need pantheon. Yeah, you've got um Odin and Thor and Loki and Frey and Fair and Tear and Um Baldar, that handsome one. I think that's how you pronounce it. All these gods, you know, you have the chick with the apples that keep you young. That's in the in dun in dun Iden. I don't know. And she had golden apples, she'd walk around in a box just around Asgard, you know, heaven or whatever, Gazgard where the gods lived. Not heaven, but um, and then they could, when they fail to wrinkle, they could grab one of the apples, her golden apples, and eat them.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

And you know why won't that lady to come?

SPEAKER_02 17:51

I know. Oh, it's not some people are trying to do that even today. But yeah, anyway, it's interesting. So um keep preaching, Sarah. I love when you can Okay. So they had problems and they had things. These gods are very human, human-like, except they all had their exceptional thing, which when you think about it, every human is a human-like, except each human has their exceptional thing. And then even, you know, they're giving each person some people can shape shift, some people, humans can do things. They have giants, and giants are supposedly these terrible, evil, terrible, scary things, and yet they are the gods are going to them for help with their farm, or it's they marry them, and it's just it's interesting. I mean, they bred with didn't OD with the giant or Loki. And Loki has three kids with a giant, and that the his kids, he's interesting because he's he turns he hangs out with the gods, he's not really part of the gods. I mean, you could see the similarity of Lucifer and everything. He's Christianized it a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 19:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:07

You have to be, and I did listen to this podcast of this guy who's like, he's like, You're gonna, I'm gonna tell you the story of Yggdrasil, which is the world tree. He says, and you're gonna hear a lot of things that are gonna get you excited because you're gonna think that's the same as Christianity, you know? And it's true, because I, which is what we do. I want to relate things to my things that I know and understand. He said, and in two things, you can either be excited and do a little more research and find out if you think that that's a real similarity. You can go back to pie or whatever. Or he said, you can just assume that it was translated a certain way, and that the people you're learning about, these Norse Vikings, Norse, Scandinavian people, don't think like you and don't, you know, you can do that too.

SPEAKER_03 20:04

So really you have a choice. You have to pay play four-dimensional chess on how you interrogate your your sources. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

But then here's the thing. So then when you do go and like, okay, I'm gonna go to the original source, which is the poetic edda, right? And it's translated, but it has this whole section which reminds me of the Beatitudes a little bit. Because here I am comparing Christianity, but it's or Proverbs. I guess it's more like Proverbs. It's Odin. He um he wakes up this well, that's the other one. That's Val. But anyway, Odin is giving advice to people, and it's like pages and pages of advice he's giving to people.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

And this advice in the he's in the mortal world, the Asgard, or is he giving advice to anybody in the tree in the planet?

SPEAKER_02 21:01

Um, when he's giving this, it's a bunch of poems put together. The one where he wakes up the the sorceress from the dead, and she actually tells the story of the Yggdrasil and like the creation, basically. She tells that she's Genesis, basically. Oh, she tells the creation story to Odin. Then right after that, it's Havama, and it's the words of the one-eyed or the words of the high one. It's basically his, it's from different poems, but it's his advice, kind of like his proverbs, and and some of them are really great. Um he says, do not be so sparing in using your money that you don't use it for your own needs. Often what you say for your children will end up in the hands of your enemies. Many things will go worse. So he's basically giving retirement, like golden die broke, basically, like what dad do. Um, be a friend to your friends. Friend and also to his friend, but never be a friend to the enemy of your friend, you know, like just little proverbs, just kind of words of wisdom.

SPEAKER_03 22:09

Helpful hints if you're on a Viking ship with your bros. Yeah. Like, yeah, don't like, yeah, it is. I love it how Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

He says, No man should mock another for falling in love. Love sickness often strikes harder on a wise man than a fool.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

I love that. It harkens a little bit to, and I guess the proverbs, all these things to Confucius or the teachings of a little bit like a blend of a god and your your smart grandmother.

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Yes. Yeah. And and so that if that was if those are poems being read in 500 AD or maybe even a thousand BC, right? Then those are just truths that came through, I mean, friendship and love and money. And he talks about like how to build the kind of house you should have, or always have a home, or, you know, just real basic truths coming from this God, you know. It's in their way. Um so the Yggdrasil is the tree of life. I know that's another theme, but it you know this, but it's it's basically a huge tree that they believe. Its roots go down. It's so tall, it reaches above the clouds. It's so the roots go so deep, they go into the earth so much so that they go into three, they're fed by three different wells. Um, and in amongst the tree are the nine worlds. And uh again, the guy I was listening to is like, be careful because some translations will say the nine worlds or realms, and others will say nine worlds. So it could be more than nine, you know, people get caught up in the number nine.

SPEAKER_03 24:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Um, but that go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 24:07

No, no, no, I'm listening.

SPEAKER_04 24:08

I'm very interested. Um hold on, let me find my paper on it.

SPEAKER_03 24:15

So this is essentially the old Norse tradition, or or as as close as we can get to the creation story where you know, that idea of where they come from and how what the architecture of their worldview looks like, basically. Where they how it's ordered.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

Yeah. And it's um I won't get into all the details. It's fun to read about.

SPEAKER_03 24:48

You told me, you explained it to me, and I it's very helpful even thinking about Gudrid. And yeah, you know, it helps me think, not like my modern self.

SPEAKER_02 25:02

It's um it's nice again to put your to see how they view the world. That there are, I mean, in there, so let me say, okay, so there's nine worlds in the tree. There's Asgard, that's where the gods lived. Um there's Vanaheim, that's where the a different kind of group of gods lived. There were two different god fighting gods, but then they made peace. But anyway, so you'll hear Vanir or Azir, different gods, Ordin and Thord, they come from the Azir. They make peace. They each have different skills. One's more creative, one's more powerful. They realize they both need each other. So there's that struggle of um wanting money and progress and promotion, and also the artistic side of creation and using your skills, and it's not all about money. And they finally decide they have to come together to be really successful, which I think is a nice little life lesson. Um, and then you have Midgard, and that's where the humans live. And you can picture these realms are all kind of nestled in the branches of these trees, of the tree and some of the renditions. Um, that's where the humans live. Again, this is where Gudrid lives. She's in Midgard and her people, and it is enclosed. It's a safe, enclosed space. There's a big wall around it. Um, flat earthers now really like the description of it because it describes their vision of a flat earth and you know, with the dome on top. Oh, we need to talk about okay. We have to go back again, I guess, and talk about. Okay, so um, so they're protected from these chaotic god forces and giant, the gods and the giants and all these serpents and all these things are always busy doing, meddling in each other's affairs, but they pretty much leave Midgard alone. So Gudred would have believed that God is never really gonna mess with you. The fates and but all this chaos and going on in the world of the gods isn't really their work their concern so much. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 27:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Until we get to the okay. So they're safe in their world and they're free to explore their world, and there are different humans in the world, and and it's just a free place to roam and be. Uh Jotunheim is where the giants lived. And again, they can shape shift, they can come fight the gods, they can mate with the gods. Their offspring are some often sometimes really terrible and horrible, and some and that's a biblical that's you know, that's um Alfheim is the light elves where the a lot of the elves live. And uh oh. Oh no. Oh, it says you stopped. Ask him to refresh, then rejoin from a regular browser, not incognito.

SPEAKER_03 28:02

Okay, now mine is Sarah is experiencing issues.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Oh, you're in incognito mode.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

Really?

SPEAKER_02 28:12

But now it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

It's saying you're having troubles.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

See, you YouTube was weird yesterday too. Did you see that?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Were you watching anything on YouTube?

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:25

All the comments on I was watching one guy's live stream.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

And all the comments turned into Spanish. So like I would type a comment and it was Spanish. And then later I was watching another um live stream, and all the comments were just emojis. So if you typed, it would type in emojis. These are just live streams? Yeah, on YouTube. Yeah, I mean, we're not live streaming or anything, but weird things are happening.

SPEAKER_03 29:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:03

Maybe the gods do mess with our mid-guard. I'll keep talking. Okay. Okay. So we left off at Alfheim, which is the light elves. So when you hear elves, I've read that it doesn't mean they're little short. It's elves. It's just some uh different spiritual being or whatever, and that that's their realm. They're tied to brightness and beauty, and their fertility image. So these are different things that Gudred and pagans and Norse pagans would have also kind of worshipped or had as a lucky thing, or if they were worried about fertility, maybe they would have a sculpture of a life dwarf, or or you know. Um, I can't pronounce this. Your friend's gonna have to really help. Svartalaheim Nidavil. Anyway, it's the it's the realm where Dorbs live. And again, Dorbs don't always have to be short little they just live underground and they're really good with making metal and creating are they alchemists? They are, yes. And they can, yes, they're alchemists.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

I know if we could just spread these out through our going to give you a pic try to show a picture, but this made it freak out just for a minute. I can add a picture later of the Yggdrasil? Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

Oh yeah, that's cool. Yeah, see, those flat earthers love it.

SPEAKER_03 30:33

Okay, so yeah, there's probably better pictures, but that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Yeah, I have a picture I can do too. Um this picture.

SPEAKER_03 30:44

Oh, that's much better.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

It's like primary. But it's um so yeah, so then you have must spell, which is the fire realm, and this is important for the end of time thing. It's the fire, and there's one person, one giant named Surter, and he is um has been there since the beginning, will be there at the end. He holds a flaming sword, he's in the land of fire, and he's just waiting for the end of time. Ragnarok is like last days, end of the world kind of thing. Niflim is cold, and this is important to know in their burial practices. Niflim, Nifflheim. It's a cold, misty realm, primordial chill, fog, deep cosmic north imagery. So it isn't necessarily hell, but it is to the north. And we find in a lot of archaeological digs that people were buried with preparations on how to get to the north with skis or ships or horses, or you know, and they were um going north meant kind of going to your death or going to the death.

SPEAKER_03 31:59

That is such a good thing to bring up because even embedded in this, you know, ancient idea was the idea of you're gonna travel, you're gonna need skis, you might need carts, you are, you know, you gotta you gotta move through the different worlds, yes, through the different ideas and beings, physically move in the um because uh one part gets really close to kind of explaining there's a story in with the gods where Balt Bagdar, one of the handsome gods that everybody loves, he dies, he's killed by his brother.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Oh, this is a cool part. So his mom loved him, and somebody, some prophecy said that he was gonna die. So his mom goes and she's and she is, I think she's fur, but she goes and she gets she can she tries to think of anything that could hurt her son. Like, what could kill my son? And could a rock fall on him? Well, she goes to the rocks and she's makes an oath with the rocks, you will never hurt my son, right? And rocks are like, we will never hurt your son. She goes to the water, you'll never drown my son. No, we'll never drown your son. She goes to fire, we'll never burn your son. She goes to beasts and just name it. A mother can think of a lot of ways, you know, her child could get hurt. And she thought of all of them and went and made them all promise to her that they would never hurt her son. And she's walking past this big tree, and up in the tree is the mistletoe kind of kind of wrapped up in the tree. And she looks at the mistletoe and she's like, Well, that's mistletoe can't hurt anybody. So she doesn't make an oath with the mistletoe. And then um Loki hears this, figures out that the one thing that she prompt she never didn't make an oath with was mistletoe. So he goes and gets mistletoe and threw another brother and blah, blah, blah. That her son dies from a dart from mistletoe. And um, which is interesting because mistletoe is a th is important in druid in the druids and Celtic and Kagan. Like it's a pretty important.

SPEAKER_03 34:19

What is it, an ivy or a fungus? I don't even know. Yeah, it's almost like a well, I don't know. I think it's a yeah, it's a lichen type. Parasite?

SPEAKER_02 34:29

Oh, a lichen? Yeah. But anyway, it's pretty pro it's pretty important. Um, anyway, so she, so they're all sad and they burn his body, and but then they go visit him in in this land, and and um he his spirit is there, but he's his spirit looks like a body. So they the body can be in two places or something like that. It's really interesting that it's not really they don't believe in a solar spirit, they just believe in, you know, we talked about that before, but hey, you can burn the body and have the body be in this other place, so then, which is like what you're saying, that's right. Physically had to travel in death to hell or at or Valhalla or wherever you were going, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_03 35:21

And the idea of Loki, um you see this in other traditions, you know, the the Christianized version, the the later writers want to say that well, that's the devil. But no, Loki is a a very common trickster figure and that you'll see in cultures. Um the idea of a trickster, you even have those like in the West Ghana tribes and all that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah. He's not good or bad. He just messes with things. And he's like your, you know, the one cousin that that messes with stuff.

SPEAKER_02 36:02

He's very human. He's very human. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

Yeah. I mean the yeah, go ahead. Just he it's almost like he has the ability to mess with luck in a way, to mess with your good vibes or your, you know, your good wave, and he'll mess with it. So you have to, as part of being human, you have to understand that maybe you're going on a path or whatever, but it could get messed up. But you you know, you gotta work with Loki a little bit. And yeah, it's interesting. He's not mean, there's not hell, even in this tradition, right?

SPEAKER_02 36:43

There's there's a form of it which is interesting. So it's not like a damnation, it's not there's no for lack of a better word, because there is shame, but there's no um guilt. Is that the word? There's no, as we know it as Christians, of like I did this, I better repent. I'm I'm gonna go to hell, and like all these other reasons to make you make good choices until you get to a beautiful part in Christianity where you're making good choices for love or whatever. But as a in the pagan faith, it's not you aren't being compelled to do correct things, I wouldn't say. It's more um just it is what it is, right? You just aren't mean to people and or you and you're not, I don't know. Now I'm wondering.

SPEAKER_03 37:40

Yeah, it is, but it it the idea the the thing you have to think about is there is an ambivalence. There's not this overlay of blessings and sin or heaven or hell. There's uh heaven and hell, and sometimes you can go visit there, and sometimes you can't.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

And yeah, that's exactly there's they know where they're going when they die. There's not a lot of choices. There's two. You go to you go to well, maybe three. You go to Valhalla if you die gloriously in battle. And even then, the Val Valkyrie, say that for me. Valriches, Valkyries, Valkyrie, Valkyries.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

We're gonna get this, and we because we want to be right.

SPEAKER_02 38:31

I know so badly. Even then, if you die gloriously in battle, you still have to be kind of selected by a certain guardian to go to Valhalla. I think you can also go to Valhalla. So you might go to Valhalla. If you die in battle, you get to go to Valhalla. If you don't, if you die any other way, they call it less glorious ways or boring normal ways. There's funny words for it. Like, you go to the next place, which is hell, H-E-L. It's Helheim, hell. It's the realm of the dead ruled by hell, H-E-L. Generally, for those who did not die in battle, it's not the same as Christian hell. So think of all the people that think they're going there. It's mothers who die in childbirth, it's children, it's a lot of women. That's probably why it's it's run by Hell, which is a woman. She's Loki's daughter. Loki and a giant's daughter. She's got half half half her face is beautiful and warm and fleshy and rosy, and the other half is a corpse, like decaying corpse face.

SPEAKER_03 39:39

So is it an affirmation of like live your life and enjoy it because where you're going is just so so or it's not a horrible place.

SPEAKER_02 39:49

They eat. I mean, it's a horrible place, but they eat and they just are there. You're just there. And I don't think they believe in reincarnation. I think they're just there waiting for Ragnarok, wait, waiting for the end, you know? Yeah. And um, because they are like I they're they believe they're in their physical bodies that they've traveled there. Okay. Um, and yeah, and then there's Valhalla, and that's where Odin ran Odin is in charge of Valhalla. It's beautiful, it's big. The doors is like can fit 800 soldiers shoulder to shoulder to go through the door. It's huge, it's wonderful. Um, and then so that's your realms in the tree. And the gods can go from round the realm using a rainbow. Yeah, the rainbow bridge. The bifrost. Yeah. And humans can never go on it because it will burn their feet. But the rainbow, and anytime you see a rainbow, that's where the gods are traveling from round the realm. It's very beautiful and fun. Um, and then you have the wells. So you have three wells. I don't have them written down really well here, but one of the wells is Midservice's Midgard, I think. Another one of Loki's sons is the serpent that that swims around the seas of Midgard, and it's terrifying and horrible. And um, then you also have Norns well and Urd's well. The Norns, Erds Well. And the Norns are your fates, and these are the women that sit around the well and they weave your fates. Very similar. There's Greek, right? They have the fates. Um and we're talking, if we believe this, then this is pre-Roman, pre any of that. So it's interesting to go back to the pie idea on this. Yeah. Um, they draw water. There's three, three of the three of the women, basically one's past, present, future, you know. Um, and the they they decide your fate. So they decide that the path, the island you're heading to, even though there'll be different things that make different waves. Um, and the three routes are one route goes to the god, one goes towards wisdom, that's Mir's well, and one goes to the underworld. They're very interested in very interested in wisdom because Odin, that's what he sacrificed himself unto himself to gain wisdom.

SPEAKER_03 42:26

And he's gave his eye, one eye, to a well to and he hung upside down, the Christians out, you know. So they're like, oh, you know, how do we figure that out? That their main god in search of knowledge just um hung himself over this well, right? Right. Eye out.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

But his eye out gave because the the it was it Mimur, I think, who said he was he went to ask for knowledge. And Mimmer is like, Mimar is like, well, give me your eye. And Odin's like, I just fought a bunch of giants. I just had the worst trip of my life to get here. Yeah, you want my eye, I'll give you my eye. So he gives him his eye, and I is floating in the well from now on. Later, Mimmer gets his head cut off, and now his head's floating in this pond, but it's knowledge. And I keep coming back, Odin sacrificed himself unto himself. And and what what do you think that? I know what it can mean, but what does that really mean? Because everybody knows it. It's in it's in lots of poems ref referring he's the one that he's known as the God who sacrificed himself to himself. Isn't that interesting? I mean, I guess Jesus means if you believe Christ, Jesus was sacrificed to God, and you believe they're the same person, that's kind of the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 43:53

Yeah, you know what that yes, because you have to dip into their creation story of the female. Male. Oh, we want to talk about that. Yeah. I think that's how we're going to understand that.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Okay. So then that's that's Yggdrasil. And there's a hawk and an eagle on the top, and they watch everything, and they have meaning there's a squirrel that goes up and down. They all have names. The squirrel goes up and down the branches sharing gossip and news. You know, it's busy. Yeah. There's a um d uh deer or stags eating at the bark and the branches. They all kind of have a purpose a little bit. There's the serpents at the bottom, snakes and serpents at the bottom that are eating and scratching at the bark. Basically, this tree is always being gnawed at and and torn away. It's it's always the gods are always stressed about this tree and the the treatment of this tree because it's just being worn away. And um, but basically at the end of it, I'll do the end and then the beginning again. The end is Loki basically ushers in Ragnarok. He does some great, he they have one big blow-up, they all get drunk and have a big party and just goes too far.

SPEAKER_04 45:11

That happens.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

And he leaves on a different level of just being an outcast and mad at everybody, and they're all mad at him, and they do some things. There's a big long story, and um basically it introduces Ragnarok, which is the end, and there's no everybody knows it. All the gods are gonna die, they all die in a very specific way, fighting a very specific thing. Um, then that your guy, your mole spell, whoever the guy with the flaming sword burns the earth and everything's burnt, burned up, except for a couple of uh couple of mid gods, I think they are, who hide. And after it's burnt up, they come back out and it's a new beginning. And it's and even one of the gods, I think that handsome god we all like, he's there too. And they begin again. And what the part I love, I don't know why, I love this part so much, is that everything there's big battle, everybody dies, all these gods that you love that that you've learned to love through reading this. Thor's hilarious, Freya is is great, but whatever. And they all die and the earth burns, and there's nothing left. And these people come out and they find gold pieces. They find gold and they create a Thor game piece and a Loki game piece, and uh, you know, they name all the giants game piece and uh Freya game piece, and they make a chess board out of, and then they make the heart this.

SPEAKER_03 47:00

Yes, it's so beautiful. Wait, so after the world, they believe that after that world burns up, two creatures emerge, or gods or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Some hidden gods come back out, and they um they begin again, and but the the way they honor these gods is they make chess pieces out of them, golden chess pieces. And on the one side of the board will be like the giants and the the mischievous dwarves and things like that, and probably hell is the queen, and then on the other side is the gods that they love, you know, there's just they're all back and they're ready to play the game again.

SPEAKER_03 47:43

In a sense, they're reordering, resetting the game. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

And they're ready to go again. It's like we're and so it begins again, you know. It's just oh, and Balder, it's Balder that they all, this god, and it says, Ball um, soon they will find they have all the pieces they could ever need to make a full chess set. They arrange the pieces into a chess game on the tabletop chessboard. The gods of Asgard face their eternal enemies. The new minted sunlight glints from the golden chestman on this perfect afternoon, and then that Baldur, who is that god that had gone to hell and back, will smile like the sun coming out and reach down and he will move his first piece. Boom. And then that's the end of the story. Isn't that cool?

SPEAKER_03 48:37

That is interesting because it is like well, first of all, I'm always fascinated with the idea of all these what if we lived in a s world or a culture that didn't have this devastating end story? Like, how would we live our lives if we didn't have an idea of Ragnarok coming or you know, World War III or whatever? I know choices, what chess moves would we make differently? Is there a nature is there a hang over us?

SPEAKER_02 49:13

Right. Is there anybody on this planet that doesn't have that hanging over them? Why do we have it hanging over us?

SPEAKER_03 49:19

For all these traditions and and I can't, I don't know. Do you know if there's any society that no, because even in Buddhism, you know, the end would be enlightenment, right?

SPEAKER_02 49:32

There's an end. And I don't know if it's a big, scary, horrific end.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

But I feel like sometimes to myself, how am I living my life because I have this story? You know, and and then how would Gudrid be? I mean, we know they weren't afraid of battle. We've seen that. Right.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

They loved it because that's how you got to the good place. Yeah, you needed to die in battle. Look at how look at how much other people get away with things by telling other people there's a big scary end. Like, look, what a great way to get an army. Say the only way you go to the really pretty heaven or afterworld is dying in battle. So come fight my battle, you know? Yeah, yeah, like the way we can get manipulated by belief by being told stories like that too.

SPEAKER_03 50:28

Well, and it is, I mean, you I love how this, so this is this ancient, ancient belief system, but we saw it in Gudrid's grandfather's story, Vifel. One of the only ways if you were taken slave by um the Norse people, um, that you could be freed is if you A, you fought victoriously in a battle on their side and you were created and great, then you can be free. Or B, if you purposely killed someone on your old side and showed loyalty. So, I mean, that kind of comes back full circle to that fundamental belief system that you know you can change your whole life or or reset your chessboard, I guess. So is that a form of reincarnation then that they're believing in? Or what is that?

SPEAKER_02 51:29

No, I think they are they are from then that moment on, they are um they became if this is an origin story, which isn't which or it's kind of cool because they believe Ragnarok already happened then, right?

SPEAKER_03 51:48

That's what I always wonder. You know, you don't even know, like with bib Christ biblical traditions. Right. Don't know. Did revelations already happen or is it going to happen?

SPEAKER_02 51:59

Right. Some people say it's already and we're in the season of Lucifer's, like in the Well, we know that. That the millennial of millennium, the thousand years where he's bound already happened, but now he's free kind of moment. So we're that far advanced in the timeline. But um even if they do do believe that Ragnarok already happened, this resetting of the chess pieces and the board would mean that it could happen, it's gonna happen again, right? So they are still having that hang over their head, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 52:36

Yeah, like the cyclical well, it is like nature. They understood the cycle of life. They understood you have to burn some of your crops so they'll grow back better. They they maybe more than we understand it. You're you live life with death, you know, and it's always being born and um reformed. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:04

I'll just say real quick too. I one thing that goes through when you're reading about the Norse and these people is how much they did love games. So I think it's cool that their big story revelations equivalent ends with a game piece.

SPEAKER_03 53:20

Well, my brain goes toward to the new the book that's come out. Um, we'll give her a shout out that we love her. Um appears on some interviews lately on YouTube, but um she kind of is trying to highlight some of these untold stories of the Norse women, kind of like what we're doing. But one of the archaeological sites that have just been found that she describes, so she describes how we're unearthing the artifacts and the peoples is the ship, the full-on ship was buried with all the guys in it, right? Yeah, and one of the bodies found had a game piece in it shoved in his mouth. And that is so interesting to me. And she kind of speculates why what is the symbolism? Does that mean that's the other army kind of rubbing it in his face that he lost, or does it signify he was the king, or what or do they understand that origin story of the Ragnarok?

SPEAKER_02 54:36

Yeah, and is he that's his game piece to have when he comes back? It's really interesting. I love the gaming part. It's in sagas, they're always playing games. Yeah, so that was a really so that um we need to pause and find the name of it.

SPEAKER_03 54:52

Oh, of the the archaeological site. Yeah, okay. Um I have it in my and am I taking you places you don't want to be? I want to go everywhere. Okay, I go everywhere, but I swear I've never heard that before. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 55:09

Yeah, it's cool. It's I sh I need to cite my source for it.

SPEAKER_03 55:13

I never heard the resetting of the game.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Here it is. Oh wow, this isn't gonna Sarima. Okay. So the the art the place you're talking about is in Sarima, right? And it was um in this Estonia, almost all the way to Russia. They kind of found it in the mouth of I can't find the river, but it's it's basically Estonia. So a picture of Vikings um made it all the way across the Baltic Sea, you know, and over to Estonia, and that's where they found this ship. And and it's she she or maybe it's Neil Price, somebody sort uses that as uh evidence that Vikings were doing their thing, raiding, traveling, conquering, because these were warriors, they had weapons and things. It wasn't just a trading vessel, right? It was actually armed found way before a battle. Yeah. And this was discovered and and dated to be way before the first known or attributed Viking raid, which was Lindisfarne, Lindisfarne over in England, and that was 740 AD. And so they're dating this back to be, I don't have it. Um let's see. They're dating this. Where is the quickest place to find it?

SPEAKER_03 56:46

Um, I guess I could quote her.

SPEAKER_01 56:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:50

Um so this is from the North Women. I hope this is okay to do, but um, in this Heather Pringle talks about um in 2008, workers on a small Estonian island discovered something strange and grisly. Um I don't know if this is necessary, but it turned out um at first the workers thought the bones belonged to casualties from the Second World War, but as digging continued, this is Heather Pringle. The crew began uncovering artifacts that were more than 1,200 years old, a long iron spearhead, a bent sword blade, which we know what that means, um, and hand-carved gaming pieces. It later proved to be the mass grave of more than 40 armed Viking men who had met violent ends during a foray to Estonia around the year 750.

SPEAKER_02 57:48

750. Okay, so okay, so maybe I'm wrong then. Well, if seven, when does Linda Sarn? So about that time, okay. But it shows that they weren't just heading west, they were heading east too. Yeah. Which is crazy. Um, so So back to the gaming piece. Yeah, the gaming pieces and how games were so important. And when I read that, I thought, okay, that's it's it's a fun pastime too, but it was really important. You know, I think the frame of mind played a really important part in their life too. They were they were very matter-of-fact strategic, maybe even. I think Gudrid is also that way, and and her father obviously is, and he's replacing his pieces from one place to another. Yeah. You know, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_03 58:48

It's almost like how they describe one of the few first words we hear um Gudrid described as a woman who can reckon, right? Yes, right. And that yeah, yeah. So that's a great word because it is. It means you're dealing with weights and balances and adding and subtractions and um battles won, but battles lost. Also, she would have had the skill of reckoning on a ship, like you know, women on ship, she would have learned part of her girlhood learning would have been how to reckon the skies, help them navigate and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, I love that. And so, and that harkens to the idea of being buried with the stuff you need to travel to where you have to go in life and in death, you know, and and that was the rabbit hole I went down to that we can talk about next week or whatever of what would you pack? What would Gudrid have put in her ship? Like what how do they prepare? How do they reckon that? How do they strategize um all of that stuff? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:06

It also shows that they were being led by their own thoughts and reckoning, not led by a command or which I'm not saying this to put down Christianity. I'm just trying to picture the other thing that was happening at the same time. Were people heading out? You had your desert fathers and your monks and people that were heading out, venturing forward for a different reason. They weren't game pieces, they weren't reckoning. Where can I, where is my farm? Where's a better farm? Where, okay, I can't get ahead than this petty kingdom because this guy's gonna rule forever. I gotta get to, you know, it's a different, they were venturing out for a reason. But it was more their own reckoning, I guess, than these, this thing that's coming by 790, it's there, but in this time, this thing that's coming from Rome and from the deserts of people that are traveling more compelled by a belief or by a god or by a mission or a purpose. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:23

Big purpose. You know, different, um, a different opponent than the traditions had been dealing with.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

Yeah. Or uh something that isn't, yeah, a different opponent for the Norse, and definitely uh if you're a monk who's dedicated your whole life now to wander and settle and and worship and maybe convert, you aren't on a game board anymore. You're not playing a game. You're you know, there's there's no game for you. You're it's you and God, basically, right? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:03

So yeah, so explain to me. We kind of talked last week. This is a good place for maybe this idea of in Iceland, they believe some of the first Indo-European were monks. What was their what were they believing?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:22

What I mean did did they bring it straight from Jesus or how did they what was Christianity to what so I think I think Lanimabok talked about maybe in 500 was the first when they got when the first Norse Norwegian Norway people landed in Iceland, there were already monks there and that was like And were the monks Christian or were Christian monks? They weren't Druid No Christian monks, not Roman Catholic monks. So these were your uh Christ was crucified, his apostles went out, spread the gospel, um, and then people, other believers wrote things down, believed things. Eventually time went forward, and you're talking 200, 300, 400 spreading into Europe, monks and believers of Christ and to Ireland and and Iceland, but it didn't look the way the Romans made it look. And they were coming, I mean, in 45. Wasn't that like the first Roman Julius Caesar's actually sent people up into England and they were headed up there? And then Mag uh was it August? I got a couple a hundred years later, or maybe after that is when they actually came to conquer. Is that right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:59

But still we're talking a hundred AD or something, so and were they the Romans were carrying uh their brand of Christianity at that point, right? I assume so. Yeah, I assume so. But they still had God, they had different pantheists, they were blending, they were trying to blend. So, yeah, so what what what did Christianity what flavor were these monks? Who were they praying to?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:27

Well, I think it would have been one I would have been all some they were different because you had so okay, so here's an important so we'll do this and then maybe we'll be done because then it'll be too long, and then we'll get this is good, and we can talk the sorceress next week or whatever. Is that good? Yeah, I'll talk about so there's the Christianity, the what's the word? Uh monast monastic Christianity, which I picture as just individual, not a franchise Christianity. It's individual monks that made their own monasteries, had their own followers, had their own reckoning of their own of how to worship. They even had different calendars, different ideas of when to worship different days, um how to appear, what to look like, and they had their own translations of the Bible. So what happened on in Eastern Europe, you had a different monk who took off from the Holy Land, went up north, and he translated the Bible. But when he translated the Bible, he made God, Jesus, and the Holy Ghost be separate beings.

unknown 1:05:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:47

Did I already talk about this in a recorded podcast? Okay. So he so he that was the following over there, Christianity over in Eastern. And that's when you get into your your goth. You know, your Visigoths, your Ossigoths, Ostrogoths, and it's the A-word, they were Aryan. Okay. And that meant that, all that meant was that they believed they didn't did not believe in a Godhead. They believed Jesus, God, and the Holy Ghost were separate beings based on a translation from a monk of the Bible. And it started this whole big belief. And and like I said, battles and things happened from that. So then they, the Goths, migrated from this Eastern Europe back down into Italy and to Spain. So you had this happening about this. This is 589 AD. So this is all happening in this time. Then you had these independent monks coming up through Gaul, which is France, Germany, Netherlands, um, and then spreading into Ireland, England, Iceland. Okay. And beginning Christianity there. So you had Christians in all these places. You just had different types of Christianity. And then in the middle, you had the Roman Catholic, which was apostolic. Yeah. And eventually they and then you had the Jewish people, you know, the Jewish faith coming and getting mixed in, that got mixed in with the Visigoths and the Arians and the Lombards, and they were battles and territory. It's just always mixed with violence and you know, taking people's land and all that stuff. Um, so you have the Goths, that's Eastern Europe, they're Aryan, the Visigoths, the Aryan. They started with, and I like to write down what they were before. We don't know what the Goths necessarily were before. You can assume that they were a form of paganism. The Visigoths were possibly pagans before they trans the Christianity in 589 AD. And the Ostrogoths, they stayed Aryan until the Byzantines. So they were strongholds of the Aryan and they went into Italy. The Lombards, did I tell this already about the Longbeards? Okay. So the Lombards definitely were pagan first, and they are um Aryan. And they they're so obviously pagan because Lombard means long beard, and the legend is Odin named them Longbeards because they were the ones who wanted to look like they had more soldiers in battle. So the women came with their long hair and put them around their face to look like men with their beards. Okay. And they went to Italy. They're very pagan, they're Aryan. We are related to the queen, Queen Theodelinda Theodelinda. She was the eastern half of Italy. And um, she was she was married to an Aryan king. She was buddies with the Aryan. Your meaning this type of Christianity that Yeah, I'm not talking blue-eyed, blunt, I'm not talking anything that has been appropriated or twisted. It means at this time, it only means you believe in three separate beings. You do not believe in a trinity. That's it. So they have what God looked like. No. It's just that's when you say Aryan, you're talking about they believe they do not believe in one Godhead. That's it. Okay. Um so she was friends with the Pope. She got her husband to convert. She was very diplomatic. Queen Theodelinda, Theodelinda in Italy got everybody to convert to Roman Catholicism in 589 by slow, diplomatic, calm means. She built a little Roman in their neighborhood. She built a little Roman Catholic chapel. And don't worry about it, it's just one little chapel, you know. So if you want to go to that one, you can go to it, but I'm not pressuring you. And eventually more people went, oh, there's another one now in your neighborhood, and slowly it evolved where they all were converted to Roman Catholic from Aaron. Then you have your Saxons, and they started as Scandinavian, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:10:30

Over in Denmark, Netherlands, yeah, Germanic.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:34

Okay. And um, they had a rough time. King Charlemagne was part of that. He burned their Ermansall, which was their tree, their Yggdrasil symbol, um, and set up laws against pagan behaviors and practices. Um, right in that area are the Frisians. They converted in 719 very slowly and violently.

unknown 1:11:03

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:04

Saxons converted fully in 785, 719 slowly and violently. So this is all on the cusp of the Viking raiding era, are these places where Christianity is taking over.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:16

I think that's interesting. And the Christianity they were converting to was the Roman Catholic that had a central consolidating power and yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:26

Okay so they're either coming straight from paganism to Roman Catholic, skipping over anything else, or you're coming from the Aryan to Roman Catholic, or you're coming from your Celtic, who we'll I'll talk about in a minute. Okay, from paganism to monastic Christianity to Roman Catholic. Okay. So it's kind of like a ease. Uh Frisians, it was a very violent. They cut, they also the Romans cut down their sacred tree. They call it Thor's Oak in 723. It was a and the Frisians are still kind of there. They're interesting. They have the book of Oli Olinda. Olinda. Right. That is kind of like a manuscript translated by a guy in the 1800s, you know.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

So he had a lot of footnotes. Yes. Um Norway, they didn't baptize, get fully baptized until the 900s. There's some cool stories there with King Olav. There was a lot of okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

We have in 380, it was so big 80 AD, we have Domaldi Visperson, who was the king of Uppsala, and his there was a famine going on, and the Swedes, he allowed them, he like there were several Euro crop failures. This is important because it I love it. Tell, tell, tell. And so since none of his animal or human sacrifices helped improve the situation, he ultimately sacrificed himself. Um that tells you how pagan they were at 380 AD. His son was 14 when his father sacrificed himself. So you've got this you know, 340 AD to 500, and you've got you know, these this clash of uh tradition.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:27

It's really hardcore belief.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:30

Yeah, I mean hardcore to be the king and be so upset that and this is will link up to next week Gudrid Like I I don't know, I feel like it's her reveal who yourself is moment with the buttons. I mean they believed this. They're that it was a practicing culture, you know? Yeah. I don't know. I messed with your your thing there.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:02

So true because you have to they're not just converting. Uh some of them were, but they're not just converting because like we talked about last week, they a lot of them really did believe it. And maybe they believed it more in harder times or something like that. Like, but it it was they had a religious center, they would all go there every nine years to do, they had a pilgrimage, they had specific rituals. Even in your home, you could do things or practicing at home. Um, it wasn't like prayer and things like that, but it was things that you could do to get in tune with that spiritual side of that realm.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:39

You were walking hand in hand on the path with your fogas and your your beliefs and your, you know, sacrifices, and you're arming yourself against this world you're in, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:14:55

Yeah. And think about I think about different religions. And one of the most important part glue of any religion I can think of right now is your ancestry, right? It's where you're coming from. It's uh there are religions who do actual physical work for their ancestors. There are religions that set up specific areas of their home for their ancestors, religions that have a certain god about their, you know, it's just how important that glue with your past is.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:30

And some even in modern times that will dig up their ancestors every few years and have a party for that body, right? I think that's in um Indonesia or something. But yeah, they literally really into it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:46

So this you're talking about. So this this thing coming into their world is not just messing with their politics and their way they practice and their healing, it's messing with a fourth of their who they are, their ancestry, right? Their person. Yeah. So to convert would have been a very big thing, I think. If you truly were converting for the right reasons to Christianity, it had to be something in that religion was speaking to that. And I think that's where we see um a lot of these translations and things like that, trying to blend them to make it easier for people to convert from paganism to Christianity.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:31

Yeah. I mean, you're right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:34

Um, okay, so uh Denmark King uh 965 is when they fully converted. It's Harold Bluetooth, which everybody look at your computer and everything. That Bluetooth symbol is a rune, two runes. It's a bint bind rune.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:50

Oh, it's a spell then.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:53

Yeah, it is. A bind rune. It's a bint bind rune. It's the B for burcana, and then it's the H for hail, which um, but then if you wanted to make it more the link Bluetooth, it's B for blue and T uh has a T in there, kind of in a weird way, T was. But um, yeah, so it I don't know, it's just always fun. But anyway, he was part of Denmark. He was the first Christian, second Christian king in Scandinavia, Scandinavia. He was very popular, Harold Bluetooth. Um Iceland, they all converted in 1000. They did it in a very nice way, and we're gonna talk about it more. They were very diplomatic, they had a pagan leader. Christianity, paganism was on the island of Iceland. There were some flare-ups, it wasn't as violent as what was going on over in Europe, but it was time to decide. And so their leader didn't he like put himself under his cloak for two nights and slept or something and fasted and then he himself to figure out he had to decide. He had to decide which to do. And the the Norse political system is set up by things, pings are things, uh-huh. And that's your group. So when you have a thing, it's when all your leaders get together and decide. So they had a big, big, big thing, and they all got together and he decided, yeah, okay, we're gonna take Christianity. Well, dot Christianity. You can still practice in your homes if you need to, or look away for a little bit. Um, but we are Christian now.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:29

And this is it should be noted, this discussion took place. Gudrid was there. Yes. Like this, she's the 19-year-old girl.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:39

Yes. She's there for this.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:43

And she's got parents who are some type of Christian, and other parents, mothers, friends that are pagan.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:54

Do you think she spoke up for Christianity at this point?

SPEAKER_03 1:18:58

I still want to understand what they thought Christianity was, which uh you see like Odd, the deep-minded going to the pagan place in Iceland and putting her crosses up, kind of like you know, building her little chapel. You see um Eric the Red's wife in Greenland p making him build her a chapel. So in Iceland, how did they understand this Christianity? What did they think was better in it for them than paganism? Or or did they find a way to live with that together?

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

In Iceland, I think they uh it didn't actually take, right? It actually went back to paganism later, like in the 14s or um Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:51

You're so you're you're talking about this moment, and they made a wise decision. He's like, we'll be a divided culture if we don't agree on this.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:03

And I will say, so okay, let me just finish. So and Swedish was the last one, 1087, Sweden was the destruction of the temple in Uppsala, Uppsala. Uppsala. Uppsala is in Sweden, sorry.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:18

It's on the kind of near the And that's the site where that Swedish king sacrificed himself, not too many hundred years before. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:29

Um, so the one thing I noticed in those conversion stories of these different places, many of them were, I kind of talked about the Lombards with Queen Theolinda, were uh Christian queens making their pagan kings convert. So the hand women had in all of this was pretty strong. Um Franks were converted by Clotilde. She was from Burgundy, she married a Frank king, King Clovis in the fifth century, and basically insisted that well, she said if you if you win this battle or whatever, if you don't die in this battle, you have to convert or something like that. And he didn't die, so he had to convert, kind of thing. Um, she's a saint now. The Anglo, um, the Frank Queen Bertha in 597 made her king, King Uthbart in Kent, England convert. She had a big strong hand in that. We talked about the Lombards. That was a major, major thing she did to get half of Italy. Italy was split, Roman Catholic and Aryan, and she got them to all turn Roman Catholic. And then um, there's other stories of women influencing this Christian conversion. So women took to it quicker, you know. I think we talked about that.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:58

I wonder what what were they hearing that they liked? Yeah, were they hearing a direct route to power that they didn't have before?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:10

Like maybe a shortcut to power.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:13

Yeah, probably for these queens, this upper level, that's probably what it was the consolidation of people, and then you know, if your king is ruling all these people, maybe, and then I will never set aside also that it could have been a true revelation conversion. I mean, the way that a lot of these people write, they're pretty convicted in it. And but yeah, so and then for your normal woman who's converting to Christianity from paganism, it I don't know, to know that you're not going to that hell because you don't die in battle is pretty nice, you know. That maybe we're doing it for me. That everybody gets to go live with God and heaven. Yeah. Your baby just gets to go to heaven and you you don't have to go live hang out with hell.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:03

What? I don't think they believed that yet, maybe. I don't know. Well, if it's Roman Catholic. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. You don't think so? I don't know. I'm just my brain's like thinking. This is a lot of things. I don't know. This is my question. What in the heck did they think they were converting to? What were they getting from it? Was it that it was outside of their men's uh belief system, you know, and or maybe they thought it was safer for their sons to not be worried. You know, the message of peace and the hearth and all this stuff, were they getting that from the monastery monks flavor of Christianity?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:54

Yeah. I mean, um he writes about it.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:57

And the reason this is important, and this will go to next week's, but um the next time we see Gudrid, she's actually having to make a choice right in front of us in the saga of which who are you? What religion are you? You know, and which is pretty symbolic.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:18

Here's what Neil Price writes about it in his book Children of Ash and Elm, which we didn't even talk about the creation story, but um, he said there are also indications that not everyone was happy with the spread of the new faith, blah, blah, blah. The social position of women also altered with conversion. Several scholars have argued that Christianity brought a focus on the individual in contrast to the patriarchal norms of traditional Viking age society. So it's true. It would have been more introspective. You're thinking inward now on yourself. It's the introduction of a soul. You're not split into this luck, the humming jaw, and the uh, I already forgot how to announce it. Fil ja.

unknown 1:25:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:11

The hummer, which is your shell. Um, and you're brought into just the soul and a body, right? So that's kind of simplifying things.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:21

Maybe in their mind you're cutting out the middleman to God or to Odin.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:25

Like you're Yeah, ironically. That's what they okay, and um all it's it says that all cross pendants known from Burka. So one specific burial site, all the cross pendants and burials were found on women, not men. And he's saying that it's probably because of the perspective afterlife. So after the afterlife became a big selling point. So the afterlife offered hope of a happy and permanent existence in heaven and the ability to influence one's destiny through actions undertaken in life. So you're getting rid of the fates. It comes back in colonial time, the Protestants bring it back. Meddling cronies down there with your well. Yeah. So it is pretty um empowering if you think that that you have the ability. Evidence for increased gender equality as a result of a shift in religious belief might explain the number of rune storms erected by women. And that's another thing we'll talk about another time. The rune storms are often. Um, on the other hand, so here's he said there's one reason why they would have. On the other hand, the church was hardly egalitarian and curbed women's agencies. The traditional spirituality of North women gave considerable power and control of access to other worlds. So then he's talking about the sorcery, the magic taken from a woman. Right. Um, it was removed by Christianity. Uh so the status in their household was also demoted. So that's the other thing. A lot of burial sites, women were buried with keys. Lots of keys. They always had keys, and it was symbolic of if you had more keys, you're more prominent because the woman ran the household. She had the keys to all the doors, to all the food, to the gates.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:23

And so that's harkens to that double um, the two kings you can have the brother kings, or when your guy's gone on a raid, you have the keys. You have the power of attorney, so to speak.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:38

Yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:40

So she her uh access, her power in the household is demoted. You know, now you become beholden to your husband. So yeah, he writes pretty nicely about that. He also talks about um how Christianity changed lots of habits, their eating habits, fish, fishing picked up because. You had to eat fish on Fridays, you know. It's just really interesting how they can. And uh he also talked a little bit about um how they blended it. It said that the way they buried people. So anyway, there was a blending happening, even in the mystical, even in the leaders. And for a woman, you had to, I guess, make that choice, which was more important. Your mat your power in this world or your power in the next world, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:28

It's that is kind of bittersweet. Then I mean, it's almost like back to that Adam and Eve decision, you know, was she a wise woman who knew what she was getting herself into, or was she beguiled and innocent and gave up her Eden because she was lied to? You know, that whole idea of Christianity beguiling the pagan woman almost, or did she know what she was giving up? Did she make that choice? And who's to say?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:01

I mean, it had to do with your your your position in that human realm. Were you a wealthy woman with lots of keys, or were you a slave girl who just were you a mom who had several children die?

SPEAKER_03 1:29:18

And here they're saying you get to there's a just because women really you're talking about choosing different levels of seeing or divining or control, but they held the keys to life and death. They stood at that portal their whole life, like in between, and had to navigate all those liminal spaces. You would, you know, a mother can make a bargain if if it's going to make her son live, you know, past that battle. Or, you know, it's interesting the bargains a woman is asked to make. And and back to Gudrid, a woman who reckons. I mean, that's that's what you're asked to do sometimes, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:00

Yeah, and if she would have known her sagas and stories, it's filled with women making reckoning, you know, the mother that went and had everything promised not to hurt her son, and it's filled with stories, big pivotal moments and choices. So be told now you can you can control your life, you can control your this world, you can do things on this planet. You don't have to go die in battle. You can do lots of things. You can pray, you can take a sac take a sacrament, come worship at this time, eat this food on this day, do all these things, and then you have a glorious afterlife. Maybe was pretty nice. And that's why the men didn't care. They're all gonna die in battle anyway. So, you know, maybe they were that's why they were slower. Yeah, I guess polygamy would have had to go away. Women maybe would have liked that too. The Norse, Norse religion, Norse culture, Viking culture was polygamous. That's right. That's polygamy, polygamy.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:05

That's right, and concubinage, yeah, concubines. And then that would have gone away. Have to think about that deal.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:16

So then when you talk about like, well, what were they being sold? I don't think they were being sold the Roman Catholic strict what that was had evolved to. I think they were being sold a softer, more familiar Christianity of what were they reckoning with. Yeah, and they they they everything was done by nature and the sun and the moon and the belief of the moon, and the it was still very familiar to them um to their pagan sensitivities, I think.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:52

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:52

So and then when the Romans came, then it was and so there was a very famous um what is it called? Uh not Synod, what was it? I think I talked about it already. This is my last thing, and then we should probably be done. There is a lady we're related to that was there for the meeting at Cynod.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:18

Yeah, this is a good way to this is good. This is what we'll end with.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:22

Oh, Hilda Whitby. So she was there for Cynod of Whitmy, Whitby. So in 664, the Roman Catholics and the Celtic Christians were kind of converging in England, and so much so that again, just like in Iceland, a decision needed to be made of which doctrine are we gonna go with. And the monastic priests in England were I know I did talk about this last time because I talked about Bede, the recognition of time.

SPEAKER_03 1:32:59

Um this book, it's um he wrote about you just filled it up, but you didn't say much about it. Oh, okay. Oh, he wrote this whole book on one concept.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:11

Yeah, on the concept of um when to celebrate Easter. Yes. Because if you're coming from a pagan place, you are celebrating Easter in a different time. If you're coming from a Roman Catholic place, you are celebrating Easter on a different time. You're you're taking in math and numbers and counting back days from the middle tides, blah, blah, blah. If you're coming from a monastic side, you're looking at the phases of the moon and and the sun and the equinox and when a year begins and blah, blah, blah. And heat, they they had that to decide. And then they also had haircuts, basically. Things they had to decide in this this um synod of Whitby. And Iona, we talked about you want it, that was also the more mystical, the thin place was being able to be more in tune with the spiritual realm and and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:05

Lots of Christianity that Gudrid's grandfather would have brought to Iceland. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:14

Um, so they decided that they would celebrate Easter in the Roman Catholic way and have the haircuts be the Roman Catholic way. And that was kind of that was kind of the death, I think, of the hybrid pagan Christian.

SPEAKER_03 1:34:25

Oh. And you're saying a woman was there, a woman in our line.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:31

Our woman, Hilda of Whitby, Hilda. She was there. She preferred the Celtic Christianity. She and she's known for making a big stink about it and really standing up for it. And um then she and she went away and then she came back, and um she was an abbess near Lindisfarne. And this is years before the Vikings, a hundred years before, but it's cool that that's where she was. That's the very first Viking raid, famous Viking reign in Lindisfarne.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:09

And our lady was sitting there.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:12

She would, that's where she had an abbess, but she was there before they she wouldn't have been there when they came. But it is kind of cool. There's our lady there worshipping and and having a nunnery in Lindisfarne, and then our other ancestors are showing up a hundred years later to raid that monastery, steal the relics, capture some of the monks, kill the monks, you know. Wow. So anyway, that's that.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:41

Yeah. I mean, why are all our chicas end up as nuns? That's a good question. But they're very devout. Yeah. Stubborn. Yeah. But I do think, um, yeah, so I thank you, Sarah. That helped lay out a good foundation for the choice that Gudrid is gonna be asked to make. And in our next episode, we kind of see she's framed in a doorway the first time we meet her as a teenager. We also met her ensconced in her anchorage at the end of her life. Now we're gonna kind of see how she how she reckoned with choices and in this next episode. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:36:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:29

Thank you, Sarah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:30

Thank you. That was fun. Good job. I learned a lot. Okay. Well, I hope it's all true. All right, okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:44

Yay, bye. Bye. I think I'm still processing.