Archaeologists discovered a 5,000-year-old Egyptian funerary boat, measuring 60 feet (18 meters), that was so well preserved that it still had intact plant fibers attached to it, in 2016. Found near...
Archaeologists in Denmark are celebrating the discovery of the oldest inscription mentioning the god Odin. This story begins with the 2021 discovery of a 5th century collection of Norse treasures at...
In antiquity every village, town or city had a central crossroads, probably marked by the largest statue, fountain, temple or cathedral in the area. This is not by chance. Since prehistory crossroads...
Much of what we know about Norse mythology and history comes from their sagas. These are stories written in the Old Norse language that recount early Viking voyages, battles, and feuds between...
The Norse people were the ancient tribal communities of Scandinavia, who in the modern day are often referred to or thought of as the Vikings (who were actually a subset of them). Like many other...
The story of Ymir and the creation of the universe typifies the emphasis on sacrifice as a theme, in Nordic myth and in creation stories around the world. In Norse mythology, Ymir was the primeval...
"Man the Hunter," an early 20h-century human origins story, saw hunting as the primary driver of human evolution, emphasizing mankind’s forefathers' bipedalism, large brains, sharp tools, and...
In Norse mythology, the cosmos consisted of nine realms. Some realms we know a lot about, others remain largely a mystery. Jotunheim, the land of the frost giants, is one of the better-recorded...
Norse mythology is a rich and vibrant source of tales, myths and legends. It has provided us with some iconic gods, monsters, and even symbols. One of the most controversial and mysterious of these...
For the ancient Vikings, poetry was a way to tell the stories of their gods, their religion, their heroes and villains. Works that have survived centuries are told with such eloquence; it would only...
Controlling outcomes, steering destiny and reversing fate in ancient times was all about spells and old-school hands-on magic. Practitioners in ancient Greek and Rome commonly used ‘binding spells’...
Odin is the chief deity of the Norse pantheon. Although Odin was worshipped more generally in Germanic paganism, the information we have today about this god is derived mostly from Norse mythology...
In separate discoveries that occurred in 2019 and 2020, searchers found seven ancient gold pendants buried in a field near the Norwegian municipality of Råde in Østfold County. The first four gold...
Does a Viking Age Mask Stone picture the real Hamlet? Surely not, the immediate reply might be. It is well-known that Shakespeare modeled his Hamlet story over older versions of the story about...
The total of the poetic, mythological and sapiential heritage of the ancient and early medieval Scandinavian tradition is contained in the texts canonically collected under the title of Edda . Within...
The existence of mystery schools in the Viking Age (800-1200 CE) is deduced from myth and folklore. The poems of the Edda display the structure and content of cultic texts used within the framework...