Image: Niflhel —copyright by Dominique Velsen on Deviant Art
Viking Legends and Norse Mythology Source Books
These will be a completely new kind of publication, linking in with eTEXT to some of the world’s leading online resources concerning Norse Mythology, the sagas, historical details of the Norse and much more.
Whether your interest is mythical, legend, historical or fantasy, There is something just so captivating about the Norse. From J.R.R. Tolkien to television series like Vikings, the ideas, beliefs, concepts of fate, existence, the understanding of the world has captivated our imagination. We know the Norse through the mythology of giants, gods, men, dwarves and elves. But this is only the popular perception. What lies behind is something much deeper than myths and stories. Legends based on Kings, warriors turning a brave face to fate in times of hardship, turmoil and struggle. In this series I will examine legend and lore, trace the lines of legendary kings behind the sagas and myths and explore the origins of the mighty Vikings.
eTEXT Books
This is a new series using eTEXT that offers a no-holds barred panorama look at the myths, legends, historical references of the Nordic Past. A source book, since the chapters provide a wealth of detail no matter what the interest or subject matter, a new series of it’s kind that offers more than the mythology we know so well concerning Odin and Thor. This publication is published as an eBook intended for the mobile-digital audience using the benefits of hyperlinking. In the text, hyperlinks are used to take the reader to sources. Wikipedia and this site to be developed supporting original research, providing more information and graphical-visual content. In the Norse universe, nothing is straight, nothing is linear and nothing is ever really done. Similarly, this publication is not necessarily a linear ‘from A-to-B’ read. It can be, but is intended to be ‘open’, in the respect that it can be accessed in any order by theme.
This is as much about the historical basis for legends, as the tales and sagas, beliefs and customs of the People who came to be called the Vikings, a people whose belief of and understanding of the world was as accomplished as their warrior status and bravery in the battlefield. Volume by volume, I will chart the many different facets of the Norse, from the influences that inspired J.R.R: Tolkien, to the use of runic inscriptions on the battlefield.
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The following publications are being planned:
Volume 1: The Underworld and the Afterlife
PUBLISHED APRIL 2017
The Norse and the Vikings, the concept of the afterlife was very close to such lives and life a close part of death. Death, if it was to be feared, was captured in legend and such legends were a very real part of the collective existence of the Norse people. This is not just a voyage into myth, into the past or history, but also one within our own global modern culture.
In Viking times, burial sites of ancestor worship often featured the device of the boat carrying the dead to the halls of Valhalla. Of this we can only speculate, since the sagas that have come down to us, mostly from Icelandic sources, are only fragmentary. Scholars do not have any answers to the question whether the dead would remain for some time in the grave and later depart for the realm of the dead, what the purpose of the grave goods was, or if ‘the ship in the barrow’ was to transport the deceased to the realm of the dead.
With these legends in mind, I have spent a lot of time working on ideas that somehow, juxtaposes a ‘discovery of truth and morality’ with older, darker deeds that almost felt they had grown out of the ragged bedrock and black lakes of the middle-Swedish lands, places where belief and identity could be dragged into the light of a modern day revealing the past –not so much as ’tales’ – but as a reawakening of age-old customs revealed through the brutality of people who remain hidden, leaving only deeds to speak for themselves. The result was a decision to concentrate on the legends of the dead and the afterlife and this book is the result of that decision.
Volume 2: Norse Kings of Legend
Explores the origins to Rolf Kraki’s saga and the legendary Kings of Lethra, the source of Beowulf and other legendary kings of old. The second volume of the Viking Legends and Norse Mythology series covers the Swedish and Danish Kings, about conflicts – and even the spirits of slain warriors who keep on fighting, as witnessed by Hadingus, one of the earliest Danish kings. However, this is not Valhalla. This is not the realms of gods, or even a focus on the sagas. This is the hunt for the real Kings, the real people who influenced history, left to us today as legends.
Volume 3: The Norse Myth of Creation
Looks at the Norse myth of creation.
Volume 4: Tolkien’s Sources
Goes into the Nordic sources, the sagas and legends Tolkien used in the creation of Middle Earth and the Myths of Arda.
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