00:03:10.880Hello, all, and welcome to this week's exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.
00:03:16.620The blob of black on the screen is my co-host, Witten Svahn, joining us tonight.
00:03:22.040um due to a couple of things it's been it's been a month since we've had spawn on the program
00:03:30.740um whatever you moved is still there so anyways uh welcome tonight we are going to cover a couple
00:03:42.380of different, a number of different poems in the, you know, in the tail end of the poetic
00:03:52.460edda. There's a lot of little short ones towards the end there. And so we're going to work
00:03:59.980through a few of them in the time that we have with you guys tonight. But first, some
00:04:06.860kind of top of the show news. We are all extremely excited about the dedication of
00:04:14.900Frase Hoff coming up on December the 6th. So if you guys are able, we would love to
00:04:23.060have you join us there. It is in Austin Town, Ohio. And it's, it's amazing. This is a once
00:04:31.980in a lifetime opportunity to be there as we present the Hoff to Lord Freyer and
00:04:40.300dedicate it and inaugurate our first ritual there in that Hoff and really, really solidify
00:04:54.800its existence here in Midgard. And it's a pretty special thing. I got a chance to visit
00:05:03.000last month to visit the Hoff site. The building is great. The property is great. The location is
00:05:11.240great. Everything about it is fantastic. And I'm very excited to get to be there for it.
00:05:16.980The McNallans are also going to make it out for the dedication. So that's an opportunity to meet
00:05:22.900And our founder, Steve McNallan, and his lovely wife, Sheila McNallan, and a number of other members of AFA leadership that will be in attendance.
00:05:32.940So, again, if you're able to make it, we would love to see you guys there.
00:05:35.940If you're interested, contact your local folk builder, and they can get you all set up.
00:05:41.020other news and things speaking of phrase
00:05:48.340Hoff we continue to make amazing progress towards
00:05:52.560paying that Hoff off we have not even had the dedication
00:06:09.000So that's just about $116 per member would pay it off immediately, and that is tremendous progress with this relatively short amount of time we've had the Hoffs.
00:06:23.940So thank you guys all for your generosity.
00:06:25.620Speaking of generosity, GW Farnsworth, as always, starts us off with a $25 donation to this program and a $20 donation towards the payoff of Frazehoff.
00:06:40.580So thank you for that. We appreciate it.
00:06:42.620and also in phrasehoff news as of today the phrasehoff website is officially a thing
00:06:55.020and live so you want to check that out at phrasehoff.org
00:07:00.940so that people know do we have a map to pull up of what the phrasehoff district entails
00:07:12.620levels so all of that in the very very pale blue is Frazehoff district West Virginia sits
00:07:27.820kind of oddly in it and a lot of how we determined that was on road time with the mountain range
00:07:37.080going through there it it changes kind of what's closer to what but that is the new
00:07:44.360Frazehoff district also including oh wow that is the global projection of Frazehoff district
00:07:54.120so yeah check it out if you are in that district here's your website it'll have
00:08:02.360a calendar of your local events and things going on. And yeah, just one more time, we'd love to
00:08:11.000see everybody at the dedication. Svahn is making his way up there soon to paint Frey's mural in
00:08:21.320his Hoff. So I'm very, very excited to see what Svahn is able to produce for us.
00:08:27.000us. I'm also excited for Svon to get to check out the Hoff. It's really cool, and I think
00:08:34.280he'll be really impressed. Yeah, that's what we've got at the top of the show. Svon, is
00:08:45.140there anything folks need to know before we dive into the first of our poems for the
00:08:54.200evening uh just making sure that the order that i have uh kind of set up in my head is the same as
00:09:03.800we are we're um doing uh brenhilda's ride to hell yes yes okay uh yeah this one specifically
00:09:20.360um kind of lays to rest all of the lore that we've been covering but in an interesting way
00:09:30.680and brings up a lot of good points about um the far more clear sense of the afterlife uh that
00:09:42.300alsatru has um rather than i think what a lot of people have kind of presented
00:09:51.740with alsatru um and the afterlife um it's always kind of struck me as a millstrom of information
00:10:03.980and far less definitive than I think a lot of people want and it also I think some people have
00:10:16.460kind of made up things kind of pulling from the the Egyptians and all of that so I find it very
00:10:26.520interesting and here we do get a chance to see the glimpse of the poetic explanation of
00:10:38.760Brynhild's ride to the underworld to the place of the souls the collective
00:10:46.520domain, the protected domain of the souls. And it, I mean, it naturally adds context and extra
00:10:59.420movement towards explaining, justifying, and
00:11:06.180And even still allowing Brynhild to throw some extra attitude on this situation, as she was seen as a villain, ultimately.
00:11:25.920And I'm not saying that there's a justification that she makes, but it's just another latticework of her reasoning.
00:11:40.540And it really kind of goes away from what we are used to today in modern age, where they'll present a villain and the villain doesn't believe that they're a villain.
00:11:55.920And they're actually a good guy. And they are doing this because they're ignorant or that it's the thing that they need to do in order to make things right.
00:12:12.580I really got that this is about the word, about the oath, about reacting properly.
00:12:28.900And I say that tentatively because, again, people can take this subjectively, but the slice of this in ethics at the time shows, again, a completion of fate, a part fit with the rest of the puzzle pieces.
00:12:57.420And it wasn't done ignorantly, and it wasn't done in the sense that somehow, some way, in her mind, everything was right, or she needed to make it right.
00:13:22.400And whether or not everyone around her didn't understand or not, that didn't matter. And the reality of it is, is that she was simply wronged. And then all of her actions were kind of in retribution to being wronged.
00:13:40.400uh when people broke their oath when people tricked her she reacted in the way
00:13:49.760where she was kind of leveling or it's it's like she was going for dharma but without the idea of
00:14:02.960modern consequence or modern ethics involved it was kind of a um you struck me so i strike you
00:14:16.640and i think that it's really important for the audience to think about how one our ethics change
00:14:24.640um there are things that are perennial and but there are also things that are
00:14:32.960subjective and it is based on our time and i'm sure that the way that our ancestors were in the
00:14:40.880bronze age may have evolved until the time of the uh late nordic period so because they're they're
00:14:53.360dealing with things and so this story takes place amongst the goths but is being spoken
00:15:02.240during the late viking age or nordic age and you can kind of see how some of that plays out
00:15:13.200and where it's painstakingly detailed um and i think it's important that we we look at that
00:15:21.840see them in their slices of time realize that our ancestors did not have to deal with things
00:15:28.240that we deal with today and um learn the lessons within the frame and then the application of today
00:15:40.960may be different so i think that's something i wanted to kind of emphasize um also to the the
00:15:51.600The narrative story of traversing and going into the land of the dead is also very telling.
00:16:05.460It gives an idea of the way our ancestors saw that heaven wasn't just Ausgarder, but Ausgarder was a building or a domain within heaven to our ancestors.
00:16:22.740And I think it should still remain, this understanding.
00:16:27.160And the same with Niflheim or Helgarder and the idea of the boundaries of the domicile that is Ausgarder does not make the entirety of the heavenly domains.
00:16:45.960But instead it is seen as an expanse or a realm of its own type of reality.
00:16:57.160All right. Well, anybody who is following along with us this evening, it's at velispow.org. And, yeah, whenever you would like, if you could take us through the Elride Brynhildar.
00:17:19.160right the the the ride to hell of brunhild um and i think it's also important we've talked about this
00:17:31.720before hell not only the ausmineer of of death um allocated uh giving protection over the souls of men
00:17:46.600being the least um dangerous is placed farthest away in the the first realm the low realm uh
00:18:00.200that where the taproot of yggdrasil is and the first well that spawns the rivers but
00:18:09.200But it's almost completely synonymous with death in and of itself. The idea of walking the hell road was death. Having the hell blau cloak was the blood settling in the back.
00:18:30.840So, when we read in certain sagas, the usage of the word hell is very, very loose. It's not just simply referring. It's almost very similar to the usage of the word yarv, or it's spelled J-O-R-Ev, the goddess of the earth.
00:18:56.380but there are different times in which it's focused as the being and as the result of the
00:19:05.060being's domain in life so um and again it is a short poem so we're doing uh multiple poems
00:19:16.760tonight too right yes we're doing three right so and and they're just boom boom boom so um
00:19:26.000easy to kind of move from one to the other. Um, so, uh, we shall start with
00:19:35.140the introduction in which they say, after the death of Brynhild, there, there were made
00:20:15.500in the wagon on hell way and passed by a house and there dwelt a certain giantess and the giantess
00:20:26.440spoke. So I think it is interesting to note that death and travel, whether by boat or wagon,
00:20:41.220There is a symbolic sense, sometimes both. I believe the Osberg ship has a woman. She is buried, but in a wagon on the boat. So the transitional space of that is definitely emphasized.
00:21:03.220And I think the gods, the Vanir, the waning gods, and a wane is a wagon, being the gods of natural law is that this cycle is part of the natural cycles of the life.0.95
00:21:24.300And the ones that truly broke it for humanity, the folk, to exist in a different cycle than just regular animals are the Isir gods.0.96
00:21:43.180So, but the combination is still there.0.98
00:21:47.200So he is burned and then she is burned and now she's traveling on her own.
00:21:57.160And the giantess says to her, thou shalt not further forward fare, my dwelling ribbed with rocks across, more seemly it were at thy weaving to stay than another's husband here to follow.
00:22:17.200So, right away, she's speaking about her dwelling. Her dwelling, most likely, with the stones across, is a barrow mound.
00:22:28.500And we also see this with, in Volospow, that Lord Odin draws forth a giantess from her burial, and the comparisons of this is that in this, in Niflhel, there is where things reside after death.
00:22:57.500And then Helgaarder is an encapsulated place with the specific function of protecting the human souls, the ancestors, and where they're at from the spiritual landscape around.
00:23:14.520um so she kind of veils a insult and says you know it would be would have been better for you
00:23:27.340to stay weaving than to follow another woman's husband into the land of the dead0.86
00:24:04.540Bear in mind, too, Walland is so far, as I know, and I've been kind of looking into it, is utilized throughout all the poems that we've spoken of as a sacred land or a special place, but is not actually correlated with any historical place that we know of.
00:24:25.840And she's not talking about any supernatural place.
00:24:35.500So the only thing I can find is the possibility that it is the land or the tribal land in which the Gutens or the Goths had set out in Eastern Europe.
00:28:50.080And then when she returns, she becomes mortal again as punishment.
00:29:00.720The monarch bold, the swan robes bore of the sisters ate beneath an oak.
00:29:08.560Twelve winters I was, if no that wilt, when oaths I yielded the king so young.
00:29:15.900Um, so eight of her, uh, Valkyrie sisters were donning robes and had taken them off and they were taken and she was married off to a young King, but she was young herself.
00:29:39.460um and i don't know because there's no other hinting towards the idea of um the mortal souls
00:29:49.420becoming or growing up to be valkyrie but uh it's just again very interesting or i think more
00:29:58.300importantly since she's bringing this up as a sense of tragedy that she's justifying herself
00:30:05.720What this really does point out is youthful marriages at that age were seen culturally as not good.
00:30:19.400And that's why she's bringing it up along her list.
00:30:25.240The first thing she says is, oh, I was betrothed to marriage through trickery after they stole my swan robes at the age of 12.
00:30:35.720And that lends to the idea that our ancestors looked at that being unacceptable or not good.
00:30:48.600So then she says, next, I let the leader of the Goths, Hjalm Gunnar, the old, go down to hell and victory brought to Auda's brother.
00:31:03.220for this was was odin's anger mighty and that's where we have this point even though she's now
00:31:13.400uh trapped in midgard she's still dictating the fates of warriors and she knew that um
00:31:24.940How this brother was supposed to lose, and Hjallngundr was destined to live, but instead she did the opposite, and that made Lord Odin upset at her.
00:31:43.460He beset me with shields in Scotland, red and white, their rims overlapping.
00:31:54.300He bade that my sleep should broken be by him only who fear had nowhere found.
00:32:03.060So no one would wake her up until there was some prince or noble or warrior who knew no fear.
00:32:15.660And here we kind of see the essence of the sleeping princess, if you will, in general terms with the Western stories.
00:32:31.460uh it's it's all here as well except instead of a kiss it is no fear or be incinerated um
00:32:40.980so uh he let a he let around my hall in the southward looked the branches foe which is fire
00:34:01.320On Grani Road, the giver of gold, where my foster father ruled his folk.
00:34:07.780Best of all, he seemed to be the prince of the Danes when the people met.
00:34:14.660So she is of the East and she is of the Gotlandic and he is of the Danes.
00:34:23.580Happy we slept, one bed we had, as he, my brother, born had been.
00:34:31.320there's a reason why she says that she's saying like my brother we slept together meaning they
00:34:41.240did not have relations and this again was important at the time um and clearly making
00:34:50.240reference to the fact that brothers and sisters are not intimate but more so is that they weren't
00:34:57.260married yet so he even though they shared the same bed made no uh and inappropriate advances
00:35:06.740um from that and this is again another sign of his um noble nature um
00:35:14.580eight were the nights when neither their loving hand on either laid
00:35:20.680Yet, Gudrun reproached me, Gyuki's daughter, that I in Sigurd's arms had slept, and then did I hear what I would wear hid, that they had betrayed me in taking a mate.
00:35:42.100so again referencing the fact that Gudrun well and it's in reality it's Gudrun's mother
00:35:52.860tricked Sigurd and took him in they they were married before she could ever realize
00:36:01.280what was going on as she was waiting for him so she says that that the betrayal starts there
00:36:07.460first because they stayed together did not go any advances and they were intending for marriage
00:36:13.660um ever with grief and all too long are men and women born in the world but yet we shall live
00:36:24.120our lives together sigarth and i sink down giantess go into the earth go into the mound
00:36:33.680leave me alone. But I like this line here, ever with grief and all too long are men and women
00:36:40.620born in the world. One, it's very dark. Obviously, the story and all of the stuff we've covered
00:36:50.040kind of gives a peek into the reflection of why she thinks this way. But also too, I think the
00:36:57.160attraction to tragic and foreign-worn love uh the very same things that we find in romeo and juliet
00:37:05.320or in uh just very powerful love songs still alive and well uh in this time
00:38:34.040Something that I wanted to – a couple of things that I wanted to mention
00:38:39.120about this short piece that I think is, I don't know, I think is informative to our religious
00:38:53.240practice. One of the reasons we read all these things isn't just the story that it's presented,
00:39:01.820But the way it's presented and the points of reference and the backdrop that it paints of the understanding that our folk had with life, with their values, with the afterlife,
00:39:23.120with how the mechanics of their all-encompassing faith worked the idea of the hell road the idea
00:39:37.280that it's not like you know boom you die and then you're resurrected in in a heavenly realm kind of
00:39:46.880thing. It's a process. And it's like a journey that occurs. The imagery in that with be they
00:39:59.480Wayans or ships, or whatever it might be, it's like you were going on a journey from
00:40:05.540the land of the living into the land of the dead. And we see
00:40:11.360we see imagery with the valkyrie and with cremation and other things the idea of
00:40:22.680hastening that journey by being snatched up out of this life and taken kind of directly if you're
00:40:29.560playing the the chutes and ladders and you get on the little extra square that kind of gives you a
00:40:34.900shortcut um and there is shortcuts through ascension but for the vast majority of those
00:40:43.640who pass there is this process and i think that something else that's inherent in the poem is the
00:40:50.720idea that there is a reconciliation thing in the process to where you account for certain things
00:40:59.560or you face certain challenges and, you know, have to come to grips with the circumstances of your life,
00:41:07.420the circumstances of your passing, and the things that go on that way.
00:41:11.960And I think that, you know, there's just these subtle clues in this piece that I do think are important.
00:41:18.260There is also the implication at the very end in the last stanzas that, you know,
00:41:24.140her and Sigurd get an opportunity to reunite in that afterlife and to get another chance
00:41:32.160to see how things are going to go at that point. So I think those are tantalizing. I don't think
00:41:39.980they give us the full picture by any means, but they give us little glimpses into the
00:41:46.820also true the you know archaic also true understanding of death of the process of
00:41:55.340the souls traveling across the veil and of what that kind of looked like what that implied
00:42:04.940i think that's really important and i think it's it's a special element of our faith that doesn't
00:42:11.220get i don't know it doesn't get enough focus or enough attention paid to it
00:42:19.300so it's little but i i think it's i think it's cool but it's too short to do a whole episode on
00:42:25.380right that's why i wanted to do do a few more this evening um you know i don't want to just
00:42:30.820pack them in i know that some of these some of these at the end are a little bit tedious
00:42:35.540i know that a larger audience is typically more excited about the big the big meaty pieces about
00:42:46.020the gods and i think those are really really important so i i get that but i think there's
00:42:51.540a lot of little there's a lot of meat left on the bone when you don't read these um often overlooked
00:42:58.660poems and yes well and and those little things like when she says you know i was
00:43:08.660unwillingly taken out of the the swan skin and um uh you know i was married at 12
00:43:19.780and so that lens again that uh the inverse of that is why you know why is she saying that
00:43:28.500she's saying that because again she's pleading her case and by pleading her case she's kind of
00:43:34.900showing what was um wrong what was deemed or looked at negatively so but at the same time
00:43:46.900she was not always seen as simply a wronged villain no she was wronged in her perception
00:43:56.100and that was enough for her to seek um total revenge
00:45:20.960the Abrahamic idea of Yahweh being omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent appears to have the
00:45:30.060same problem in terms of predestination versus free will. Are the Iser all omnipotent, omniscient,0.95
00:45:37.700and benevolent? So a couple of questions in there. It's fun. You want to take first swing at those?0.99
00:45:43.920okay yeah and usually answering from like the the last and then working backward firstly is
00:45:51.860no the isir are not omnipotent um but their power is far greater um i think then some people may
00:46:05.080perceive and when we talk about the gods and powers uh they i think a lot of people
00:46:16.120try to ask or comprehend how uh if the gods um are able to use primordial forces then who created
00:46:26.680those forces and it keeps going back into these kind of uh blurry undefinable what-ifs and
00:46:33.720And I think that the biggest defining point is after the tripartite of Yggdrasil and Ymir and Adumla,
00:46:51.060there is a great stratification of these wills all interacting with the primordial forces that are often caused by movement.
00:47:03.720I think movement, sound, and light are the products of these things.
00:47:10.120Now, we in the mythos stories will say it is an ocean or a weapon, painting concepts with words and ideas that are understandable.
00:47:23.760But the reality of this being that they are primordial and cosmic and so beyond comprehension that bringing them into focus via a vehicle or a color or an animal are ways for us to better understand modes.
00:47:47.540Um, so when we look at the gods, it's hard for, uh, when it comes to like, say Christians who have made Yahweh so undefinably omnipotent and, uh, blurred, you go back into the old Testament.
00:48:10.620it's very very clear it's pretty straightforward um and you don't get that same kind of sense
00:48:17.380what happens is is after christianity hits greece and it gets heavily influenced by neoplatonism
00:48:26.700that's when the identity of the middle east starts to kind of crumble more and you get a lot
00:48:34.820of the philosophical understandings of the the trinity which didn't exist until europe of course
00:48:41.160you have people who argue that um but there's all of these kind of bigger concepts um whereas with
00:48:50.700mythos and with story the idea is that we are learning about and mapping the way the gods move
00:48:59.800around and they are part of an ecosystem there's not just one singular thing that makes everything
00:49:09.980does everything and is everything all in one um whether internally or externally there's
00:49:16.480always multiplicity so the multiplicity of the gods within a area that has
00:49:27.580that which can be used, that which is, we would say like fire in the land of fire and ice and
00:49:39.700proto-matter in the land of ice. But these great divine beings are in a cosmic scale having will
00:49:48.440and there's not just one thing that has will. And I mean, again, even Christianity0.74
00:49:55.480kind of lies about this is that they do believe that other things have will, but they ultimately
00:50:03.200they're all lower than the one thing. And that thing is so omnipotent that if those things are
00:50:09.820around, it's by choice from the omnipotent. So it removes all sense of conflict and gaining
00:50:20.000ahead. So that ultimately brings me to the last part, which is will and fate.
00:50:28.860I think in Ausatru, there's a lot of people who have different sides or philosophies of it.
00:50:35.320Some people may think that fate is far more prevalent than will, but we do see the balance
00:50:42.260of the two, almost as if when we see fate mentioned by our ancestors, it is that which
00:50:52.260was that is set, that which is coming into being, and that which should happen.
00:50:59.660Skuld is debt. She is the weaver of the outcomes of will, the outcomes of deeds. And so there is a combination, but it's not completely linear.
00:51:18.580the the actions that happen during the present are affected by the past but have an outcome
00:51:26.680that is uniquely its own um and that you can change your fate if if you are doomed
00:51:36.320uh you can change your fate by drastic action and drastic will um it's just going against the
00:51:45.500tidal wave of past actions um but it's not impossible and so you know if this if fate was
00:51:54.100so set the idea that lord odin staving off in a rock uh would be pointless and i think that that's
00:52:05.220uh, the reason why will has far more of a presence in our outlook of, uh, fate and will.
00:52:18.500So it's like fate looks backwards and looks into the past. And that's very important because you
00:52:26.240can you know uh show trajectory of where things are going from the past but there is always still
00:52:37.040will and the outcome of deeds for the future
00:56:24.320as of this moment where things are heading
00:56:29.340but the the act of them doing that presents you with options to stay that course to lean
00:56:38.600into that fate or to challenge that and try to take a different course and sometimes the
00:56:47.960you know that river is strong and very hard to pull against and sometimes it's not i mean
00:56:54.600there's a lot of factors in that but i think fundamentally we all understand that free will
00:57:02.280exists. There is no person that has ever lived that doesn't understand that. If we actually
00:57:08.980try to think about it and try to logic it out, if everything is completely faded and
00:57:15.540there is no free will involved, then you can't have heroism. You can't have villainy. You
00:57:23.200can't have, you know, victory. You can't have failure. You can't have any of those
00:57:30.060things if you are just conscious of being along for the ride of something that's all been laid
00:57:35.860out before you're here that it's just not how things work and i think we all know that
00:57:40.100i think if we didn't know that our lives would look very very different and a lot more boring
00:57:47.460so the the hero is only heroic because his will is is very much the factor that's at play if he
00:57:58.560has no choice in the matter, then it ceases being heroic. So I
00:58:04.540think that's really important. That is to say, and in, but what
00:58:11.100I meant earlier, when I said that both things exist, there are
00:58:17.220people that are destined for great things. But those people
00:58:22.860can choose to not do those things or could be taken by some tragedy to where they are not able
00:58:31.660to achieve that destiny and i think that we all understand the truth of that in life and our
00:58:39.580ancestors did too the other thing that's really important when you're examining what our ancestors
00:58:45.260thought or what we think now just because something happened a long time ago doesn't
00:58:52.140mean that the people it happened to are idiots our ancestors had just as large brains as you and i
00:58:59.260have they were very smart and very intelligent people they had just as much capacity to grasp
00:59:08.140the world around them and to make sense of things so these weren't you know simple idiots that just
00:59:15.260went along with these very fairy tale ideas these were real people that were very well acquainted
00:59:21.820with the realities of the world around them so yes there's people that obviously have the hand
00:59:27.740of fate on them there's people that have a destiny woven for them that that's powerful
00:59:33.260but that can all be affected and that's why and this goes to the next point i'll get off this
00:59:39.020that i'm rambling on um the omniscience no the gods are not omniscient the gods are not um anything
00:59:48.940but they're not omni anything because again either they're mortal and they have no power
00:59:59.380or each of them individually is all powerful at all of the things that's not real that's not how
01:00:06.500reality works it's not how our faith works they are vastly wise they are vastly powerful
01:00:13.800But our lore shows us time and again their quest to gain power, to gain knowledge, to learn hidden mysteries of the universe, to learn the plans of their foes, to win knowledge of the runes, to gain power over their enemies, to struggle against chaos.
01:00:40.800chaos existence be it heavenly or um earthly exists in a constant state of movement and of
01:00:53.880struggle and that's that's a fact of life and of our reality that our ancestors certainly embraced
01:01:02.340um and benevolence is a strange it's a strange term to use in when we talk about absolutes
01:01:18.840Abrahamists don't really believe that either their texts describe their God as being jealous and
01:01:29.760angry and like malicious and doing not benevolent things um i don't when you stare when you
01:01:40.000sterilize things to where some something is all sunshine rainbows and and roses you take away a
01:01:51.360certain amount of personality our gods are real living existent entities with personality
01:01:59.760with will and with capacity to express their will and i think that trying to put them into those
01:02:07.680you know artificial categories isn't it misses the reality of our gods and it makes them
01:02:18.100caricatures of themselves and i think that does them a disservice i think it's the same thing when
01:02:24.340you talk about free will that's not pushed in a direction, or when you talk about every decision
01:02:35.800you make being predestined to make, and so you're not really choosing what you're watching on the
01:02:40.260TV tonight that's already been decided for you somehow, and you're just following the path
01:02:46.320laid out for you and whatever. That's not how it works. And again, I think we all know that
01:02:53.160that's not how it works. What's interesting is the interplay between those things and I think
01:02:58.560that is what creates a lot of the drama is you have currents of fate working against you sometimes
01:03:06.760like working against a hero oftentimes. You have places to where other forces are trying to make
01:03:14.440that hero end up and sometimes he can't escape that fate. Sometimes he's able to slip one trap
01:03:19.500only to fall into another because the pull of that destiny is so powerful but the fact that
01:03:28.040there's a story to be told is because there is will it's because the hero is trying to act against
01:03:35.040that and to alter his fate in some way and sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's
01:03:39.840insurmountable but that entire struggle tells you that all of those small actions in between
01:03:47.700are certainly expressions of free will but no that's a question that we get often in one way
01:03:54.080or another and I think that the early romantic era scholars on the subject treat Ausitru and
01:04:04.860our ancestors as some kind of a historical curiosity and not as a like living faith that
01:04:10.780real people actually practiced. So they really lean into absolutes. And this is one of the ones
01:04:17.660that I think has damaged people's perception of, you know, how Ausatru was conceived in our
01:04:25.360ancestors' time. Next, go ahead. There's an extension question to this in the chat. And
01:04:34.960i also had one other thought because of what you were saying um you know every time it was
01:04:43.460ever mentioned say that that the warrior was saying our fate was woven that wasn't an omission
01:04:50.880of free will which is like exactly what you're saying it just made me think of like um instances
01:04:58.000in literature where it's not that they didn't believe that free will existed but generally
01:05:03.940they would say it when they were in perhaps what they viewed as their final battle. It was
01:05:10.080that all of our free will and all of our actions and everything that we have done has led us to
01:05:15.220here. And now we are truly tied in. I think people have perceived that to mean that that's
01:05:25.500the way our ancestors saw about everything. But the other part that's kind of interesting is
01:05:32.500uh there is a question in here um about uh skulld and shield um i'm trying to see who wrote it um
01:05:44.500but the idea that if there's any etymological connection between shield and skulld and there
01:05:52.340is the word skilled or skilled eventually became shield um means to cut or to separate
01:06:05.940and that's uh i guess in the sense of a shield being able to separate one uh the the carrier
01:06:12.900from the opponent um but there's also connections to skull cutting the thread cutting the thread
01:06:20.580of someone so i think what it truly represents is the finality of will um as it is up to the
01:06:32.340very last minute and then uh things can be brought to a close um but after that's i mean that's
01:06:43.380speculative um indo-european translation of the idea that skilled to separate or to break apart or
01:06:52.260to keep a division but i find that very interesting and of course you see that too with like weaving
01:07:00.340and uh the the scissors um so it immediately made me think like oh i want to check out the
01:07:08.980etymology of of scissors or shears so you have shears uh shields and skull and i think very much
01:07:19.460so this may be lending to the uh the idea of the ending or the cutting or the separating of the
01:07:27.220thread and also there was another thing i saw as well as um the three i don't know if anybody's
01:07:35.700ever heard of it but where there's three threads a gold thread for for uh highborn or nobleborn
01:07:45.620silver threads for freemen and copper threads for lowborn um so far as i know i can't find
01:07:52.580anything on that other than the simple mention that heroes have golden threads so that the
01:07:59.860poetic mentioning of the fact that heroes are um uh have nobility uh inherent in them before their
01:08:12.820deeds see i'm wondering how that works etymologically because i don't find the same
01:08:19.780rundown in the etymology when you go back i don't find that same point of connectivity yeah i got
01:08:27.780so um here it says uh the middle dutch dutch german gothic uh coming from the ie scale
01:08:40.900um so it has a bunch of funny things around the scale and i think that makes a difference
01:08:46.180because that scale means cut but the scale from proto-indo-european i'm looking at means
01:08:51.700to be obliged beholden to oh to be guilty oh see so you know little little differences and and i
01:09:03.700i say that i wonder if there is some kind of um cross overlap within that together that close
01:09:10.740that far back but the debt the obligation all of those things weave in i think we
01:09:21.700I think it really plays to your point about the threads tying you into stuff.
01:09:30.120You know, once you weave yourself really tight, you, you know, as they say, you paint yourself into a corner and you find yourself in the situation that you're in.
01:09:40.920And if you can see the threads that are starting to weave that snare for you, then you can alter what you're doing to avoid it.
01:09:54.380Once you find yourself in the midst of it, now all of a sudden you see all the threads that brought you there.
01:10:01.380The tighter that weaves, the more that pins you into a spot.
01:10:05.840But it's made up of choices that you make over time.
01:10:09.200Now, it's also made up of, you know, choices other people make in relation to you, again, other free will, the free will that's exercised against you, if it's some supernatural, you know, hex that you're put under, all of those things, but all of those things individually are expressions of free will.
01:10:28.740um so we've got one more question i also want to uh say that tyler in new hampshire donated
01:10:37.240500 to phrase off thank you tyler that's amazing
01:10:42.700well done and much appreciated that's crazy that's awesome
01:10:52.240bit of extra reading um i think the confusion might be because the the word shield is different
01:11:00.920than the word shield it's s-h-i-l-d not i-e-l-d so it's not the type of shield
01:11:07.500the shield that means debt is not the type of shield that means yeah a sword and shield
01:11:14.200yeah and i'm posting up kind of what i what i found oh obviously actually that's not gonna work
01:11:24.040because there's a space limit on that i'll post it up to you just to kind of cool yeah so um in the
01:11:33.200meantime can you talk about the woad self and is it similar to the idea of the higher self
01:11:42.240swan you want to take first shot at that yeah i think uh and we were again strangely enough
01:11:49.540just talking about this um at the hoff the components of the soul working together to
01:11:57.960attain the woad self the woad self as its elevated form perhaps is the form that lord
01:12:06.280Othen takes notice of. But all of the components that we were talking about, just kind of going
01:12:15.560through and their resignation of kind of falling into the sowl after the leak is no longer the0.80
01:12:25.400vessel and carrying on uh to the to the ancestors unless there is the attainment of the woed self
01:12:37.880where the paragon of being whether um and i think it's cumulative i think it is mental
01:12:48.360um and physical and also action uh kind of coming into its purest form and this is something that
01:12:58.600i think we were ultimately coming through with uh all the the the literature that we were looking
01:13:08.840at especially founder mcnallan's book ausitru a native european religion um as we were seeing the
01:13:17.960components as components but this woe to self element is kind of known and spoken of as this
01:13:26.600culmination and what exactly is it and i i honestly don't know how to articulate what it is
01:13:34.680But I do believe it is that kind of flair in the dark of Lord Odin's eye, the seeing these moments, especially if we're talking about in a singular moment where someone supersedes their own self, perhaps in mortality or in mind.
01:13:59.720And they no longer, they in essence float above and separate themselves from the mundane to such a degree that they become a force, something beautiful or terrible to behold that is burning bright.
01:14:21.580and then sometimes cut down or taken away.
01:14:29.280That moment, achieving their purest sense in the moment.
01:14:38.540In talks that I've had with our founder, Steve McAllen,
01:14:51.580And that's one of the words that I kind of veer away from a little bit because it crosses
01:14:59.980linguistics and I'm trying to get all our linguistics to line up.
01:15:05.320So you know, I would call that the the other self or the the the old shelfer.
01:15:16.380think but because those words are cognates that mean the same thing but it's a concept of
01:15:32.060yeah i think you're spot on when you when you compared it to the higher self um
01:15:36.460Um, it's, and I've often described this as kind of a, I don't know, a meaning of life
01:15:47.740thing that we all face is the distance between the man that you are and your, your woe self,
01:15:58.780the distance between who you are and who you ought to be in like the best version of yourself.
01:16:06.460and i think that there are transcendent moments but i also think like what's fawn mentioned
01:16:14.220earlier is true as well it's like when the different pieces of your soul fully integrate that
01:16:28.540um actualization of the woad self or the other self
01:16:36.460is important. And I do think that you become transcendent if you can become that fully.
01:16:46.060I think for a lucky few, you have moments where you touch that, where in a moment you are
01:16:57.740integrated and you are the best of yourself at a moment of transcendence. And then it's
01:17:06.380slips you know back to a less perfect state but that ability to merge
01:17:15.500who you who you are in reality with the best version of your highest potential
01:17:24.140is something that i think we all chase after and is a an inspirational thing for us to try to always
01:17:31.180is contemplate what your woed self would do in a given situation and try to be that man
01:17:39.220I think that is informative so yes I think it's the
01:17:45.640it's like it's the projected best version of yourself that you ought to be or that you are
01:17:57.700capable of being and when you fit into that outline when you fit into that and are integrated
01:18:08.340in that way that moment however long it lasts is transcendent and i think that's the idea of that
01:18:16.900self that self that is the the fulfillment of the inspiration of the woad of the the other of
01:18:27.700The ecstatic, godly fury of your potential, I think that's the congealment of that.
01:18:38.360oh we also said something about uh the hammer that the hammer is uh kind of a good indicator
01:18:51.360of the woe to self that that as you're moving towards the the being you should be your hammer
01:18:58.260has uh an effect it can a quantifiable kind of thing uh and of the way that you command room
01:19:07.520the presence um or just over i mean overall uh i hate to say the word but in it because it's been
01:19:17.020bastard bastardized by other but the aura of oneself kind of being an indicator of
01:19:24.820how you get close to your other versus i guess the opposite whatever that might be where the
01:19:31.860hammer is a deficit or is weak or frail or insignificant yeah well it's it's funny because
01:19:42.880we separate these things out in ways that are digestible i think the lines aren't nearly as
01:19:47.880clear in the reality of our our soul makeup but i think the hammer is
01:19:53.680more visual and more of an image or a projection of that as opposed to the
01:20:02.140fulfillment of it or the embodiment of it so I but I do think that your your hammer is a0.99
01:20:14.440I do think that is an indicator of what that woad self might be or might look like
01:20:20.780you actually embodying it the embodiment of it becomes the load self uh when the hammer is fleshed
01:20:30.200out um i think that's that's a thing but again one of the things that we do struggle with is
01:20:38.900the more we try to talk about these things words fail us when you talk about metaphysics at some
01:20:47.220point because the concepts themselves are are transcendent and outside the range of our vocabulary
01:21:01.140with that we've got a very short one stanza poem for you next the draup niflunga so
01:21:12.340So Svahn, is there anything folks need to know before we hit the ground on that?
01:21:18.560It is really what this was supposed to be or where it was kind of placed in things is as an introduction to the Reyn's Maul that we read a while back as we were going through Fafnir the Dragon, Reyn.
01:21:41.060and uh they were kind of being atomized away from the core story this was uh the introductory
01:21:51.140but was separated simply because it most likely had a different composer so I think it was kind
01:22:01.460of uh brought out of that to be looked at in that way but that's also kind of that's why it's
01:22:08.340ultimately short is that it was more or less an introduction to the Rehensmull poem.
01:22:21.220All right. Well, whenever you would like, let's give it a read. Like I said, it's short when it's
01:22:29.100one stanza. It's a big stanza. It's not like one of the little couplets that we end up with. It's
01:22:35.260a paragraph and and this really takes place after sigurd's uh slaying and gunner and hogni the the
01:22:47.580brothers of are the sons of gyuki of course their youngest brother was slain in the process of
01:22:55.980slaying Sigurd he was cut in twain by a uh flying the flying sword um but after that the other two0.90
01:23:09.020brothers uh end up kind of gaining their spoils and ultimately their fate lies at dying at the
01:23:18.180blade of Atli. But that's all this kind of is, is kind of speaking about that time. So Gunnar and Hogni
01:23:31.120then take all the gold that Fafnir had had. There was strife between the Gyukkings and Atli,
01:23:40.000For he held the Göttings guilty for Brynhild's death, as she was one of the Huns in the Gothic lands.
01:23:54.660It was agreed that they should give him Gudrun, their sister, as a wife.
01:24:01.300And they gave her a draught of forgetfulness to drink before she would consent to be wedded to Atli.
01:24:10.000so again we see the the mcguffin of the story or the the plot kind of uh convenience but
01:24:20.720more importantly if you look at the way the audience is reading this or being perceived
01:24:26.860like they're being told these things it's again another mark of treachery on gunner and hulkney
01:24:36.500The, the idea of someone being able to give a potion to someone to make them forget is cowardly. It's, it's, uh, again, you're not only averting fate, you're also averting will.
01:24:56.200Both of those are being hidden from by the forgetfulness, and these things are common throughout all the poems.
01:25:06.820We spoke about the queen poisoning the horn against the hero, because this is an inverse of the feminine giving divine power to the hero, as in the sword with the Lady of the Lake or with Gunlov and Lord Oven.
01:25:27.240it was an inverse and the audience would know that and have it would it would evoke emotions
01:25:37.220well in this case too the audience is hearing them giving off these these potions which seem
01:25:47.700to source from their mother and her knowledge of it but it's simply just again nefarious
01:25:56.100dastardly to be able to to try and want to just remove yourself from all the things that you have0.79
01:26:03.780done and giving their sister over to atli um is kind of again dastardly they're uh the um the1.00
01:26:16.820gyukings according to kind of like mapping things out they're burgundians in eastern france and0.98
01:26:25.140And Otley and the Gothic kingdoms are kind of in what would be currently Austria and all the way over to the Black Sea.0.96
01:26:35.560So they're kind of also doing that to get rid of her because she knows that they were plotting to kill her husband and now they've got his gold.
01:26:48.560so they need to kind of get her out of there and um and of course she's all torn up from all of0.84
01:26:55.780this and from from brunhild and so uh they're they're dividing the spoils um
01:27:02.960so they gave her a draw to forgetfulness to drink before she would consent consent to wedding
01:27:12.180King Atli. The sons of Atli were Erp and Eitel, and Svanhild was the daughter of Sigurd and Gudrun.
01:27:26.680King Atli invited Gunnar and Hogni to come to him and sent as a messenger Vingi or Kneifroth.
01:33:47.320we do not have additional questions and the next one is a little bit meaty so
01:33:56.480whenever you are ready if you would like to take us through uh gudrunar kovida
01:34:04.460all right so now we're going to informa uh yeah it's uh and this is of course gudrun's
01:34:15.740uh lament or gudrun's side of the story which has only been kind of touched on um as we go
01:34:27.080around through everyone but i love the fact that much like the stories of hercules amongst the
01:34:34.060greeks there being multiple endings um having different points of view uh this was ultimately
01:34:42.980storytelling, but brought down into the discipline of poetry and then expounded on
01:34:53.420because the audience would be familiar with the people being spoken of. I could only imagine
01:35:04.940though i wondered like if a poet is saying something from uh this story and someone not
01:35:14.780knowing the story of sigurd and which makes me think perhaps the likelihood of that it was so low
01:35:22.460that this story the sigurd the dragon slayer story was so widespread so well known that it
01:35:29.980wasn't a risk or a gamble to um create from other perspectives in the story that's the thing by the
01:35:39.660time this is recorded and certainly by the time the the etta was recorded it's an ancient story um
01:35:49.580when elements of it were first composed i think is anybody's guess but the events and the people
01:36:03.560involved are 600 years prior to getting written down in this format so that's a long period of
01:36:15.600time um you know that's us passing down an oral tradition from you know
01:36:26.960the 1400s that's that's a long it's a long period for this to be disseminated throughout europe and
01:36:38.400And through all the courts of Europe, through all the campfires of lords and kings, and yeah, the spread of it, when you think about it, is tremendous and spans large swaths of the continent.
01:37:03.420but also you know over the course of centuries so it's really interesting what comes down to us
01:37:12.340when this is getting recorded in the 1200s right and i wonder at that point these stories are spoken
01:37:19.540and then at a certain point they become poem um and all the details are are kind of hammered out
01:37:29.260into meter and disciplined uh style of poetry or has it always you know i i'm a believer that it
01:37:38.220was a story before poems but some people make the argument that the only reason why these have last
01:37:43.660is because they were made into uh poems all along um but i mean either way it's it's uh yeah from
01:37:55.500the years 500 to the uh this poem that we're about to go over is supposedly um by guesstimate um 12
01:38:09.82012th century so um that's a huge expanse of time uh the other thing is that's worth noting i just
01:38:18.060check the notes and um is that there are a lot of omissions and pieces taken out
01:38:26.620survive so there might be some choppy parts in here and that's because of the uh the condition
01:38:40.780okay so it starts first with uh king theodric who you know this name immediately is guys oh it's
01:38:57.020i looked at the bottom there theodoric so uh this is the kind of nordic translation of
01:39:04.460the gothic name theodoric um and this is i believe the same theodoric that slayed odaker that i had
01:39:13.180mentioned earlier um king feodric was with atli and had lost most of his men feodric and gudrun
01:39:25.260lamented their griefs together she spoke to him saying and now we begin the the metered verse
01:39:33.740A maid of maids, my mother bore me, bright in my bower, my brothers I loved, till Gyuki dowered me with gold, dowered with gold, and to Sigurd gave me.
01:39:49.580So just to clarify to dowry, the idea that there was property and wealth that was significant to the station of a woman that when she came into a house in marriage,
01:40:10.640She brought with her this property that enriched the house, whether monetarily sometimes, with actual objects like weaving looms and things like that.0.92
01:40:27.660So Sigurd rose over Gyuki's sons. He became much, much better than my brothers.
01:40:40.640as the leak grows green above the grass again we see that referencing that we've seen numerous
01:40:49.840times before the poetic sense of the the leak being greater than the grass or the stag over
01:40:58.480all the beasts doth stand or as glow red gold above silver gray till my brothers let me no
01:41:07.860longer have the best of heroes my husband to be sleep they could not or quarrels settle
01:41:14.660till sigurd lay at last had slain from the thing ran granny the horse of sigurd with thundering
01:41:26.180feet but thence did sigurd himself come never covered with sweat was the saddle bearer want
01:41:34.900the warrior's weight to bear weeping i sought with granny to speak with tear wet cheeks for the
01:41:43.540tale i asked the head of granny was bowed to the grass the steed knew well his master was slain
01:41:53.220so i think this is a really well written um and sorrowful
01:41:58.900poem and we've spoken about the horse grani and how the essence of a horse that laments the death
01:42:11.260of its owner uh that being so good uh and being able to carry the treasure of fafnir grani has
01:42:21.800as a horse its own kind of element within the story and she wishes to see the horse
01:42:31.140because it's the last living representation of him um and this would really get i i believe
01:42:40.000especially if you consider how much horsemanship is important in island uh this being said and
01:42:46.580spoken um and the significance that horses have within icelandic culture is um significant so um
01:43:05.620long i waited and pondered well ere ever the king for tidings i asked then there's a break because of
01:43:13.460um uh the uh condition and it goes to the seventh stanza um his head bowed gunner but hognitold
01:43:29.540the newsful store of sigurd slain hewned to death at our hands he lies gutorm slayer given to wolves
01:43:39.780on the southern road thou shalt sigurd see where here thou canst the ravens cry the eagles cry as
01:43:51.860food they crave and about thy husband wolves are howling so again all of this death imagery um and
01:44:02.500And the southern road, or, you know, on the road downward, I think is probably the better translation going in there.
01:44:22.600But the road of the dead, road of hell, and around him ravens cry, and around him eagles cry, and wolves are howling.0.90
01:44:32.500Why dost thou, Hogni, such a horror let me hear?0.88
01:44:40.140All joyless left, ravens yet, thy heart shall rend
01:44:50.180So the intro that we just spoke about,
01:44:54.960where Hogni's heart is removed by Atli,0.71
01:44:57.480She foretells it that his heart will be eaten and rendered from him in a land that he has never known.0.89
01:45:07.820So when he goes to the east, few the words of Hogni were, bitter his heart from the heavy sorrow.
01:45:16.660But he speaks, greater Gudrun thy grief shall be, if the raven sow, my heart shall rend.
01:45:27.480From him who spake, I turned me soon in the woods to find what the wolves had left, tears I had not, nor wrung my hands, nor wailing went as other women, when by Sigurd slain I sat.
01:45:46.840Sorry, that's actually correction, that's her speaking, saying that she did not wail and cry as other women have.
01:45:57.480when she sat next to the body of her husband but the darkness of that moment
01:46:05.160fully seeped into her uh never so black had seemed the night as when in sorrow
01:46:13.000my sigurd sat the wolves and then the verses gone uh best of all be thought
01:46:24.280t would be if i my life could only lose or like to birchwood burned might be so
01:46:34.360another important thing that i think we should see is that uh the the she's talking about it0.68
01:46:42.520would be better if she was dead but the story continues on she doesn't uh kill herself or
01:46:50.280anything of that nature and continues on in her life and i wonder if that's an implication towards
01:46:57.880the idea that sacrifice of life perhaps in a situation where you are fighting off someone
01:47:08.360with imminent doom was okay but perhaps the idea of like trying to take yourself
01:47:17.080out of woe was seen as as something perhaps not to do um
01:47:25.260so she uh she says best of all me thought to it if my life could be only lose or like to
01:47:36.780birchwood burned might be from the mountains forth five days i fared till horlofs horlofs
01:47:46.220hall so high I saw. Seven half years with Thora I stayed, HÃ¥kon's daughter in Denmark then,
01:47:56.560with gold she broidered to bring me joy. Southern halls and Danish swans. On the tapestry wove me
01:48:05.980warrior's deeds and the hero's things on our handiwork. Flashing shields and fighters armed,
01:48:45.060then grimhild asked the gothic queen whether willingly would i and this is of course
01:48:55.060it's lost in the poem but it's lending to the arrangement of the marriage between her and
01:49:01.540atlee so grimhild most likely began the arrangement of that um
01:49:08.100her needlework cast she aside and called her sons to ask with stern resolve who amends to their
01:49:18.340sister would make for her son or the wife requite for her husband killed ready was gunner gold to1.00
01:49:28.420give amends for my hurt and hog me too then would she know who now would go the horse to saddle the1.00
01:49:38.920wagon to harness the horse to ride and the hawk to fly and the shafts from bows of you to shoot
01:49:46.900And so from this point, Grimhild from the Goths comes and says that Atlee wishes to be betrothed and who would build a dowry for her.
01:50:05.240And, of course, it's her brothers who killed her husband do this.
01:50:10.880And that's why I think that they were purposely trying to get rid of her, that they were purposely trying to separate her and send her away.
01:50:20.400But she goes and she takes a group with her and she leaves for the east.
01:50:30.340um valdar king of the danes uh was come with uh yaris leaf and amoth and yariscar
01:50:44.580in the in like princess came they all the long bearded men with mantles red
01:50:51.340short mail coats and mighty their helms swords at their belts and brown their hair
01:50:58.240And so I think this here too is showing the aged men of the warriors that attended her and attended this coming to the Goths and to Atli.
01:51:15.280But more importantly, I think something to consider. Blonde hair was seen as a symbol of youthfulness. And a lot of the reasons I think that culturally the Nordic ancestors dyed their hair blonde was, again, because it was a sign of youthfulness.
01:51:36.260we don't see that everywhere we see the germans dyed their hair red for war so this was something
01:51:41.620kind of more unique to the the nordic people um as a child with blonde hair would get darker as
01:51:49.860they grew older so i think that's the major reason what they're what they're emphasizing
01:51:54.260in this is they were long bearded um and they wear mantles of red uh because of station uh in society
01:52:03.780and um they're bare weapons but and have their brown hair um each to give me gifts was feign
01:52:14.420gifts to give in goodly speech comfort so for my sorrows great to bring they tried but i trusted
01:52:22.260them not. A draught or a draught, a drink, did Grimhild give me to drink? Bitter and
01:52:36.920cold, I forgot my cares. For mingled therein was magic earth, ice cold sea, and the blood
01:52:45.100of a swine. So this is the forgetful potion or the drop thereof. In the cup were runes of every kind
01:53:00.060written and reddened. I could not read them. A heather fish from the hadding's land,
01:53:08.860an ear uncut and the entrails of a beast i think one of the things is that this might not obviously
01:53:21.420be a completely accurate kind of sense of magic but that even when we hear about the witches
01:53:30.180is making the potions with the Eye of Newt, etc. I wonder, you know, to what degree if this may be
01:53:40.820herbal code, but also just, again, the audience getting the idea that there's all these kind of,
01:53:49.460like very significant and odd things placed in the drink and like the ear uncut and I wonder
01:54:05.000too if like if this is an ear of a grain or an actual ear or the ear you know
01:54:11.360this one was kind of interesting but very very hard to find any leads on
01:54:16.720But much evil was brewed within the beer
01:58:34.920And the foremost of all, him shalt thou have, while life thou hast, or husbandless you will be, if him thou wilt not choose.
01:58:47.080And again, we've spoken about marriage in the royal courts, why it was so important to gain those stations.
01:58:56.140So this exchange back and forth is really Grimhild's political movings.
01:59:06.940Gudrun speaks, seek not so eagerly me to send.
01:59:15.600Don't seek so eagerly to send me away is what she's getting there.1.00
01:59:19.800To be a bride of yon baneful race, of Gunnar first his wrath shall fall, and the heart will he tear from Hogni's breast.1.00
01:59:32.580So, prophetically speaking of what is to come when Atlee invites her brothers.0.99
01:59:44.760And this is, of course, Grimhild is their mother.
01:59:49.800Grimhild is the mother of Gudrun and Gunnirn Hogni, so she's also kind of saying, like, don't be so quick to weave me into the weird over there, because what ultimately comes of this is that your sons will die, my brothers will die, and all of this is bad.
02:00:11.740um weeping grim healed heard the words that fate full sore for her sons foretold and mighty woe
02:00:23.540for them should work she spoke lands i give thee with all that live there
02:00:30.340vin bjork is mine or is thine dal bjork too have them forever but hear me daughter
02:00:39.240gudrun speaks so must i do as the kings besought and against my will for my kinsmen wed
02:00:48.880never with my husband joy i had and my sons my by my brother's fate were saved not that part there
02:00:58.740the way that it kind of should be read is that what she's saying is never with joy will i have
02:01:07.140with the husband at Lee um it's not reflect reflective of saying she never had any joy with
02:01:15.680Sigurd no it's quite the opposite but um she says she has to do it as royalty beckons um against her
02:01:24.100will uh but never with my husband her future husband um joy I had and my sons by my brother's
02:01:34.920fate were saved not i could not rest till of life i had robbed the warrior bold and the maker of
02:01:42.920battles this uh stanza 35 is missing the front half so i yeah i don't know if this is grimhild
02:01:55.880saying this that she um could not rest until sigurd was dead uh
02:02:04.920I don't, I mean, again, this is where that, that choppiness really kind of is the only thing that's bad about this poem.
02:07:06.340Hounds, I dreamed. From my hand, I loosed. Loud in hunger and pain, they howled. Their flesh, me thought, was eagle food. And their bodies, now, I needs must eat.
02:07:22.680And so the plants, the hawk, and the hounds, all, I think, significant of the land that he owned and, of course, the powers of being a king.
02:07:46.400All of these great powers kind of coming back to him where he must consume them because of his doom.
02:07:58.440But Gudrun speaks back and says, men shall soon of sacrifice speak and off the heads of beasts shall hew.
02:08:09.220Die they shall ere day has dawned, a few nights hence, and the folk shall have them.
02:08:16.400So she's saying, don't worry. The Godis will sacrifice and they will bathe the blood of the animals of bloat and they will give the meat to the people and share it with the gods.
02:08:37.220so don't worry is uh i think this line here she's really saying like you are in good graces with the
02:08:45.380gods you have priests who are about to sacrifice um the animals and the the folks shall have
02:08:53.380so all thing is all things are a right you shouldn't worry um but atli speaks again and
02:09:01.700says on my bed i sank nor slumber sought weary with woe full well i remember
02:09:10.900and then the last part of the stanza is of course and terribly inconveniently gone
02:09:18.900um and gudrun speaks back soon on horseback each hero was and the foreign woman in wagons
02:09:28.740fairing a week through the oh wait a minute oh sorry i went backwards there um oh that's because
02:09:37.060yes it suddenly ends right there at the the dream of otley but you know the story kind of
02:09:45.700this poem is all it's doing is foreshadowing or going into detail more about gudrun's lament
02:09:55.700and then her being married to atli and ultimately what's to come and her hiding
02:10:03.380the dream that atli has and kind of writing it off is more indicative to that she still
02:10:10.820um had uh plans and this of course is um after you know he kills her brothers too
02:10:21.220too. And I wonder, too, if Attlee felt like her brother slaying her first husband, maybe he was
02:10:34.140doing her a favor or attempting to kind of win her over that way, but that didn't work. That
02:10:41.240doesn't work, especially with the moral ethics that we've seen played out. And I wonder, too,
02:10:48.540it's maybe perhaps some lack of understanding that aptly being of the of the of the east of the
02:10:55.900guttanish and um people coming out of the um steps of russia if maybe that wasn't something
02:11:06.380he fully understood or even cared about but kills her brothers and then says oh you know it's so
02:11:12.940crazy i had this dream that you were gonna kill me and she's like oh no no it's just gonna lance
02:11:18.300a back boil and uh everything's gonna be okay i don't know sorry but that's the end of that um that
02:11:28.780poem. Well, there you have it. We keep hitting this from different angles. This poem I think
02:11:50.720was really, some of the imagery was really, really well done, especially at the beginning.
02:11:57.800Like, there's a lot of really nice pieces.
02:12:01.760It sucks that there's pieces missing and stuff that we won't ever know, but it's also really, I don't know, encouraging and exciting that we have so much of it.
02:12:16.300But the fact that we read through this and so many of these pieces are stated again and again in little different ways from a little different perspective, all these different pieces of this poem being preserved in the Etta is a little bit tedious to work through sometimes to get that.
02:12:32.880But it's a testament to the effort put in to preserve this and have this make it all the way down to us again about a story from, I don't know, probably 500 written with characters around that time.
02:12:57.360so having that make it all the way to us you know in large part or from people like
02:13:04.560simonder who recorded this stuff and cataloged it and preserved it for us to have so i think
02:13:11.780that's really cool that we've got so many different little angles on it and i assure
02:13:16.500you we're we're working our way through it we don't have too many more left what's up yeah i
02:13:22.880just had a um so we just did the old poem of gudrun but there's a another short one we're
02:13:30.640are we doing uh gudruna in uh the third lay of gudrun it's an 11 stanzaed one two weeks from
02:13:42.560now we are oh oh okay i didn't know if we were doing that um kind of all coupled in because this
02:13:49.840is kind of another extension of i mean they all are in this section until we get out of it um
02:14:00.720i get that we're beating it to death but we are going through them in the order that it came down
02:24:13.000It expresses that in a very clear and very intentional way that's, you know, we're not picking up bits and pieces from, you know, a bigger story about something else and applying them.
02:24:27.720It's directly, this is what, and it's written that way.
02:24:32.280Like, this is what the ancestors believed.
02:24:34.860That was kind of the purpose of that particular section by Snorri, is to recount what the religion of his ancestors were.
02:24:46.640And he was very devoted to doing that in an authentic way.
02:24:49.680so it's it's something that uh informs how we practice house true in the afa quite a bit and
02:24:58.720where we get um a lot of very directly how we do things so we're excited to get to that
02:25:07.280um and yeah we'll likely do it right after uh the fun keeps nodding his head so we're
02:25:14.160We're going to do it directly after we've done with the poetic edda.
02:25:20.420And that is what we'll move on to next.
02:25:23.060I'm itching to get to the gill beginning because of just like the things you said.
02:25:28.660And there are so many elements all right there that we implement within the theology of the church.
02:25:35.880So, I mean, everything from the tripartite to the wells and certain things that I've noticed other people, perhaps, you know, more internet-y people are trying to say that things are wrong or different and they're moving things around.
02:25:51.940And it's like, no, it's very clear here in the gill beginning.
02:25:55.600And that is where we, you know, and even down to the temples being built in order from the gill beginning, everything.
02:26:06.060It's such a it's the I think it's the cornerstone of lore in relation to the theological framework or at least the lore framework of the church.