Asatru Folk Assembly - 1⧸7⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 183 - Guðrúnarhvöt ｜ Hamðismál ｜ Hlöðskviða ｜ Hervararkviða

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:03:00.000 I'll see you next time.

00:03:30.000 all right and uh welcome to this week's exciting edition of victory never sleeps

00:03:51.120 as you guys may have noticed who are watching the video of this we'd like to mark the passing

00:03:55.680 of one of our members Adam Schultzstedt apologies if I messed up his last name obviously a Swedish

00:04:04.160 member um but yeah we're very sorry for his loss and hope that uh he finds himself in the warm

00:04:11.840 embrace of his ancestors um on a happier note it's awesome that we are starting the 32nd year of the

00:04:22.720 the AUSA True Folk Assembly. Pretty excited about a lot of different, a lot of different

00:04:29.780 things this year. We've made a lot of progress towards a lot of things in 2025. Very, very

00:04:38.720 fortunate. It is an amazing time to be part of the AUSA True Folk Assembly. I'm gonna

00:04:45.940 ramble about some top of the year new year's other afa stuff at the top of the show but on this

00:04:53.800 broadcast at long last spawn and myself will finish with our uh odyssey uh through the uh

00:05:03.580 through the the pros etta um appreciate everybody sticking with us on it i know that it's long and

00:05:09.720 i know that the end with all of the smaller fragments and bits about the volsunga cycle

00:05:14.660 can be tedious um there's you know juicy little nuggets to pull out of each of them

00:05:20.860 but i appreciate you guys sticking with us um we're going to finish up tonight on that and then

00:05:26.100 next time spawn is with us two weeks from today we will do uh we'll begin the poetic era and that's

00:05:35.860 that's exciting. I think that we will do the introduction and begin the Guildfaginning

00:05:43.760 in our next time together. So lots of exciting stuff there. The Guildfaginning is a foundational

00:05:51.180 text in the Ausatru Folk Assembly for the way that we practice Ausatru. So we're looking forward

00:05:57.820 to that. Also, lest I forget, GW Farnsworth, you were awesome. Thank you so much. You don't miss

00:06:07.560 a beat on being the first and donating each time $20 to this program and $30 towards paying off

00:06:17.300 Sigurheim, which is much appreciated. Yeah, thank you for your generosity. On Sigurheim notes,

00:06:25.720 I am very excited. I'm very happy. It has taken me longer than I had originally planned, but we are now in a position and we are moving to to Jackson County, Tennessee.

00:06:41.060 I am really hoping to be out there. First or second week of February. That's my plan.

00:06:53.460 So I'm very, very excited about that.

00:06:59.220 Stay tuned when I get out there because I'm going to be obnoxious about all of the stuff

00:07:03.040 that we're working on and stuff that we're doing once I get there. And I'm also going

00:07:07.220 to be constantly beating the drum to try to get the rest of you guys to come join me out

00:07:12.120 there. I'd like to also say, coming up, the big event of the year at New York's Hof is

00:07:21.300 going to be in February. And that's a DISA thing. It's going to be the third Saturday

00:07:26.600 of February. I'd have to look at the calendar on that. And I'm sure that Nick will throw

00:07:31.800 on the screen here in a sec, but that's up. If you want to attend that, you absolutely should,

00:07:39.720 you can talk to your local folk builder, they'll get y'all set up or any of our folk builders for

00:07:43.560 that matter. Yeah, it's gonna be great. That's at Njordshof in White Springs, Florida. Looking

00:07:49.880 forward to it. Yeah, and that's coming up February the 20th through the 22nd. So yeah, be there.

00:07:59.240 it's gonna be awesome um other stuff top of the show uh pan off race off that has you guys been

00:08:08.360 great guys been extremely generous uh i was you know reflecting on it i think that we had at a

00:08:16.600 distant very optimistic hope thought that we would have paid off njordshoff hopefully by now again

00:08:25.320 very optimistically and that right about now we would be starting to look for phrase off

00:08:32.440 the fact that that was sped up um you know five six months and honestly there's no guarantee we

00:08:40.600 would have paid off nords off by now like i said that was really optimistic but we had tremendous

00:08:45.080 generosity by a number of members last year that uh got us in this spot where you know we're we

00:08:52.760 We are enjoying Frazehoff, going to be celebrating the second, not really dedication counts too,

00:09:02.580 but the second monthly bloat at Frazehoff coming up here for Thora bloat.

00:09:08.540 So that's amazing.

00:09:10.520 We're very excited about it.

00:09:12.100 Still paying it off, but tremendous progress.

00:09:14.200 We've already, not only did we pay off Nordshoff, not only did we get Frazehoff,

00:09:19.800 but we're already 33.8% of the way through paying it off.

00:09:26.000 So, you know, we still owe $82,748.

00:09:30.580 The way that looks now is about $110 per AFA member would pay that off immediately.

00:09:39.680 So, yeah, thank you guys so much for your generosity.

00:09:43.600 Another thing that I want to mention while we're on the top of the program

00:09:49.300 we have an order of operations on these things and some of that order will be

00:09:56.440 you know become evident when we go through the gilf again but there's a there's a progression

00:10:02.680 of hoffs happening and the next hoff after phrase hoff is going to be tears hoff tears hoff will be

00:10:11.480 in uh again in jackson county tennessee at the sigerheim property we're very excited about that

00:10:17.960 And as it's worked in the past, our strategy is to, because each Hoff that we've done, we've needed to incur a certain amount of debt on, the deal is we pay off the debt on the previous Hoff before we start the other Hoff.

00:10:35.300 And I get that.

00:10:36.260 That is in order to not, you know, just keep taking out debt.

00:10:41.100 But, and that's not going to change for this.

00:10:43.920 But what is unique?

00:10:45.100 and again we'll see how it develops but this will be our first Hoff that we will be building from

00:10:52.320 the ground up as a Hoff which is awesome it's also a much more involved and much more novel task

00:11:04.880 I wouldn't say that it is easy to buy an existent building but it is simple to buy an existent

00:11:14.220 built. It is much more complicated to do the things necessary to build off from the ground up.

00:11:20.880 We're excited about those challenges, but it also presents opportunities. The plan

00:11:26.300 is to, as best we can, piece out that process into smaller chunks that are digestible that

00:11:35.240 we can raise funds for as we go. Now, if we find at some point that we need to

00:11:42.980 take out loans to do whatever we need to do, we can do that. But in the mean, I guess all of my

00:11:50.580 word salad is intended to tell you that as long as we are raising the funds independently for the

00:11:57.780 steps, we can start with those as soon as I have a figure to start raising funds for.

00:12:03.960 while we still do well on phrase off so we can start the tiers off process anytime we're just

00:12:11.200 not going to take out any additional lending until phrase office paid off so that is exciting

00:12:17.360 and you know i want to make sure we're moving forward uh hold up right now is that we are

00:12:23.660 trying to and anybody who's listening to this show if you have expertise in this please reach out to

00:12:29.420 us no please reach out to us anyway on this this is going to be a volunteer organized thing you

00:12:35.420 don't have to be an afa member to help with this process if you want to um at this stage we are

00:12:43.100 looking to find a and forgive me i am very much out of my comfort zone when it comes to construction

00:12:51.340 i'm not sure the terminology well enough i want to say we are looking for an architectural engineer

00:12:56.300 I think if we get close to that, you'll know what I'm talking about, but one that works with steel construction or metal building construction generally.

00:13:06.620 And we're looking for that. Once we get that and we get kind of a quote on what blueprints and plans will cost, I think that will be our first step.

00:13:16.180 So stay tuned for that and we'll let you know as the projects progress here.

00:13:21.360 Other top-of-the-year stuff, The Rune Stone just came out today. As a matter of fact, just a few

00:13:35.840 hours, maybe an hour before this broadcast. So if you are a subscriber of The Rune Stone,

00:13:41.520 you should definitely check that out. Producer Nick produces that as well.

00:13:47.400 and other stuff that I think is worth noting about the start of a new year.

00:13:58.860 It is a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of a fresh start on things and on, you know,

00:14:08.460 rededicating yourself to purpose and to things that you want to see done. It's a time of those

00:14:14.960 sort of beginnings. And it's, you know, I guess, extra special this time of year to take stock and

00:14:22.500 to do that. And one of those things that I'd like to mention, you know, if you're listening to this

00:14:32.160 broadcast, and you're not an AFA member, assuming you are heterosexual and white, you should be an

00:14:39.280 afa member let's fix that um it's always it's very easy for us to always speculate about a time when

00:14:48.320 well maybe i'll be settled down and have more time for it here in a little bit oh well you know maybe

00:14:53.600 i'll have you know i'll wait till i wait till the holidays are over ah you know i've got this i'll

00:14:59.120 wait till after this time or i'll wait till this thing that we have in our head and we keep moving

00:15:04.000 that goalpost and moving that finish line in search of the perfect time perfect time is right now

00:15:11.600 so if you're listening we invite you to come home to your native faith come home to also true come

00:15:18.560 home to the astro folk assembly we'd love to have you guys join us and start this amazing year of

00:15:25.920 victory with us so now is the time and i would really encourage all you guys to go ahead and do

00:15:31.760 that. Also, and then I'll let Sfaan get us into our material, but help us out. Like, share,

00:15:41.800 subscribe, tell a friend, tell your family, tell the guy at the gas station, whatever you need to

00:15:47.680 do. But there's tons of people that need this and would like to know about the things that we do.

00:15:53.840 There's other people that might be educated by this or entertained by it, and that's great too.

00:15:59.120 So let folks know and help us reach more of our folk and give them the opportunity to come home.

00:16:07.060 That said, for the first of our last poems,

00:16:15.540 what do you have for folks?

00:16:20.360 What do they need to know before we get into this?

00:16:22.740 uh one of the big things is this is the end of the poetic it is and this is still on the

00:16:35.140 um the volsunga saga siegfried the dragon slayer singing the dragon slayer these are

00:16:42.720 some of the final components but some of the interesting things we were talking about the

00:16:47.700 poems that were written in Greenland, um, and they're being relatively recent with additions

00:16:53.980 of new poetic ideas. This is most likely from the ninth century. Uh, I believe the first

00:17:04.380 or second poem that we're going to go over, but it goes deeper than that. The big thing

00:17:10.200 is um uh the key figure uh erum ear manneric or jorman rocker jorman rocker in uh old norse this

00:17:23.720 uh chieftain of the goths has a huge corpus of lore outside of the nordic sphere as well

00:17:35.160 he is mentioned in the famous poem deor in anglo-saxon lament of deor um he is even

00:17:43.880 mentioned in medieval german manuscripts and is slain by a former frankish germanic

00:17:51.560 chieftain named dietrich in that story and that's well after the christianization of germany so

00:18:00.440 So we can see this huge connection, and that's just an interesting rabbit hole to go down.

00:18:08.720 I think for people to understand what's ultimately going on, though, Gudrun is the wife of Sigurd.

00:18:17.740 She becomes his wife because Sigurd is tricked, and he forgets about Brynhild.

00:18:23.720 And she has her brothers involved in, well, they end up slaying Sigurd, and this causes calamity all around.

00:18:35.020 And then Gudrun gets politically married, forcefully politically married to Attlee, who in the stories is not historically Attila, but is, of course, based off of Attila.

00:18:55.540 And then there's the Calamities. And we just went over all those poems.

00:18:58.900 So where does this kind of come in? This is really about Gudrun's daughter with Sigurd. Her name is Svanhildr, and she is married to Iormannrecker, or Iermanarek of the Goths, and there is a calamity that befalls them.

00:19:25.960 So Svanhild, as you guys will hear in the story, is the daughter of Gudrun and Sigurd before his, obviously before his death, but before the conspiracy to kill him when kind of they were in that golden age where Gudrun's brothers were all alive and all very much aligned with Sigurd.

00:19:52.040 so this kind of branches off so the connective tissue there is very very light however we have

00:20:00.820 tons of other things outside of the nordic um sphere that that kind of lend to the fact that

00:20:07.200 this has a lot of truth in it um there's some interesting things that i i you know i wanted

00:20:12.980 to bring up. I mean, first off, talking about Ermenerich or Ermanerich and his name, Ermen

00:20:24.920 means, well, they'll translate it to universal, but what it really means is all-encompassing

00:20:32.780 or across all directions.

00:20:35.940 It is the all-encompassing of something.

00:20:40.980 The Ermensul, the Ermonarik,

00:20:43.740 and Ermonarik means like the king over everything.

00:20:49.200 And he, you know, I was doing some research

00:20:54.660 and I wanted to bring up some points

00:20:56.100 that I think a lot of folks who are here

00:20:57.900 that might be interested in runes might not know.

00:21:01.060 And that is that a lot of folks and I'll just hold this up here for because I don't have cool, you know, digital things, but most people are familiar with this rune and maybe the subsequent Anglo-Saxon rune.

00:21:18.060 And this here is EO or EU.

00:21:22.480 And then the modern English word is EU, a EU tree.

00:21:28.600 And the transliteration of the rune is actually this.

00:21:32.300 And that's what I wanted to talk about.

00:21:34.180 EI and this is actually a long E sound.

00:21:38.300 Most people, when they see that rune, they think of the EI as in the German, like, you know, Reich.

00:21:46.840 they would say that, but that actually came about in the 14th century. So this is a double E sound

00:21:54.480 and the Nordic version of this in the beginning of a word is generally a J. So like Jormann

00:22:03.820 Gander, the sound of it is a double E. I wanted to bring that up just because I wanted to clarify

00:22:09.160 and I know some folks that are into runes might be like, no, that's the I sound like in the German

00:22:15.160 EI. And that's really not true. But I wanted to throw that out there to kind of spice some things

00:22:24.960 up, get people to think about that. But going back to him, in multiple sources, he is sourced

00:22:32.200 at living to 110 years old and being slain at 110 with the ability to to fight that is uh or to or

00:22:47.800 you know to still defend himself there's that's very interesting i mean even down to some of the

00:22:53.660 Roman scholars, Jordanes, of course, is one I think that a lot of people might be familiar

00:23:02.340 with, but also Ammianus, Ammianus said that he had grown to 110 years old. There's also

00:23:12.720 a bunch of other sources, including, this is one of the figures that we can connect

00:23:21.600 between all of Snorri Stuttlason and all of, of, uh, Simon and the accumulated works of the

00:23:28.680 Icelanders. And he is also in the code or the, um, Gesta Denorum, which was written by Saxo

00:23:36.060 Grammaticus, um, and the history of the Danes. So I just wanted to bring it up because he is so

00:23:43.720 cross spheres. He is in a lot of different things. The other one I found most interesting

00:23:53.840 is that he is in the German, the low German medieval poem called Ermenerichs Tod. And

00:24:04.320 it's interesting because they talk about his death and that's the one where Dietrich, the

00:24:09.140 the former frank um you know this this is all you can easily find this on uh on wikipedia just

00:24:18.860 looking into air monarch himself um however in the poems what's really going on is this is there's

00:24:27.980 a harsh punishment laid out here and we are going to see that air monarch was a a uh a brutal and

00:24:39.060 very, very decisively swift and violent ruler, which again, he did not become a ruler of

00:24:49.900 four different Gutanish tribes by being a soft hand. He, you know, he ruled over

00:24:58.720 the Hurulis. He ruled over the Veneti, the Asti, and all the people around the Black Sea and all 0.98

00:25:10.940 the way up to the Baltic before the Huns really kind of came in and cut things through there. So 0.71

00:25:18.460 we're going to see a lot of that. And bear in mind, this story, this poem is older than the

00:25:25.740 ones we were reading about in um about the Greenlanders so the other thing I would say is

00:25:33.580 that it is very curt it is very uh choppy and very violent and uh is filled with a lot of um

00:25:43.880 I would say the the emotions are less played out in a in a poetic way they're just very they hammer

00:25:53.560 away as they go and then continue on again. Um, I, I find that seeming to be the poetic style

00:26:01.900 from older. So they've, they've sourced this to possibly be from the ninth century, which is even

00:26:07.960 older than the poem of Deor, uh, the Anglo-Saxon poem of the 10th century. So, um, all of that

00:26:19.840 very, very interesting stuff. So I was muted. I was talking to myself for a second. I wanted

00:26:28.180 to pause for just a second to acknowledge another extremely generous donor. Gilbert,

00:26:33.720 thank you. You're awesome. $150 towards beautifying Thorshoff. Anybody who doesn't know Thorshoff

00:26:40.300 is in many ways I think it's our most beautiful Hoff it's a really cool very old it's our oldest

00:26:52.180 Hoff building anybody who doesn't know Thor's Hoff is separated in two buildings there's a

00:26:57.160 worship hall there's like a sanctuary of a vey and then there's also a fellowship hall now the

00:27:09.800 Fellowship Hall is a brand new building. It's very nice. But next to it is a, I believe it's from

00:27:15.740 1870s in its current form. It's there was existing there a little bit earlier,

00:27:22.260 but I believe it was rebuilt in the 1870s. But any of our European listeners may be laughing

00:27:28.540 at me now thinking that that's old. But I'm from Alaska where that's unheard of all the oldest

00:27:34.140 things in Alaska from white people outside of a couple of Russian monasteries and the ruins of

00:27:43.420 White Earps Saloon in Nome is any of the buildings up there that are very old are like 1930s

00:27:52.380 to 1950s. So for me, a building from the 1870s is really old, but it is the oldest of our house.

00:27:59.820 uh that said i think last time it was painted was the 1870s so um

00:28:07.420 the it's beautiful the closer you get the more you see that that some some scraping and some

00:28:12.460 love and some painting needs to happen so uh thorsoff folks are raising some money for that

00:28:17.740 and uh gilbert just made that a little bit closer to happening so thank you for that

00:28:21.900 i wanted to also say i think i might have locked in a wane or a wagon for um gilbert's um

00:28:31.660 uh godstead of lord fray so um by happenstance i'm sure just coincidence i found one so and

00:28:44.220 it's here and i'm trying to figure out how you might not know gilbert is the one who uh

00:28:49.580 carved the statue, the idol of Freyr that sits on the altar at Freyshof. So, you know,

00:29:00.560 that's in the pictures. I don't think we have a picture handy because certainly weren't planning

00:29:04.060 on it, but no. Thank you, Gilbert. You're super generous and you're very, very much appreciated.

00:29:09.720 Anyways, carry on.

00:29:14.680 So the biggest thing is this connectivity of Jormann Raker in the Old Norse and just bearing in mind who he is and that this story, which may very well have some significant truth to it.

00:29:33.520 I would say this is the keyhole to the possibility of Sigurd being far more a tangible, not just a hero in the mythic sense, but of the worldly sense.

00:29:50.400 And it's kind of connected randomly through Ermonarek, one of the Goths.

00:29:57.980 So as we go through, though, just understanding poetic is brutal, is brutal.

00:30:05.000 It doesn't flow, I think, as so much as the newer stuff.

00:30:08.200 It is a combination of translation and immediacy that goes on.

00:30:14.800 And there is some brutality going on in these poems.

00:30:21.220 Lots of specific punishments, if you will.

00:30:24.160 and even kinslaying, which I think is going to be an interesting point.

00:30:32.440 So starting off, it comes in with an intro,

00:30:38.040 and this is on velaspa.org.

00:30:41.780 I don't know if you mentioned that, Asir Govi.

00:30:46.380 And this is Gudrunakvot.

00:30:49.480 And it is three poems that are specifically referred to as Yorman Raker's poems

00:30:59.440 Because he's kind of a common figure throughout all of them

00:31:04.760 So Gudrun, the wife of Sigurd, went forth to the sea after she had slain Atli

00:31:13.820 So this is after Sigurd and after Atli, and she has slain his sons, her children of his seed, and then slays him. 0.80

00:31:27.600 She went out into the sea, and Fane would drown herself then, but she could not sink. 0.75

00:31:34.260 The waves bore her across the fjord to the land of King Yonah.

00:31:38.880 He took her as his wife, and their sons, Sorli and Erp and Hamvir.

00:31:48.680 And let me see this in, I wanted to see theirs, yes, Sorli, Erper, and Hamvir.

00:31:58.820 There was brought up Svanhild. Svanhild is Sigurd's daughter.

00:32:05.580 She was married to the mighty Jormann Rek.

00:32:10.040 With him was Biki, who counseled that Ranvir, the king's son, should have her. 0.91

00:32:18.560 This Biki told to the king, the king had Ranvir hanged, and Svanhild was then trodden to death under the hooves of horses. 0.94

00:32:30.700 And when Gudrun learned this, she spoke to her sons. 0.97

00:32:35.580 So right out the gate, it kind of goes forward into an understanding that Gudrun's daughter, who is from Sigurd, she is wed to Jormunrek.

00:32:50.940 And Jormunrek has a counselor, a right-hand man, or a speckingor, a man of wisdom.

00:33:00.180 And he convinces the son of the king, Ranvir, to go after his father's new bride.

00:33:09.480 And they hit it off.

00:33:11.820 And then he turns and tells Jormenrecher that your son and your new bride are together.

00:33:22.340 And the punishment is that Jormen Rekker, he hangs his son and he has his wife ridden over by horses.

00:33:35.100 So Gudrun, Svanhild's mother, the one that Svanhild is the one that's ridden over by horses.

00:33:42.420 She is now speaking to her children and this is of her kind of final marriage.

00:33:48.560 and Gudrun has already been established as someone who does not take kindly to anyone

00:33:54.620 killing her family but this is particularly um egregious because this is the daughter of her

00:34:03.740 and Sigurd and Sigurd is of course the the the one husband that she truly loved so now she's

00:34:12.460 speaking to her sons. And she says to them in stanza one, a word strife I learned, most woeful

00:34:23.720 of all, a speech from the fullness of sorrow spoken, when fierce of heart her sons to fight,

00:34:30.640 did Gudrun wet with words full grim.

00:34:36.960 Why sit idle ye?

00:34:39.700 Why sleep out your lives?

00:34:42.420 Why grieve ye not in gladness to speak

00:34:45.440 since Jormunrek, your sister young

00:34:48.520 beneath the hooves of horses hath trodden? 0.95

00:34:51.840 White and black on the battleway, 0.85

00:34:54.640 gray road wanted, the steeds of the Goths.

00:34:58.380 so in here she's encouraging her sons to rise up and why are they why are they not lamenting

00:35:09.420 why are they not ready uh at her behest to go and get vengeance and so she's stirring them up

00:35:18.180 um the white and black on the battle way this may have reference to we see this in an in a saga

00:35:26.380 where the D-Seer are mentioned as wearing white and black

00:35:31.360 and as a reference to order and chaos or good and evil 0.94

00:35:38.520 in the culmination of someone's life and they show up.

00:35:43.500 So the entirety of this is that kind of contrast.

00:35:51.040 But she may also simply be making reference to the idea that this is the battle way of the Goths out of their kingdom.

00:36:01.820 It's kind of can be read in different ways there.

00:36:05.540 But she says in stanza three, and again, she's stirring them up.

00:36:09.960 Not like are ye to Gunnar of yore, nor have ye hearts such as Hogney was.

00:36:16.760 So she's now name dropping her brothers.

00:36:18.880 You know, you're supposed to be of the same stock as my brother Gunnr and my brother Hogni, but yet here you sit.

00:36:29.680 Vengeance for her ye soon would have, if brave ye were, as my brothers of old, or hard your hearts as the Hunnish kings. 0.70

00:36:40.160 Then Hamthir spoke, high of heart. 0.68

00:36:44.140 Little the deed of Hogni didst love 0.61

00:36:48.200 When Sigurd they awakened from his sleep 0.98

00:36:51.380 Thy bed covers white were red with blood

00:36:55.360 Of thy husband drenched with gore from his heart 0.96

00:36:59.060 So she's name-dropping her brothers

00:37:03.100 And they're quick to retort

00:37:05.720 Hamther's very quick to retort

00:37:07.920 Yes, but your brothers also killed Sigurd

00:37:10.500 um and where would you be uh if that hadn't happened so uh

00:37:18.340 bloody revenge did have for thy brothers evil and sore when thy sons did slay else yet might

00:37:28.400 we all on your menreck together our sisters slaying avenge so he's not counting it out

00:37:35.740 But he is certainly recalibrating his mother's insults towards them, saying that they're idle cold chewers that are not, you know, doing anything.

00:37:54.180 There is a break in stanza six where we end up kind of losing a line.

00:38:03.320 And then it starts with, the gear of the Hunnish kings now give us.

00:38:08.380 Thou hast wedded us so to battle of swords.

00:38:12.860 It doesn't indicate a gap in the actual Codex Regis, but it seems to be because it comes out of nowhere. 0.79

00:38:23.320 um and this may simply mean that they are gaining loot from the the huns uh this is of course after

00:38:32.920 atli is dead so they're probably chasing huns out of their area and gaining treasure from their

00:38:42.280 bodies um and then uh laughing did gudrun go to her chamber the helms of kings from the cupboard

00:38:52.520 she took and mail coats broad to her sons she bore them on their horses backs the heroes left

00:39:00.920 and i think that too is kind of a poetic um they don't mean cupboards as in where they keep the

00:39:07.560 furniture so much as the the box chambers in the halls but um again she's she goes there and she

00:39:16.520 throws them at them and says go like you need to do something and they do uh then hamther speaks

00:39:25.320 high of heart and here you'll see it again every time they mention that they say high of heart

00:39:31.240 this is another note of an older poem um because these repetitive lines help the poet mark where

00:39:40.360 they are so they would they would know okay this is the second time i say this so i am in this

00:39:47.720 section of the poem it was a mental cue um so in eight he said uh then ham hamther spoke with high

00:39:55.560 of heart homeward no more his mother to see comes the spear god fallen mid gothic folk one death

00:40:04.680 draw thou for us shalt all or for us all shalt drink for swanhild then and thy sons as well so

00:40:16.760 one the reference of the spear god um is very interesting because of the old norse translation

00:40:26.760 um as you know as you know reading it was kind of interesting uh the translation of uh

00:40:36.980 gear or gear gear njord but again this is one of the times where it's utilized as

00:40:50.260 almost like as in the name of the god Tyr, that it could be kind of placed down as a god or broad sense.

00:41:03.100 And I think we see this as the names of the gods were almost always just unilaterally understood to represent divinity.

00:41:12.760 I know some people nowadays try to say that Tir doesn't exist because the usage of Lord Odin and Haiti like Hangatir and so on and so forth.

00:41:26.600 It's crazy, but we see it here.

00:41:28.960 They do the same with Lord Nyordar as a just simply divinity.

00:41:36.040 And it's translated as comes now the spear god.

00:41:39.480 And most likely he's talking about Lord Odin.

00:41:42.760 And he says, you shall hold a draught, you shall drink to your daughter and your sons, because most likely we will not return.

00:41:53.940 And we will all die in this, but we'll die in the name of revenge or vengeance.

00:42:04.700 Weeping, Gudrun, Yuki's daughter, went sadly before the gate to sit,

00:42:10.780 and with tear-stained cheeks to tell the tale of her mighty griefs so many in kind.

00:42:18.620 Three home fires knew I, three hearths I knew.

00:42:23.040 So she's speaking about the fact that she has been connected to three falls and three husbands and the woe and the rise and fall of vengeance in her life.

00:42:41.360 So she says, three home fires I knew, three hearths I knew, home was I brought by husbands three, but Sigurth only of all was my dearest, he whom my brothers brought to his death.

00:42:59.700 A great sorrow I saw not nor knew, yet more it seemed I must suffer yet when the prince's great to Atli gave me.

00:43:11.360 So she said, I knew great sorrow in his death, but there was even more great sorrow when I was hands foisted over to Otley. 0.96

00:43:22.460 In 12, the brave boys I summoned to secret speech for my woe's requital I might not win till off the heads of the Nivlungs I hewed.

00:43:37.600 To the sea I went, my heart full sore, for the Norns, whose wrath I would now escape. 0.64

00:43:46.340 But the lofty billows bore me undrowned till the land I came, so I longer must live.

00:43:54.060 That is a really powerful, she's saying that her life and her fate is the wrath of the Norns,

00:44:03.460 that she is trying to escape through suicide.

00:44:07.600 And she still can't, so longer must she live and endure.

00:44:12.300 This, I think, is one of those moments in the poem where, again, the audience is kind of gobsmacked by this kind of deep poetic sense of living where it's recalibrating everyone to understand that Gudrun has lived a terrible existence.

00:44:38.560 ever since Sigurd was tricked into marrying her.

00:44:46.960 And then she says in 14, then to the bed of old was it better, of a king of the folk,

00:44:54.080 a third time I came, and boys I bore, his heirs to be, heirs so young, the sons of Yonak.

00:45:02.000 These are the boys that she's talking to, sending them to avenge Svonhild.

00:45:11.400 But round Svonhild, handmaidens sat, she was dearest ever of all my children, so did Svonhild seem in my hall, as a ray of the sun is fair to look upon.

00:45:25.840 Gold I gave her and garments bright 1.00

00:45:30.780 Ere I let her go to the Gothic folk 1.00

00:45:34.420 Of my heavy woes the hardest it was 1.00

00:45:37.660 When Svanhild's tresses fair

00:45:40.100 Were trodden in the mire

00:45:42.200 By hooves of horses wild

00:45:44.960 The sorest it was when Sigurd mine

00:45:50.340 On his couch a victory robbed

00:45:53.700 They killed and the grimmest of all

00:45:55.520 when Gunnar's heart there crept the bright hewn crawling snakes and the keenest of all when they

00:46:02.080 cut the heart from the living breast of the king so brave her other brother Hogni so she's just

00:46:09.020 again referring woe after woe after woe of death and in 18 there is a break but and she just says

00:46:20.720 many woes I remember. And then there is a break. And then it continues to say, bridle, Sigurd thy

00:46:29.540 steed so black, hither let run thy swift-faring horse. Here, there sits not son or daughter,

00:46:38.040 who yet to Gudrun gifts shall give. And, you know, again, speaking of the, of Grani,

00:46:46.160 um and there's not much mention but i wonder if this is again referring to grani and sigurd in

00:46:55.920 death um but she says um remember sigurd that once we said when together both on bed we sat

00:47:07.520 that mightily thou to me wouldst come from hell and i from earth to thee

00:47:14.000 from hell and in this usage of the word

00:47:17.780 she means death

00:47:22.420 beyond the veil, the underworld

00:47:25.380 and she said that he would rise from hell

00:47:29.380 and she would fall from earth to him to be reunited

00:47:33.280 Pile ye up, Jarls

00:47:37.660 the pyre of oak, make it the highest a hero ever had

00:47:42.080 Let the fire burn my grief-filled breast, my sore-pressed heart, till my sorrows melt.

00:47:52.560 May nobles all, lest sorrow know, and lest the woes of women become, since the tale of this lament is told.

00:48:03.300 So, prepare the, she says, prepare the pyre.

00:48:08.040 And she says, let nobles never know the sorrows that have bereft my family.

00:48:14.940 Let no woman ever feel the tragedy that has struck her and that this story stands as a testament.

00:48:25.680 So this poem is, again, it's condensed and it is very brutal in its short, strong hits.

00:48:35.300 It doesn't have a lot of smooth eloquence.

00:48:39.500 It is just unrepentant in what it's trying to say.

00:48:46.060 So this poem is, you know, wonderfully put together.

00:48:50.240 And that's the end of the first of the three poems that we're doing tonight.

00:49:01.860 We're doing four poems.

00:49:03.340 Well, excuse me. I'm a Marine. That's hard for me.

00:49:19.140 Yes, no, I'm just entertaining a thought.

00:49:21.060 It was interesting to me. I have no idea if it's connected or not,

00:49:26.020 but when the talk of Svonhilder being trodden down by horses, 1.00

00:49:32.080 i wonder on that tradition because it's such a unique execution method and it's a asian 1.00

00:49:42.160 um execution method and it's something notoriously that the mongols would do 0.96

00:49:48.280 there's a taboo against spilling royal blood so you would have it you know the royal hostage or 0.97

00:49:56.020 whoever you were executing wrapped in a in a carpet or a blanket or something of the kind 0.98

00:50:01.280 and then have horses trample them to death and i wonder if it is a hunnic precursor to that

00:50:09.300 well and i don't know it's just something that came to mind and i was kind of googling a little

00:50:14.320 bit while we were going through there on it well and there's definitely a cross

00:50:18.240 referencing uh between the gutins as the gutins had spread from pole what is now poland all the

00:50:26.280 way down to Ukraine. They had established kingdoms, fought back and forth, and the Gutens

00:50:32.440 were multiple tribes. It wasn't just one tribe, and then eventually they split into two, the

00:50:38.720 Ostrogoths and Visigoths. No, they're multiple tribes, and when the Huns hit them, there is

00:50:44.220 fighting back and forth until eventually the Huns win, and I think at that point, the Gutens become 0.91

00:50:52.520 like the foot soldiers of the calvary for them and there's this um kind of absorption and we see 0.94

00:51:00.840 this you know i think so much in eastern europe the with like the slobs and the usage of the uh

00:51:07.960 the scimitar or saber and the the clothing and a lot of the other things and even to the horse

00:51:14.280 horsemanship because they were still able to do all of that in the east whereas in the central it

00:51:21.080 is wooded. So, I mean, I have, yeah, that's interesting. I didn't know about the Mongolians

00:51:26.860 though. Yeah, it was, it just stood out to me when, when we were going through that.

00:51:34.280 Let's, so to break it up, just because we've got these little snippets, we can break it up and hit

00:51:40.380 questions that we have in between them, or at least, you know, a couple and see what we've got.

00:51:46.280 one question and this is a reminder if you have questions at any point in time um first you're

00:51:55.020 encouraged to show up to any of the places this is going on live and ask the question

00:52:00.060 uh we'd love to answer them live and participate that way but if you can't or you don't want to

00:52:04.940 or if something hits you the middle of the night you can email vns at runestone.org and we will be

00:52:11.360 happy to answer your question at the very next opportunity. So we had a couple of questions

00:52:17.580 emailed to us tonight. Hey there, question for y'all this week. How does the AFA recommend

00:52:23.940 parents teach certain portions of history to their children, which are commonly weaponized

00:52:29.220 by the, in quotes, the other side, such as American slavery, MLK, and so on. We're homeschooling

00:52:40.300 my stepdaughter and I'm trying to think of ways to approach these topics in an honest and reasonable

00:52:45.520 way. Thanks. Svan, you may have some experience on this. What say you? And my children are also

00:52:54.980 homeschooled. And I think that one of the biggest things you can do is, again, it's about expanding

00:53:01.420 the scope. A lot of times the other side, if you will, or just the controlled sense of it, whether

00:53:08.260 it's you can follow it back to uh you know uh jekyll island off the coast of uh georgia with

00:53:16.100 the rockefellers trying to make their perfect little workers and that's the education system

00:53:21.220 or dewey you can you can focus in on him no matter what at the end of the day it is hyper focused

00:53:27.860 for purpose and what um i find is to open the scope and that requires well actually nowadays

00:53:37.060 with the age of information it's not as hard as it it would seem so you know uh when it comes to

00:53:44.980 things like slavery you know i the first slave owner in virginia was a west african um i bring

00:53:53.620 that up quite you know the the the ownership of people as as a practice was common uh you know

00:54:00.900 talking about the barbary pirates talking about the ottoman empire letting my children know that

00:54:05.860 like slavery was a practice and was ended by the west but that it goes further than the way it's

00:54:14.020 just kind of portrayed so you you open up that scope you open up the scope that the trail of 0.99

00:54:20.020 tears uh was also they never paint them in it they show the cherokee kind of lamenting as they're 0.82

00:54:27.460 moving but there was like 500 slaves with them and they were uh you know the last confederate general

00:54:35.300 was a Native American Cherokee Indian who was fighting to the bitter end that even Robert E. Lee

00:54:41.400 had to tell him to put down his sword. And that was because he didn't want his people to lose

00:54:48.600 their property. And so what's really going on is about opening a scope of things. Now,

00:54:56.480 when you get into more modern stuff, it gets harder because things are refined. I think things

00:55:02.640 are angled in such a way the mirrors are sometimes even set up before the light starts streaming

00:55:08.800 if you will and there is one person that i i have been looking at and kind of i'm not there with my

00:55:16.000 children yet and i would teach them kind of as we learn in our school program uh what they're being

00:55:23.920 taught and then showing them well there is also this so again it's opening the scope and it's not

00:55:30.080 about this is what they teach you and this is what i'm teaching you it's like no this is what

00:55:35.040 they teach you and i'm going to show you this and you can critically think about it and uh there is

00:55:41.920 one gentleman uh his name is chad o jackson and i'm uh he is a documentarian who is making a document

00:55:51.680 uh document uh documentary on uh martin luther king he is not folk he is a african descended

00:56:01.040 american and um he hits heavy on a lot of the more modern um startings of the civil rights

00:56:10.080 movement and their relations with like the communist party and all of that stuff that's

00:56:14.480 very well documented so nothing is conspiratorial um and i think that's the other thing is you got

00:56:20.720 gotta be careful uh people on the on the other side of things say like uh the le the people that

00:56:29.820 are not about the order of it and the reality but more of the emotions and what have you what they

00:56:35.980 end up doing is they obfuscate a lot of the truth and again if you're not allowed to talk about it

00:56:43.060 that's like even more of a sign to go and dig in um but they none of it is

00:56:52.100 conspiratorial and i think a lot of what they do is they throw out conspiracies

00:56:57.500 so that they can lump people who are expanding the truth and finding the truth in things

00:57:03.120 and saying oh you must be like one of those people who believe in x y and z um you know i i think

00:57:10.200 like most of the times we would call them psyops or whatever but it's like oh you know you believe

00:57:15.560 that the bankers run you know the the governments you must believe in flat earth and so you get

00:57:21.640 these kind of obfuscation techniques where uh something that's very conspiratorial and and

00:57:29.160 clearly made up uh and then you you lump it near the truth and that's what they you know tie you to

00:57:36.840 to beat you with so the big thing is is again keeping everything um in greater scope keeping

00:57:45.400 things away from conspiracy and keeping them in documented truth another great person for um

00:57:54.520 the truth in homeschooling for your children to critically think about the world around them

00:57:59.000 is cubs to bears uh gentlemen on um i think he's predominantly on instagram but he does make books

00:58:07.480 um he is also a big one that talks about modern propaganda he talks about jekyll's island and

00:58:15.560 and uh the work the kind of the capitalist structures that were being brought in and some

00:58:21.640 of the communist structures that were being brought in after the fall of monarchies in america

00:58:27.480 uh you know our monarchies in europe and then it was kind of influxing into america really great

00:58:32.840 stuff so um chad o jackson for mlk and cubs to bears on a broad sense don't think of yourself

00:58:43.880 as being some sort of nefarious that's what they want you to think that you're you're you're on

00:58:49.800 another side no you're gonna teach them what they're saying and then go okay now they've said

00:58:56.760 that now look at this and look at this and all of it can be documented and your kids learn how to

00:59:03.080 critically think about the world around them yeah i first the requirements of your home school

00:59:14.200 are wildly different depending on what state you're in so there's some states that you have

00:59:21.640 complete freedom to teach kids whatever you want and there's other states to where you have a much

00:59:27.320 more um much more requirements to the curriculum um i think you know certainly everything's fond

00:59:36.600 said uh truth let truth guide you on things and don't

00:59:43.320 there is a tendency amongst our people to push really hard for an outcome and i think that

00:59:57.400 you know ah well they're trying to teach my kid this or i'm going to teach them the opposite of

01:00:01.400 this. I think there that path is perilous. I think it works easier. If you just present

01:00:14.960 truth and back up stuff and like, Okay, well, these sources say this thing. Well, have you

01:00:20.720 looked over here because these sources say this thing. So take a look at these also,

01:00:26.080 You know, hey, I realize this is, you know, Martin Luther King did this, and he was a civil rights leader, and he led these marches, and here you've listened to some of his speeches, and, you know, that stuff sounds really good.

01:00:37.940 Here, look at this as well.

01:00:39.220 This is also where he's coming from and where a lot of his ideology is sourced from.

01:00:44.100 You know, show those things soberly and backed up by evidence, backed up by sources and things, because what you don't want, and I'm broadening the scope because people have questions about this even more so when the children are indoctrinated in a public school.

01:01:07.220 this is side note get your kids in the austro academy that we provide homeschooling resources

01:01:15.660 to help austro academy is a good step and a good option for our people and our austro

01:01:22.100 academy volunteers help hold your hand through the homeschooling process but if you're not

01:01:29.180 kids are in public school i still think you don't want the i the side of legitimacy to be with what

01:01:39.420 they're being indoctrinated with at school and then you seeming like you know the stereotypical

01:01:46.940 tinfoil hat nut job and and i'm not accusing anybody or saying that's the case but there's

01:01:55.260 this strong urge to counter signal very hard when they're going too hard the other way

01:02:01.820 to be calm and sober and present truthful things that are backed up by actual research and actual

01:02:08.540 sources i think is really valuable and not to like overreact or hyperreact to it but again these are

01:02:16.940 my thoughts and theories these are things that are you know things that have worked with adults

01:02:23.500 i am i am hopeful that uh these things will work well when you know if and when we run into those

01:02:30.860 challenges uh with aubrey's education but uh her being her being five i've got a little bit of time

01:02:38.220 on a lot of these things but i think it's a really good question i think it's something a lot of

01:02:43.020 parents do wonder about especially depending on you know what their home school requirements are

01:02:48.300 or what public school system their children are in but the truth i think that we think you always

01:02:55.900 are in in good stead if you are guided by by truth because that's the thing you can't

01:03:04.220 you can't undo truth truth is there truth comes out truth is documentable and observable and

01:03:10.060 it's a thing it's lies that have to be constantly reinforced and constantly

01:03:17.260 you know maintained or else they fall apart on their own so there's a tremendous value in just

01:03:22.380 being honest um question from austin good evening all's here you go the matt whitton spawn and

01:03:32.700 for builder nick is there a re uh recurring lesson in the poetic etta that you want to highlight

01:03:41.740 swan is there like a running theme or a particular you know

01:03:48.220 distalization of a point that you'd like to bring out from the etta as a whole well that is a tough

01:03:57.420 tough question and to be honest i don't think i have an answer for it but i do have

01:04:05.740 something um i think that the important thing to understand is that when we look at the uh

01:04:14.060 the eras and the or the the in in juxtaposition to the prosatas or the coges regius or as we

01:04:24.220 start moving into the skaldskarpersmal which is the structure of poetry um you're going to notice

01:04:30.460 things so what we have just covered in all these poems is what i would say is kind of the the

01:04:38.380 vertical pillars and then the skaldskarpersmal and all of the others that reference these stories

01:04:48.780 is what ties it all together and um what you end up getting by reading over the adas i mean

01:04:58.140 is details key details and i am of a belief that theologically that these stories are uniquely

01:05:08.380 passed down and have survived by divine machinations to express truths that we as a

01:05:20.660 people are becoming to understand that may be different from our ancestors, but were understood

01:05:27.600 by the gods all along. So, and I can't, that would be a very long conversation to get into, but just

01:05:35.300 Just as a general example, I try to talk to people about how, you know, the understanding

01:05:40.340 of the sky by our ancestors and the idea of Midgard being a plane.

01:05:47.020 And that on that plane, there is day and not that cross over the sky, day and night.

01:05:53.420 But we now know this centrifugal pull of the planet and we know about its rotational pull.

01:06:01.140 we begin to understand that day and night is that rotation um so by that concept you know we know

01:06:10.100 that the earth in essence has two horses in rotation and that the sun is also spoken of as

01:06:16.900 having two horses but the moon is spoken of as having one horse and by no name and out of those

01:06:24.180 three astrological bodies those heavenly wardens set by the gods one of them does not have its own

01:06:33.220 axis rotation its rotation is based around its gravitational pull to the earth and i find that

01:06:40.420 as a poetic meta point this is my theological belief of it this is what i do when i when i'm

01:06:48.980 reading into the stories is looking at these concepts, these ideas, when Thor drinks from

01:06:57.600 the horn and lowers the ocean. Is this a magnetic pole shift? I'm thinking of all these kind of

01:07:05.140 things. So that's what I would lay at your feet as a interesting thing to at least entertain as

01:07:13.140 you read the poetic aid us to look at the stories, not just as simple poems, but paintings being

01:07:22.420 constructed with the words and what that could entail, even in a bigger concept.

01:07:29.880 But outside of that one singular thing, I don't have one.

01:07:35.600 So my, I guess my one, one thing to play into this, I don't think it really works like that

01:07:48.540 either. It's not a, it's not a, it's not a standalone narrative. It's a collection of

01:07:54.760 pieces. So it's hard. It's a collection of pieces that weren't composed for a common purpose. So

01:08:01.060 it's hard to you know draw like one thread through it or whatever but what i think is a

01:08:08.100 standout benefit and lesson is the

01:08:19.220 the need and the characteristic of our folk to preserve their

01:08:31.060 history their knowledge their tradition um that being so essential their keeping of these tales

01:08:42.040 and then collating them and putting them together and storing them and learning them and you know

01:08:48.080 the skulls memorizing them and them embedding them in art and in deep works of their culture

01:08:56.300 and then preserving them even after they were no longer ausitru they still it was again it was a

01:09:04.700 sin against the very core of their being to discard these things so you know in this instance uh

01:09:12.060 simender and the uh the folk at his at his monastery at his you know institute of learning

01:09:19.820 getting these things together and keeping them together and preserving this stuff the fact that

01:09:27.420 in 1200 we're telling stories that take place in 400 um keeping these things

01:09:40.700 alive through the preservation of our language our culture our storytelling and our art

01:09:49.260 and our imagery speaks to how tied in our faith is to the folk soul of our people and it speaks

01:09:58.940 really profoundly through the fact that all of these things are collected and preserved as well

01:10:04.140 as they are and we see that even built upon in snorrizzetta when they're you know referenced

01:10:11.100 and the knowledge is clearly there so i think that i'd say is a theme that i think is important

01:10:17.260 to pull out of it. But yeah, I don't think I could just get, you know, like one narrative

01:10:23.420 that runs through it. Also, while I have a second, Jason in Mississippi donated $10 to

01:10:28.980 Njortz Hoff. Thank you for that. We appreciate it.

01:10:39.380 Are there any Hoffs named for goddesses a possibility?

01:10:42.980 there are currently not Hoffs named for goddesses we absolutely plan to name Hoffs for goddesses

01:10:50.560 when things are in place and it turns that way so Hoff number 13 will be Frigg's Hoff

01:10:57.140 Hoff number 14 will be Freya's Hoff we're excited for those when they come about there's a very

01:11:03.720 particular order that we're naming these first certainly the first 14 of our Hoffs

01:11:08.980 um but yes those uh we will absolutely have hoffs for our goddesses i wonder i don't know

01:11:17.360 that's why we were talking about getting into uh the gil beginning is that the list in the

01:11:23.420 gil beginning is the progression of the hoffs and so the house the masculine divine gods

01:11:32.760 um are spoken of and we're following that and then there is the al senior and so i don't think

01:11:39.240 people realize that we're going in that list if you will and i i've talked to people and they

01:11:45.860 seem to think that like we're purposely uh like snubbing the al senior and i don't that's not the

01:11:54.320 case is you know that progression i think is important but i don't i don't think everyone's

01:11:59.560 aware of it out there you know they're they're not we've said it a lot of times but what's hard to

01:12:05.320 uh it's hard to counter what's hard to fight against is this tendency that our folk have to

01:12:12.680 man i like pizza why do you hate chinese food what that's what i said um

01:12:21.880 i don't think so and i think this speaks to our divinity as well

01:12:25.640 jehovah is attested to as a jealous god there is a and i'm not trying to be needlessly

01:12:36.200 um critical or mean-spirited i think it's it's necessary for the contrast

01:12:41.900 there is a pettiness to semitic deity that's not present in that with our gods there's not

01:12:52.660 of burning jealousy that like if you praise one of the the iser that the rest will be offended or if

01:13:00.100 you you know it's it's a weakness in our fight and and so person who asked the question this

01:13:08.080 isn't aimed at you at all your question's a fine question i take it for what it is yes i just kind

01:13:13.400 of brought it a little further we're excited to get uh hoffs to our goddesses you didn't do this

01:13:18.420 But this brings up, this is what Svon and I do is follow these little rabbit trails.

01:13:24.140 And one of the things is there is a hole in the self-confidence and in the hearts of our women that I would really like to see filled.

01:13:39.360 and i think it gets filled with a closer relationship to our gods and with a better

01:13:50.400 and more healthy social development amongst our folk um

01:13:57.920 there is a need and i've seen this at symbol and i see this less now than i've seen it in the past

01:14:05.440 but somebody will um raise a horn to men who did something like i want to raise a horn to the you

01:14:17.920 know brave men that did you know x y and z or fought for our folk or whatever hail in the very

01:14:25.360 next one well um uh hail the women too women are good too and it it's not that it's silly it's not

01:14:32.960 even that it's the content is wrong but the desperation that like it's necessary or

01:14:42.960 you have to fight for a place or that every praise of something else is a slight aimed at

01:14:51.840 at you personally i'd like to see that get healed and i think a lot of our people

01:14:58.560 do it inadvertently because it has infected our folk at a cultural level

01:15:02.960 But, yeah, our having five Hoffs, two gods doesn't mean impiety towards goddesses.

01:15:11.800 We just have an order of operations on some of the stuff that we're doing and a purpose behind it that is divinely inspired.

01:15:19.640 And that is born really beautiful fruit for us in the time that we've heeded that inspiration and that calling.

01:15:29.940 And that's why we're staying on that commitment.

01:15:32.960 um heated doesn't sound like the right word but i don't know what the right word would be so i'm

01:15:41.500 rolling with it just in case you guys thought i wasn't aware i'm aware um all right so we only

01:15:50.160 have one more question so we'll go ahead and hit that before we get to the uh to the next story

01:15:54.440 here but what are your thoughts on asceticism in spirit for spiritual growth some would say it's an

01:16:00.160 Eastern religious practice exclusively, but I think one good example we see of this in

01:16:05.620 Ausatru is when Oden hung from Yggdrasil for nine days and nine nights without food or drink in

01:16:13.500 order to gain knowledge. Svan, speak to us on asceticism for spiritual growth in an Ausatru

01:16:21.140 context. I am a practitioner of it as well, and I do not believe it is solely an Eastern thing.

01:16:27.060 I think that people do get caught up in these ideas that somehow if there is a group of people doing something that there's just no way we have that in parallel or that we must stand in the opposite.

01:16:44.520 it so if they if they have aestheticism then we must be uh i don't know here and now ism with

01:16:51.500 everything you know straight into like four-wheel drive no um i would i would argue that i mean we

01:17:01.480 see it in the lore another one you gave a great example of course too is the the discipline of

01:17:08.200 lord odin synthesizing with the very circulatory system of the universe and going all the way down

01:17:13.840 to the sounds of creation um and we also see it with uh vidar the wide ruler sitting in silence

01:17:25.360 waiting for the moment in which he is to enact perfect uh correction and splinter chaos and put

01:17:35.760 his the metal boot the foundation and he becomes the new axis mundi after the fall of the axis

01:17:44.240 mundi here in midgard and you know pre-ragnarok anyways we see this again and i bring that up

01:17:52.080 specifically because the aestheticism that i did uh quite often i didn't do it this year but that's

01:17:58.160 because i was ill and uh traveling and caught pneumonia and all that stuff um is something

01:18:06.560 that i i often called the widening of the jaws or widening of the jaws of fenris and it was

01:18:12.560 uh 12 days before yule there would be a strict uh fasting regiment and i would argue too that much

01:18:22.720 of the aestheticism of knightly orders and i've we've spoken about this and i always kind of bang

01:18:30.200 this drum is the knightly orders of europe the knightly orders that you know took moholy land

01:18:36.900 um was built off of germanic warrior ethos and there were already the the granules of and it's

01:18:47.580 mentioned in the stories as well of the of the warriors taking no sleep or not eating or drinking

01:18:54.140 until they achieve a goal and i think these are the proto forms of that where there is a sense

01:19:02.440 of commitment to and a goal to be attained and then i think later on as it formulated itself it

01:19:11.920 became the kind of the steps in between that formulated it. I do not think it's as prolific,

01:19:20.200 but the Eastern religions, of course, were less molested by Semitic traditions. And again, 0.99

01:19:28.520 Semitic traditions, I think, were influenced by their being along that folk road, these concepts,

01:19:35.840 especially from the Zoroastres and things like that. So I'm not against it. I think it's good.

01:19:41.040 It's just about context, intent, and purpose.

01:19:48.040 The eyes are looking a little bit narrow there, Svon.

01:19:52.100 I know. 0.97

01:19:53.540 Welcome to the rice field.

01:19:55.440 No, no. 0.97

01:19:55.960 I'm taking off a yellow hue.

01:19:59.460 I really like the rice. 0.89

01:20:01.760 Okay, so first, it is certainly a really big Eastern thing.

01:20:06.700 Yeah.

01:20:07.340 Um, and it's, we run into a, um, and I've seen this in a number of things lately.

01:20:24.260 Language sometimes isn't as precise as we want it to be.

01:20:28.140 periods of asceticism for a purpose we do see that within house of truth but a lifestyle of

01:20:40.460 asceticism we don't outside of socially oddball circumstances like yeah you see the witch out in

01:20:51.740 woods that's creepy and whatever that's a motif but that's not the norm and that's certainly not

01:20:58.940 something that's like praised and celebrated it's a strange other that exists like outside the kin

01:21:05.180 fence and ventures in to say something spooky and then go back out in the woods um

01:21:12.380 Um, I guess in that sense, same with the, uh, the, uh, the bear Sark, you see that, um,

01:21:27.160 there is a point to going without to get yourself. And some of it is the intentionality.

01:21:35.680 There are things that happen when you fast for a certain amount of time or when you subject yourself to ordeal in a certain way to where you're able to perceive the spirit realm in a different way or through a different lens.

01:21:51.980 and i'm not saying there's no value to that but so if your idea of asceticism is you know for

01:22:00.460 short periods or you know like to go on some sort of a vision quest that makes sense when it's a

01:22:08.320 lifestyle choice a lot of the time that is a masochism that you do see in the east in christianity 0.96

01:22:18.000 it develops into an intentional masochism because you you are worthless and you deserve nothing but 0.86

01:22:26.240 misery because only god can have nice things and that's a malignancy that i that's not appropriate

01:22:36.400 and is is very misguided and damaging but there's also in in the east this like

01:22:42.320 longing for nothingness that is it's no secret that at the deep deep roots Vedic practice

01:22:55.520 and as a result of that Zoroastrian practice shares common origin points without the true

01:23:02.700 practice in a very very long ago time but they've developed really differently one of

01:23:09.500 the big separations between us and people of the east we are life embracing life is good

01:23:19.960 the individual is good we want to celebrate kings and heroes and great people who do great things

01:23:29.160 there is a tendency in the East to want to be diminished and to not have your head be above

01:23:40.120 the crowd, to disappear into the many instead of being an actualized individual. And part of that

01:23:51.080 as a embracing of starvation and poverty and misery in a very strange way. I don't know why

01:23:59.540 all that is. There's different theories on it. I think that massive poverty and overcrowding

01:24:06.780 and poor conditions lead to that kind of life-denying miasma hovering over the surface of your folk.

01:24:17.940 that's not

01:24:21.180 the spirit of Alcatru

01:24:22.460 but again that's choosing asceticism

01:24:25.320 as a lifestyle choice

01:24:26.720 as opposed to using it as a

01:24:29.140 tool and I think

01:24:31.120 that would be the distinction that's important

01:24:33.080 and

01:24:35.100 no transition

01:24:38.080 Steve thank you for buying us two coffees

01:24:40.160 we appreciate you

01:24:41.240 also Segway

01:24:47.240 is spelled funny if you try to look i i found myself trying to look up how to spell it properly

01:24:54.840 and s-e-g right yeah it's it's it's spelled funky g-u-e yeah something like that

01:25:06.120 i was thinking right around it

01:25:08.360 no i was talking about a transition between two topics but both well i'm i was you know

01:25:18.360 when you said and kind of like again intention and tool but also i i was gonna bring up one

01:25:26.440 other thing was oaths oaths have a tendency to embody that kind of in uh framework where it is

01:25:33.460 of timely manner and it may be of something to hone you but yes not to give up on your people's

01:25:40.280 way to live in poverty like siddhartha and not you know don't get me rolling on buddha i'll start

01:25:48.320 uh it's bad i was yeah you tried you were hitting it and i was like i'm gonna say it so bad i was

01:25:57.360 trying not to um yeah i was trying not to uh but anyways yes um all right anyways uh thanks for

01:26:10.380 the coffees steve and that's where we're at um that might as well anyways we're on this thing

01:26:18.100 so if it's an extra long episode uh it's fawn's fault um

01:26:25.940 so one of my gripes and i think it's it's more than just matt ranting about stuff um

01:26:39.460 the story of the buddha

01:26:48.100 The concept of a nobleman choosing to not do noble stuff, but go sit under a tree and calcify, wasting his life for some kind of spiritual attainment that he doesn't actually use in a productive way.

01:27:18.100 it hurts my feelings on a lot of different levels you know there's this idea in buddhism about

01:27:25.560 developing the diamond body and you know you do this thing to make yourself awesome for what

01:27:32.040 purpose because you don't do anything with it you don't take it out of the box like what's the point

01:27:39.660 it's like the let's get an action figure and just put it up on the wall like no you take it out of

01:27:44.700 thing and you play with it you make it do stuff that's it's an action figure it's an inaction

01:27:48.620 figure sitting on the wall suffering well and that's that's the thing all the suffering in

01:27:55.580 the world well you're a prince go do prince stuff and alleviate suffering go conquer the villains

01:28:03.900 and you know slay evil and provide justice and food for your people and you have a responsibility

01:28:14.220 and to abdicate that, to claim that you are spiritually enlightened 0.99

01:28:19.720 because you are useless and have made yourself useless. 0.99

01:28:24.900 And again, they would characterize this very differently than I am. 0.99

01:28:29.360 But I think that is a fundamental difference in understanding

01:28:32.360 in House of True and in Eastern variants

01:28:36.520 that might have an Aryan root way back when.

01:28:41.140 The key is action.

01:28:42.320 we are our deeds not our thoughts the point of gaining wisdom is to implement action is to be

01:28:51.980 successful is to win it's not to disappear into nothingness um

01:29:00.320 yeah the squandering of that is is is a tragedy and not something inspirational to my

01:29:09.320 to my reading or to my understanding.

01:29:16.580 Yeah, so that ventured far afield from the question, I suppose,

01:29:20.540 but I also think it didn't.

01:29:22.140 I think that kind of is very relevant to that idea.

01:29:26.940 But that said, the hamth, the hamth is small.

01:29:34.320 What, if anything, additional to folks need to know

01:29:37.160 or should we head right into it?

01:29:39.320 Again, it is in a short, brutal style. It actually covers two different poetic meter styles. But I mean, outside of the kind of the more poetic machinations. No, it is a brutal. It's written again in in that same poetic abruptness.

01:30:03.060 so uh i mean i think we should just go right into it and again i've been hammering over and

01:30:10.060 over again sigurd gudrun uh gunner and uh you know atli and her son i've been trying to give

01:30:19.560 people the road map so that they don't get lost in the big story of it all but i think this here

01:30:25.420 kind of uh will be able to um go because this is so uh hamphir or as it's translated he is the son

01:30:38.020 of gudrun gudrun has told her three sons take these weapons get on your horses go avenge your

01:30:46.440 sister against the gothic king and then she says prepare the pyre i'm ready to go and it shifts

01:30:54.400 immediately into the most outspoken son of the last poem, Humphir, and we go into their part of

01:31:03.760 the story. And again, very interesting stuff, though, that can be covered in the verses.

01:31:16.860 right out the gate uh great the evils once that grew with the dawning sad of the sorrow of elves

01:31:30.060 in early morn awake for men the evils that grief to each shall bring

01:31:38.100 so one of the things that you might obviously that might stick out is the sorrow of elves

01:31:45.320 This is a kenning for the sun, and a lot of folks might be like, wait a minute, the elves, how does that, Alvar, if anybody can think of, like, if you think of the word for a vikingr as a skip-elf, a ship-elf, even in the dwarves' name that is used by Tolkien, Gand-Alf.

01:32:14.680 Alf is a being, and whatever is generally connected in front of it, that being is synthesized to it.

01:32:24.120 It is not a kind of a genus species, but instead it's like a Leosalf is a being of light.

01:32:31.140 A Svartalf is a being of the soot in the ground.

01:32:35.400 Doc elves are elves of the darkness. 1.00

01:32:39.260 They have traveled hell's road.

01:32:41.440 so the the broad term of the sorrow of elves is most likely referring to svart alvar um as in

01:32:51.500 this has been kind of spoken about in alvis mall when the svart elf comes to wed thor's daughter

01:32:58.640 and the sun comes up but it's just really a kenning i just wanted to bring that up because

01:33:05.120 know people might hone in on that but the big point of that first verse is that early in the dawn

01:33:13.840 does oftentimes hearken the start of grievous wars or attacks um you know we attack at dawn

01:33:24.080 that's kind of what this first uh verse is saying great the evils once that grew with the dawning

01:33:30.560 sad of the sorrow of elves in early morn awake for men the evils that grief to each shall bring

01:33:39.120 at the dawning of war there shall be great grief between men and often is the case

01:33:45.360 since long ago that's what that that uh first verse is saying um and then you know we move

01:33:53.760 into more of the details that we were doing before um in in two uh not now nor yet of yesterday was

01:34:04.000 it long the time that sense hath lapsed so that little there is that is half as old since gudrun's

01:34:13.120 daughter of Gyuki wedded her sons so young to Svanhild's vengeance. And that's, again, not long

01:34:24.800 was it when Gudrun tells her three sons to go avenge their sister. In three, the sister

01:34:37.720 Yehad was Svanhild called and her did Jormunrek trample with horses white and black on the battle

01:34:46.880 way. Again this is clearly these poems have been composed around the same time and they have

01:34:56.280 connections to actual historical evidence so that's very interesting that these might be some

01:35:03.500 the more older and more grounded poems even though they're at the very end and they're kind of looked

01:35:09.980 over um the gray road wanted the steeds of the goths little the kings of the folk are ye like

01:35:20.780 for now ye are living alone of my race so it's that is an interesting part because uh it says

01:35:30.220 here thioth kanunga little uh they are not like the the people's kings and thioth of course meaning

01:35:40.460 the tribe and thereof and i think that this is clearly stating a separation between the story of

01:35:48.380 the western germanics uh sigurd and all of them coming from the burgundians and from the alamani

01:35:55.740 and the suwebi and all the western tribes and that the gutans are of the east and they are

01:36:02.220 they are different and that they are not of the same but the word race here is not in the

01:36:08.700 contextual way we would use it today and that word still has power but the translation here

01:36:14.540 is again this is like uh white people amongst white people is the the most like simplest way

01:36:21.740 i can say it um they're just saying they're not like the kings of our people um and then it moves

01:36:30.060 into uh them speaking and uh uh kind of get setting the tone if you will um and i i think

01:36:39.340 that this is again coming from ham fear uh lonely am i as the forest aspen of kindred bear as the

01:36:51.260 fur of its bows the fir tree for those who are not able to read the poem my joys are all lost

01:37:02.060 as the leaves of a tree when the scather of twigs from warm day turns like like burned of fire um

01:37:12.060 And it's just, again, it is about loneliness, or I would even say, too, the focus of bearing a singular task that is probably doomed.

01:37:26.860 Like a tree without leaves.

01:37:31.200 Then Hamther spoke forth the high of heart.

01:37:34.800 small praise didst thou Gudrun

01:37:38.760 to Hogni deed give

01:37:40.300 when they wakened thy

01:37:42.380 oh excuse me

01:37:43.140 that last quote was Gudrun

01:37:46.180 this of course is

01:37:48.120 Hamvir

01:37:49.320 Hamvir then spoke forth high of heart

01:37:52.840 small praise did thou

01:37:54.560 Gudrun to Hogni

01:37:56.780 Hogni's deed give

01:37:58.920 when they wakened

01:38:00.780 thy cigarette from out his sleep

01:38:02.500 thou didst sit on the bed

01:38:04.380 while his slayers left thy bed covers white with blood were red from his wounds and with

01:38:12.860 gore of thy husband were wet now we can see there's this repetitiveness from the poem before

01:38:18.220 um so sigarth was slain by his corpse did thou sit and of gladness didst thou not

01:38:28.360 was good nurse doing so the retort back and in this poem it we don't see as much the scathing

01:38:40.880 words of their mother their mother is claiming them to be cowardly and he in turn says don't

01:38:48.000 compare us to your brothers your brothers killed your first love um and we this is kind of just

01:38:55.760 Biting back and forth.

01:38:59.140 Then they say, thou would strike at Atli, saying, by the slaying of Erk and the killing of Echel.

01:39:06.740 These are the two children that she had.

01:39:09.960 Thine own grief was worse.

01:39:11.840 So should each one wield the wound-biting sword that another it slays but smites not himself?

01:39:20.900 Then did sorely the other son speak.

01:39:24.840 for wise was he ever

01:39:27.340 with my mother

01:39:29.800 I never a quarrel

01:39:31.320 will make

01:39:32.640 full little in speaking me thinks

01:39:35.320 he both lack

01:39:36.420 so he's saying stop I would never

01:39:38.740 begrudge my mother

01:39:41.000 especially since he knows her life 1.00

01:39:42.920 but both of you are being foolish right now 0.98

01:39:45.220 why askest thou Gudrun 0.99

01:39:47.620 that will give thee no tears

01:39:50.060 for thy brothers

01:39:53.680 dust weep and thy boys so sweet thy kinsmen in birth on the battlefield slain now gudrun as well

01:40:01.440 for us both shalt thou weep we sit doomed upon our steeds and far hence shall we die

01:40:11.200 so again a resignation of fate i think that's a commonality amongst the volsung saga

01:40:18.880 is the the resignation to yes we shall die but we must go forward and we see it over and over and

01:40:27.960 over again and in essence he stops both of them from arguing sorely does and says um that at this

01:40:37.660 level of of uh the burden of of death and fighting means no that no one escapes from this those who

01:40:47.460 wield the swords, we'll fall by swords, and you will get no respite by the vengeance of Svanhild

01:40:56.660 because you will in turn be losing us, but still we will go. And it's just, again, a very sad

01:41:06.040 all around

01:41:07.840 in 11

01:41:10.220 then the

01:41:12.520 fame glad one

01:41:14.180 the young princes

01:41:15.920 the warriors on the steps

01:41:18.480 she 1.00

01:41:20.520 was the slender figured spake 0.98

01:41:22.440 to her son so 0.88

01:41:23.900 she's on

01:41:26.400 the steps of the hall and they're

01:41:28.120 sitting out and she speaks

01:41:29.940 ye shall danger have if

01:41:34.400 counsel ye heave not

01:41:35.820 By two heroes alone shall two hundred of the Goths be bound or slain in the lofty walled berg, in their lofty castle.

01:41:49.200 From the courtyard they fared and fury they breathed, the youth swiftly went over the mountain, wet, on their hunnish steeds, death's vengeance to have.

01:42:01.920 And here's another point of the hunnish steeds that are mentioned. 0.57

01:42:05.820 This is after she has slain Atli and the Huns are in a disarray, but there is clearly a sense of pedigree in their horses with good reason. 0.88

01:42:18.900 So upon their steeds, they go over the mountain to fight and give vengeance and receive death in the Gutanish lands. 0.89

01:42:29.460 13 does have a break and it says on the way they found the man so wise and there's the break 0.84

01:42:38.380 what help from the weakling brown may we have so here this is uh in the two lines that follow

01:42:49.820 this stanza um has a lot of folks kind of debating what exactly this means some of them believe the

01:42:58.080 man so wise is erp from uh the previous stories um and here it says to bellows um gives it he says

01:43:12.040 the manuscripts indicate no gaps even though there are the man so wise erp he here represented as

01:43:20.500 son of Yonek, who is the father of these young men, but not of Gudrun, and hence half-brother

01:43:29.120 to Hamthir and Sorli. There is nothing further to indicate whether or not he was born out

01:43:34.760 of wedlock. However, he is simply mentioned in this capacity. And again, it's also kind

01:43:44.340 of the idea that the poems that were spoken of at the time were so well known that even

01:43:50.460 referring to or making heighty of was still giving an understanding by the crowd so there's not much

01:43:58.620 that we can go off there except um you know the the mentioning of him being kind of uh weaker

01:44:11.180 and they also use the word brown and generally um the word feet is used in relation to like

01:44:19.980 weakness so i think the brown may be of like low or earthly sense because a lot of times they'll

01:44:27.260 say like lily livered or white livered but in this case you know he's just this weak and lowly man 0.71

01:44:33.100 but um he answers in 14 so answered them their half brother then so well may i my kidsman aid

01:44:41.980 as help one foot from from the other has so i will help you as one foot helps the other

01:44:48.780 How may a foot its fellow aid, or a flesh-grown hand another help?

01:44:56.900 Then Earp spoke forth, and he said with his words that were few, as haughty he sat on his horse's back. 0.97

01:45:04.300 To the timid tis ill, the way to tell, a bastard they, the bold one called.

01:45:11.280 From their sheaths, they drew their shining swords, their blades, to the giantess, joy to give. 0.92

01:45:20.380 Now, that's an interesting line there, but let me continue forward and then we'll go back.

01:45:24.500 By a third, they lessened the might that was theirs.

01:45:28.060 The fighter young to the earth felled.

01:45:32.240 Now, I am of the belief that the giantess has a possibility of two meanings.

01:45:40.520 One, immediately there is this gravitation towards the idea of hell, but I think more so it is the giantess that stands at the bridge of Helgard, speaking specifically of the giantess Mothgulv, the one who accepts the dead across the bridge that covers over Gjöl and Sliv.

01:46:05.700 So I am of that belief, but he says that this is clearly an indication towards the goddess Hel.

01:46:15.220 And I think, again, there are mirroring images of understanding between Helgard and Ausgard.

01:46:23.320 Ausgard's bridge is thin and shimmering and disappears and reappears and cannot be tread by everyone.

01:46:29.140 So access into heaven is special, and then Helgard has a wide bridge, and it is sturdy, and it is covered, and it is most importantly guarded just like Heimdallgaard's Ausgarde, Moggauv guards the bridge into hell.

01:46:48.100 And she's often overlooked, so I wonder if that's more in relation or in correct thought to that, but I digress.

01:46:59.140 so they fight all of them are fighting many young men are felled to their death their cloaks they

01:47:07.520 shook their swords they sheathed the high-born men wrapped their mantles close on their road

01:47:14.720 they fared and and an ill way found and their sister's son on a tree they saw on the wind-cold

01:47:23.820 wolf tree west of the hall and cranes bait crawled none care to would care to linger

01:47:33.500 so as they approach the halls of the goths they find swanhild's son is

01:47:41.740 hanging or see they say sister's son and this could be swanhild's son but there's no like

01:47:48.140 mention um of that deeper or it could be um the king's son but here is clearly the sister's son

01:47:59.420 so i wonder if there was a poetic mix up there there could have been or it is just that they

01:48:04.700 never mentioned swan held son but he's hanging on a wind-cold wolf tree left to the wolves to the

01:48:13.500 west of the hall and their brains bait or crows uh crawled amongst the branches of the tree and

01:48:25.100 none of them cared to linger there in the hall was din uh and then anybody that might not be

01:48:33.260 familiar with the word din din of course meaning loud it's a great noises there was a a din of

01:48:41.580 clamor or or what have you in the hall was din the men drank deep and the horse's hooves could

01:48:50.220 know could no one hear so they're partying inside the hall and they can't hear this

01:48:56.940 the warriors approaching uh till the warriors hearty sounded his horn

01:49:01.820 men came and the tale of yorman wreck told the warriors helms without they beheld take

01:49:14.000 counsel wise for brave ones are are to come of mighty men thou the sister didst murder

01:49:21.120 then Jormunruk laughed his hand laid upon his beard his arms for with wine he was warlike

01:49:32.520 he called for and shook his brown locks on his white shield he took and raised high the cup

01:49:40.020 of gold in his hand happy methinks where I behold hamther and sorely here in my hall

01:49:49.560 The men would I bind with strings of bows, and Gyuki's airs on the gallows hang. 0.59

01:49:58.140 In the hall there was clamor, the cups were shattered, men stood in blood from the breasts of the Goths. 0.79

01:50:07.040 Then did Hamther speak forth, the haughty of heart, thou soughtest, Jormunrek, us to see. 0.79

01:50:14.100 Sons of one mother, seek thy dwelling.

01:50:18.020 Thou seest thy hands, thy feet, thou beholdest. 0.59

01:50:22.300 Jormunrek flung into the fire so hot. 0.84

01:50:28.920 Then roared the king of the race of the gods.

01:50:34.140 Bold in his armor as roars a bear.

01:50:38.180 Stone ye the men that steel will not bite.

01:50:44.100 sword, nor spear, nor the sons of Yonach.

01:50:50.500 And then swordly speaks.

01:50:53.340 Ill didst win, brother, when the bag thou didst open

01:50:57.220 off from that bag came baleful counsel.

01:51:01.180 Heart hast thou, Hamther, if knowledge thou hadst,

01:51:04.860 a man without wisdom is lacking in much.

01:51:08.900 And Hamther retorts, he says his head were now off

01:51:12.900 if Earp were living, the brother so keen whom we killed on the road, the warrior noble,

01:51:20.500 t'was the Norns that drove me, the hero to slay, who in fight should be holy.

01:51:28.220 Now, I think that line there too is very interesting because it again reiterates the

01:51:33.260 seed of knightlyhood. The warrior noble, t'was the Norns that drove me, by fate and by fate alone

01:51:40.260 I was to act the hero to slay who in fight should be holy. In your struggle, in your war, you should

01:51:49.360 be divine. You should be working in synchronicity with divinity. And in 29, in fashion of wolves,

01:52:02.480 it befits us not amongst ourselves to strive like the hounds of the norns that nourished

01:52:08.100 We're in the greed mid-waists so grim.

01:52:13.540 So not so noble, but instead we were vengeance-beared to wade in the gore mid-waists in it so grim.

01:52:28.180 We have greatly fought over the goths, do we stand?

01:52:32.400 By our blades lay low like eagles upon branches.

01:52:35.820 Great our fame though we die today or tomorrow, none outlives the night when the Norns have spoken.

01:52:47.560 Then sorely beside the gable sank, and Hamthir fell at the back of the house.

01:52:55.080 This is called the old ballad of Hamthir.

01:52:59.160 so they fall in the battle and sorely what they mean by at the gable the front of the house

01:53:06.920 where the gables are lifted uh and you can see the gables like at our hops that's where he he fell

01:53:14.480 he fell upon the stairs but it was hamther who got when they say to the back of the house is that

01:53:21.960 he got into he covered the distance he fought the whole way through and fell at the end

01:53:32.280 and that's it they both fall in battle um in vengeance but i mean again this poem's just

01:53:41.720 very very short concise and as about as subtle as a hammer to a kneecap

01:53:46.600 all right well

01:53:52.000 I don't know stanza wise if we're halfway through poem wise we are

01:53:59.040 take this time to approach a couple more questions

01:54:04.460 in our tradition what's the difference between excuses and valid obstacles

01:54:14.200 and how do we tell the two apart?

01:54:19.560 Svanner,

01:54:20.540 what do you say?

01:54:22.680 Wow.

01:54:24.080 One, that's a great question.

01:54:26.260 And I think that that's a question

01:54:27.600 since we are, as we just spoke,

01:54:30.960 about a religion of living,

01:54:33.260 a religion of deeds.

01:54:36.020 There is,

01:54:38.120 that's a great thing to ponder.

01:54:40.880 But I think the answer may be simple.

01:54:43.540 The problem is deception of the self. A lot of times we deceive ourselves. If we are not deceiving ourselves and the obstacles are real, then it doesn't matter what is presented to others.

01:55:02.560 But we have to be completely honest with ourselves. If we are not honest with ourselves, then what we do present to others is the same thing we present to ourselves, an excuse.

01:55:19.140 So I would say in short answer, that which is truly an obstacle and something that must be overcome is not an argument to others and has little consequence other than perhaps if someone was to ask you why you were doing something is that I must do it because of this obstacle.

01:55:44.180 But it's not about defining your argument. If you do find yourself defining your argument, you must look deep within it and make sure that you are not lying to yourself as you would lie to others.

01:55:59.320 because one is bad in the outward sense,

01:56:02.920 but even far worse on the inward sense.

01:56:06.460 And that, again, just really boils down to truth and action.

01:56:13.900 What actions are you going to take to remove said obstacles if they are real?

01:56:19.240 You don't need to lawyer up and defend.

01:56:22.920 You must have a plan.

01:56:25.120 You must start working towards it.

01:56:26.460 And I think that's kind of what we see in a lot of these poems.

01:56:31.100 And that's my take on that.

01:56:32.940 I don't know.

01:56:33.400 Yeah, I think you covered it really well.

01:56:35.580 I was going to say, because I saw this question a little bit ago and I was pondering it.

01:56:42.660 And again, linguistically, they mean the same thing, but we get colloquially, you know, the difference.

01:56:50.660 So, I would say excuse is a justification for inaction, whereas obstacles or, yeah, valid obstacles are causes to reframe action or to, they're things, obstacles are things to be overcome, whereas excuses are like justifications to go back and sit down and be the adorner of couches.

01:57:18.360 and that's kind of the the distinction I'd see in my head when I see somebody who's like well

01:57:25.500 you know I couldn't because of you know reasons and stuff or man it was really hard I couldn't

01:57:33.360 get there so I had to drive three hours out of the way to get there cool that's a valid obstacle

01:57:38.240 and you found a way around it and that's a reason that you were late as opposed to I didn't show up

01:57:43.220 because I don't know it looked kind of sketchy out and I mean I think those are are the things

01:57:50.060 and I think that whether or not no no answer that we're going to have here is the perfect answer

01:57:58.100 but I think it comes in the attitude and excuses is you being able to find a reason to take an out

01:58:04.160 whereas a valid obstacle is a frustration that you can't get there as fast as you want or in the way

01:58:10.280 that you wanted and it is followed up with you know alternative action as opposed to

01:58:17.080 uselessness i think that makes the difference uh to my mind

01:58:23.400 um in times when motivation fades what spiritual truths or teachings do you turn to

01:58:31.400 that remind you of your purpose it's fun these are great questions um

01:58:40.280 that's very interesting um i'm trying to think of the best way to put that um for me

01:58:56.120 and i know this sounds very strange but it's honest is is obligation i i am uh i am of belief

01:59:05.480 great belief in obligation or obligation to the divine obligation to my ancestors obligation to

01:59:13.860 my folk or to my words or to the oaths so that which i find and i know that sound because the

01:59:24.660 modern usage of the word obligation is like oh so when it when it sucks you just have to deal

01:59:32.260 No, I find a reinvigorating sense when I look at the scope of everything, when I think about that which I am given by the gods, whether it's the blessings of healthy children or the recorrection of my life in juxtaposition to where much of my family went.

01:59:56.100 And, you know, that's kind of getting into the details of it, but the idea is that obligation based off of what I have and what is helps me recalibrate and shirk off a lot of the doom, a lot of the darkness of the moment and helps me say to myself, you know, that the blessings I receive from the gods and that which I've received from my ancestors.

02:00:23.040 And the things that I have done to bridge those gaps and the blessings I feel like I truly have received, and then it goes even further, is the scope of my words.

02:00:36.480 I said something, and I've been trying to do it, but then I look at all of the deeds and all of my little place in it and how it all fits together, and I suddenly realize that I can't let that go.

02:00:52.500 I am obligated to continue on because the bigger piece of it all, the web of it all, the fate of the gods and the norns and all these things invigorate me to carry on.

02:01:09.520 I may take a step back. I may, sometimes I fall into a sense of seclusion, but what that ends up doing is I, I, I rise from that just as there is the low tide, there is the high tide.

02:01:25.700 And I know that, but sometimes you do need to kind of recalibrate, reset, but all the while, you're never letting that creeping doom cross over you, and you've got to hold the big perspective.

02:01:42.600 That's what helps me, is my obligation to the greater things going on around me.

02:01:55.700 I think it's, first, Nick in Ohio donated $10 each to Frazhoff and Sigurheim.

02:02:04.020 Thank you for that.

02:02:04.760 We appreciate it a lot.

02:02:08.220 I think my answer to the question, again, so it's like the question wants us to have

02:02:13.700 a cool, like, ah, well, if you harken back to the quatrain of Steve McNallan number seven,

02:02:19.640 and I don't have one of those that's cool, and I wish I did, because that's awesome,

02:02:23.600 and it's a nice succinct thing I think mine and spawns are similar but from a

02:02:32.920 slightly different vector I wouldn't characterize

02:02:48.040 my feeling as

02:02:50.140 obligation as much

02:02:52.260 as

02:02:53.120 doesn't sound good but

02:02:58.080 truth is one of our virtues ambition

02:02:59.820 I

02:03:01.880 must make the

02:03:04.100 gods proud of me

02:03:05.460 and

02:03:07.720 I feel

02:03:09.680 like

02:03:12.800 I feel like

02:03:17.860 that is a bar that is always too far ahead that i can't make it to so i need to always be sprinting

02:03:31.700 towards it as the best i can and hopefully if i sprint hard enough and consistently enough

02:03:40.420 enough, then they will call it good enough. But yeah, it's so example on stuff with Hoffs

02:03:53.700 or anything else. I know that our have our Hoffs and things will happen. I know that

02:04:05.460 the gods have a approved way of things that they'd like to see happen that they put their

02:04:14.060 energy towards happening and kind of a plan or at least a direction for how things go

02:04:25.520 and i don't ever want to rush that or run afoul of that but i will damn sure have myself

02:04:38.680 in position when the time is right i don't ever want the gods or the folk or the afa to miss out

02:04:49.500 because i'm caught asleep at the wheel because i'm not where i need to be because i'm not pushing

02:04:56.140 hard enough because i'm not um pouring enough of myself into it i don't ever want my failing

02:05:06.220 to be the thing that present prevents success for the afa uh boon for our folk or glory to our gods

02:05:16.140 and so it is a ever-present um need to be doing my utmost to make the gods proud of me

02:05:31.820 and i think that is the daily acknowledgement and it's something i reaffirm daily in front of

02:05:42.380 in front of my altar and uh yeah that's kind of the guiding thing and i think it's

02:05:49.980 the same kind of thing just approached from a slightly different vector if i may and and a lot

02:05:54.780 of folks listening don't they may not i mean they may think that like what's being said is

02:06:00.700 i don't know it's that's what somebody who's running the or the church or the afa or the

02:06:06.460 church of the icer would say but it is truly that way and i think to speak on a negative sense for

02:06:12.940 both of us i know that you speak about how when you push forward and you push forward hard

02:06:18.620 sometimes you are so far ahead that no one is with you and then you start to get agitated panicked

02:06:27.340 and things i've seen this i'm and i'm just i don't mean i'm not trying to air out the truth

02:06:32.060 to know that this is genuine.

02:06:35.560 Whereas for me, I am playing catch up

02:06:38.160 because a lot of times I get so hyper focused

02:06:40.300 on one little thing that I lose sight of the big picture

02:06:42.980 and then I get drugged down and one of my setbacks.

02:06:47.020 And so you have this kind of aggressive forwardness

02:06:49.680 and this kind of reflective, I don't know,

02:06:53.340 like receiving of an understanding or the burden,

02:06:59.280 the obligation, the greater picture.

02:07:01.640 what ends up happening is i play catch up a lot of times while you're waiting for everyone to

02:07:07.720 so it is really true what i was here ago that you're saying this is absolutely

02:07:13.880 the case between the two of us that's why this show is called victory never sleeps is i don't

02:07:20.040 ever want to get caught yeah resting like i always want to be moving forward and i'm i

02:07:31.640 We have a limited lifespan in Midgard.

02:07:38.080 There is so much that I want to accomplish for this and for our Aesir.

02:07:49.700 And I want to do the very best with the time that I have.

02:07:56.560 I have been blessed with a very amazing opportunity and amazing fortune in the sense of amazing luck to be in the position that I'm in.

02:08:13.880 I don't ever not want to be worthy of it.

02:08:16.540 And so I always want to show my worth and I don't know, I want to leave it all on the field.

02:08:30.720 And that's the, you know, that's the thing.

02:08:36.080 That was a rare kind of deep cut into the core of things there.

02:08:41.680 i mean that's the thing with these questions you know some of them are you know what's your

02:08:45.440 favorite breakfast cereal and some of them right to the bone deeper and some of them that don't

02:08:51.600 necessarily seem like they would um you know inspire something else so we appreciate all

02:08:56.480 you guys's questions we got one more before we'll go back into the text um how can each of us become

02:09:04.080 a brighter beacon of courage steadfastness and honor for our families and folk this year it's fun

02:09:14.160 well i'm kind of following that question turbo charge you only have a living amount of time

02:09:20.400 get in there fight light on fire do the heart no i i think to bring it into the middle between

02:09:28.160 i would say one of the things is is cultivating small victories is a huge thing i think for a lot

02:09:34.960 of folks who maybe aren't on the role of catching the horizon there are a lot of folks and perhaps

02:09:41.840 there's even folks around you um but gaining those small victories including others in your small

02:09:48.080 victories uh and making them grow together if you're if you're talking about your family um

02:09:56.160 you know they in a big scale they might not get certain things but you get this small victory

02:10:02.720 and include them and show them why why you're doing this and where are you the source of your

02:10:08.240 spirit comes from and i think that makes you kind of that beacon and i think that a lot of times we

02:10:15.120 get too grandiose in our thoughts about what we can do and instead if we can just make those

02:10:22.320 steps and get bigger and bigger and bigger but include your family with you and then also to

02:10:29.920 exonerate them in their little steps in the things that they do that make them move forward and

02:10:36.960 together that's one thing um is those those little victories if you will um focus on them

02:10:47.120 keep yourself in scope all right see you in the morning baby sleep good

02:10:54.800 um they uh those little victories i think are a big one since you you scoped the question with

02:11:03.760 being uh up for for your friends your family and your folk around you that is one of the things i

02:11:09.920 think a lot of people lose sight of they they hit the ground running hard and they have a very big

02:11:15.520 horizontal goal and they don't concentrate on little things and then they falter and kind of

02:11:21.120 sometimes spin out or again fall into darkness lose scope of things so those little grabbing

02:11:30.860 those little victories whatever they might be of uh spiritual attainment or and i'm not even

02:11:39.520 talking even just spiritual but you have this uh say something plaguing you you or your family and

02:11:47.340 you remove that obstacle you you conquer that situation you come out on the other end and then

02:11:55.160 you say okay now i'm gonna do the next thing and you know you celebrate so it's kind of like a in

02:12:02.300 between the two the last question we were talking about having that but don't lose scope don't go

02:12:08.760 so big that you don't get the step off questions are good so uh painful self-reflection um

02:12:28.200 and i think it follows on with what you're saying seize opportunities to do stuff don't just wait

02:12:33.080 on the big stuff you're doing. Don't, you know, be adorners of couches, or in my case, adorners of

02:12:40.120 broke down recliners. Get out there and do stuff. I know I have a tendency of having big things that

02:12:48.340 I'm trying to do that I like wait on them happening. There's lots of little things you can

02:12:55.720 do in the meantime. And I really like the phrasing of the question, because it's not just like what

02:13:02.800 stuff can we do better but it's how can that be a a brighter how can that be an example to others

02:13:13.040 being seen to do stuff either inspires people like wow that guy's awesome i should be out 0.61

02:13:19.600 there doing stuff too or it you know scolds others like damn it if that guy now i look bad sitting

02:13:28.320 here so i guess i got either way works either way moves you forward so um either of those things 0.65

02:13:35.280 it's really example is such a powerful thing because it cuts through all of the um

02:13:48.160 we are very adept at defending

02:13:50.880 laziness and poor behavior with words and with concepts and with argumentation. An example

02:14:03.040 cuts through that. There's no resistance. There's no built-in arguments. There's no, well, actually,

02:14:10.440 dude's out there doing it and you're not get up and go do it or shut up and it's

02:14:19.060 that is instinctual to our core it doesn't know a language it doesn't know a philosophical school

02:14:27.340 it's you know they're out there doing it get out there and do it or count yourself lesser

02:14:33.580 and uh i think example is super powerful and i think it's it's not just powerful with that

02:14:39.120 it's powerful with your fam. And you mentioned specifically in

02:14:41.860 the question families, your kids are watching. Your kids are

02:14:49.140 watching. And that's okay, so that's something that has really

02:15:01.940 been brought home to me in a lot of ways that that I try to

02:15:05.880 internalize and you know a lot of ways i'm very proud of of my wife and i in some some ways that

02:15:10.760 we've handled that because especially and you know any long-term followers of the show or whatever

02:15:19.880 um may be aware that there has been significant rift in my family between my father

02:15:28.440 stepmother and uh mandian and i over the covet 19 reaction and a lot of things since then and there's

02:15:40.120 been it's been really important to me to try to set the example for my family to try to be

02:15:51.240 the bigger person in that which is strange dealing with the generation that you look up to

02:16:00.520 that's supposed to be the bigger person by default it's interesting when as a grown a grown child to

02:16:07.400 a parent you find yourself trying to be the adult in the situation that's not meant to be disparaging

02:16:14.440 I'm sure Aubrey will say the same thing in 30 years from now.

02:16:19.720 But it's been at the forefront of our mind.

02:16:23.160 Not only is this the right thing to do, not only should we do it, but Aubrey needs to see us doing it. 0.98

02:16:29.720 And they need to see me being a good son and not being a jerk.

02:16:34.280 They need to see that even though we've got rifts over things, that I'm still showing hospitality, that I'm still extending courtesies to my parents that I owe them. 0.95

02:16:46.520 She needs to, I don't just need to do it.

02:16:48.960 She needs to see that we're doing it.

02:16:51.720 And that's, that's powerful.

02:16:53.920 So I don't know if there's really a point there or just kind of an example of it, but that came to mind.

02:17:00.240 And again, these are good questions.

02:17:01.360 so appreciate the meaty the meaty questions for us this evening but we will handle a meaty portion

02:17:10.240 of text here the uh um it's fun do they need any prep work or we just diving right in uh i would

02:17:20.320 say one of the things about this is this is more well first off it's not in the corpus of the codex

02:17:29.040 and that this is more like the Volsunga saga is ultimately talking about the interplay between

02:17:42.640 the Burgundians, the Frankish Germanics, the Goths, and so on. This next poem is from that,

02:17:53.060 and i would say is even more detailed um because there is such a wide mentioning of kings of

02:18:01.460 england uh leader or kings of wales uh there there is a lot going on here but the best way

02:18:08.660 to look at this poem is one okay we're stepping outside of the volsunga cycle and we are looking

02:18:15.700 into a poem that is constructed of the inner fighting of uh

02:18:27.700 european tribes if you will and their kings and some of the just it's it's more of a kind of a

02:18:35.780 snapshot into like real life game of thrones if you will um i i uh i don't mean to say that

02:18:43.060 impiously but it is true there's a lot of backstabbing and fighting that's about to go on

02:18:47.220 and um it's just very straightforward and um some of it is very historically contextual and then

02:18:55.140 others speculative and that's because by the time that this poem was uh fully composed and written

02:19:03.780 down, um, that, you know, this was a great expanse of time, but not as far as the expanse

02:19:12.920 of time between Attila and, uh, you know, writing this down in Iceland. So it's not that far, but

02:19:20.680 still very interesting. Uh, the story is again, based off of the treachery that happens, um,

02:19:28.980 between kings and um their kinfolk and uh yeah i mean i guess the the poem will will speak of it

02:19:40.500 um so in the in the beginning here it gives a great and straight out connection of like a road

02:19:49.940 map of where everyone is where everyone's at and it's so strange because remember

02:19:57.940 when we talk about how and i'll use this just for fun and make sure people are paying attention

02:20:04.660 um tomato europe and the roman empire um and having its connectivities a lot of people forget

02:20:14.020 potato europe it's super funny using um like vegetables from the americas or a fruit and

02:20:21.780 a vegetable if you want to get really specific uh but in potato europe there was a great connectivity

02:20:30.980 between all the tribal groups there was fighting and there was not a lot of cohesion but there

02:20:38.980 was very much an understanding of who was who and where was where and they did share a commonality

02:20:46.820 of culture our religion was all across europe um and they knew when we when we spoke of the gods

02:20:58.500 um that they understood who they were talking about and this connectivity is is really shown

02:21:04.820 in here um especially with the inclusion of the welsh and the english and the english of course

02:21:14.480 being germanic folk that go over into the aisles um but yeah so here in right out the gate stanza

02:21:26.040 one. Of your, say

02:21:29.900 they, Homli over the Huns 1.00

02:21:33.820 held sway. So that's all the way in the east. 0.99

02:21:38.140 Gysir over the Gauts in Gautland, which

02:21:41.960 would then be up north near Sweden.

02:21:46.640 Over the Gauts, Angatir.

02:21:50.900 Now, Angantir is also written

02:21:53.560 Angaty in the Nordic side, but we're going to go with Angantir. And then there is Valdar over the

02:22:04.640 Danes in what would be Denmark or Jutland, but over the Welsh, Kiar, and Auric the Bold over the

02:22:14.400 English folk. And their speculative nature is that Auric may be either a king unknown named

02:22:23.300 Ulrich or it may be Alfred the Great or Alfred the Great or Alfred the Great or Alfric who was

02:22:47.860 um better known as a scholar and possibly one of the first of the of the christian conversions but

02:22:55.540 i think the likelihood of this is it's more alfred the great but um uh let's see so alric

02:23:04.500 the bold over the english folk then there was cloth born there in the hunnish folk lands

02:23:12.020 with dagger and broadsword and bernie long, with ring-decked helmet and sharp-hewing sword,

02:23:23.400 with horse well-broken in that hallowed land. Now Floth learned about the death of his father.

02:23:32.720 His brother, Angantir, had himself made king over all those lands which Hedric had owned.

02:23:43.080 Then King Humli advised Tlaugh to claim from Angantir his share of the inheritance with fair words, as is said here.

02:23:53.700 And then it moves into the poetics.

02:23:55.880 So bearing in mind, it is that of the Goths, they are speaking of Anguntir, and Hoth is supposed to go to him and claim his rightful half.

02:24:13.180 So, Rodeloth from the east in the Hunnish lands to King Hydrix, firstborn, to the halls where dwells the dauntless Goths, to Auerheimer to claim that his heir lands.

02:24:35.520 I also find it interesting, Ærheimr. Ærheimr is, you know, the home of like the year, the cycle. I'm looking here again to see what the notes from Hollander. They call it the river dwelling. And it may be supposed of the Dnepr River, but Ær in Old Norse means year.

02:25:05.520 or the cycle or seasons, I don't know.

02:25:10.300 I'm going to have to look into that one,

02:25:11.660 but I'm just noting that as I'm reading it.

02:25:16.000 Before the high hall, he found a hero standing from far lands,

02:25:20.220 hailing him he welcomed.

02:25:23.100 Floth said, into high hall now go thou, hero,

02:25:27.380 and bid Angantir make answer to me.

02:25:31.400 Now, this is an interesting point that I wanted to bring up.

02:25:34.380 We see this over and over and over again in our stories when it comes to the idea that the hero is going to the hall.

02:25:45.520 And then, sorry, one moment, my phone keeps blowing up because my fellow Speckinger are talking about very important things on Teams.

02:26:04.800 Anyways, we see this over and over again. We see this in Skirnismall, in which when Holy Frey sends Skirnir, he meets outside of Gareth's Hall, a herdsman.

02:26:21.500 And we see this in Ragnarok. We see this time and time again, where there is a kind of a gatesman, a doorman, a herdsman. In this case, they simply say a warrior from far away.

02:26:37.560 And the idea is that he is presenting himself, not directly, but through this person with, perhaps to show a sense of civility.

02:26:52.160 At the time, the idea of, you know, being hearkened by someone else, having a herald was generally seen as polite.

02:27:02.440 so maybe that's what this this is but again it's just worth noting we see it over and over and

02:27:09.140 over again um so he says go into the high hall hero and tell the king of the goths angantir

02:27:16.660 the uh that he should come to answer to me the warrior went in before the table of king

02:27:23.180 Angantir, and said, Tis Hloth, come here, King Hydric's heir, thy bastard brother, thy brother

02:27:33.400 he, high the young hero, on his horse doth sit, would he now feign with thee have speech. 0.52

02:27:43.820 Pretty blunt, but also fair.

02:27:46.600 so um but when king angatir heard this he threw down his trencher his plate on the board the table

02:27:59.440 uh in icelandic we still say uh like when when you come to eat it's come to borda means come

02:28:05.980 to the board come to the table so he throws his trencher down and i love this this kind of detail

02:28:12.480 that they throw in here and he rose and clad himself in his bernie in his chainmail he took

02:28:19.600 his white shield in hand and grasped his sword uh tierving with the other then there arose much

02:28:30.320 din in the hall as here is said and again the mentioning of tierving people often or people

02:28:39.120 from time to time mentioned tear thing and it's interesting that this is

02:28:43.680 you know this has come up for whatever reason it came up with something the other day i really like

02:28:50.160 this poem's um uh descriptions the uh the imagery in a pretty short word economy is like really

02:29:02.880 powerful i like the way i like the way this is composed really well yeah that that short concise

02:29:09.120 and all of these poems are but i mean such a clear picture like that's the thing with

02:29:16.160 so few words it paints a very vivid scene well and a lot of people might be thinking like what

02:29:22.880 does this have connection with gudhrun because we've been talking about gudhrun and hogni and

02:29:27.520 no this is uh in essence um after i believe it's after because atli is uh not there and that um

02:29:37.920 flovy is one of or the king of in the hunnish lands so this is again just a slice of

02:29:47.200 warriordom in poetics clean and clear as if we were simply warriors in the hall listening to the

02:29:55.440 poet give tale of the going-ons between great men um so uh

02:30:08.960 yes tierving then there arose much din in the hall as he as it is said here

02:30:13.600 rose outcry in the hall with the atheling when the atheling stood up again the atheling is

02:30:21.840 an anglo-saxon word but it is uh speaking of course of the king of the goths angatyr and

02:30:29.600 and all of his lords they all feign would hear what hoth did say and eek what answer angatyr made

02:30:37.520 so immediately everybody gets up and they want to see what their lord is going to say to this man

02:30:44.000 who is coming uh for things that he believes is rightfully his and there this is a this is like a

02:30:52.960 moment and they want to they want to see what what's going on and of course they are of angatyr's

02:30:59.360 throng so they they're it's more about seeing how their king reacts to this challenge uh angatyr

02:31:06.240 says hail to thee king hydric son and my own brother he doesn't say bastard brother or step

02:31:14.560 brother he says brother on bench sit thou in his hall let us drink hydric's arville

02:31:25.840 that's uh arville that's an interesting the father of us the first of mankind

02:31:32.240 In wine, in mead, whichever worthest seemed.

02:31:38.800 So he's saying, come, let's sit in our hall and drink mead or wine

02:31:44.240 or whichever one of those we deem the worthiest at the time and speak.

02:31:53.020 um i just i wanted to see there the connection there with uh hydrix arville and the the

02:32:04.380 yeah

02:32:06.780 i mean i see here too when he says the father of us the first of mankind he's not i think he's

02:32:15.380 speaking of the origins of because it says theodhan um the origins of the germanic people

02:32:22.480 or the origins of the goths perhaps since hlothi even even though hlothi lives amongst the huns

02:32:29.920 he is half brother to um uh angantir and angantir is gothic so maybe he's speaking about the first

02:32:41.280 king of the goths um and then lowly says uh not hither came we from hunnish lands to share with

02:32:50.240 you your wine and mead the half will i have of what is hydric owned of all and of edge of all

02:33:01.360 the treasure of cow and of call of cairn and of harsh grinding of thrall and bond made and those

02:33:10.080 born of them so he cuts he minces it right to the heart of it he says i'm not here to drink mead

02:33:19.680 with you and negotiate i want what's half of which is mine from hydric so again hydric being

02:33:30.400 their father uh and you know as our anger says is the the source of their race or their

02:33:39.040 their being their tribe and he says um of all and the word all meaning like a

02:33:48.080 a punch that you would punch holes in leather and of edge of all the treasure.

02:33:57.500 And it's speculated down here when they talk about of all where he says that this could mean

02:34:06.880 representing of peaceful pursuits. So he's saying like of craft, he says, I want what's half of

02:34:16.680 mine owned of all or of, of crafts like of leather crafts and of peaceful things or by

02:34:25.380 edge, like the edge of a sword. Um, and of all the treasure that he had won, even of

02:34:32.560 the, of the cows and the, and the land and the, the millstone and the, the, the, the

02:34:39.960 fields that the thralls um grind wheat upon or from he wants that which is owed to him so again

02:34:48.760 this is poetically just saying you know i want all the treasure that is i want it of the peaceful

02:34:55.080 crafts or by edge and i want the lands that are owed to me um and then he continues he says the

02:35:02.120 mighty forest which is murkwood height the hallowed grave which in gothland stand gothland stands

02:35:10.840 the shining stone in uh denopsted stands half of the war weeds which hydric owned of lands and

02:35:21.480 lieges and of lustrous arm rings so interesting part of that is um he's talking about the

02:35:31.960 burial places of the of the gothlands so i think what he's ultimately saying is the the lands of

02:35:40.040 the north down to the deneper river and so he's basically stating out that plot um and then he

02:35:50.520 also wants um the uh of the of the stone in uh denepstead or the denepir river um but the war

02:36:03.400 weeds part was the one that i was looking at and i wonder if um uh war weeds may have a uh

02:36:12.920 Kenning for soldiers. But in essence, and this is something that Boog suggests, is that this is where it would put a buffer zone between the Huns and the Nibelungs of the Volsunga saga and the Nibelungs, that this is kind of this buffer zone that he's trying to reclaim.

02:36:41.120 And in essence, since he's from the Hunnish lands, this is the East kind of stepping back in to the West and making claims again, which may have had, I think, kind of an aggressive reaction from the audience with good purposes.

02:36:58.320 Like the East, the wake of Atli is still nibbling into the heartlands of Europe kind of thing.

02:37:06.260 Angantir says 0.53

02:37:08.260 to

02:37:10.360 Clothi, he says,

02:37:12.000 Your shining shield will be shattered,

02:37:14.780 brother, and by cold

02:37:16.520 spears

02:37:17.200 will be split by

02:37:20.300 many another, and

02:37:22.420 many a man will meet his death

02:37:24.380 before Tirving into

02:37:26.540 Isunder, or to

02:37:28.500 three, son of Humli, 1.00

02:37:31.140 leave the half

02:37:32.460 of it. Now,

02:37:34.320 So, the placement of that is as a threat, that he will sunder him, or maybe in threes, I think is an interesting thing.

02:37:52.520 And Homely, of course, being, it says here down in the bottom, that Homely is his daughter's son.

02:38:00.780 so i i'm a little confused as exactly how this is looping around but um he continues he says i will

02:38:11.040 give thee brother gleaming arm rings and much wealth and gold what most thou wishest 1200

02:38:18.840 thralls 1200 steeds 1200 bondmen with bucklers and weapons to every man of you

02:38:29.880 much will I give other and better things than

02:38:33.940 e'er this he had. To every man a maid will I 0.96

02:38:38.040 give, and give each maiden a golden necklace. 1.00

02:38:43.300 About thee a sitting hall 0.91

02:38:45.420 shall I silver heap.

02:38:49.760 About thee a going shall I give golden trinkets

02:38:53.820 to pour, so that the rings will roll about thee.

02:38:57.420 shall govern a third of the Gothic lands.

02:39:02.420 Gizr then called the follower of the Grittings,

02:39:06.080 King Hyderic's faster father,

02:39:09.160 was then in Angatyr's company,

02:39:11.880 and he was exceedingly old by then.

02:39:14.460 When he heard Angatyr's offer,

02:39:16.720 he thought that too much was being offered,

02:39:19.860 and said,

02:39:20.980 Could no better be offered to a bondwoman's son, 0.97

02:39:25.300 to the son of a bond woman though born to a king the bastard son that will sate on the hill 0.73

02:39:31.940 when the atheling the heirlooms shifted so uh angantir is saying i will give you 0.94

02:39:41.480 horses i will give you bondsmen and weapons i will give you maidens and each maiden will

02:39:48.020 have golden necklace he is laying it on there and saying that you know you can then too

02:39:54.540 governed a one third of the Gothic lands. But Gisr, who is King Hydric's father, so their father's

02:40:06.860 father, the grandfather, and he says, you know, why would you do this? Why would you offer so much

02:40:12.160 to this half bastard stepbrother of yours who's born not just of a king, but also of a bond woman 0.99

02:40:22.720 of low birth um and he kind of even lends to the idea the bastard son then sit a saint on the hill 0.98

02:40:31.640 when the atheling the heirlooms shifted so like he's also kind of saying like you're promising

02:40:37.020 him all this and do you think he's going to sit tidily by uh and accept it if not and not go for

02:40:43.440 more? Will he be sated when you've shifted all of this upon him? Now, Hloth is enraged and returns

02:40:55.080 to Humli, who promises to help him the summer after. So this is a gap. And what we end up 0.90

02:41:02.880 getting is this exchange goes and Hloth is not satisfied. And so he leaves and he speaks to

02:41:10.960 Humli and says, the next summer, I'm going to attack Angantir. And that's another interesting 0.98

02:41:20.120 thing to consider is that most wars and most of these kind of things happen seasonally.

02:41:27.160 So Humli says, shall we feast at our ease till over is the winter, drink and hold and converse,

02:41:37.480 quaffing the mead and teaching our warriors weapons to fashion,

02:41:41.720 which to battle bravely we shall bear forward.

02:41:45.580 Well shall we arm our warrior host and help thee, loathe,

02:41:50.060 with hardy deeds, with 12-year-old drafts or draughts, 0.92

02:41:57.620 and two-year-old foals, thus shall the host of the Huns be gathered. 0.91

02:42:03.700 So he says, with 12-year-old mead or 12-year-old alcohol and with two-year-old calves, so long-standing mead and young meat, soft meat, over the winter we shall eat and prepare. 0.91

02:42:29.560 And that winter, King Humli and Tlov did stay at home.

02:42:34.900 But when spring came, they drew together so great a host that there was a dearth of fighting men in Hunland.

02:42:43.080 And when this mighty host was gathered, they rode through the murkwood.

02:42:48.100 As they came out of the forest, they found many farms and level fields.

02:42:53.380 And in the fields there stood a fair castle.

02:42:55.820 There ruled Hervor, Angatyr and Loth's sister, and with her Ormur, her foster father.

02:43:08.400 They warded the land against the Huns and had great hosts.

02:43:12.520 And one morning, about sunrise, Hervor stood on a tower above the castle gate.

02:43:18.420 she saw so much dust southward towards the forest that it blotted and hid the sun for a long time

02:43:27.740 then saw she a glow under the dust as though it was from gold but it was from the fair shields

02:43:36.900 inlaid with metal gold and gilded helmets and bright shining chain mail then understood she

02:43:47.500 that this was the hunnish army and most numerous they were she hurried down and called her trumpeter 0.65

02:43:55.180 and bade him summon the host then they said hervor to them take your weapons and make ready for

02:44:03.540 battle but thou ormar ride out toward the huns and offer them battle before the southern gate

02:44:10.840 and Ormar said, Assuredly shall I with shield aloft ride to the Hunnish most hurriedly to

02:44:21.940 summon them to the south gate there against the Goths to try in the game of war. And that is what

02:44:29.020 he did. He then returned to the castle. Then Hervor was armed and all her host. There was a great

02:44:37.680 battle but because the huns had such great a host and number the battle turned against her lord 1.00

02:44:45.520 and at length she fell and round about her many of her men but when ormar saw her fall 0.96

02:44:53.280 he fled and with him all they who still lived he rode day and night as fast as he could to king 0.83

02:45:02.560 angatyr's castle in our in our heimer while the huns took to harrying and burning the countryside 0.76

02:45:12.960 when he arrived he said from the south gate i come to say these tidings burned is the 0.97

02:45:20.160 far-famed forest of mirkwood all the goth lands drenched in gore of the fallen

02:45:25.920 I know that Hervor,

02:45:30.200 Hydric's daughter and thy sister 0.97

02:45:32.320 by the sword has also fallen. 1.00

02:45:35.740 Have Hunnish hosts hewn down that maiden 0.98

02:45:39.320 with many of your warriors? 0.92

02:45:43.420 So the half-sister to both Clothi and to Angatyr

02:45:48.720 is leading this castle with her foster father. 0.81

02:45:55.920 and she takes to arm she starts leading the men as they attack the huns attack and she is felled

02:46:03.520 with the warriors there but um ormar the foster father escapes running and riding all the way to

02:46:12.720 tell uh ungan tier the huns are coming they were here last year they but they're keeping true to 0.93

02:46:19.440 their, their threat. Um, and remember she was, uh, this is part of the poem. Remember she was 0.93

02:46:29.600 readier for war than wooer of Dali or on the bench to sit as a wedded bride. So, uh, she of the 0.83

02:46:40.840 goths um she was ready for war his uh hervor is her name uh and no doubt because she was so close

02:46:51.020 to the hunnish lands and her husband was probably slain in those battles with the huns so she was

02:46:58.600 waiting um and was not fit simply to be a wedded bride or a queen she was preparing and it came 0.84

02:47:09.780 to her and her fate was met um and she was felled with her men um when angantir heard

02:47:20.100 this he stroked his beard and was silent for a long time and then at last he said

02:47:27.780 was unbrotherly dealt with my brave sister now have fallen the fighters who fared with you

02:47:36.020 full many the men with mead we drank have i fewer followers when i feign would have more

02:47:44.680 so he says basically that loathe and uh his half sister as well um this was not a fate befitting

02:47:56.520 her. And now, many a men did he have about him during times of peace, but yet fewer during

02:48:06.620 times of war, and he's lamenting that. And in 23, he says, in all my host, no hero I

02:48:16.760 see, though I should beg him and buy him with rings. Who would raise the war shield and

02:48:25.100 ride for me to the hunnish host as a harbinger of war geyser the old said and i like the face 0.86

02:48:34.620 obviously but geyser geyser the old he says not a single silverling seek eye of thee nor of

02:48:45.020 glistening gold gerden crave i yet shall i ride and raise the war shield to the hunnish hosts

02:48:52.460 as a herald of battle so geezer the old says you know you you uh you offered them

02:49:02.440 gold the last time we talked and you shouldn't have done that uh and now they're here to just

02:49:10.120 take it all i'll ride so this is his grandfather um saying i don't want any silver and i don't

02:49:16.760 want any gold. He's too old to spend it. He's going to lead the men and fight against the Huns.

02:49:24.920 As it was King Hydric's law that if a hostile army was in the land and the king of the land 0.92

02:49:32.960 challenged them to a pitched battle and appointed the battlefield, then those Vikings durst not 0.51

02:49:40.340 harry before the battle was tried to them geezer then armed himself with good weapons and leaped

02:49:48.340 on his horse as uh though he were a young man and said to the king to the huns where shall i

02:49:57.860 herald that battle now i think it's interesting to note first off this is written by or i mean

02:50:04.980 this is translated by hollander so there is a lot more kind of storytelling going on with the

02:50:12.260 poetics but i found that interesting one of course there is the usage of the word viking

02:50:19.460 in this context is more or less uh i would say um warriors and from what i'm looking at

02:50:30.020 I do not see the usage of the word wikinger. So that may have been a translational thing

02:50:37.280 where it means warriors, bondsmen, swordsmen, spears, spearmen, or freelancers. But he's saying

02:50:47.320 that their father made a law that if there was a hostile army, what was to be done was

02:50:55.060 that there would be an appointed place to meet

02:50:59.220 and that there was no raiding and pillaging beforehand.

02:51:07.020 And I just think that's interesting that that's stated,

02:51:09.380 whereas the Huns are clearly doing the opposite of that law.

02:51:14.420 So Geezer says to the Huns, where shall I herald the battle?

02:51:18.260 Where shall we go?

02:51:20.620 And Angatyr says, on the down of the Dunheath,

02:51:25.060 In Diltia Vales shall the battle be. And here in the notes, I mean, again, it's mentioned earlier that this is, of course, near the Dnepr River, possibly.

02:51:40.960 um and near beneath the uh iserfels

02:51:48.140 uh where often the goths their glaives reddened and victory won warriors in sword play so they're

02:51:59.200 going to a familiar battle site um also again very interesting that they use the word glaives

02:52:05.960 or uh you know instead of their spears or their their axes um then giza rode till he came upon

02:52:14.500 the hunnish army when he was in within earshot he called out with a loud voice and said uh afraid

02:52:24.800 are your hosts fey is your leader and again this may be a misspelling fey is your leader

02:52:34.320 I think fate is your leader.

02:52:38.300 You have angered Lord Odin, and we now offer you battle.

02:52:43.480 On the downs of the Dunheath, in the Dilkia Vales, I bid you to battle, neath Israfel's brow. 0.95

02:52:51.480 May Odin overwee Angatyr's foes. 0.87

02:52:57.040 So may, in essence, may Odin own ye all who is the king's foes.

02:53:02.580 and may this spear fly over you as do as I do bid it and we are many folk in Alistair are very

02:53:12.440 familiar with the the speaking of and the concept of and it is even mentioned that Lord Odin does

02:53:19.720 it in the battle between the gods of cosmic order and natural law between the Aesir and the Vanir

02:53:27.200 He throws over the spear, bidding, and this is clearly a cultural, Germanic, especially from the migration era, the idea that before a battle, there was a spear thrown, and that was in dedication to Lord Odin and the bidding of victory over your enemies.

02:53:53.920 so he throws his spear and says as it flies over you i do bid it then love had heard geezer's words

02:54:03.520 and said seize ye geezer the greetings follower hangatier's man from uh alheimer come humley

02:54:15.360 said no hurt no harm to him shall be done to hero who fares to herald us to war so uh

02:54:23.920 Again, they're threatening to capture him, and he says, no, he will not be seized.

02:54:31.000 He is a messenger.

02:54:33.620 And then Geezer says, well, not hunnish hornbows do harm to us ever, nor hunnish wiles hinder our warriors.

02:54:46.000 That is a direct and a historical reference to the fact that they were horsemen who used bows made of horn instead of wood.

02:54:57.120 And their wiles, of course, meaning their tactics, the riding, the shooting.

02:55:03.180 He says, your horn bows will do us no harm and your wiles will never hinder our warriors.

02:55:10.300 Geezer then gave the spurs to his horse and rode back to the king, Angatir.

02:55:15.180 and the king asked him whether he had encountered the Huns. 0.70

02:55:18.700 Geyser said, I spoke with them and summoned them to combat

02:55:22.180 on the downs of the Dunheath in Dilkia's Vale.

02:55:26.720 Angatyr asked him how great an army the Huns had

02:55:30.920 and Geyser said, huge was the host. 0.59

02:55:35.920 Sixteen squadrons I foregathered.

02:55:39.840 Had each squadron fully 5,000 men

02:55:42.820 and each thousand thirteen hundred and each hundred horsemen eight score so a massive foot

02:55:54.500 army with a good each with each um uh hundred there were like eight calvary or uh eight score

02:56:06.640 So maybe that is actually, uh, not, that might be 80 men per, uh, wow, that's insane.

02:56:17.980 These are insane numbers. 0.69

02:56:20.000 Um, and to the response, Angatir then got together an army to meet the Huns, though 0.85

02:56:28.860 they were twice his strength so that he's half, his, his army is half the size. 0.59

02:56:34.160 The battle lasted eight days with great slaughter, which was made good in case of the Goths, by the continual reinforcements so that at last the Huns were actually forced to give ground. 0.69

02:56:50.080 Angatyr stepped into the front ranks with his sword tierving in hand. 0.89

02:56:55.220 He slew both Flothi of the Hoths and Humli. 0.89

02:57:00.280 Then the Huns took to flight, and the Goths slew so many 0.68

02:57:04.220 that the rivers were dammed up and overflowed their banks 0.51

02:57:08.660 because of their bodies of the dead men and horses.

02:57:13.220 Angatyr went about the battlefield to search amongst the fallen,

02:57:16.900 and there he found his brother.

02:57:19.280 And he said, untold arm rings I offered you, brother, a wealth of gold, and what most thou did wish as a guerdon for strife now has gotten neither, nor lands, nor lieges, nor lustrous rings.

02:57:38.420 A baleful fate wrought is that, brother, I slew thee, well that I be told, ill the norn's doom.

02:57:49.280 that's that is metal

02:57:55.120 holy crap and clearly i think what what's being kind of uh laid out too is despite their size

02:58:04.600 it was the goths choosing the battlefield that ultimately led them to being able to control 0.95

02:58:13.220 the movement of the huns and then also they had a constant reinforcement coming in

02:58:18.560 that's that's the poem but that is absolutely awesome at the end too yeah these these last

02:58:31.580 couple are pretty cool um all right well we got a couple of more questions and then uh we will

02:58:39.640 do the final poem

02:58:41.720 of this

02:58:43.380 Etta and

02:58:45.220 like I said it's been

02:58:46.440 two and a half

02:58:49.440 years

02:58:50.140 it's crazy this is the end of it

02:58:53.220 it's been a while

02:58:54.200 but no so here just as a

02:58:57.480 note we're going to go through

02:58:59.220 because

02:59:01.580 it's much shorter we're going to go through

02:59:03.060 Snorri's Etta much quicker

02:59:04.360 and there's

02:59:07.400 other stuff we'll get to

02:59:09.060 So, yeah, we're excited about that.

02:59:12.920 But we've got one more in the tank here tonight, and we'll do a couple of questions.

02:59:17.880 In your view, what is the single most important thing modern Alcetru folk are getting wrong about living the faith day to day?

02:59:27.820 And what would it look like if we finally got it right?

02:59:31.300 Svon.

02:59:32.380 Oh, piety.

02:59:36.700 Or really what it is.

02:59:38.100 And I don't know if it's from the fact that there are many folk coming in from the Semitic Christian, the Christianity as the subsect of Judaism that it is, or if it's modernism or a combination of the two.

02:59:55.600 but there is a deep kind of sense where on the negative side of what I'm saying is that I see

03:00:07.200 many people who are almost in a way doing this as performance. And I know other religions are

03:00:15.240 wrought with this as well. So, you know, we can't sit here and pretend that those that oppose us

03:00:21.720 are not afflicted with the very same things i'm saying but there are a lot of folks who are i

03:00:28.440 wonder when i see them maybe on social media or maybe speaking that are they doing this in their

03:00:37.240 daily lives do they truly believe in the power and the divinity and the very presence of the gods

03:00:44.680 the other is will they take this to their deathbed and what the only reason why i'm thinking

03:00:51.320 that is because again it does seem performative it could be my perception as well with say like

03:00:59.480 in the wake of the viking show and um i don't want to define myself about what i'm against

03:01:09.640 so what i i try to do is spread a genuine understanding that the gods are real they

03:01:17.560 are our gods we have our place our obligations like i spoke of earlier that hold us into the

03:01:25.000 greater pattern of all these things that we are in a clandestine time in which the gods are returning

03:01:31.880 and that the Hoffs are being built and reopened

03:01:35.980 and that there will be a center, a sacred center

03:01:39.740 that if there are runic epochs

03:01:42.580 and when I was learning growing up,

03:01:45.040 you know, that they spoke of,

03:01:46.820 my rune teacher spoke of the epochs of the runes

03:01:49.520 and or the epics

03:01:51.420 and that the epics of the runes

03:01:53.120 that we were in the age of Sawilo

03:01:55.060 and we are now, you know,

03:01:56.900 we are moving into the age of Tiwaz. 0.74

03:01:59.980 And I remember asking him, when will that happen? How will we know? And he said, you will know when it happens. And that was, of course, very underwhelming for me and infuriating. 0.99

03:02:14.820 And now he's passed on. He's on the other side of the veil. And I now understand exactly what he's saying. These moments are real. And I think that we need to build that sense of this is a real religion. This is not performative.

03:02:38.140 But it isn't so much about grandstanding and saying, you know, I wear my hammer, not as a, you know, as a trinket or no, I'm saying go even beyond that, to the point of studious study of seeking community, building around Hoffs, moving to Hoffs, even, you know, say what you want about the Semitic religions.

03:03:07.220 that Europeans have been following since Saul of Tarsus.

03:03:10.600 The one thing that they do is they're motivated. 0.99

03:03:14.180 You got weirdo Mormons,

03:03:16.460 but they walked across the United States to settle Utah.

03:03:20.300 And we have people struggling with the concept of like

03:03:25.320 moving closer to a Hoff 0.76

03:03:27.560 or even knowing that a Hoff is nearby. 0.73

03:03:30.000 And we've had members who are like,

03:03:31.660 yeah, I've been living here all my life

03:03:33.680 and I just now heard about you.

03:03:35.000 um there's a lot of that so my point is is that this is not a a performative sense or even again

03:03:47.300 to fill a vacuumous void of identity i i'm not christian i'm european and um this is what you

03:03:55.100 know you know i'm gonna look like i'm gonna you know grow a a mohawk ponytail and you know then

03:04:02.360 we get into like the shoulder pelts and all that stuff no i'm saying go beyond that evolve beyond

03:04:07.520 that and understand that we are our ancestors in living form and we are in this modern age we are

03:04:16.020 dealing with modern issues modern thoughts modern ideas and we are bringing the knowledge of our

03:04:22.680 ancestors and our faith in the gods in the living religion today we are not trying to go back and

03:04:30.220 you know oh this in this fjord we have one little sighting that says they did alvar bloat

03:04:37.380 in this part of iceland so that means we're going to do it for everyone everywhere because

03:04:44.340 that's probably what they were doing which it isn't that isn't true so i mean we're even

03:04:50.220 organizing beyond what our ancestors did so i would say the calling of that the single most

03:04:56.640 important thing is to evolve into understanding this is a real religion we need to put on our

03:05:03.600 our big boy pants of religion and stop thinking about being backyard uh kings um and trying to be

03:05:17.280 uh like some sort of big fish amongst the pagans of you know of these kind of you know like neo

03:05:24.240 paganism no we pull ourselves out of that and we shift over into we are a religion these are our

03:05:32.720 churches these are our people and we are serious and we are bringing our people home and we also

03:05:40.000 have to gird ourselves with understanding that when that becomes serious that is really going to

03:05:45.360 to draw a lot of, um, aggression. It's going to come from the, uh, Europeans who are devout 0.99

03:05:55.820 to, uh, the synagogue of Yahweh, or, you know, as they, they, they don't like to think of it that 0.94

03:06:02.960 way, but they're doing it. They're in the synagogue of Yahweh, but there's, they're still

03:06:07.720 in a synagogue and they're going to be really mad that we are making our presence known that we are

03:06:13.340 returning to the idea that the lands that we've conquered, whether it's the Anglo sphere or

03:06:19.360 whether it's, of course, Europe itself, that's our holy land, not some place in the Middle East.

03:06:24.920 They're going to hate that. And then on top of that, we also have political enemies or ideas

03:06:30.580 that people take some philosophical or political stance that because we integrate our faith with

03:06:37.880 our ethnicity, that that's somehow some sort of political statement. We're going to draw air from

03:06:42.700 that and we can't have people half-assing and dressing up as tv vikings who you know 0.98

03:06:50.940 you're i'll slay a dragon for you but i won't show up to a food drive that crap has to stop 0.96

03:07:03.340 that's that's all i gotta say about that i guess that's that's it 0.97

03:07:09.340 oh so spawn did not understand the single part of uh of the question oh no

03:07:20.700 what spawn said

03:07:23.980 sorry i soapboxed there no you're fine you're on a roll that was good

03:07:28.060 and i and i agree fully um but now you can say what spawn said and that's one thing

03:07:33.260 no but so here's the yeah but he took my stuff because he had like 15 things i know i like

03:07:41.500 buckshot the whole but no we no because it all it all we joke but it goes to a central point of

03:07:50.140 taking this seriously as a living religion and you know when i was contemplating what the single thing

03:07:55.500 is is our folk and i think well-meaning have a very hard time conceptualizing

03:08:07.180 also true as a living religion they're perpetually stuck in these circles of

03:08:15.900 but what did the vikings do on this thing or is this exactly how the vikings performed this thing

03:08:22.460 and they don't ever it is not it's like it's not it doesn't occur to them

03:08:32.380 that this is living and that what we are doing now is just as important as what they were doing

03:08:39.760 then and that innovations and knowledge that our gothar have now is just as valuable as a gothi 0.80

03:08:49.880 in 700 they don't see that we are in a living relationship with the Isir at present and that

03:09:02.020 what we are doing is divinely watched over inspired and instigated in many instances

03:09:12.260 They don't, it's like their mind is stuck in the historical pursuit of Al-Satru and not in the living practice of Al-Satru. 0.75

03:09:27.840 And when I say that, I think there's a lot of reasons for it.

03:09:32.700 I don't think it is dishonest or poorly intentioned. 0.84

03:09:37.260 I think we get people now more so than ever before that come from an atheist background, so they don't understand how to how to religion.

03:09:46.900 That's not something that comes natural to them because they have no point of reference for it other than something they see in the abstract. 0.91

03:09:57.200 And if the only way you experience religion is through seeing it in a historical context or seeing it on media, that's not real in the same way as if you grew up in the church or you grew up practicing a religion.

03:10:13.400 So it's a different kind of thing to adjust your mind to how to do religion.

03:10:18.920 And then the other thing is people are very isolated.

03:10:23.360 And so in their mind, they're still stuck in the, now, wouldn't this be cool if, as opposed to, wow, this is really cool because.

03:10:34.100 and the more we have people that come out to their local events the more we have hoffs closer

03:10:42.800 to people the more people attend the hoff the more they are able to feel this in their life

03:10:51.220 and see and you know actually believe in the reality of what they're doing i've mentioned

03:10:59.740 before on here um the phenomenon a number of times it's very special

03:11:12.540 okay so i've mentioned that one of the most special things as a gofi is when it becomes

03:11:16.780 real to someone when you can be part of this becoming real to someone so many people think

03:11:24.620 this is real want this to be real but when you see their eyes get you know as big as saucers

03:11:35.260 and all of a sudden their reality has changed it's real in an entirely different scope of magnitude

03:11:44.780 and that's not something that just happens at random that's something that's facilitated by

03:11:50.700 participation if you're not in the spot where this is happening it's very hard to feel the realness

03:11:58.460 of it so i think that the more um our folk participate and conceive a vow so true as a

03:12:06.540 living real religion that's happening right now really special things will happen when a critical

03:12:14.700 mass of people begin to see it in that light instead of as a you know uh an exercise in um

03:12:25.420 historical reenactment or recreation

03:12:31.100 it's like um something that ghost things happen there's there's ghost impressions on a place

03:12:37.420 where they're perpetually doing the same thing over and over and over again like they're stuck

03:12:42.860 There's something about the soul of a lot of our people to where they recognize a need for something, but they're stuck and they don't know how to move forward. So it's a perpetual cycle of intellectualizing over ancient concepts rather than living our faith.

03:13:02.380 And I think that's a big part of it.

03:13:05.160 I neglected to mention that Jeff in Texas donated $50 towards the Baldershof steeple.

03:13:11.700 Thank you for that, Jeff.

03:13:12.780 We appreciate it very much.

03:13:15.880 Our next question, and then we'll get back into our final poem.

03:13:20.480 If every Alcetruar today suddenly took the community and folk obligations inherent in the faith as seriously as our ancestors did,

03:13:31.440 How would that transform our folk, our Hoffs, and our future?

03:13:37.220 Svon.

03:13:38.980 Well, I mean, those two kind of link together.

03:13:43.320 And perhaps the specifics of it is as seriously as our ancestors did.

03:13:49.680 Because we've already talked about modernity.

03:13:52.060 We've already talked about that a lot of us are coming from a foreign faith and contesting with, you know, the synagogue of Yahweh has turned divinity into an abstract. 0.61

03:14:07.200 No longer is it, you know, the foreskin demanding God of Abraham in the desert.

03:14:15.940 Now it's kind of this abstract. 0.51

03:14:17.060 abstract um but

03:14:25.540 i think that the obligations that we have are different than our ancestors

03:14:32.100 but what we were ultimately just talking about was that connectivity our ancestors

03:14:39.620 may have saw things slightly differently but yet are still the same when i talk to the gothar

03:14:49.540 about cosmology and i say you know our ancestors believed of the world to be a semi-spherical

03:14:56.020 plane but that the gods lived amongst a mountain or mountains that is him and him and bjarkar

03:15:04.820 that the mountains of heaven but that somewhere the gods are central and upward

03:15:12.980 that does not change even though things about say the the natural world and our understanding

03:15:21.860 but to our ancestors the gods were central and upward that is very important so i think what it

03:15:30.260 is is kind of what we were saying is building a real relationship with the gods is imperative

03:15:37.060 because that is something our ancestors did have and we see it flagging when there's this

03:15:44.020 introduction of a foreign faith that's using you know kings and nursery and marriage laws

03:15:51.380 and land rights and and you know pumping scandinavia with roman coins and we see a lot of our

03:15:58.660 folk starting to like oh what is you know this connection with our with our gods is being attacked

03:16:06.660 by this kind of very real and tangible um machine that is uh the church at the time um but

03:16:19.380 the tangibility is still even there even in the very very like in the times where our heroes are

03:16:24.420 dying in faith to the holy ice here to the gods of their ancestors the last bastion

03:16:30.180 of arian paganism under duress and by brother um in the very like the mistletoe laddened hand

03:16:41.700 of the blind brother slaying balder is happening all over northern europe and uh you know

03:16:51.700 that kind of stuff we need to reattain that living faith with our gods um we need to know

03:17:00.360 that our gods are in that heavenly place they are in the center of our lives in the center of our

03:17:06.940 world and upwards that they are gathering at the the well at the tree and they are looking upon us

03:17:15.740 They are measuring out the dunes of men with the Nornir, but they are also marking us for notice, for glory, or worst off, for dishonorable sense. 0.97

03:17:30.200 And we must never fall into that. We must try to always seek to build that relationship. 0.88

03:17:36.060 And when we do, then we can start confronting things and obligations to our community that didn't exist for our ancestors.

03:17:44.180 And we can seek governance of ourselves with their guidance, but it all comes down first to building real, tangible relationship.

03:17:57.220 It's not necessarily that you bloat in a certain way, that you follow these steps or you draw a grid on the ground.

03:18:09.260 None of that.

03:18:09.920 It's about bringing the folk home and that the people, the fires that are lit in them, the gods can look out and see us, see us doing this moving forward.

03:18:25.240 That is where I think we will make the success that our ancestors had. 0.99

03:18:32.200 actually supersede that because now we've already learned about the idea of foreign inclinations,

03:18:37.560 whether it's religions, philosophies, political ideologies, whatever it might be, we now know what

03:18:43.820 is detrimental. In some ways, our ancestors had never dealt with that level. They had fought with

03:18:51.580 each other and tested metal against metal. This was different. And now we've learned. And so when

03:18:57.480 people say oh you can't think that way our ancestors didn't think that way they reported

03:19:03.980 your ideas it's like no our ancestors evolved and they are us and we are evolving and the gods are

03:19:12.200 beckoning us to build a relationship with them and then move forward with them and we're not

03:19:20.300 putting them in a hole we're not tacking them into a box we're not framing them it's a relationship

03:19:26.740 and we are guided and so people kind of that's the thing is we got to bridge that and get get

03:19:35.740 that in people's heads that this is bigger that this is happening because the gods are involved

03:19:41.000 now not just how they were involved in the lives of our ancestors once we do that i think we will

03:19:47.600 become more like our ancestors than we've ever been

03:19:50.120 innumerably um so 0.96

03:20:05.080 if every house of truer today took their obligations to folk and community

03:20:11.720 seriously like our ancestors did i think the biggest change would be

03:20:20.120 their lives, their relationships, and their participation in Ausatru would not be disposable.

03:20:28.280 We wouldn't have people that rage quit or get butthurt and blow up all of their friendships and all of their familial obligations.

03:20:38.820 The bonds that bound our ancestors together made it through hard times, made it through, you know, emotional upheaval.

03:20:48.780 people were dedicated to one another and a purpose

03:20:52.360 if that happened how would that transform our folk we would not have to constantly

03:21:02.740 be um i don't know fearful is not the right word but anticipate we would not constantly

03:21:12.060 have to anticipate treachery or anticipate people flaking out or quitting midstream. We'd be able

03:21:20.080 to count on the men and women next to us in a way that would bring peace of mind and confidence

03:21:28.060 moving forward. Our Hoffs would benefit because these people would be devoted and would want to,

03:21:35.640 and i don't even mean this in a bad way they would want to donate to their hoffs out of

03:21:42.500 and participate at their hoffs out of piety but also out of genuinely caring what their community

03:21:50.040 thought of them so an emphasis on supporting our hoffs would be there in a you know tenfold way

03:21:58.180 from what it is now uh and as far as our future we wouldn't be taking you know three steps forward

03:22:07.940 two steps back all the time because people are flakes we'd have people that stuck around and we

03:22:14.500 would continue to see growth instead of growth growth loss growth growth loss growth growth

03:22:21.940 loss growth if it was just the growth we would have

03:22:31.300 we'd have if everyone who was ever a member of the afa was still in a member of the afa today

03:22:41.460 i think we'd have 10 times the membership we have at least that would make everything we try to do

03:22:49.940 10 times as easy. That would mean we could support 50 Hoffs instead of five. It would

03:23:00.560 mean that we would have people everywhere to connect our new membership with. It would

03:23:07.960 mean that we would have no shortage of uh resources and volunteers to accomplish most anything we set

03:23:20.200 our mind to and it would you know excel us forward it's amazing that we've been able to do as well as

03:23:27.960 we have um through the blessings of our gods but our our people have a lack of

03:23:41.560 part of the soul sickness is a tremendous lack of courage lack of constancy and lack of maturity

03:23:49.800 in our folk they have become atomized and they don't take those bonds of community serious we

03:23:57.960 read about them we talk about them we chest thump about them but when it comes to seriousness

03:24:06.040 our conditioning for a very long time has been this hyper individualism

03:24:12.200 as we heal our folk and i'll say this we're on the path towards it it is much better today

03:24:17.240 than it's ever been as our folk heal and see themselves as part of a kin fence as part of a

03:24:24.680 community we will see these things exponentially increase and that's really exciting and we are

03:24:31.960 moving towards it it's never you know where we want it as fast as we want it but i think that's

03:24:38.040 the nature of things but it is moving in the right direction so that's the thing that i think would

03:24:42.200 be different oh i was gonna say one thing i i have friends and i have people that i know

03:24:49.880 that um and i've noticed this just with the last uh pope of the catholic church there are many of

03:24:55.880 them who despised the last pope but they didn't leave their church they didn't break away and to

03:25:07.480 me that is something that i've noticed and the the one thing that hurts me about that is

03:25:14.680 i i kind of chalk it up to the caveat that their religion basically says if you leave you're gonna 0.84

03:25:22.120 you're gonna burn uh you know yahweh is gonna uh just really throw you in the in the bin

03:25:30.520 or whatever it is um and you know we are without that caveat and that should make people stay more 0.84

03:25:44.120 than this kind of overarching kind of i don't know false semitic fear but instead it makes

03:25:51.640 people again scatter or hyper individualism and and they're not seeing that this is the movement

03:25:57.720 of the gods and we should all be in it and all under one banner and all working together instead

03:26:04.120 it's like they need to have this kind of concept of that fear uh brought on their necks and that's

03:26:12.240 i think that that taint of it is what is not being said we need to get to the point where

03:26:19.960 our folk look at the church of the ice here as they're one and they're same the gods and

03:26:28.100 the afa are coalescence of divine will moving forward

03:26:35.400 without the caveat of you know if you become a protestant you're gonna you know

03:26:43.840 i don't see that as much these days i think there have been times and places in christianity where

03:26:51.920 it was held together by fear what i have seen a lot is they genuinely love jesus

03:27:00.720 they have internalized their christianity as a part of who they are and so they couldn't just

03:27:08.080 cast it off. They genuinely believe that their God is watching them and they don't want to let

03:27:16.940 their God down. I wish that our people had the same amount of faith. Many of us do, not nearly

03:27:27.000 enough, but many of us do. More do today than did last year. More do last year than did 10 years

03:27:35.320 previous we're moving in the right direction but healing the soul sickness in our folk is a long

03:27:43.500 process and it's hard but it's moving the right direction and i think that very small changes in

03:27:54.260 that towards the good will make very large changes in our ability to do things and make things happen

03:28:03.460 so i'm excited for that um that's fine will you take us into the final of our poems in this era

03:28:12.740 the uh hervara kvida yeah in this um

03:28:22.100 okay so for a lot of folks announced it through who uh maybe conceptualize ideas and

03:28:28.500 and talk about tropes in in stories and stuff this is the big one this is one of the big ones

03:28:36.420 um and i i simply state that in the idea that even tolkien was greatly influenced by this this trope

03:28:45.620 the the the summoning of the spirit of the burial mound to retrieve a sword for

03:28:52.820 uh quest or for victory and it gets really good because there are things just like how i see

03:29:05.060 um that you know like white people in the united states will talk about like native americans and

03:29:14.040 their birth totems missing the mark about that but then failing to realize that the philkia is

03:29:22.200 very similar in what they're talking about this i've seen this with uh the west and the anglosphere

03:29:29.860 is like absolute i don't know romanticization of like samurai and the samurai sword and we're about

03:29:39.000 to see some stuff that is deeply european but you'll hear it and see it in reminiscence be like

03:29:47.320 that's uh that sounds like something you know somebody would say like a samurai sword about

03:29:53.800 no it goes it's us we've been doing this for and it's it is the poetics of a warrior culture

03:30:02.040 and so i like this story because it lends to some of those things great it's really well

03:30:10.960 written it's very metal as i as we've been saying but it also has some things in it that

03:30:16.740 are really interesting the summoning of the the dead for a blade that's that's cool and so this

03:30:28.080 is uh her uh her or uh her is so is a woman it is um her raising the the king the the king of the

03:30:41.680 gods that we were just talking about on gun tier raising him for a blade um it's a short one but it

03:30:51.440 is uh condensed and and very just thick viscously strong uh poem so uh starts right out now there

03:31:05.920 may have been a um a uh the intro here and there is one in relation to uh apart from the hawksbock

03:31:18.640 But in this translation, it's not there. So we move into what immediately there's a discussion between Hervor and a shepherd.

03:31:34.580 And I think this is, again, another referencing to the idea of the being outside of an enclosure.

03:31:43.560 Whether it's a herdsman or a guardsman, but the enclosure that she's going towards is very different than, like, say, a castle.

03:31:55.800 So the shepherd says out loud,

03:31:58.260 who by himself hath come hither on Isle.

03:32:03.480 Go thou straight away, get thee shelter.

03:32:07.740 Hervor says, I care not go and get me shelter.

03:32:12.900 Not anyone know I of the island's men.

03:32:17.700 Ere hence thou highest in haste tell me.

03:32:22.200 Where are the house of Hiorvath named?

03:32:25.900 So imagine it more like there is a shepherd out in the fields and beyond him are the burial mounds.

03:32:36.760 And he's saying, I'm an edge walker. I'm out here in the wilds.

03:32:42.700 You should seek shelter. You should get out of here.

03:32:49.100 And that's not why Hervor's here.

03:32:52.780 um the shepherd turns to say ask not of such if sage thou art friend of vikings

03:33:03.260 friend of warriors thou art on fairly ways let us fare hence so fast as our feet will carry

03:33:11.760 without now it is awful for men so if you're truly a sage don't ask where the burial mounds are

03:33:21.620 If you're a friend of warriors and have traveled over warrior ways, let us leave this place.

03:33:31.680 So there's an immediate sense of dread.

03:33:35.260 Hervor then says, this trinkets thine, if thou tell me, for hard to hold back the hero's friend.

03:33:44.080 So, immediately offering gold in exchange.

03:33:56.040 Tis folly in faith to fare thither for a man alone in the murky dark.

03:34:01.320 Again, this reads so well.

03:34:04.520 The herdsman is folly to go.

03:34:07.120 It's folly and faith to fare thither, for a man alone in this murky dark is fire abroad the barrows open, burn field and fen, let us flee in haste.

03:34:21.120 hervor then says i scorn to dread a din like this though fires do burn all about the aisle

03:34:35.780 let not men who are dead unman us shepherd with fear so swiftly but say thou on so he's speaking

03:34:47.660 of the lights of the barrel mounds are lighting up and are lighting the fields of fire with their

03:34:54.380 light and hervor says um you know i know that i've seen the lights but we shall not let dead men

03:35:06.220 unman us i love that line um the shepherd then says to the forest fast fled than the shepherd

03:35:14.940 nor more cared he to the maiden to speak but heartier hervor's her heart then swelled in the

03:35:25.320 daring do dis disdainfully now bear in mind too these translations are from hollander and there

03:35:33.460 will be alliteration and there will be more storytelling of the poetics so you have the poem

03:35:40.780 written in its style and then hollander reinvigorates the storytelling of the verse

03:35:51.260 so as she did she went through the fires as though they were but smoke

03:35:56.460 until she came to the barrow of the berserkers then she said and the word berserkers actually

03:36:04.780 used in the train it says you know that she went to the hallway of the berserkriana

03:36:13.180 and she said awake angatir wakes thee hervor thy only child bairn uh is what the word is but

03:36:25.100 and in english but also in icelandic or old norse's child bear um wake the hair for thy only child

03:36:33.020 born of Svalva, the bitter brand from thy belt gird thou, which swinking dwarves of Svalver

03:36:42.440 Laumirat. So she says, I'm here. I am your only child by the way of your wife, Svalva. And I am 1.00

03:36:51.860 here for the bitter brand, the sword that girds on your belt that was brought about by the hammer 1.00

03:37:01.000 of dwarves from 1.00

03:37:03.220 Svauvrlaumi. 1.00

03:37:05.120 So these, of course, the Dvrgar, 0.98

03:37:09.040 the 1.00

03:37:09.760 under-spirits

03:37:13.460 of the earth, the spirits

03:37:15.220 of energy and of matter

03:37:17.360 have shaped this

03:37:19.200 sword.

03:37:24.080 Hervarth,

03:37:25.700 Kiorvarth,

03:37:27.320 Prani, Angatir,

03:37:29.460 I awake you all.

03:37:31.000 ye wights neath the mold with helmets and bernies and bitter swords with gory spears and all the gear of war. 0.94

03:37:41.000 Have Arngrim's sons, the evil men's, their corpses become to clay and mold,

03:37:49.000 seeing that none of the sons of Eifera with me will speak in Munnar Bay. 0.60

03:37:59.000 so here we uh have you totally turned into it's like a kind of a spurning on even in death you

03:38:08.760 should be lively or have you turned totally to to the dirt into the mold to the clay um

03:38:15.880 and then here at the end um

03:38:18.520 um you know the the mentioning here of the sons of a vera and i'm looking in here in

03:38:28.600 the translations there's no notes upon which it is uh stated

03:38:39.160 um also there is a interjected stanza that was supposed to be said by the shepherd before he

03:38:47.560 left and it is uh is hell's gate lifted is the land of the dead opened up the how the house the

03:38:57.800 the barrows do open the edge of the aisle is a light with fire awful it is to be without to thy

03:39:05.880 ships thy hasten thee o maiden so that was kind of a a section that was to be up before the shepherd

03:39:15.160 left um and i'm just now seeing that in the in the notes so then hervor says

03:39:22.520 as she is spurning her line to come out of the barrow um she says may all of you

03:39:32.120 feel within your ribs as though in anthill your ill bones rotted but the sword ye fetch me

03:39:41.640 forged by dvalin it befits not ghosts to guard its prized arms so again the heavy sense i this

03:39:54.760 is definitely where i think tolkien was picking up much but your sword was forged by dvalin the

03:40:02.140 dwarf mentioned in the voluspal in the in the dvergatal it does not befit that ghosts should

03:40:09.920 guard it. And then Angatir says, Hervor, daughter, why dost thou call me with cold curses? Thy will

03:40:23.600 cost thee dear. Bereft of reason and raving art thou, that with withwildered thought thou wakest

03:40:33.100 the dead

03:40:33.840 neither father me buried

03:40:38.700 nor fellow kinsmen

03:40:40.240 thy brothers banesmen

03:40:42.220 this barrow raised 0.85

03:40:43.560 the twain who lived

03:40:45.920 did with tierfing wind

03:40:48.440 now one of the victors

03:40:51.080 wields it at last

03:40:53.340 hervor then speaks

03:40:56.540 thou sayest not sooth

03:40:59.180 so

03:41:01.220 a lot of people don't know what Sooth's saying.

03:41:05.660 Sooth, it means truth in English, in

03:41:08.800 old elder English. So what you are saying is not the truth.

03:41:13.700 Thou sayest not Sooth, may so the gods

03:41:17.220 leave thee whole in this howl, as thou hast

03:41:21.080 not tierving with thee, unwilling art you to give thy

03:41:24.940 daughter her dearest wish.

03:41:27.080 Angatyr then says

03:41:30.340 that this is the section that was

03:41:33.000 moved from the shepherd to Angatyr

03:41:36.760 is hell's gate lifted 0.55

03:41:40.560 and the house do open

03:41:42.920 the edge of the aisle is all a fire

03:41:46.320 awful it is to be without

03:41:49.040 to thine ships hide thee in haste 1.00

03:41:52.280 O maiden

03:41:52.760 And it says here, too, that this originally was stanza seven from the shepherd, but is moved here. And I don't know if it's because of the way it was written that it was sought to be from him.

03:42:10.820 but she says such nightly blaze ye cannot build that of their fires afraid i grow

03:42:20.660 will hervor's heart not be horror struck even though a ghost in the grave door stood

03:42:30.100 i tell thee hervor heed my warning what will happen thou hero's daughter

03:42:36.580 i say but sooth will this sword become the slayer of all thy sib and kin thou it have a son who

03:42:49.060 hereafter will wield tierving and trust his strength hydric will be the height of men and

03:42:57.860 the mightiest grow of men under heaven so he's giving this warning the sword that you take 0.79

03:43:05.300 tierving will be the the doom of and the slayer of both sib and kinsmen and she says thus shall 0.69

03:43:15.220 i deal with you dead men bones that in your graves ye get no rest out of the how hand me 0.90

03:43:22.740 this hater of bernies the the hater of chain mail the sword this the dwarves handiwork 0.86

03:43:31.140 twill not do to hide it and angatyr says in return hardly human i hold thee maiden 0.88

03:43:40.580 about barrows who hoverest at night with graven spear and gothic iron with helmet and barney

03:43:51.300 the hall's gates before

03:43:54.020 and she returns how be it then human was i held to be either hither and hide to me

03:44:05.160 your hall to seek hand me angatyr out of the how that sword wherewith thou slewest hjalmar

03:44:14.720 so in this part here the idea is you know you are traversing between the gates of the veil

03:44:23.760 and uh you know me me thinks you're not a human but bear in mind she's also not stepping in she

03:44:31.320 won't traverse that threshold it has to be the other way but she says i'm human enough and brave

03:44:38.140 enough that i went and braved these the the the flames and the lights and the ghosts of the

03:44:45.500 Barrow Mounds, give me what I want, which is the sword.

03:44:49.920 And Angatyr says, under my shoulders, hidden lies Hjalmar's bane.

03:44:57.060 About its blade blazes fire.

03:45:00.240 In this wide world know I, no woman born, who would dare wield the dreaded weapon.

03:45:09.800 And just something to state of that statement.

03:45:12.620 He says under his shoulders, a common practice during the migration period and on into the Nordic period is that the swords were not placed at the waist, but were placed under the armpit during riding.

03:45:28.540 it was easier to draw the sword than to have the sword clanking and and and uh bouncing around but

03:45:37.140 it's both mentioned here that it's girded at his waist but he also states no it's it's under my

03:45:43.560 shoulder and you know both is probably true in essence he is a ghost it's not the sword is

03:45:51.720 there but um i just found it interesting because he says under his shoulders um then she returns

03:46:00.540 would i hold in hand if have it i might the bitter brand and in battle wield it not a wit

03:46:09.540 fear i the fire blazing it swiftly sinks as i seek it with eye

03:46:15.360 Witless art thou and wanton of mind 1.00

03:46:20.720 Like a fool to fling thee into fire blazing 1.00

03:46:24.840 Out of the how, the barrow mound 1.00

03:46:28.760 Rather shall I hand the sword hardy maiden 1.00

03:46:32.820 Nor withhold it from thee 0.99

03:46:35.000 Well then dost thou warrior's offspring

03:46:38.420 Out of the barrow mound to hand Tyrfing

03:46:41.600 Which, leave here to me, thou lord of battle, then, now, to all, Norway.

03:46:52.080 And again, this writing of Norway, the northern way, Norwayer.

03:47:02.000 So, the attainment of the sword, she will take back to her lands.

03:47:10.100 Angatyr says, and not Norway, the country, the northern way.

03:47:17.240 Angatyr says, thou little knowest, luckless woman, what ill thou hast wrought with reckless speech. 0.91

03:47:25.720 I say but sooth, will this sword become the slayer of all thy sib and kin. 0.64

03:47:33.760 To my ships on the shore now shall I. 0.92

03:47:36.920 i head me is the hero's daughter happy in mind little wreck i ruler of men whether my sons will

03:47:48.340 slay each other and so she says little do i care little do i reckon um oh ruler of men talking to

03:47:57.520 to uh angatir whether or not my sons slay each other she is obsessed to get the sword

03:48:05.740 And he says,

03:48:35.740 Grimm's sons left after them. And she says, shall I then head me hence? Happily may ye along be gone

03:48:45.980 and live in your barrow mound. But lately I lingered twixt life and death when all about me

03:48:52.520 blazed the fire. So one of the things that's kind of what I was talking about with like

03:49:01.300 the samurai sword thing is the mentioning of the idea that it is baneful it is but if it is pulled

03:49:11.540 from its sheath it is beckoned to take the blood or the baleful lives of men so he's saying like

03:49:22.780 touch it not do not remove it from its sheath because if it comes out it will wreak havoc

03:49:28.940 it is poisoned

03:49:30.680 a terrible

03:49:33.180 sword

03:49:33.920 and that she is again

03:49:36.700 playing with fate beyond her

03:49:38.920 reckoning that she pulls this sword

03:49:41.100 very very cool

03:49:42.900 poem

03:49:43.200 but that is it 1.00

03:49:46.200 she takes the sword and she

03:49:48.800 says that she is forever

03:49:50.340 kind of in between the life

03:49:53.060 and death because she

03:49:54.520 stood in the glow of those

03:49:56.660 baleful

03:49:57.260 flames from

03:50:00.320 the barrow mounds.

03:50:04.000 Well, there you have it.

03:50:06.440 We have finished

03:50:08.260 with our

03:50:10.620 epic study

03:50:14.520 of the Poetic Era.

03:50:18.140 Thank you for being here with us

03:50:20.540 and sharing our study with us.

03:50:22.200 I hope it has been beneficial

03:50:24.420 to you. I know that

03:50:26.440 fawn and i have both gotten a lot out of it um i know many of the poems especially these

03:50:33.960 later smaller poems i have not read in years so it is great to go back

03:50:39.000 and read them and absorb them and share them with folks so thank you guys um 0.99

03:50:45.800 we have one more question tonight what do you believe the isere are asking of our folk right

03:50:59.720 now in this moment of history and what do you think is going it is going to take for us to get

03:51:06.960 there, and what will it cost us if we fail to answer that call? Svon.

03:51:15.040 Well, I mean, I think nothing shy of, of course, coming home. There is so much at the precipice.

03:51:26.120 I don't think it needs to be said. I don't think that there is a failing to understand amongst our

03:51:34.200 folk and those who do know but there are so many who don't um i think it's imperative that the gods

03:51:41.740 want us to tell the folk about them to go out and speak of them as they must be spoken of the bastion 1.00

03:51:54.020 of our people we have to return to our folk faith we can't harbor these foreign faiths 0.96

03:52:04.340 these foreign ideas these foreign indulgences even with all of their chest beating 1.00

03:52:09.760 it is still we are at the greatest threat of 0.99

03:52:16.900 our existence and as the founder of our church said our existence is non-negotiable

03:52:23.420 But that incorporates this understanding that this is not some philosophical battle.

03:52:28.820 This is not some political battle.

03:52:32.320 This is spiritual.

03:52:33.900 And it starts here.

03:52:36.580 And so I would say that the gods do want us to be that beacon to let people know.

03:52:44.820 Because again, half of it's really just them not even knowing that we exist.

03:52:48.680 It's not about whether they hate us or don't hate us or what have you.

03:52:53.420 They just don't even know. Like I spoke about the, there was a member in North Carolina who had been living and he just happened to drive by and was like, wait, I've been honoring the gods for years. I didn't even know. And he joined and now he's there and things are good, but that needs to happen in mass.

03:53:14.760 go out. When you are on social media, I would even say, say that. Stop giving your energy to this

03:53:24.440 foreign religion. If you want to know more, go to runestone.org. Tell people, just be a herald 1.00

03:53:31.760 and go out there and say it. But if we don't, the last part of your question, if we don't,

03:53:38.200 I mean, I do not believe that the gods would allow our demise.

03:53:52.620 I think that we are synchronistically together in that.

03:53:57.240 But if it is one thing that we learn about Ragnarok, if there's one thing that we learn from the faith and the ethos of our religion,

03:54:04.700 is that despite that doom or despite any horizon, whether it's bright or whether it is dark,

03:54:13.080 is that we turn to face it and we face it wholeheartedly.

03:54:18.120 So I'm of a believer in hope and I'm a believer that the gods are very powerful

03:54:24.760 and they are with us and they are doing things in our lives and in the world.

03:54:31.000 um so i i'm of a kind of more of a positive note but regardless if there's again the ethos of our

03:54:40.620 faith is to turn and face the horizon and attain it whatever lies there so best to do it laughing

03:54:49.420 i i feel smile on face and and moving forward but where wherever you go with that um if you

03:54:57.880 have done your best, then whatever that horizon is, you will meet it knowing you did your best.

03:55:04.780 So, are we doing our best?

03:55:10.100 Yeah, I, in a lot of ways, I suppose my answer is similar to Svon's.

03:55:19.380 Our founder, Steve McNallan, described it as this time, you know, he is issuing the call for an ingathering of the folk.

03:55:37.380 are

03:55:41.100 our founder was given a very special

03:55:50.980 mission by all father oven to

03:55:57.000 restart our trough with the ice here

03:56:03.460 to reinvigorate the gift cycle,

03:56:08.800 to bring our folk home.

03:56:14.240 And we are living

03:56:19.160 in the early stages of fulfillments of that. 1.00

03:56:26.980 The Aesir want our people

03:56:30.680 to wake up to their true faith of Alcetru,

03:56:35.500 to come home to our true gods,

03:56:39.020 and to reforge that link that sustains us spiritually

03:56:45.520 and that heals the soul sickness that our people face.

03:56:53.440 And it's, you know, the ripples go out from that.

03:56:58.140 I know those listening to this, like, you know, really the gods are that concerned with, you know, small group of people coming home to Alistair?

03:57:08.100 True. Yes, because it from a small group of people, a larger group of people comes in and larger and larger.

03:57:16.560 It has to start somewhere. It is much further than it was when the mission was given to our founder.

03:57:24.340 And we have seen the lives of those involved who stay true and who stay loyal enhanced in a profound way.

03:57:36.160 So I think our gods want us to come home to our true selves, to our authentic faith, our authentic gods and our authentic identity.

03:57:49.340 and to take strength and pride and dignity from that

03:57:55.700 and to restore that pride and strength and dignity

03:58:00.060 to our race as we move forward into the future

03:58:04.140 to where our people walk with their chest out and their heads up

03:58:08.720 as sons and daughters of the Iser. 1.00

03:58:12.820 That's what they want, and that's what we're trying our very best to implement. 0.83

03:58:19.340 What it's going to take for that is for people to have the courage to venture out of their comfort zone and to stand with the eyes of people upon them, people who might call them racist or call them silly.

03:58:39.700 you know is it worse to be laughed at or to be hated but i think those are both fears that each

03:58:48.480 of us need to face and overcome to move forward um it's funny the wolves that seek to devour the

03:58:59.880 sun and the moon, Skol and Haiti, you know, hatred and mockery. Those are the things that 1.00

03:59:13.520 we must overcome to move forward. And we need to outpace like Sol and Manny. That's what

03:59:25.200 will take and

03:59:27.840 for those of us who take up the challenge

03:59:33.520 and who move forward our gods will bless us

03:59:37.080 they'll know us and they'll remember us

03:59:41.340 I'm confident in that should

03:59:45.200 much of our folk or a critical mass fail

03:59:49.200 to rise to the invitation of our eyes here to come home

03:59:53.380 then more bleakness and more soul sickness and more of the same but i believe very much

04:00:05.360 that as long as we exist it is never out of our reach to rebuild our relationship with our gods

04:00:17.020 There's never a time that we exist as people to where we cannot call out to the Iser and make offering to them and them not hear us. 0.56

04:00:31.840 We are connected inseverably by our very blood and bone.

04:00:39.120 And that opportunity is always there in each generation.

04:00:43.500 But we're in a special time.

04:00:46.100 We're in a time where the All-Father reached out and touched Stephen McNallan in 1968.

04:01:00.900 And again, for the skeptical or whoever listens, you can conceive of it in any of a number of ways.

04:01:09.140 Something special happened to where the All-Father of our gods initiated the rebirth of our faith, the reforging of Alcetru, through his chosen herald, our founder, Steve McNallan.

04:01:31.180 Um, 32, you know, years after the founding of the AFA, what could math, um,

04:01:43.980 oh, what are we looking at? 57 years from that time.

04:01:52.400 We have, when there weren't temples to our gods for a thousand years,

04:01:59.680 We now have five where this wasn't a thing and was a curiosity or a, you know, what could be.

04:02:13.500 We have a thriving community of faithful together every month at five Hoffs and regularly are in the gift cycle with the Yisir.

04:02:26.440 it's very easy because we are hungry and we are ambitious and we are on fire for wanting to build

04:02:38.260 this to see how far we have to go before we meet our ambitions but here's a secret

04:02:44.360 wherever that horizon is of man where i wish we man if only we had this if only this many people

04:02:51.720 came home. If we had that magically today, immediately I would project out that much

04:02:59.640 further into man. But if only we, because I think that ambition and that hunger to trend

04:03:05.240 ever and ever more worthy of our noble ancestors and our holy gods is eternal. There's no end to

04:03:13.640 it. So we've come a long way. We have amazing things yet to do. We're on track to do those

04:03:20.360 things the more of you come home and help us the faster we'll get to them

04:03:27.580 but we'll always move forward nonetheless as long as as long as we have folk that stand

04:03:36.920 faithful to the iser we will continue progress um see that's kind of a long-winded answer to that

04:03:46.440 but the gods issued a call for our people to come home it's our jobs to magnify that call and to

04:03:57.640 provide

04:04:01.640 the guidance the assistance the leadership and the structure to facilitate the accomplishment of that

04:04:09.720 call. And we're doing that. We have a lot more yet to do. But yeah, thank you guys. I'm excited

04:04:21.920 to be starting again, 2026, the 32nd year of the Ask True Folk Assembly with each and every one of

04:04:28.280 you. We've come far, but as I was just saying, we got a lot of work yet to do, and it's work that

04:04:37.620 we're excited to do. Invite you all to be part of it. If you're a member, be an active member.

04:04:45.880 Show up. Go to your Hoff. Go to local meetups. Get together with your AFA family close to where

04:04:53.880 you're at or far away. Make it happen. If you're not a member, why not? If you're waiting for the

04:05:02.580 perfect time. Cool, that perfect time is right now. But yeah, I am, I am proud to be starting

04:05:13.480 2026 with, with everyone here. And with all of our AFA family. I'm very excited for our

04:05:21.100 future. Swan, thank you for taking us through this exhaustive study of, you know, one of

04:05:28.380 most foundational pieces of our lore um it's been fun reading this again and going over it's been

04:05:37.420 very very good you have exposed a great number of people to material they have never encountered

04:05:43.980 they've never read they've never heard and i don't think that's a small thing i think that's

04:05:50.540 something really cool and we appreciate you being here and sharing the experience making it happen

04:05:58.380 um nick thank you for all that you do you are are silent often on this but you are ever present

04:06:07.500 uh you're the one person that's made it on more of these shows than i have

04:06:11.500 uh thank you for facilitating all of this and making this run as seamlessly as it does

04:06:18.300 182 out of 183 it's been my pleasure sir there you go we got more yet to do so uh

04:06:25.980 But yeah, Speckinger Svahn will join us once again, two weeks from today for us to start

04:06:36.480 the prosetta with the gilfaginning, well, the introduction and then the gilfaginning,

04:06:43.940 which we've all been very excited to get to. So that's awesome. Next week,

04:06:48.060 Folk Builder Chris Savage will be here to talk to you guys about the period of underground Ausatru in a time of darkness between the conversions and the Romantic period.

04:07:08.060 There's a lot of medieval practice.

04:07:11.360 We have two heroes that were practicing Ausatru in the 1400s.

04:07:19.760 So talking about that time and what that looked like

04:07:23.660 and that piece of our history and those men that stood faithful

04:07:28.360 in a strange time and in an occupied land and an occupied time.

04:07:34.860 So looking forward to that.

04:07:36.640 Until then, hail the Aesir, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember, victory never sleeps.

04:08:06.640 We'll be right back.

04:08:36.640 Thank you.

04:09:06.640 Thank you.

04:09:36.640 Thank you.

04:10:06.640 Thank you.

04:10:36.640 We'll be right back.

Asatru Folk Assembly - January 08, 2026

1⧸7⧸26 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 183 - Guðrúnarhvöt ｜ Hamðismál ｜ Hlöðskviða ｜ Hervararkviða

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