Asatru Folk Assembly - 12⧸17⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 180 - Atlamál hin groenlenzku

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Hello, all, and welcome to this week's exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:11.020 It's great to talk to you all again.

00:03:17.060 So, I'm waiting a little bit for my co-host for the evening to get situated and get on the call.

00:03:23.800 But in the meantime, I can kind of run down the top of the show news and things.

00:03:29.540 So, as I am reminded by the chat, if you are seeing this, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your family, tell anybody who might need to or want to hear this or participate.

00:03:44.880 word of mouth is really important

00:03:49.220 it bumps all the algorithms

00:03:51.440 so wherever you are consuming this show

00:03:54.100 whether you're watching it

00:03:55.260 or whether you're getting it as a podcast later on

00:03:57.800 yeah, like, share, subscribe

00:04:00.400 and spread the word

00:04:04.780 so top of the show kind of things

00:04:11.820 We are doing great on paying off Frazehoff.

00:04:16.460 We are making tremendous progress on that.

00:04:19.780 We are currently at 32.5% paid off, which is awesome, which means we still owe $84,384,

00:04:31.760 which I have no doubt that we will make happen relatively soon.

00:04:37.180 I appreciate you guys' donations.

00:04:38.780 If you'd like to donate and help us, runestone.org slash donate.

00:04:44.560 The current figure, if every member paid $113 today, it would be paid off.

00:04:52.180 So that's awesome progress.

00:04:56.860 Yeah, so thank you guys for your generosity.

00:05:00.100 Svan has just popped in the show for us.

00:05:02.460 People who would like to follow along, please do so at velospow.org.

00:05:10.480 That's where we do all of our readings from, certainly during the Poetic Edda portion.

00:05:18.200 Come to mention, so our next episode that Svon and I do, we will finish the Poetic Edda.

00:05:26.400 It has been a long journey.

00:05:28.460 it's been well over a year I don't remember how long but much longer than a year so we've been

00:05:33.820 on it for quite a long time but it's been good I think think of gotten a lot of nuggets of wisdom

00:05:43.500 out of there that I'm glad I've been able to to share with you guys so that'll be awesome if you

00:05:50.180 want to go through like I said please feel free to read there or any other translation you might

00:05:54.900 have of the material. There's, you know, different translator may have gone a different

00:05:59.980 route and you might find something expressed in a different way that it's a little bit

00:06:04.300 different. I feel like there's something else to talk about at the top of the program here,

00:06:14.320 but I am not remembering what that might be. Nick is suggesting I plug a decent thing

00:06:24.820 at New York's Hoff. That's our Hoff in White Springs, Florida, and that's going to be in

00:06:30.160 February. That is their kind of showcase event of the year for the New York's Hoff District.

00:06:37.460 So anybody who wants to make the journey to White Springs, Florida, I would invite you to do that.

00:06:45.060 It'd be fantastic. I'm going to be in attendance. It's going to be awesome, so come on out if you can.

00:06:50.680 um also remember a lot of a lot of our program is question and answer based and audience

00:06:58.980 participation so if you guys have questions please get those to us and you can send questions

00:07:05.800 to us anytime you want at vns at runestone.org that gets them to us and we will answer them

00:07:15.560 on the very next episode.

00:07:21.880 Yeah, so that's where we're sitting on that to get started here.

00:07:26.660 Tonight we are going to read the Atlemalhen Gronlensku,

00:07:34.040 and that's the Greenland speaking about Adley.

00:07:44.640 so it's going to be the the the poem that's believed to be composed in Greenland which is

00:07:51.780 kind of kind of cool and a little bit different from our other um etic poems that we've gone

00:07:57.220 through Svond what do folks need to know if anything that's different on this one oh and

00:08:02.880 I was neglectful GW Farnsworth as always you're amazing thank you for your donation

00:08:09.160 He gave us $45, $20 towards Frazhoff, and $25 towards this program.

00:08:16.640 So thank you so much, as always.

00:08:19.120 Tom, what do people need to know before we get into the material tonight?

00:08:22.940 Excuse me.

00:08:24.800 I am recovering from disease.

00:08:31.020 So what you said was actually kind of the thing about Greenland.

00:08:36.780 And this story, I mean, it goes all the way back to the 5th century and the battling between the Burgundians, the Franks, and the Huns.

00:08:49.620 And it is now, it was most likely composed in the 10th century to the 12th, but was written down by the 14th.

00:09:01.580 Because remember, Iceland was founded as a nation in the year 1000.

00:09:08.200 So Greenland and the settling of Greenland. 0.91

00:09:10.920 At the same time that they rejected Troth with our gods. 0.94

00:09:17.580 Yes. 0.92

00:09:18.440 And most of Christian Europe was in the throes of the Black Plague.

00:09:22.980 So they were all opining that this was somehow Armageddon.

00:09:28.220 um and the the icelanders uh actually i i would i would refute that a little bit else here you're

00:09:38.700 going they knew that norway had them in a chokehold and that if they didn't accept the church

00:09:44.720 from rome that they were going to uh not only suffer in iceland but their descendants who had

00:09:52.320 settled greenland would suffer with embargoes so when the the uh how go the of iceland at the time

00:10:01.440 um made the decision he went under the cloak and he said that that uh because the church was so

00:10:11.440 uh politically powerful and where it was on the threat of embargoing the island and making their

00:10:17.680 lives miserable they would go to the church of the the the god of rome um really the god of israel

00:10:26.720 uh on sunday and then they were free to worship the gods of their ancestors any other day and

00:10:32.560 that was the initial step but once the church got its foot in within two generations they had

00:10:40.960 demonized and outlawed most folk practices and most of it was done oh behind the or behind the

00:10:49.600 the priest's shoulder um and the church went so far as to take the bells from the churches

00:10:57.920 and make it that they somehow keep the hoodl folk or the the lambeteer away um even though

00:11:06.560 bells were already established to be sacred to the land spirits so you can really see and there's a

00:11:12.320 lot of connections that they try to make between hasatan or satan and lord ovin uh in particular

00:11:21.040 because he was still influential in the in the poetic courts of iceland so i think there was a

00:11:29.040 it was the start for sure you were correct but so as an official act of their of their all thing

00:11:37.320 they officially broke trough with our gods and the small concession that you know well

00:11:44.880 you guys can kind of worship the gods if you do it in secret and then on the outside we worship this 0.96

00:11:50.440 zombie Jew. Betrayal is foul. A curse upon anyone who betrays our gods. That's the thing. People 1.00

00:12:07.060 ask if we celebrate all those generations of our ancestors that were Christian, and we do all but 0.98

00:12:15.180 one. You know, there's people who are raised that don't know any better. But there was one

00:12:22.100 generation that knew better, one generation of people that decided to knowingly forsake

00:12:27.500 troth with our gods. And the ones who knowingly made that decision, I think they likely find

00:12:39.560 themselves on the strand. Yeah, I agree, honestly, with the disgrace of that level, whatever that

00:12:47.560 generation might be, certainly around all of Trigverson's time, I would imagine that Trigverson 0.79

00:12:54.220 is somewhere on the strand. But, um, and it's funny to amend what I said on that generation,

00:13:00.740 it's not one generation for everybody, but it's one generation in people's family. One of the

00:13:05.500 interesting things. And apropos, and this is the thing I was stumbling over at the beginning that

00:13:13.240 I was going to say, we're celebrating for the first time the day of remembrance of King Seward

00:13:18.520 tomorrow. And it is his first remembrance day. And he was one of the rare instances

00:13:26.780 where his father had converted. And he's like, no, no, no, let's roll it back and go back to

00:13:35.060 trough with our gods so there's like one conversion period in everybody's family where

00:13:40.100 that family broke with our gods and that's what i mean by the one generation that generation in

00:13:46.500 different countries in different places happened at different times it just officially was codified

00:13:51.860 into law at uh the year 1000 or year 1000s all thing in uh eastlandy well and i you know they

00:14:02.180 they always the kind of pigeon on a chessboard kind of move where it's,

00:14:07.660 you know,

00:14:07.780 do what your ancestors did best and convert to Christianity that, 0.89

00:14:12.120 you know,

00:14:12.460 liberals and Christians like broad stroke history, 0.89

00:14:15.040 pretty hardcore.

00:14:16.100 And one of the things they failed to mention is that, yes,

00:14:19.640 like you said,

00:14:20.220 the generation that turned more than likely the generation following that

00:14:25.660 did not that,

00:14:26.740 but went back.

00:14:27.580 And I mean,

00:14:28.140 this was all over Christendom.

00:14:29.580 And that's why we celebrate, you know, and we see that with our heroes very specifically, our Anglo-Saxon kings that we celebrate, because they're some of the few exceptions that went back and reestablished that trough after, you know, it had been broken by their immediate predecessors.

00:14:53.380 And that's a very rare and unique thing.

00:14:57.300 And it's one of the reasons that they stand out as heroes.

00:14:59.400 So before we get going into the meat and taters, we've got a couple of questions that I think are just worth getting away up front.

00:15:06.060 And the first is by a five-year-old from Sweden.

00:15:14.160 and she wants to know um ida carolina wants to know uh what is the significance of the mushrooms

00:15:28.900 in the phrase hoff mural and you happen to have the man who painted that mural right here with

00:15:34.660 you today so it's fine explain ida uh it's really nice for you to ask the question and i'm going to

00:15:42.200 be really honest with you. When I painted the picture in the bottom, there wasn't anything

00:15:49.780 going on. It was just, I had three days and I was trying to focus on the corpus of Holy

00:15:58.860 Frey and for the body. And so at the end, the giver of the Hoth said, the bottom looks

00:16:09.600 terrible put something down there and so I like to draw like the the flowers the mushrooms all of

00:16:19.240 those things I had the scabbard down there empty and it it is a very stark color there but there

00:16:25.640 was nothing else there and I didn't know what to do so I made what was kind of a gardenia bush

00:16:31.240 and I she said I want to put I want you to put mushrooms in there she didn't specify which ones

00:16:38.720 So I, of course, put fly agaric or aminata muscara, which was used all throughout Europe to get rid of bugs and also for medicinal purposes and spiritual purposes.

00:16:53.940 But the major reason is, is to put a splash of color down there to make it look cool.

00:17:01.040 so though we recognize um though we we recognize legal prohibitions against use of fungus for

00:17:11.200 spiritual purposes and we would not encourage anybody to violate the laws of the nation or

00:17:16.800 municipality that they live in a little bit more to it because i i'm a follow-up with a question

00:17:23.040 how come the same mushroom is pictured in the odin mural and also balder's mural

00:17:31.040 You need to fill some space at the bottom.

00:17:37.040 Now you're making some connective. For anybody who doesn't know, I am extremely fascinated

00:17:46.040 with the usage of herbs. The herb charm of Norninot that we use is my herb charm. I'm

00:17:57.040 i'm fascinated with the usage of low land warm warm climate psilocybin mushrooms and uh the mountainous

00:18:07.200 um uh animata mascara um and i was a i actually went to school for horticulture during my

00:18:15.600 landscaping stint in my life and uh was extremely fascinated with ethnobotany so it's just me

00:18:23.920 putting in splashes of color, but I think so uniquely the Aminata muskara mushroom is deeply

00:18:31.500 tied to specifically the Slavic, Gallic, and Germanic Aryans. I do not believe Soma is Aminata

00:18:43.100 muskara. I actually believe it's a plant, but that's a whole other subject. But yes, it's because

00:18:50.880 it just immediately brings magic whenever anyone sees the mushroom there is an immediate

00:18:59.440 transference into the world of mythos there is the unknowing the mystery the bright color

00:19:06.640 the vitality it it's whimsical but serious at the same time it's just something that's the real

00:19:14.720 reason why i did it i didn't do it honestly honestly the bright red with the uh you know

00:19:22.480 the dotted with the white on it really pops it makes it a really dramatic element to have

00:19:28.720 in uh compositions like it really pops um we got a couple of other questions and i think

00:19:36.320 that because while we're on a roll we'll get those we're going to read the material unlike

00:19:39.680 the past couple of weeks or a couple of spawn episodes we only have one piece that we're

00:19:45.360 covering tonight it's a little bit longer but not oppressively so um so we do have we can answer

00:19:51.360 some of these up front while the people who asked them are still here and engaged uh the next two

00:19:56.480 are kind of the same so red shirts and black ties looks great conspired and what's with the red so

00:20:06.320 first caveat this is green but it's super dark and it's like it's darker than it was when i

00:20:15.440 thought when i ordered it but it is it is green and uh i'm wearing red and green because it's

00:20:21.120 almost yule time and i've got one episode with you during yule this year because brandy's doing the

00:20:26.800 one on 12th night so the next episode i do i will as custom determines i will wear my

00:20:34.880 my like swole santa uh sweater yeah so i figured this is my closest one to people celebrating yule

00:20:42.400 this weekend and i'll wear some festive red and green uh there was no there was no conspiracy

00:20:47.840 involved yes fun is there a reason that you chose to wear red this evening this is what i wore to

00:20:52.400 work today when i get on the podcast i am wearing what i wear to work um i am a barber i'm my own

00:21:01.280 boss so nobody tells me to dress this way just wanted to and it happened to be that the red shirt

00:21:07.120 was closest you can hear it in my voice i've been ill for the last week

00:21:10.800 so um i've been kind of throwing my trying to catch up at work and get my clients ready for

00:21:16.560 the yuletide holidays and it was completely not planned that's i didn't even until i saw the the

00:21:24.320 question i i it didn't quite hit because on my screen your shirt is very bright red

00:21:31.520 it is very bright red in in my house as well um yeah it is that's like fire engine red um

00:21:44.240 our next okay so the follow-up so spawn being a a son of iceland wanted to cut some slack to uh

00:21:54.320 to some some cowardly uh cowardly representatives at the 1000 all thing and i wanted to condemn said

00:22:02.500 cowardice and it uh brought some question up uh so question goes like this some surely publicly

00:22:11.160 renounce the gods to stay alive while maintaining their worship of them and passing it down to the

00:22:16.580 next generation. Any leeway for them, you think? So I've got much to say, but Swan, go ahead and

00:22:26.600 take the first swing at that. Yeah, I'm in agreeance. I believe that, and I've always kind

00:22:34.220 of made points that Christianity did not spread by the grace of their rabbi or the church or just

00:22:41.520 because everyone thought it was the bees knees no it was ursory it was manipulation it was political

00:22:49.200 uh backlogging it was if you want to make allegiances with my kingdom you're going to marry

00:22:53.360 my daughter but you have to become a christian you have to get baptized and again our ancestors

00:22:59.120 had a very loose base of what troth to the gods meant i think that they had a very unsemitic view

00:23:07.920 of their connection

00:23:09.960 and that

00:23:12.360 they

00:23:14.080 unfortunately looked at it more like

00:23:16.180 common political of the time

00:23:18.440 politics and

00:23:20.100 their dedications

00:23:22.280 to Jarls and

00:23:23.900 to Thames and

00:23:26.280 other people and lords of the land

00:23:28.500 and sometimes

00:23:29.740 when it got hard you would

00:23:32.100 you know join the other guy

00:23:34.100 excuse me

00:23:36.620 so

00:23:37.400 So I think that Christianity spreading was very political and we see the shining exemptions of folk that were like, no, no, no, this isn't just some sort of political affiliation with with the divine.

00:23:54.620 these are the gods of my people and i think that that was very much a reaction to how christianity

00:24:01.620 which had been doing that all the way back since it injected itself into crete and into greece

00:24:07.500 and um all the way back to justinian the apostate he actually reconverted back to hellenistic

00:24:14.560 paganism julian uh julian excuse me um uh you know he was known for uh larping and i say this

00:24:23.760 in a good way though he he he was very very high esteemed at looking at the philosophers of greece

00:24:31.520 so he had an unkempt beard he wore um simple togas and things to kind in like reference to them um 0.55

00:24:38.320 But the Christians were just being particularly, well, at the time, and they were trying to defund all the other religions and wanted Constantinople to only be paying them, etc.

00:24:55.080 And it's pretty much had been that way ever since. 0.94

00:24:58.540 They're just very, very aggressive. 1.00

00:25:00.560 It's very much like Islam. 1.00

00:25:02.400 It's very much a part of that. 0.99

00:25:05.400 That it's like hypersensitive Zoroastrian dualism that they were, they just took it to another level and they were very, very good at it through the Roman ages. 0.97

00:25:16.940 Just like warfare for the Norsemen coming up through the migration period, they learned so many tactics from the Romans that the Norsemen had good hit and run tactics, good weapons, good steel as people were re-migrating back into the north. 0.98

00:25:32.280 it was christianity was forged in a crucible of politics and uh they were really really good at

00:25:39.720 it and the common folk i think were so distant from the cities they were so distant from the

00:25:46.020 influence especially in norway and in sweden that they were just like oh okay that's like something

00:25:51.560 the king is doing and they were able to for some generations avoid it but somewhere along the way

00:25:59.700 Like Leif Erikson with Eric the Red. Leif Erikson is that generation. You can point it out. You can see him. He converted his mother, which pissed off Eric the Red to no end because they were having a frosty marriage as it was.

00:26:14.500 and uh but he loved his wife and she had wanted him to build a little uh chapel and so he threw 0.89

00:26:20.880 his axe over the berm um and he said where that axe lands I'll put that little uh house to your

00:26:28.400 god and uh he was just notoriously like not happy and he moved to Greenland eventually so

00:26:35.460 um yeah i just don't think it's a clean cut i think okay so here's

00:26:42.780 i realize that it is much well okay two things first because i want to just put a cap on the

00:26:57.360 Iceland thing. They weren't under any pressure of anything. There was no, you know, inquisitors

00:27:04.420 or crusader army at the door, or they had no pressure. Well, okay. They had no threat of

00:27:12.520 violence. They had no direct threat of boycott. They had no actual pressure. It was becoming

00:27:20.660 not cool in the community of european nations for you to not be christian and so they voted

00:27:29.540 with democracy which kills a lot of really good things to officially sever their ties as a nation

00:27:38.680 with our gods there was nobody with sword in hand there was nobody threatening them

00:27:44.060 they are cowards that chose something that was politically expedient and probably economically 0.73

00:27:51.120 advantageous no slack for that man i'm just i'm getting attacked well you build that time machine 0.97

00:28:01.680 go talk some sense into great great great grandpappy on that um the mushroom ring and i can

00:28:08.160 go through and tell you there you go but here's but here's the thing with other people

00:28:16.320 i understand that saying i'll be loyal unto death to the gods is a very very easy thing to say

00:28:26.800 is a much much harder thing to live um and i think that it's

00:28:34.640 It's aspirational, and I think we all should be so resolved and make such a declaration,

00:28:43.340 but I think we know that there's a certain degree of folly to that until that's been put to the test.

00:28:51.500 Those of our heroes that we know their names who were put to that test and who stayed loyal to the

00:28:58.080 seer we remember eternally and we celebrate them yearly with days of remembrance because we

00:29:04.340 appreciate their loyalty and courage and conviction to stand by that so you know if 1.00

00:29:15.120 you have some crusader army gonna kill your children or rape your wife or kill you unless 0.99

00:29:23.080 you say you convert i get that i get doing that as a temporary measure and then you know trying 1.00

00:29:31.880 to escape the oppression and then go back to your faith but once we start admitting that that's okay

00:29:40.440 then everything else becomes okay and every time it's inconvenient you just disavow and you can

00:29:45.720 pick it up again later and and i've watched that i've watched i watch that in modern times a lot

00:29:52.440 There's people that will step away from their faith because they're scared of their family reacting.

00:30:01.560 They're scared of work reacting in a way, or they're worried about losing a career.

00:30:06.380 Maybe they're worried about somebody calling them a name, or they're worried about their parents looking at them funny,

00:30:12.080 or they're worried about their wife getting mad at them, or they're worried about any number of things.

00:30:19.680 Once we say it's okay, you know, it's okay under the most extreme circumstances to disavow the gods, then you watch that bar slip steadily until it just doesn't matter and it's not a thing anymore and I'm not willing to do that.

00:30:34.860 um so i don't cut that leeway but i can't tell you you know our gods are much better than me

00:30:44.000 and there may be circumstances and it matters how you end the race a lot more than stuff that goes

00:30:51.600 on in between so you know if you've got this super secret 4d chest plan that our ancestor had

00:30:58.620 i'll disavow but then i'll go over here and i'll raise an army to reconquer and then we'll

00:31:04.180 okay but we don't see that a lot what we see a lot is people that straight up go conform do what's

00:31:13.800 popular get the reward and sell out the gods that's what we saw a lot now in different places

00:31:20.860 the threat was a lot more visceral and a lot more real other places it was just avarice it was

00:31:26.700 people wanting to make money and wanting to have political alliance with you know the big boys and

00:31:34.160 the Carolingian Europe or in the Mediterranean or whoever. But the other thing is you have this

00:31:41.380 theory that you kind of posit that they're secretly passing it down. And that's this legend that

00:31:47.320 everybody's got this secret hidden paganism they're passing down. I think that there were

00:31:52.980 probably, and I would love to find out, there were probably absolutely some instances where there was

00:31:58.860 an actual plan to go underground and maintain some kind of underground link to the old religion

00:32:08.360 i don't know for sure of any of that but i hope that some of that happened and i always look for

00:32:16.480 that and i want to find that and i think that there's little hints of that in stories or in

00:32:26.840 you know in some stuff and i was actually talking to uh folk builder chris savage earlier today

00:32:32.840 about you know some of two of our heroes who were practicing alsatru in in the 1400s

00:32:40.360 so something made it down to them for them to have some

00:32:43.560 ability to connect with our gods in some some special way um

00:32:48.520 But yeah, I think that happens less often than we'd think.

00:32:55.060 And Svahn made a good point about a lot of our ancestors at this time's level of commitment to the gods.

00:33:10.860 A side note, and this isn't to denigrate everyone who lived in the Viking Age.

00:33:16.140 it happens to be at the point at which our people had literacy and wrote down the tales of their

00:33:22.820 gods but it's not the golden age of the practice of ausitry the practice of our faith goes back

00:33:29.520 as long as our people have existed and i have every hope and reason to think that it was much

00:33:36.760 more evolved and in a much higher state of cohesion at earlier times and under different

00:33:45.680 economic and climate circumstances than the viking age found a lot of our ancestors

00:33:51.740 the trouble is where we see the material culture of the very tail end the dying gasps of that

00:34:01.140 original practice of ausitru a lot of the people are just carrying on a cultural tradition and

00:34:07.440 they're not devout ausitru are some are but it's like in this day and age every gangster rapper's

00:34:14.360 got a, you know, a bedazzled Jesus piece and a big old crucifix and whatever. And they may even

00:34:20.820 quote a scripture in their, you know, gangster rap album. It doesn't make them, you know,

00:34:28.680 definitive examples of faithful Christians, but it does echo older traditions. And I think

00:34:35.940 sometimes with some of the more politically advantageous people at this time, you have that,

00:34:40.960 You have people that are culturally also true, but are not people of deep faith or deep commitment.

00:34:46.740 And I think you see that a lot of different times.

00:34:49.480 But so that's a kind of kind of case in point.

00:34:52.900 The gods know the truth of it. 0.98

00:34:54.840 And yes, if you're somebody that you're they're going to kill and rape your family if you didn't say the things you needed to say,

00:35:01.900 but then you engendered some kind of rebellion and you pass down secret knowledge to the next generation to do a thing, 0.63

00:35:08.620 then they may very well have a, have, you know, cut slack on that. That's entirely up to them.

00:35:15.300 But I did want to put it out there because I think it's an interesting question. It's something

00:35:18.240 that people often think about. And I also want to assure everybody, yes, I get that it's way

00:35:25.720 easier said than done, especially when the consequences are not just on you, but on people

00:35:32.660 that you love and care about. I get that. One of the hardest things to reconcile, and a lot of our

00:35:41.240 people in this day and age don't, and they won't have the honesty to do it.

00:35:48.220 The only way you recognize and appreciate the value of courage is by seeing the contrast of

00:35:57.960 cowardice. So we can't only talk about courage and not mention cowardice or we shortchange

00:36:04.260 courage. We can't only talk about truth and honesty if we don't also call out lies

00:36:12.380 because that cheapens what it means to be truthful and honest. So I think those things

00:36:18.500 matter. While I've been flapping my gums, Leroy donated $30 towards paying off Frazhoff.

00:36:25.180 thank you lero we appreciate it very much and uh steve bought us a coffee and uh

00:36:32.300 i believe coffee's five dollars donation thank you for that steve we appreciate it

00:36:37.580 you guys are awesome as always uh svaner are you ready to engage in uh atlemaul hen groenland school

00:36:49.580 yes i was gonna say some of the other stuff that needs to be known

00:36:52.780 in here you'll hear things like about ship voyages most likely those were land voyages at the time

00:36:59.980 if this was hearkening back to actual events during the migration period or um it is simply

00:37:09.400 stylistic this is how the the the grindlanders would know um about travel in predominance and

00:37:17.740 so we also find that there are i think mainland european sensibilities of poetics coming and

00:37:26.140 bubbling up into the nordic period there was i believe a connection of influence from from

00:37:34.620 central and uh western europe into the nordic lands um storytellers were constantly picking

00:37:41.900 up new elements and honing their craft and also to what was popular at the time that's what you

00:37:49.340 wanted to give the people in the entertainment strand of rope of the poetics so uh you'll you'll

00:37:56.940 notice that there's a lot of sentiment sentimentalism there is a lot of uh a lot more expressive

00:38:06.060 emotion over deed that starts to show up in the Greenland poems, as opposed to earlier poems

00:38:14.060 that focused greatly on tangible victory, tangible defeat, etc. So that I think there

00:38:24.220 starts to be more of the poetics that we understand. I'm also trying to think, just for a recap for

00:38:31.960 everyone to understand. Sigurd has died, Brunhild is dead, and we have the Gyuki's children. King 0.99

00:38:41.080 Gyuki, his children, are Gudrun, the last female representative of the Nibelums, and then we have

00:38:54.480 Gunnar and Hogni, and their youngest brother was killed when he assassinated Sigurd. And so all

00:39:03.600 of this takes place after the fact of Sigurd's death. So this poem mainly focuses around Atli,

00:39:12.560 who is in the east and is of course the leader of the Huns, and his taking of Gudrun and the slaying

00:39:20.640 of her brothers. It's, it's all of the aftermath. Um, and we got that a little bit in the poem 0.64

00:39:27.760 from, uh, the two weeks ago. So that's kind of where we are in frame. But again, this brings us

00:39:34.720 to wrapping it up. Oh, so one sec. I'm actually answering a question.

00:39:50.640 question about next week's show. So I'm coming up, I'm a little bit slow on coming up a topic

00:39:56.480 for next week because our law speaker just realized that he had some plans. So he will

00:40:03.600 not be able to make adulting with Allen next week. So I'm figuring out what I'm doing.

00:40:08.340 But something came to mind and it came to mind on a strange, like one of the history

00:40:14.360 groups or something I'm in on Facebook. There was a guy that was, and this is random, but

00:40:25.760 enjoy the story anyway. It relates to the last topic that we were talking about. On this like,

00:40:31.340 well, what if I secretly do this weak thing, but I'm really doing it to like safeguard some secret

00:40:38.480 hidden knowledge and pass it on to the next generation and though i think that very seldom

00:40:44.720 happens it does happen sometimes so there's this guy that was and i forget the man's name

00:40:48.880 i feel bad for that now um but he was an american pow in uh vietnam in vietnam

00:40:56.400 and he was at the uh the hanoi hilton and they had 0.95

00:41:00.480 he had he realized that it was really brutal there and that his best bet was to play dumb 0.92

00:41:10.300 so he convinced him that he was really low iq and that he couldn't read and that he was just 0.98

00:41:16.340 a dullard and he was a simpleton so he could have you know freedom of movement around the camp and 0.80

00:41:23.040 freedom to like sweep up stuff and do little chores because they treated him like he was 1.00

00:41:28.880 retarded. So he played retarded and got, he memorized, he would have these, sing these dumb 0.98

00:41:36.560 songs to himself in this old McDonald had a farm cadence, but he was doing it to memorize 0.91

00:41:43.280 the names and vital information of all the other soldiers that were incarcerated with him at the

00:41:49.120 camp. And so when the VC off, they offered to free him at some point for like a political

00:41:55.600 negotiation. And all the other, you know, the other guys there were like refusing to get let

00:42:01.440 free unless you'd let all the guys go. They told him like, no, no, take the deal. Cause then you

00:42:07.320 can go tell our, all our families and tell the state department and whatever, like who's here,

00:42:11.220 what they've got in like the disposition of guards and whatever else. And so that's what

00:42:15.960 that guy did. He, you know, acted simple and he, you know, took the deal that other guys wouldn't

00:42:21.800 take out of their, you know, their extreme courage and loyalty. He went ahead and he was the patsy

00:42:27.900 for it. So he could go home and convey the intel. So it does happen. That kind of thing happens.

00:42:35.260 It's just not usually how that goes down. It's usually people justify and making excuses for

00:42:41.280 cowardice. That's another thing about the cowardice and cunning and the usage of, you know,

00:42:51.100 what what that which can't be seen which is kind of the lesson in the um 13th warrior which is a

00:42:59.040 the adaptation of the eaters of the dead and yeah there's that sense of um feigning uh weakness in

00:43:07.840 order to draw your enemy into an ambush or to you know uh do that but that's the thing that's the

00:43:15.140 risk, not only do you risk physically losing and everyone remembering, but you also spiritually 0.96

00:43:24.220 run the risk of going down in history as, oh, see, he was a coward. And he's like, 0.83

00:43:29.840 I was trying to do a thing. I had a secret plan. In my life, I have seen a lot of people

00:43:36.520 use flimsy excuse to justify cowardice and um immoral behavior i've seen very few people

00:43:46.400 cunningly do something like that to come back and save the day um so that's why that's why

00:43:54.760 i'm hesitant to uh to cut the slack on that and to uh you know

00:44:00.300 think that you know think that hamlet's really up to something or whatever so

00:44:08.000 all right it's fun 41 minutes in let's start this thing well and i also wanted to tell people

00:44:16.420 there's lots of cool stuff in here there's little nuggets information i think are important

00:44:20.940 from titles and runes and um other just little easter eggs of knowledge that are worth

00:44:29.180 looking at even if you're not truly and deeply invested in the story um and it's very well

00:44:35.760 written as all of these later ones really are i think you and i have both said wow like oh it's

00:44:41.380 just so good and it's because i think the uniformity of poetics in europe was starting

00:44:47.280 to become more collective and the uniqueness or the i would even say the kind of bumpiness of

00:44:54.660 older poems especially when we talk about translations on top of that is that the

00:45:00.820 translations become a little bit easier a little bit smoother and the poetics are kind of becoming

00:45:07.700 uh more popularized and it's something a little bit more akin to what we are familiar with

00:45:16.020 so right out the gate um again and we saw this in the other greenland saga

00:45:24.340 It's a very quick intro hop-on.

00:45:29.140 Excuse me.

00:45:31.900 It is, hey, you guys remember how they did it in the olden days.

00:45:36.660 So we're going to move past that and go right into what we're doing.

00:45:39.520 And that's exactly how the poem starts.

00:45:42.740 There are many who know how of old did men in council gather.

00:45:49.080 Little good did they get in secret they plotted.

00:45:52.780 It was sore for them later, and for Gyuki's son, whose trust they deceived. 0.70

00:46:00.040 So, in essence, this is Atli's ultimate, he's gunning for the sons of Gyuki, Gudrun, her brothers, and in specifics, Gunnar and Hagri. 0.54

00:46:17.100 And Gunnir is the widower of Brynhild.

00:46:23.000 So just to kind of constantly, I'm just trying to water to make sure that everyone's in the same page.

00:46:30.620 Fate grew for the princes to death they were given.

00:46:35.200 Ill counsel was Atlee's, though keenness he had.

00:46:39.700 He felled his staunch bulwark, his own sorrow fashioned.

00:46:43.860 soon a message he sent that his kinsmen should seek him wise was the woman she fame would use

00:46:53.420 wisdom she saw well what meant all they said in secret from her heart it was hid how help

00:47:01.160 she might render the sea they should sail while herself should not should go not and this of

00:47:11.400 course is referring to Gudrun. So it's Gudrun and Atli. It's very, very, um, they're kind of

00:47:20.940 satelliting the subject, but she's malice is deep in her heart for Atli. This is even before she

00:47:31.120 marries him and um we also see this kind of heavy dripping of um drama there's a there's this kind of

00:47:43.680 uh plot building to it that you don't usually see in some of the older poems and um another

00:47:52.660 interesting thing is the usage of simply speaking about the runes is coming up and i think that's

00:47:58.380 very interesting. Excuse me. Considering the Greenlanders and Iceland and the usage of the

00:48:07.880 runes by that time. So she'd said, you should go and sail and I will not go. And she in four

00:48:16.940 runes did she fashion, but false Vingy made them. The speeder of hatred air to give them, 0.99

00:48:25.540 he sought then sought then soon fared the warriors whom atli had sent and to lima fjord

00:48:33.960 came to the home of the kings so one of the other things interesting is that the the fjord

00:48:40.820 is probably not it's an addition it's a later addition but she the the the making um false

00:48:49.020 of the runes um the messenger is vingy so she writes in runes and then vingy the messenger of

00:48:59.660 atli sabotages the runes uh most likely she's again sending these to her brother

00:49:07.900 um same with when she sends the ring with the wolf hair wrapped in it so here's direct evidence of

00:49:15.900 forging, adding perhaps extra limbs to the runic message, and it is being used in a writing sense.

00:49:30.180 They were kindly with ale and fires they kindled. They thought not to craft from the guests who had

00:49:37.980 come. The gifts did they take, and that the noble one gave them. On the pillars they hung them. No

00:49:44.920 fear did they harbor. So at this point, we're really talking about the arrival of the Burgundians

00:49:55.640 and the Yutlanders in Atlee's court. Actually, let me see. It says here, the poem may really

00:50:07.140 have thought that the kingdom of the Burgundians was in Yutland or Denmark, or the poet may have

00:50:14.060 taken a well-known name for the sake of vividness so we can see a great amount of a lot of this

00:50:22.880 moving around um place names by the time of greenland it wasn't necessarily intended at

00:50:32.320 all to be historical and um oh people like this place so we're gonna just because it's

00:50:37.960 it's a cool name so we'll make it that they go there um

00:50:45.960 so forth did cost better the wife of hogney of the two brothers then come well kindly she was

00:50:55.160 and she welcomed welcomed them both and glad too was glaumvor the wife of gunner

00:51:02.120 she knew well to care and for the needs of the guests so this shows a healthy house

00:51:10.400 the queen the lady of the house is um uh takes care of those who come in of high renown 0.94

00:51:19.960 she's not feeding just the lowly soldiers but as the the host itself of the of these soldiers 0.74

00:51:29.140 The highest ones are being taken care of by his wife.

00:51:35.280 And I failed to mention this, but previously, the actual, in stanza three, it's Horskvar Hus Freyja.

00:51:47.520 And they are referring to a woman.

00:51:50.620 The Freyja means lady, and of course, Hus' house, so it's the lady of the house.

00:51:56.280 we had kind of a funny story at phrasehof um i went ranting on and on and on about

00:52:06.420 how i uh i will generally say like lord odin and lord thor but i will say holy fray because

00:52:15.740 fray means lord and so very much like how it bugs me that people say tuna fish but not

00:52:23.180 salmon fish or

00:52:25.420 I just

00:52:28.600 it's sad because the people that were on the work

00:52:31.720 day while I was painting

00:52:32.960 got some irate

00:52:35.820 dissertation as to why

00:52:37.200 tuna fish

00:52:39.600 is redundant so holy fray

00:52:41.520 is the proper way to say it

00:52:43.620 instead of lord lord

00:52:44.800 lord fray is fine

00:52:46.680 it's absolutely fine

00:52:49.000 don't

00:52:51.220 listen to this

00:52:52.220 I mean, I'm not going to get mad at you.

00:52:57.740 Okay, so this is a – I don't know why we are injecting this at this stage in our reading,

00:53:05.420 but that's how we do here on Victor Never Sleeps.

00:53:10.720 So I was talking, and this also spawned from a conversation at the dedication.

00:53:18.480 there are a lot of there are a lot of right ways to do things the wrong way to do things 0.99

00:53:27.140 is either intentionally doing something bad or it's just being willfully stupid 0.80

00:53:34.520 intention is so critical to everything we do and i would extend that to all aspects of life 0.99

00:53:41.320 i mean obviously there's time where you're just screwing around or you know something completely

00:53:46.940 simple. But when we do something, especially in terms of our faith, intention means everything.

00:53:55.700 Now people can express the same intention in a variety of ways. The thing is, when asked,

00:54:04.740 hey, you're doing this different, why are you doing that? You should have an answer.

00:54:10.900 And you might go about something really different. And that's, that's kind of a

00:54:14.880 thing that we see on on Victory Never Sleeps. Svan and I will come at a question or at a passage

00:54:22.320 or at something sometimes from very different angles. But we usually wind up either in the

00:54:29.560 same place or in a very complimentary place. Room work or anything else. Sometimes if you know

00:54:40.680 If Svon and I were to both do a rune poll about a specific subject, we may pull different runes, but our efficacy is on how close our independent answers would come to matching in a correct way.

00:54:59.940 and you can get there from a lot of different avenues when you're doing something ritually

00:55:05.080 there's a lot of right ways to do it outside of just obviously not trying the wrong way to do

00:55:11.960 something is just because just because why not you should have a reason why you're doing it

00:55:19.360 you should have a reason why you're saying the things you're saying i like to say lord fray

00:55:24.240 because i put lord as an honorific title in front of our deities as a way of showing respect i

00:55:31.760 realize that like if somebody asks hey you know what pray means well yes i do because i'm not

00:55:41.360 dumb and i think about the things so thinking about stuff matters as long as you're doing it

00:55:46.160 on purpose that's one thing but don't accidentally do it and it merges into a 0.97

00:55:52.000 Matt bouncing anecdote, told the guys that I would bounce with. I don't mind if you get us

00:56:02.920 into a fight. I do mind if you accidentally stumble into a fight that I have to pull you out

00:56:09.240 of. If you want to go pick a fight, cool. I got your back. I'm game. Let's go. But don't stumble

00:56:16.360 into one you don't see coming because you're not aware of your surroundings or the effects of what

00:56:21.360 you do if you're doing it on purpose okay then i i get it but don't don't make it something on

00:56:28.880 accident so there you go back to the story

00:56:40.720 okay so um she attends to the needs of all the guests

00:56:49.140 Then Hogmi they asked, if more eager he were.

00:56:52.800 Full clear was the guile, if on guard they had been.

00:56:57.820 Then Gunnar made promise, if Hogmi would go, and Hogmi made answer, as the other counseled.

00:57:06.020 Then the famed ones brought mead, and fair was the feast.

00:57:11.340 Full many were their horns, till the men had drunk deep.

00:57:15.840 then the mates were made ready and their beds for resting so everyone feasts and then the bed

00:57:25.700 chambers which were generally long closeted sliding door separation or partitions

00:57:32.900 were set and everyone goes to bed

00:57:36.660 wise was costa better and cunning in runecat craft the letters she would read by the light

00:57:47.100 of the fire but full quickly her her tongue to her palate clave so strange did they seem

00:57:54.200 that their meaning she saw not so they've been messed with and she's trying to decipher them

00:58:01.240 and she's confused as to what's trying to be said.

00:58:06.240 Full soon, then in his bed, came Hogni to speak.

00:58:10.680 Now there's a gap that the line is lost.

00:58:14.180 The clear-souled one dreamed, and her dream she kept not.

00:58:18.960 To the warrior the wise one spake when she wakened.

00:58:23.800 So here we see, again, the poetic usage of prophetic dreams.

00:58:27.800 very very big common element in icelandic and greenland poetry and still i think a significant

00:58:34.980 thing in our faith to this day um anybody that is familiar with youngian concepts of dreams

00:58:41.380 and symbology um and these this very subject is the thing that me and my uh apprentice for the

00:58:47.820 with our program we're talking about just yesterday so um she immediately speaks and she

00:58:56.140 says thou would wouldst go hence hogney but heed my counsel known to few are the runes and put off

00:59:05.260 thy fairing i have read now the runes that thy sister wrote and this time the bright one did

00:59:12.860 not bid thee to come so the bright one is his sister uh for anybody wondering and

00:59:21.980 it's surmised that even though she doesn't understand exactly what's being said because

00:59:25.500 the runes were tampered with this is a bad omen she has a bad feeling she has a bad dream

00:59:32.460 don't do this is ultimately what she's saying

00:59:35.740 And

00:59:41.500 Full much do I wonder

00:59:45.880 Nor well can I see 1.00

00:59:47.480 Why the woman wise so wildly hath written

00:59:50.540 But to me it seems that the meaning beneath 0.65

00:59:53.460 Is that both shall be slain

00:59:55.340 If soon ye shall go 0.86

00:59:56.780 But one rune she missed

00:59:58.980 Or else others have marred it

01:00:01.700 So there's the key

01:00:03.320 She just knows something is wrong.

01:00:06.380 She knows that Gudrun has the wisdom to write in runic,

01:00:10.100 but these runes don't make any sense.

01:00:13.940 So either she missed something or it was marred.

01:00:21.460 And another dutiful point to note with this

01:00:24.140 is that it is the wives who are communicating in runic.

01:00:28.760 um i think a lot of uh oversimplification in the current or current climate uh or current

01:00:37.640 internet climate is that somehow runes are specifically masculine and um uh are focused

01:00:47.240 around i i don't like some some people kind of come up with this idea that there's like a

01:00:52.680 godi or vidki kind of uh underground and and that women were mainly somehow focused on satir 0.99

01:01:01.080 um that's not the case and we have actual archaeological proof that women often

01:01:06.220 used messaging to message their husbands um and a lot of these were mundane

01:01:11.880 um even though they're using the smaller younger food art but i just find it very interesting and

01:01:20.240 this doesn't, this isn't meant to peak eyebrows. It's just that these two women have been taught

01:01:25.680 how to write runic in, in old Norse. And they're the ones kind of relaying the messages.

01:01:35.980 But Hogni speaks because Hogni ultimately, he's not as fearsome as their youngest brother,

01:01:44.460 but he is no pushover he just says what any warrior would say all women are fearful

01:01:53.580 not do i so feel ill i seek not to find till soon i must avenge it so i don't i'm not seeking any

01:02:03.180 trouble and trouble won't find me unless i'm looking for it or or you know by that time i

01:02:09.260 I will be I will be ready. The king now will give us the glow ruddy gold.

01:02:15.100 I like that little glow ruddy.

01:02:20.660 The body of it is just shining.

01:02:28.580 And so he says, you know, women fear too much. You're reading into this and it doesn't matter if it's if it is or it isn't.

01:02:35.480 I'm going to go forward and make these allegiances with Atlee and get the money, the gold for our kingdom.

01:02:45.080 When Costa Barra speaks, she says, and remember, they're husband and wife.

01:02:48.960 And this is in their bed, their laying chamber, when they're kind of speaking to each other.

01:02:57.600 In danger, ye fear, if forth you go thither.

01:03:01.360 No welcome and friendly this time shall you find. 1.00

01:03:04.800 For I dreamed now, Hogni, and not while I hide, full evil thy faring, if rightly I fear. 0.74

01:03:13.660 Thy bed covering I saw in flames burning, and the fire burst high through the walls of my home. 0.98

01:03:21.620 Excuse me.

01:03:22.820 So she saw him on fire in his bedding.

01:03:30.580 And then Hogni speaks.

01:03:32.120 yon garment of linen lies little of worth it will soon be burned so thou sawest the bed cover

01:03:39.940 so you know it doesn't matter that you saw it if it he's basically saying you know if you saw it

01:03:49.220 in a dream doesn't mean that it's true but it doesn't matter either way he will not avert from

01:03:54.700 the course or the fate upon which he must go and she speaks again a bear i saw enter the pillars

01:04:05.240 he broke the the pillars of the hall and he brandished his claws so that craven we were

01:04:11.700 filled with fear with his mouth seized he many not was our might and loud was the tumult

01:04:18.420 not little it was

01:04:21.480 I think it's very

01:04:23.860 important and I'm sure

01:04:25.140 you can also expand on this

01:04:27.120 the kingliness

01:04:29.660 connection between the bear

01:04:32.040 and Atlee

01:04:33.920 the lion

01:04:36.160 and the post 0.99

01:04:37.560 Christian conversion

01:04:39.160 and the subversion of the bear 0.99

01:04:42.180 as the royal

01:04:43.520 animal 0.54

01:04:45.700 a kingly animal

01:04:47.260 was planned it was it was very much so but here we have a very raw clean cut usage of

01:04:56.140 what the bear represents it is the king and his vengeance will be mighty against the

01:05:02.700 the the nibelos the lion is the bear but with a little hat and the little side curlies 0.84

01:05:11.140 the main um yes i mean and again of course to the lion of judah and the connection is clearly there

01:05:24.400 in relation to um the pageantry of the middle east plays and bleeds up and bubbles up through

01:05:31.480 christianity and joking aside lions are cool like yeah were i a hebrew gentleman i think a lion is

01:05:38.520 an exciting symbol of stuff lions are cool they're just that's not it's not our stuff

01:05:46.460 um unless we're talking about you know strange cave uh paleolithic lions

01:05:55.000 um but yeah that's really cool and this is a time to plug a book that i often plug but then i

01:06:04.120 remember the long drawn out name of the title what does it bear the forgotten king I will look

01:06:11.780 for the title but it was a really interesting thing that I read that um uh Steve McNallan

01:06:17.880 brought to my attention years ago that I thought was a neat book and it's just something that you

01:06:22.980 run into material you wouldn't um wouldn't run into otherwise but it was kind of an understood

01:06:30.380 across you know a pan-arian context was this idea of the bear as relates to regality

01:06:40.000 yeah i think it's that that the kind of unknown cultural tenants that perhaps get lost just like

01:06:49.040 with ostera and the rabbit and the egg we know it it's there it's always been there it can't be

01:06:55.620 taken away, but yet there are evidence that were taken away,

01:06:59.300 and the bear is a perfect example of it.

01:07:01.080 For anyone interested, the title is The Bear, History of a Fallen King.

01:07:10.560 It is a cool-looking book.

01:07:13.960 It's got a dramatic heraldic bear on the cover.

01:07:20.600 I'm trying to fill you with words

01:07:23.920 While I

01:07:24.880 See about an author here

01:07:27.220 Because I didn't have my stuff

01:07:28.620 On point

01:07:29.800 Nick's got it before me

01:07:33.420 Good for you

01:07:34.220 It's already up on screen

01:07:35.580 Nick you are amazing

01:07:41.460 I appreciate you

01:07:42.600 That's awesome

01:07:43.580 Everybody go out

01:07:45.060 Buy this book

01:07:45.860 Give it a read

01:07:46.680 It is interesting

01:07:47.840 um it's like the third time you've mentioned it it's on my amazon wish list i had it in hand

01:07:53.440 well it's one of the it's one of those ones that we come back to because you know

01:07:57.680 there's certain things that until you know they're a thing they don't stand out

01:08:04.260 and this is one of the ones that since i read this book every time there's like

01:08:09.340 a bear mentioned my head immediately goes to it because it's kind of the

01:08:14.540 the place where I first learned about it and a just kind of a mental touchstone on that

01:08:20.920 oh I wanted to bring up um somebody asked a great question Langolish said what about

01:08:29.540 the Nemean lion in Hercules and bear in mind one of the things is that symbology there is

01:08:37.060 not in relation to Hercules being a king but that he is a slayer of monsters the Nemean lion

01:08:43.280 was absolutely a monster that was birthed by a monster, a two-headed dog, a chimeric

01:08:50.020 abomination. So there's this kind of essence, and I think the bigger point would be that he was such 1.00

01:08:56.760 a massive figure that not even a regular lion could cover him. It had to be an aberrant lion.

01:09:06.300 um I just I can't remember the name of the father or the mother but I definitely remember it being

01:09:13.320 that it was born of a mythical beast um and that was kind of a huge thing of it but yes I mean

01:09:20.920 lions were in Europe cats were in Europe that's kind of a strange thing that we kind of got into

01:09:25.200 this but well it's funny because yeah sort of I mean it's um and it's interesting you bring it

01:09:34.240 out because you do find, okay, as we do on VNS, bear with us, we'll get through this.

01:09:41.060 We're already a little ways through it. We'll absolutely get it tonight. But these points

01:09:45.020 are interesting. So the lion is a rare thing. So yeah, in Greece, you'll find the lion.

01:09:53.200 In Persia, you'll find a lion. In areas where Aryan people migrated to, at the fringes of 0.99

01:09:59.560 migration you'll find different animals but the bear was something that in our homeland and in

01:10:06.040 most of the core aryan lands where our people were was a point of commonality and you see its

01:10:12.120 significance because it's in you know of such a variety of aryan cultures and it makes it to aryan

01:10:21.960 cultures that don't have bears like it makes it to you know islands that long since have

01:10:29.080 depopulated their bear supply it makes it to places where it's clearly a memory from an earlier

01:10:38.200 time which is special in that um but also your point about the lion yes it is completely

01:10:48.120 appropriate and should be expected that when our people have Hoffs different places and do

01:10:54.400 different cultural things, different places that the animals and birds and sea life in those areas

01:11:04.460 get brought into our, you know, lexicon of things that we use as symbols or that we use as

01:11:15.200 can fill you of things. We talked about

01:11:18.600 Hoffs and what happens

01:11:21.380 if we get a Hoff in South Africa, cool.

01:11:24.680 We could absolutely have elephant heads on the gables

01:11:27.840 if we wanted to. It'd be strange

01:11:30.700 but it's interesting to consider that when our people

01:11:33.520 move and colonize and conquer different

01:11:36.940 places, incorporating

01:11:39.460 the natural world of those spots into

01:11:42.640 our stories into our um you know reference point of heraldry and sacred imagery and and things is

01:11:51.920 is important and you see that in a slow march in ancient times when the movement was over the

01:12:00.300 course of generations and not in one person's lifetime also i i did want to say one thing too

01:12:06.820 is um all of the tasks in which uh hercules fights these be beings they're it's chthonic

01:12:13.460 they are all it is really about the catalyst god fighting earthly forces um and there's some people

01:12:23.460 on the internet uh who think that lord thor just simply goes into the underworld every day to judge

01:12:30.580 folks or what have you um but you know when we look with observation and keen eyes

01:12:37.620 we see that the lord of heaven and earth very rarely is in sequence with the world below

01:12:46.820 instead he's in direct opposition because he is of life of vitality he's of mastery of chaos he's

01:12:54.180 of warding chaos from the edges so you see it when with with uh him pulling the boar

01:13:01.300 him taking cerberus you see it with the lion of nemiah um it's uh there's it really is about him

01:13:09.460 just mastering the the forces of the chthonic and the earthly and the semi you know just beyond the

01:13:19.220 the material. So that was a cool segue though. I'm not, I hope you didn't take that in any way,

01:13:28.680 but Langolish, that was a great little. No, that's awesome. And that I like these shows where we get

01:13:35.940 on the topics and kind of go explore different things that maybe we don't talk about often.

01:13:41.700 Before we get, excuse me, before we get back into it, Nick from Ohio just donated $10 towards

01:13:48.660 uh Sigurheim and ten dollars towards Frazehoff so thank you for that we appreciate it Nick

01:13:54.440 and uh Swan carry on all right so she's telling him don't go there's there's death there's

01:14:03.400 calamity coming I've seen it um Hogni then speaks back he says now a storm is brewing

01:14:11.280 and wild it grows swiftly. A dream of an ice bear means a gale from the east. Now that's an

01:14:20.600 interesting line. First off, the word fita or white is not the word ice, but this is a direct

01:14:30.040 reference via the Greenlanders of a polar bear. And this little nugget here is that our ancestors

01:14:41.080 who were settling in Greenland, picked this up. 0.90

01:14:44.920 Now, maybe it was something from the Inuit

01:14:47.440 or maybe it was something that they had formulated on their own,

01:14:51.820 but there are not white bears in Iceland.

01:14:56.080 And I do not believe there were at the time.

01:14:58.200 I'm almost 99% sure.

01:15:02.020 But they may have crossed occasionally via the ice.

01:15:06.060 But here he says it, the dream of a white bear,

01:15:10.740 even though the translation is ice bear um means a gale or a storm from the east

01:15:19.060 and um it could very well likely just be the the fact that with where the greenlanders settled

01:15:25.700 which was on the southern tip and southwest of greenland or the southwestern side of greenland

01:15:31.540 uh the capital nook is in the southwest um that uh with eastern winds coming off the mountains

01:15:39.780 the snow and probably the low visibility is something that the predatory polar bears utilize

01:15:47.060 to their advantage so when it came off the mountain you had to be extra well frosty

01:15:53.900 so that you didn't get got by a big giant white bear that's just while you were doing it i was

01:16:00.500 looking up you know it's if you have polar bear in norway it's at island chains that are technically

01:16:11.060 owned by norway but that are significantly off the coast i mean our people could have

01:16:17.940 in far northern portions of russia you know there's there's spots but they are you know

01:16:26.180 there's healthy population in and around greenland and that's an interesting

01:16:30.660 their familiarity with the polar bear is going to be much much more

01:16:37.300 um if they hadn't seen them i can only imagine folks that hadn't encountered that encountering

01:16:43.940 that in greenland it's terrifying spectacle to behold yeah and you know you you think about um

01:16:51.220 um Bjarki and during um uh Hrolf Kraki's saga and the mention of him in his Filchia is a bear

01:17:02.280 it's a brown bear most likely um and uh then you have maybe some people in the great great north

01:17:10.860 and in Finland assuredly there's bear they still eat bear there on my trip over to Japan we stopped

01:17:18.080 off in finland and there was a whole thing about them being bear eaters um but a lot of the folks

01:17:26.560 that moved to iceland were from southern norway and southern sweden and uh the islands in between

01:17:34.560 so probably and not a lot going on there so you have these generations settling in iceland

01:17:41.840 and then a two or three later they go to greenland and it's like wow there's nothing

01:17:47.520 here and of course leave erickson who i'm not a fan of said you know he's gonna lie and say it's

01:17:52.960 beautiful and green and try to convince people to come over there and uh i can just imagine them

01:17:57.680 running into polar bears but you know with i think with spears and um their their the steel

01:18:06.640 with with iron and weapons they um probably faced off with these behemoths

01:18:12.640 but yeah still unbelievable couldn't imagine it you go from like a black bear brown bear to

01:18:20.980 the polar bear well and the behavior is so different so again silly segue or whatever

01:18:27.760 but growing up in alaska it was something i was aware of and again i was in southern alaska they

01:18:31.720 weren't like polar bears where i was at a lot i did go up to uh to gnome and i was north of the

01:18:37.820 arctic circle a couple of times but they're they're predatory you don't stumble on one you

01:18:45.940 don't hunt one you don't accidentally encounter one and then you guys kind of figure it out

01:18:52.400 they're hunting you they're actively hunting you and they get I get like 10 feet tall they just

01:18:59.760 get massive and huge and they're intent on just eating any meat they find including and especially

01:19:10.660 people i remember i remember the gym one time this guy was trying to recruit me to go up to

01:19:16.680 north slope and be a polar bear sniper like that's a job they have at the oil fields up there

01:19:23.080 is for guys to post up and like telescope watch to see if there's polar bear approaching where

01:19:30.900 guys are working up there because they will predate on that's a that's a good source of of meat

01:19:36.460 thank you um my wife has prepared for me some deviled eggs and i'm excited uh but yeah so

01:19:49.820 So back to our story, and it's a good and interesting time that we segwayed into, you know, as our folk go to different places, you encounter, you know what, I'm going to harp on that a little bit more too, because I think it's important.

01:20:07.620 There is an important connection, and we hear this, we hear about the connection between blood and soil a lot.

01:20:17.320 I think specifically a hyper emphasis on that comes in the early 20th century nationalism, but the idea of being connected to the land and the spirits of the land has always been with our folk.

01:20:37.240 But I think what's important to remember is it is simultaneously stagnant and dynamic.

01:20:45.500 Yes, it remains in a place and the people that hunker down and spend the rest of their existence in a particular valley or in a particular area can nurture that in that place in a really special way.

01:20:59.100 But it's something that our folk have always been very adept at adapting and building anew when they find themselves in new and distant lands.

01:21:13.040 Most of the area that we think of as sacred land of our folk is not indigenous to our folk.

01:21:22.060 It was a place that our folk migrated to and settled and spent, you know, sometimes they settled there for thousands of years, sometimes for hundreds of years, sometimes for decades, sometimes less.

01:21:35.020 Every sacred site you find that is sacred through venerable centuries of worship there, every one of those had a year one where this is brand new and they're just setting it up.

01:21:52.060 So there's absolutely a connection between blood and soil that way.

01:21:56.580 But you can build and foster that wherever our people find ourselves.

01:22:01.840 Our people, we are, it is very easy to see things in a binary that there's this or there's that.

01:22:11.180 Our people are very good at both on a lot of things.

01:22:14.380 we're good at hunkering down and building centuries of

01:22:20.620 establishment in one area but we are markedly good at conquering new lands at exploring

01:22:30.660 new frontiers and new boundaries and building sacred space and you know that blood soil

01:22:38.320 connection in different places and in different lands and i think that's one of the things we run

01:22:44.240 into the beauty of both of those things when we talk to europeans i know we have some swedes

01:22:51.040 listening tonight and that's kind of an interesting contrast between americans who've

01:22:59.040 you know our people have been here and it all depends on the american but some of us have had

01:23:05.600 people here founding stock of the united states myself but there's other people whose families

01:23:10.640 haven't been here that long but to have the you know the folks that have explored or conquered and

01:23:15.440 gone out to different parts of the world then interacting with those whose ancestors you know

01:23:20.720 stayed and fortified and built the things there in that location it's it's an interesting thing

01:23:25.920 and i think it affects you know our outlooks on stuff a little bit it's important to not to

01:23:30.320 acknowledge

01:23:31.080 both of those currents within

01:23:34.340 our folk.

01:23:35.840 Go ahead.

01:23:40.640 Sorry.

01:23:42.820 I'm trying to mute myself

01:23:44.400 because the cough

01:23:45.780 that comes in, I don't want it to be too much of a

01:23:48.460 thing, especially if anybody's

01:23:50.440 wearing headphones.

01:23:52.900 But

01:23:53.460 there's another mention here of

01:23:55.840 spirit of royalty, and that's one

01:23:58.380 that we all, I think, can agree on

01:24:00.060 and there's no very little room to ruminate on is the eagle.

01:24:05.800 But more importantly, as in this stanza,

01:24:07.980 there is a mentioning of the hammer, not the philkia,

01:24:13.660 in relation to the spiritual presence of a king.

01:24:17.680 And it also mentions huger or thought.

01:24:22.900 But in this case, it's more of intent of desire of the mind.

01:24:27.740 so she says

01:24:29.440 she returns because he says there's a gale

01:24:36.060 that's going to be coming from the east

01:24:37.340 and again Atlee is in the east

01:24:39.760 Costa Barra then speaks

01:24:41.920 and she says an eagle I saw flying from the

01:24:44.040 end through the house

01:24:45.120 our fate must be bad for with blood

01:24:48.220 he sprinkled us

01:24:50.300 then there's a break in the stanza

01:24:54.280 always just

01:24:55.780 kind of crappy to have that

01:24:58.140 and he says 0.93

01:25:00.680 or then she says

01:25:01.740 from the evil I fear

01:25:03.660 that was Atlee's spirit

01:25:06.200 so

01:25:09.160 in that part

01:25:11.440 it's his outer spirit

01:25:24.300 or perhaps his intention and there may be this may show some variation we know that filgia is

01:25:30.100 feminine and hamlet is a masculine word and so that perhaps this is again a symbolic representation

01:25:36.800 of his mass and nations not necessarily his spirit and that his spirit may be the bear or

01:25:44.400 that they both represent his conspiratorial ambushing but um it's just interesting to

01:25:52.680 think about and look at. But it is clearly a literary or poetic plot device to say that when

01:26:00.140 you have a dream and you see an animal and there's, you know, some gnarly stuff happening, this may

01:26:05.740 very well be the spirit or the shape of the soul of someone. And they are sprinkled with blood

01:26:13.660 from the flying of the eagle into the house. Hogni speaks.

01:26:22.680 They will slaughter soon, and so blood do we see. Often oxen it means, when the eagles one dreams. True is Atli's heart, whatever thou dreamest. Then silent they were, and not further they said.

01:26:40.160 so they don't really come to any uh conclusion i think this last part uh is really referencing

01:26:47.660 to hogney saying no he's he's banking on at least good intentions uh that there's there

01:26:54.540 really is no reason to further on this feud and uh they are thoroughly under his banner

01:27:00.500 um but we obviously know different especially with all the other stories already that we have

01:27:08.920 covered, but I digress. So, and there are, I'm now, I'm now noticing for a lot of folks who

01:27:18.020 don't know this, uh, there's not a huge amount of prep work that we do. We, we, we roll into this

01:27:23.000 just as much with everyone else. And, um, there is a lot missing from this poem. So the,

01:27:29.240 there's gaps there's no uh there's gaps literally in in the the works as far as

01:27:37.800 concept and meaning but not physically in the poems themselves it was almost as if the person

01:27:45.020 writing the poem either didn't know or it was tangibly a mistake and i think that happened

01:27:53.640 quite often through some of our um uh the adas uh and that there were some mix-ups sometimes

01:28:00.840 so gotta be kind of you know mindful of that

01:28:05.260 then the highborn ones wakened and like speech they had then did glaumvor tell how in terror

01:28:16.520 she dreamed so now glaumvor is having terrible dreams um and then there's a break and a mention

01:28:26.200 of gunner and two roads they should go now that's really choppy but in essence i i i'm surmising

01:28:33.720 just by the observation is that the the dream is interpreted that they they have a fork in the road

01:28:40.040 in which they either go forth or they do not.

01:28:43.420 And if they go forth, doom is to meet them.

01:28:47.940 Then she says, a gallows saw I made ready.

01:28:52.480 Thou didst go there to thy hanging.

01:28:55.220 Thy flesh serpents ate, and yet living I found thee.

01:29:01.160 The gods doom descended, now say what is boded.

01:29:07.040 So at this point, what we have is that we know that the mention of Gunnar being put into the pit of snakes or vipers or being hung above.

01:29:21.040 And then in another version, he fights to his death.

01:29:25.060 But what we do have here is the idea, the god's doom is descended.

01:29:33.460 it the the uh the term here that gerdisk rock rockna um is that the the the doom or really what

01:29:46.180 doom means is the inevitable judgment or the inevitable uh culmination of all the deeds before

01:29:54.080 it coming together in uh the great clash or conflict and they're not talking about ragnarok

01:30:01.260 in this case

01:30:03.480 you know

01:30:05.420 that the gods

01:30:08.760 doom descended

01:30:10.480 I think that

01:30:13.580 I'm interpreting this as that it's

01:30:15.400 the doom or the

01:30:17.720 judgment of the gods is now

01:30:19.860 laid upon Gunnar

01:30:21.760 and Hogni

01:30:22.520 I don't know, I find that very interesting

01:30:29.580 But it's one of the times where you see Rok and Ragnar used, but not in the sense that most everybody would be familiar with it.

01:30:38.040 Stanza 23 is completely gone.

01:30:44.340 So Gunnar says a retort, but it's missing.

01:30:52.020 Then Glaumvor retorts and she says,

01:30:55.180 A sword drawn bloody from thy garments I saw.

01:30:59.580 such a dream is hard to a husband to tell a spear stood me thought through thy body thrust

01:31:07.500 and at the head and feet the wolves were howling so again the symbology of the wolf the bearer of

01:31:17.500 death uh of hunger of the the machinations and of of intrigue and ultimately um conspiracy

01:31:27.420 uh baying at his death waiting for the flesh as he is impaled with a spear

01:31:34.320 um and then gunner speaks the hounds are running loud their barking is heard

01:31:41.380 often hounds clamor follows the flying of spears so

01:31:48.720 he's chalking this up to the inevitability it doesn't matter what my fate is you're having

01:31:57.400 a dream the dream is scary but at the end of the day i'm not going to avert my way from what i

01:32:04.920 intend to do um i do find it very very uh cool that the you know he says the hound's clamor

01:32:13.160 follows the flying of spears and my you know immediate thought is wow you know we never think

01:32:19.960 about that what if there was the usage of war dogs in combat or at least by that time it was an

01:32:26.460 understood concept and you know both sides having dogs you know after throwing spears at the

01:32:34.660 opposing side letting uh dogs go in to just kind of break the line um i find that very interesting

01:32:43.500 if that's the case a lot of people will say i see them on tiktok and i see them on instagram and

01:32:50.460 they'll say oh you know the vikings didn't do this or the vikings didn't do that and they're

01:32:55.900 going off of the absence of mention, but again, we see poetics are so tightly

01:33:02.860 choreoed into a very, very tight space. It's a choke point of you're only getting

01:33:13.740 the very visceral things of poetry. Again, people would think that our ancestors wouldn't know what

01:33:21.280 an owl was, it's only mentioned once in all of the corpus of our poems. And it's not even mentioned

01:33:28.100 as an animal. It's the beak of the animal that's mentioned. So it's really hard, I think, for

01:33:35.080 people to create these arguments where they say, you know, oh, well, that's kind of ridiculous

01:33:42.680 because, you know, it wasn't written down, so our ancestors didn't do it. And that's kind of wild

01:33:47.840 to me um i saw this with uh the the vikings didn't have tattoos because the only person who wrote

01:33:54.800 about it was ibn fadlan and he was talking about one group of people and even though it could have

01:34:00.420 been paint or it could have been tattoos we don't know so therefore probably wasn't a thing and that

01:34:08.600 that that that's a big assumption to say and i think that's just some genuine so um we we i we

01:34:17.200 see these little nuggets and i think that's why this this poem is important it gives us an idea

01:34:23.240 about dream interpretation about the usage and mechanics of words especially about components

01:34:29.020 of the spirit talks about symbology the bear the eagle the wolf um and and just the the the body

01:34:39.720 being impaled on a spear and in the darkness of the dream that the the wolves are howling

01:34:45.360 very very cool stuff um so blumvar then speaks back because he said you know oftentimes

01:34:55.200 there are dogs that follow the the volley of spears

01:34:59.760 as she says in 26 a river the length of the hall saw i run full swiftly it roared over the benches

01:35:10.200 it swept over the feet did it break of ye brothers twain so she sees a river torrent come into the

01:35:17.480 hall and it flows over and separates the brothers that of of gunner and hoggy who both die at hatley

01:35:26.680 atley's hall um again very very cool imagery the liminal space the transition the river

01:35:36.680 is a place between two foundational places and she's speaking between life and death

01:35:45.640 um gunner then speaks and this is lost uh it says here down at the bottom this interpretation or

01:35:52.600 verse is missing and most of the editor editors either assume a gap or construct two

01:36:00.120 malhotter lines out of the volsunga saga poem they bring it over here to keep its continuation

01:36:07.720 going but in this case bellow said no this is just the the nature of the poem that survived

01:36:13.720 so he moves forward so good news uh we lose that verse glauvor then speaks i dreamed that by night

01:36:23.880 came dead women hither sad were their garments so they wore garments of mourning and thee were there

01:36:34.040 were uh were they seeking they bade thee come swiftly forth to their benches and nothing

01:36:40.040 methinks could the norns avail thee so now i think we were directly referencing dc this is also in

01:36:48.280 yal saga where there are women clad in white and women clad in black again these colorations as

01:36:56.280 symbols of good and evil were not often used um pre-christian so we're starting to see some of

01:37:01.800 these influences um but they are the de-seer of his line and not even the norns the big norns the

01:37:14.200 The ones at the tree in heaven that are where all of fate and all of time and all of reality is flowing from in the first well, the highest well.

01:37:27.600 They cannot change what is to come.

01:37:30.680 And then Gunnar speaks, too late is thy speaking, for so it is settled.

01:37:36.680 From the faring I turn not, and going is fixed, though likely it is that our lives shall be short.

01:37:44.200 I think that ultimately this is determinational philosophy that was popularized amongst the warrior ethos and is another reason why I talk about how knighthood is a Germanic component brought to Christianity.

01:38:03.800 It did not exist in the Bible. There was components of suffering or enduring things, but the union of warriors that were transfixed into destiny, moving forward, facing and not veering away from the grand design of the world and of their fate, that is very dramatic.

01:38:30.240 and here's a perfect example of it where he just says it doesn't matter the dream it doesn't matter

01:38:36.080 if we are going to die i will not avert from what must be done also bear in mind this poem is

01:38:44.560 clearly has the benefit of being latter composed in relation to all the other stories

01:38:51.760 that tell the fate as it is so this is more a demonstration of poetics

01:38:56.640 um so he says then bright shown or sorry that not hey he doesn't say this he says

01:39:11.320 though i will go even though our lives may be cut short then bright shown the morning the men

01:39:17.440 all were ready they said and yet each would the other hold back five were the warriors and their

01:39:24.320 followers all but twice as many their minds knew not wisdom sniper and solar uh solar solar and uh

01:39:35.440 they they were the sons of hogney cogniz two sons uh orkning was he called who came with the others

01:39:43.360 blithe was the shield tree the brother of costa better um

01:39:49.360 um that's uh the shield tree the skelder uh because it doesn't say tree here it says the

01:39:59.860 shield bearer blithe was was the shield tree i i think in essence the bellows is using a kenning

01:40:11.740 a shield tree is a warrior so blithe was the warrior the brother of costa bearer that was

01:40:17.400 going as well. Um, so, uh, the fair decked ones, the ones, the warriors bright, followed till the

01:40:31.400 fjord divided them. Full hard did they plead, but the others would not hear it. Then did Glaumvor

01:40:37.980 speak forth, the wife of Gunr, to Vingy, she said, the messenger from Attlee. That which wise to her

01:40:45.620 seemed i know not if well thou requited our welcome full ill was thy coming if ever shall

01:40:53.360 follow then did vingy swear and full glib was his speech then that line is gone

01:41:00.420 the built up and the loss um but he says at the end there's two lines he says uh may giants

01:41:11.660 Now take me if lies I have told ye

01:41:16.600 And gallows if hostile thought

01:41:19.820 I had towards you all

01:41:25.020 So he says

01:41:27.960 Curse me if I have come here falsely

01:41:31.280 But we know he did

01:41:37.360 Because he messed with the runes

01:41:38.960 um so i think just poetically story-wise he's he's an iago style character he's just very very

01:41:49.280 um not to be trusted and i think this is more or less just a very curt word of warning that

01:41:56.220 despite what people may say their intentions may still be he in the end ultimately has to do with

01:42:02.960 atli if he fails this mission so getting them there so that atli can kill them is probably

01:42:08.320 high on his priority list um so then the lady beta spake forth and fair was her thought there

01:42:19.700 is another gap may ye sail now happy and victory have to fair is as i bid ye may not your way bar

01:42:31.340 so

01:42:32.520 she gives them a blessing

01:42:35.700 a blessing of their travels

01:42:37.360 that they may not find any

01:42:39.820 obstructions

01:42:40.820 and you know 0.96

01:42:43.780 she says

01:42:44.800 sig li ver sailor

01:42:46.800 or sigur

01:42:49.440 aurnir

01:42:50.500 go forth happy

01:42:53.780 and with victory

01:42:54.800 or sail thee

01:42:57.180 with happiness and victory

01:42:59.080 and

01:43:00.200 um victory have so in 35 then hogney made answer dear held he his kin take courage ye wise ones

01:43:13.440 whatsoever may come though many may speak yet it is evil oft mighty and words avail little

01:43:19.860 to lead one homeward

01:43:22.300 they tenderly looked till each turned on his way and then with changing fate where their

01:43:31.880 fairings divided i think ultimately what we see here is not a story about hogni and günder but

01:43:39.340 a relatable story about the greenlanders or the norsemen and how the potence of or omen and

01:43:49.020 the trepidations of people leaving and possibly never coming back um you see a generality of

01:43:56.820 theme here that I think I think is very interesting because I can only imagine

01:44:00.320 this is being spoken because it's been experienced by the audience um numerous times

01:44:06.520 so full stoutly they rode bear in mind this poem speaking in in uh nautical sense but most likely

01:44:16.640 or truth be told in the previous poems they were all moving by land unless they were moving up a

01:44:23.720 river um so full stoutly they rode and the keel clove asunder their backs strained at the oars

01:44:35.680 their strength was fierce the oar loops were burst the thole pins were broken nor the ship

01:44:42.680 made they fast air from there from her they fared um again just poetic language of the straining

01:44:52.840 and the power as they move no not long was it after the end must i tell that the home they beheld

01:45:01.080 that boothly once had boothly is at least father loud the gates resounded when hogney smoked them

01:45:09.240 open. Vingy spake within a word that were better unsaid. Go ye far from the house, for false it is

01:45:20.160 in entrance. Soon shall I burn you. Ye are swiftly smitten. I bade ye come fairly, but falsely was 1.00

01:45:28.880 under. Now bind ye afar while your gallows I fashion. So there is the truth revealed of the 0.90

01:45:35.780 cunning of the messenger Vingy, who in this case, and in one of the other poems, is the slayer

01:45:43.840 of Hogni, but is not always, and is not always named until some of the later poems.

01:45:54.900 Then Hogni made answer, his heart yielded little, and nor did he fear that his fate held in store.

01:46:01.760 seek not to affright us. Thou shalt seldom succeed. If thy words are more than the worst

01:46:09.200 grows thy fate. And remember, Gunnar has presented his brother's heart, first a false heart by Vingy.

01:46:17.960 And he says, that's not my brother's heart because it flutters in weakness and cowardice.

01:46:25.420 And then they bring out his real heart and he says, yes, that's my brother's heart because it's

01:46:30.660 bold and and and full and uh so vingy really i think if this was to be converted perhaps into a

01:46:40.080 a told story vingy is absolutely this just kind of shadowy backstabbing uh worker from atli and

01:46:51.520 um you know i i would actually like to look into it more to see if he was one of atli's actual

01:46:57.780 one of the Huns, or if he was working for him, but clearly a dastardly figure.

01:47:06.900 Then, Vingy, they did smite, and they sent him to hell. With their axes, they clove him 0.93

01:47:14.280 while the death rattle came. So, again, the usage of the word hell is written by Bellows

01:47:24.240 in the classic western sense but in the old norse it is she hell but specifically the aspect of death 0.60

01:47:34.720 they sent him on hell's road they sent him through death hell draupu um 0.51

01:47:43.540 and then at least summoned his men in mail coats they hastened already they came and between was

01:47:50.620 the courtyard. Then came thy two words, and full wrathful they were. He speaks, long since did we

01:47:59.620 plan how soon we might slay you. Hognit then retorts, little it matters if long ye had planned

01:48:07.960 it, for unarmed do we wait, and one have we felled. We smote him to hell, of our host was he once. 0.95

01:48:17.660 we killed your guy we killed your boy um it doesn't matter if you've been planning this 0.99

01:48:24.220 and all this conspiracy um in essence he's saying the flexes the fate of any conspirator 0.73

01:48:31.280 against us is the same is death then wild was their anger when all heard his words

01:48:38.240 their fingers were swift on the bow strings to seize full sharply they shot by their shields

01:48:46.160 were they guarded. In the house came the word, how the heroes without

01:48:50.500 fought in front of the hall. They heard a thrall tell it.

01:48:56.200 So, denoting that

01:48:58.240 of Gunnar and Hogni's host, it was a slave

01:49:02.680 that survived the battle to come back and speak

01:49:06.520 of the great tumult between them.

01:49:12.760 Grim, then, was Gudrun.

01:49:14.560 the grief when she heard with necklaces fair and she flung them all from her silver she hurled

01:49:23.240 so the rings burst asunder so she rips off her necklace uh and then out she went she flung open

01:49:32.120 the doors all fearless she went and the guests did she welcome to the nivlungs she went her last

01:49:39.260 greeting it was and in her speech truth was clear and much would she speak she says for your safety

01:49:47.220 i sought that at home ye should stay so i told you to stay but again bingy messed with the message

01:49:56.000 none escapes his fate so ye hither must fare full wisely she spoke if yet peace they might win

01:50:04.780 but to naught would they hearken, and no, said they all. So she tried to quell the battle between

01:50:14.880 her brothers and Utley, and they all said no, doesn't matter. Then the highborn one saw that

01:50:24.060 hard was their battle. In fierceness of heart, she flung off her mantle. Her naked sword grasped

01:50:32.600 she her kin's lives to guard not gentle her hands in the hewing of the battle

01:50:39.720 so in this version hytherin goes into the battle to protect her brothers and her she has a bloody

01:50:49.400 hand i think this is important when we talk about like eric saga and uh labor and his um

01:50:59.240 um daughter eric's daughter and she's fighting off the scaling or the uh the native americans

01:51:05.500 there is a lot of usage of women kind of getting into the battles by this end time and i think 1.00

01:51:12.940 it's worth noting there's a reason for that most people are like you know badass uh girl boss no 0.94

01:51:20.880 frontier it was you were on the edges of known society and it was clear a theme that even the

01:51:31.680 ladies might have to swing a sword in relation to the doomed fate of those around them so it's

01:51:39.840 very similar to circling the wagons this isn't um a note of where it was just like yeah this is 0.99

01:51:45.840 common no this is clearly showing you are on the edges of a stable stable society considering all

01:51:54.080 the warfare um then the daughter of gyuki gudrun two warriors she smote down at least brother she

01:52:04.300 slew and forth then they bore him so fiercely she fought that his feet she clove off she cut his

01:52:14.440 feet off now this i think is the only mention of of gudrun going into a into the warrior

01:52:24.380 sense she was always kind of compared to brinnhild

01:52:29.640 where brinnhild was scary gudrun was a lady so this is the first time she's being portrayed 0.92

01:52:37.420 as a scary force um in the previous poem she doesn't get involved with the battle and she

01:52:45.760 ends up killing otley later after killing his two sons um but this again double emphasizes

01:52:53.760 her devotion to her family.

01:52:59.620 She says,

01:53:01.080 Grim then was Gudrun.

01:53:05.780 The grief when she heard,

01:53:08.140 with necklaces fair,

01:53:09.700 she flung them all.

01:53:11.340 Oh, excuse me.

01:53:13.160 I backed up from there.

01:53:21.140 Wait a minute.

01:53:22.080 Did I get mixed up? 0.95

01:53:23.760 excuse me um uh let's see i jumped back i think um yeah she clove his feet off 0.98

01:53:35.240 uh another she smote so that never he stood to hell did she send him her hands trembled never 0.73

01:53:42.400 full wide was the fame of the battle they fought it was the greatest of deeds of the sons of gyuki 0.94

01:53:48.460 Men say that the Nivlungs, the mistwalkers, the mistfolk, while themselves they were living,

01:53:55.300 with their swords fought mightily, mailcoats they sundered, helms did they hew, at the heart,

01:54:03.120 at their hearts were fearless, all morning they fought until midday shone. All the dusk as well

01:54:10.020 in the dawning of the day, when the battle was ended, the field flowed with blood. Ere they fell,

01:54:17.240 18 of their foemen were slain

01:54:19.200 by two sons of Bera and her brother as well. 1.00

01:54:25.600 I like to point out that that's actually pretty accurate

01:54:28.440 in the sense of these small war bands,

01:54:32.940 20 folk against 20 folk,

01:54:35.940 was more probably a commonality.

01:54:40.700 And one of the ways that you can really kind of ascertain that

01:54:44.140 is like how many boats did it take for them to get there?

01:54:46.420 there's three boats

01:54:47.500 that's under 40

01:54:49.540 under 50 people

01:54:51.060 so

01:54:51.880 but here they fought

01:54:55.140 all day and into the night

01:54:57.680 and into the dawn

01:54:58.620 it's an interesting thing

01:55:00.480 that's

01:55:01.980 one of the

01:55:05.060 when you read

01:55:09.640 the Niblungenlied

01:55:10.980 it's always you know these

01:55:13.220 massive armies and it's

01:55:15.620 it's on a scale that's very elevated in the more scandinavian sources in the story it's very often

01:55:27.460 and i think a lot of the time that was the case in the north rather than you know thousands or

01:55:33.300 tens of thousands of people arrayed on a battlefield it was you know small war bands

01:55:39.940 um meeting up with other small war bands in you know close-quartered

01:55:49.700 handful of people handful of people their contacts you notice that a lot in the sagas to where

01:55:56.760 you know it's just a handful of guys on a raid or doing a thing versus another handful of

01:56:04.540 someone's retainers it's very rare that you have like a pitched battle with hundreds or more people

01:56:12.140 involved excuse me oh i just saw something as well here because again the mention of it he says

01:56:23.020 um then the warrior spoke this is of course attila he says wild with his anger this is evil

01:56:30.120 to see that thy doing is all. Once we were 30, we things, keen for battle. Now 11 are left and

01:56:36.660 great is our lack. I mean, that's just an interesting concept to understand is that

01:56:43.240 there was 30 of them and now there's 11. So they're mentioning, but there was something here

01:56:49.360 that in 55, there were five of us brothers when Boothley we lost. So Atlee says that King Boothley

01:56:57.920 had five sons and he's the only one that's ever mentioned and but he retorts saying now hell has

01:57:06.860 half of them and hell is capitalized so this is clearly in reference to the austenir that harbors

01:57:16.740 the souls of the dead and it also points into the fact that we we say this often battle does not

01:57:25.060 indicate elevation lord odin is the decider of this in this sense he's saying

01:57:33.380 you know five sons did booth we have and half of them are dead two smitten lie here so

01:57:43.780 it's just it's you know it's sad for uh athlete in um

01:57:48.820 um uh the poem but i i wanted to look it up and i attila's brothers um he has an apparently had

01:58:00.460 an older brother who jointly ruled the hunnic empire in 434 um but then attila murdered him

01:58:09.380 so this is the actual historical attila becoming the sole ruler and the feared scourge of god

01:58:16.120 who terrorized the Roman Empire um so that I think is interesting I apparently unless there

01:58:24.840 is reference to um perhaps uh brothers by oath there is no mention um so an additional kind of

01:58:34.740 point it's watching this cycle because this is it's not a historical accounting you deal with

01:58:43.840 lot of people that lived at different times from one another in the same period this is a fictional

01:58:50.400 work but it's composed with the echoes of history in it over a long period of time it's interesting

01:58:58.080 to watch the uh the translation into local things that make sense into local power structure

01:59:13.360 understanding into local scale of combat. It's funny because the, you know, the Huns were known

01:59:20.080 to be these hordes of people. It wasn't 11 guys, certainly not around like Attila, but

01:59:28.640 brought into this very, um, rural colonial Scandinavian setting, it becomes much,

01:59:39.460 it becomes much smaller

01:59:42.180 so I think that there is an understanding

01:59:44.320 by a lot of people

01:59:45.460 that this is an issue of

01:59:47.820 the Niblungenlied

01:59:49.600 portrays things in a high medieval

01:59:52.220 context

01:59:53.100 whereas this portrays things in some kind

01:59:56.180 of an earlier more primitive

01:59:57.800 context. It's not about

02:00:00.120 time per se

02:00:01.580 the Niblungenlied dates from the same

02:00:04.040 time within a hundred

02:00:06.200 years of the Vlsunga

02:00:08.260 saga but it's much more of a cultural you know what does this look like in central germany versus

02:00:18.540 what does this look like in you know in norway or in denmark or in specifically to this in

02:00:27.600 greenland by this time that they're writing it the scale and the uh way that you would display

02:00:35.940 armies and confrontation

02:00:39.380 and princeliness

02:00:40.580 looks different in each of those

02:00:43.180 contexts

02:00:43.860 yeah and I was just

02:00:49.260 while you were speaking I was looking up

02:00:51.300 descriptors of Attila and

02:00:53.060 his family he did rule

02:00:55.200 with his brother and then slayed his brother to take

02:00:57.160 control and that they

02:00:58.840 did for time have

02:01:01.080 tutelage under their uncle

02:01:02.160 and that there are no actual physical

02:01:05.060 accounts of Attila, even in the historical sense, only Jordanes has a secondary account.

02:01:12.480 And scholars, of course, immediately, oh, he's a Turk. Oh, he's Asiatic. And then others are

02:01:18.180 like, well, he could be Scythian. So, but yeah, it's even the historical is sparse.

02:01:27.500 um uh so again he's speaking even if we were to take this completely out of historical context

02:01:37.220 which i think we should in general sense is that he's speaking of the loss of his brothers

02:01:42.580 um and and this is again why is it being said it's to show the overwhelming devastation and loss

02:01:50.860 and kind of the presence that gunner and hogni have the end of their life which they don't

02:01:57.460 really get a lot of that um except you know when it's giant bombastic armies going at each other

02:02:05.020 but um i just find it interesting um hogney then speaks after at least speaks he says a great

02:02:12.720 kinship had i the truth may i hide not from a wife bringing slaughter small joy could i win

02:02:20.500 We lay seldom together since to me thou wast given. Now my kin are all gone. Of my gold am I robbed. Nay, and worse, thou didst send my sister to hell.

02:02:33.040 um and this is interesting uh the idea that this uh the manuscript marks this line is beginning in

02:02:43.500 a new stanza uh it is impossible um because perhaps more of it was lost the meaning of

02:02:51.100 this is half line is somewhat doubtful uh but apparently atlee refers to sigurd's treasure

02:02:56.760 which was supposedly

02:02:59.400 or rightfully his

02:03:00.640 and that Brynhild of course

02:03:03.420 is his sister that he's referring

02:03:05.320 to in saying that he blames

02:03:07.300 the death of his sister being

02:03:09.280 slain Brynhild on

02:03:11.440 Gunnar and Hogni

02:03:13.060 but it doesn't make a lot of sense

02:03:17.340 because right before it

02:03:18.920 it's Hogni speaks

02:03:20.740 but it would be more likely

02:03:22.600 or

02:03:24.240 or better lent to the idea that this is at least speaking because then in the next stanza

02:03:32.160 hogni's sister speaks so she's not dead so it's a little confusing um she speaks and says hear me

02:03:41.200 now oddly the first evil was thine my mother didst thou take and for gold didst murder her

02:03:48.640 my sister's daughter thou did starve in a prison a jest does it seem that thy sorrow thou tell us

02:03:55.600 and good do i find it that grief to thee comes so again this re-emphasizes the the titling at

02:04:02.800 the top of the 56 hogney speech is probably incorrect that is at least speaking and he is

02:04:09.920 saying you know i came with great kinship you slayed my sister and robbed me of the joy of life

02:04:18.480 and gudrun then retorts and so you know gudrun is is mighty spicy in this poem um and then atli

02:04:25.920 speaks again he says go now ye warriors and make the greater the grief of the woman so fair for

02:04:31.520 fame would i see it so fierce be thy warring that gudrun shall weep i would gladly behold her

02:04:38.880 happiness lost and again this doesn't fit very well with the other stories because gudrun doesn't

02:04:47.920 uh separate from atli here her brothers are slain and then she conspires and kills him later um

02:04:58.160 but there's this deep resentment between the two of them in this poem

02:05:03.920 then at least speaks or sees that ye now hogney and with knives shall ye hew him his heart shall

02:05:12.720 Again, this is the fate of the brothers re-emphasized.

02:05:30.420 Hogni speaks.

02:05:42.720 were fighting now with wounds we are spent so thy will can't thou work

02:05:50.400 he again i don't care if you're coming to kill me i don't care if you're coming to

02:05:54.560 hang my brother cut my heart out come and do it um then did betty speak betty is not mentioned in 0.83

02:06:06.240 anywhere else in this story so who beti is um down in the notes says beti is not mentioned anywhere

02:06:15.200 in the atla kvida version of this it doesn't mention beti and in the volsung saga the advice

02:06:22.800 to cut out uh hyali's heart instead of hogni is given by an unnamed counselor of atli who could

02:06:31.600 possibly be beiti um so again um uh just a an addition that we can't quite explain um

02:06:48.880 then did beiti speak he was at least steward let us seize now hyali and hogni spare we

02:06:56.880 let us fell the sluggard 0.99

02:06:59.020 he is fit for death 1.00

02:07:00.860 he has lived too long 0.99

02:07:02.740 and lazy men call him

02:07:04.540 so

02:07:06.720 remember the part

02:07:08.980 where

02:07:09.660 Gunnar sees the heart

02:07:12.240 and of 1.00

02:07:14.900 Hyali

02:07:16.680 and says that's not my brother's heart

02:07:18.540 that's what this is referring to

02:07:20.100 and then I love this

02:07:23.360 this is kind of a slanderous term

02:07:25.120 towards a man

02:07:25.840 um afraid was the pot watcher so a coal chewer or a pot watcher was a man who found himself

02:07:36.720 more comfortable in the house at the kitchen instead of out in the field or at war so he was a

02:07:44.760 um a sheltered man he was afraid afraid was the pot watcher he fled here on and yon and crazed

02:07:54.840 with terror. Don't kill me. Don't kill me. I'm getting Skyrim vibes right now. If you know, 0.97

02:08:03.340 you know. He climbed into the corners. Ill for me is this fighting if I pay for your fierceness.

02:08:11.120 And sad is the day to die leaving my swine, my pigs, and all the fair victuals that of old

02:08:20.380 did i have and if he got that horse he would have been halfway to hammerfill um but they seized

02:08:28.280 boothley's cook and they came with their knife the frightened thrall howled air the edge did he feel

02:08:35.580 he was he was willing he cried to dung well the courtyard so he grabbed his pants is what that's

02:08:46.260 saying um to the dung well the courtyard do the basest of work is spare him they would

02:08:55.600 full happy were hyali if his life he might have then fame was hogney there are few would do this

02:09:05.440 to beg for their for the slave that safe hence he should go i would find it far better this knife

02:09:12.560 play to feel why must we all hark to that to this howling any longer so stop effing with the slave

02:09:22.680 and come at me then the brave one they seized to the warriors bold no chance was left to delay his

02:09:30.840 fate any longer but loud did hogney laugh all the sons of day heard him so valiant he was that well

02:09:40.440 he could suffer. So, unlike the cowardly thrall, he laughs as they slice him.

02:09:50.960 Then a harp, again, this is mentioned in the other stories, a harp, good nurse, seizes up.

02:09:57.520 With his toes, he smotes the harp. So well did he strike that the women all wept,

02:10:06.000 and the men, when clear they heard it, lamented. Full noble was his song, the rafters burst

02:10:13.620 asunder. This line here too just really does kind of remind me of Gaulish

02:10:20.000 poetics in the strange usage of the harp and the physical bursting asunder of the rafters by his

02:10:29.780 um that the power of his poetics then the heroes died ere the day was yet come

02:10:38.660 their fame did they leave ever lofty to live full mighty seemed oddly as over them he stood

02:10:47.160 the wise one he blamed and his words reproached her it is morning gudrun now thy dear ones

02:10:54.820 dost miss, but the blame is part thine, and that thus it has chanced. And Gudrun speaks,

02:11:02.760 thou art joyous, Atli, for the evil thou tellest, but sorrow is thine, if thou mightiest all see,

02:11:10.460 thy heritage heavy here, I can tell thee, sorrow never thou losest, unless I shall die.

02:11:17.240 not free of guilt am i says atlee away shall i find that is better by far off the fairest we

02:11:25.980 shun with slaves i console thee with gems fair to see and with silver snow white as thyself 0.94

02:11:33.920 thyself thou shalt choose so he's saying i i i will i've killed your brothers but 0.94

02:11:43.520 And I wonder if this is a kind of a hidden insult, is that you are easily consoled by physical things. 0.96

02:11:52.920 You will soon forget this.

02:11:56.600 Then Gudrun spoke, no hope shall this give me.

02:12:01.640 Thy gifts I shall take not.

02:12:03.800 Requital I spurned when my sorrows were smaller.

02:12:07.560 Once grim did I see, but now greater my grimness.

02:12:11.360 There was not seemed too hard while Hogni was living.

02:12:15.260 Our childhood did we have in a single house.

02:12:18.480 We played many a game in the grove where we did grow.

02:12:23.180 Then did Grimhild give us gold necklaces

02:12:26.120 that shall never make amends for my brother's murder,

02:12:29.300 nor ever shalt thou win me to think it was well. 1.00

02:12:34.080 But the fierceness of men rules the fate of women. 1.00

02:12:37.180 The treetop bows low, if bereft of it leaves. 1.00

02:12:42.740 The tree bends over if the roots are cleft underneath it.

02:12:46.520 Now mayest thou atlee over all things here rule.

02:12:50.400 Like a rootless tree, a fallen, you know, she's your ruin, the ruin of your kingdom upon you.

02:12:58.160 Full heedless the warrior was that he trusted her.

02:13:01.440 So clear was her guile, if on guard he had been.

02:13:04.520 but crafty was Gudrun, with cunning she spoke, her glance she made pleasant, with two shields

02:13:11.820 she played. So the poem clearly indicates that Gudrun is speaking more forcefully,

02:13:21.060 more grievously, but the reality is, ultimately what is played out in the other poems,

02:13:26.060 is that she tricks him 0.95

02:13:27.580 and she kills his sons 1.00

02:13:30.160 and then kills him. 0.99

02:13:32.960 The beginning of the stanza, 0.99

02:13:36.080 the two shields,

02:13:38.560 Gudrun conceals her hostility

02:13:40.520 symbolized by a red shield,

02:13:44.420 which is spoken of

02:13:45.700 in Helgekvide Hundingsbana,

02:13:50.900 but by a show of friendliness

02:13:53.800 with a white shield.

02:13:56.060 So this symbology of, and I wonder too if it accounts for both sides of the shield, but in essence, she shows friendship, but she's feigning it deeply.

02:14:11.000 She holds resentment. Red is the color of that resentment, whereas white is the color of peace.

02:14:17.260 the beer then she sought for her brother's death feast and at at and a feast otley made for his

02:14:25.640 followers dead so he mourns his followers but there is also the feast of her brothers

02:14:31.780 uh no more did they speak the mead was made ready soon the men were gathered with mighty uproar 0.90

02:14:39.780 Thus bitterly planned she, and Boothley's race she threatened. 0.86

02:14:45.740 So the Huns, she conspires their destruction. 0.88

02:14:49.220 The terrible vengeance on her husband would she take.

02:14:53.500 The little ones, she called, on a block she laid them.

02:14:58.080 Afraid were the proud ones, but the tears did not fall,

02:15:02.040 for their mother's arms went they, asked what she would. 0.99

02:15:05.880 Nay, ask me no more, you both shall I murder. 0.99

02:15:09.780 For long have I wished your lives to steal from you. 1.00

02:15:13.180 And the boys spoke, slay thy boys as thou wilt, for no one may bar it. 0.78

02:15:20.640 Short the angry ones peace, if all that shall do.

02:15:25.040 So, again, there's this kind of reemphasizing of the affirmament of fate.

02:15:31.820 We cannot stop you.

02:15:34.340 But they were young warriors, unafraid.

02:15:39.780 Then in 79, it says, she grim, then the grim one slew both of the brothers, young.

02:15:47.720 Full hard was her deed.

02:15:49.860 When their heads she smote off, feigned, or away, was Atli, to know wither now what was going on.

02:15:58.180 The boys from their sport, from nowhere he spied them, so he was unaware of their death.

02:16:04.600 And then Gudrun speaks, my fate shall I seek, all to Atli's saying.

02:16:09.780 The daughter of Grimhild, the deed from thee hides not. No joy thou hast atly, if all thou

02:16:17.280 shall hear. Great sorrows did wake when my brothers thou slewest. And we know that this is

02:16:25.280 not historically accurate at all in any way. So this is again more of a reflection of the

02:16:33.480 commentary of society in the late Nordic period and how the murdering of the children is seen as

02:16:42.500 just this her revenge or wanting revenge for the ending of her line um is so great that slaying

02:16:53.540 her forced husband and forced children um she wanted it she wanted the blood she wanted him

02:17:02.460 see it so this is i think an important kind of thing to point out a lot of people um

02:17:11.260 good night baby

02:17:15.020 oh wow awesome so a lot of people are very um 0.77

02:17:20.860 shocked and rightly so when we see a mother murdering her children

02:17:26.300 and you know i think that's not lost on the audience this poem was intended for at the time

02:17:33.560 either this is gruesome and horrific and not you know like an awesome thing this is meant to be

02:17:39.940 terrifying and shocking and you know hell hath no fury like a woman scorned is a thing like women

02:17:47.240 get real nasty real real quick on it but it also points out something and i wouldn't want 0.99

02:17:55.040 and you know i say this as a father like i wouldn't want us to forego the modern

02:18:02.140 sentimentality placed from parents towards children i think that's a really important

02:18:08.860 thing it's a very hardwired thing and it's very you know it's very much something that's in keeping

02:18:15.940 with the afa's values but something that is also important and that this balances a little bit

02:18:23.460 When we look at the cultural context, our devotion to kinship in modern times very much

02:18:36.060 flows down one directionally to where it is 100% parent to children.

02:18:43.860 In our ancestors' time, it wasn't that way.

02:18:48.220 There was a lot of fealty towards sibling and towards parents and towards grandparents.

02:18:57.620 The directionality wasn't this, the only thing that's important is the children of the future.

02:19:06.900 There was an at least equally important burden to do honor to your parents, to do honor to the line that you came from.

02:19:17.400 do to do honor to your brothers and your sisters and your you know those in a lateral sense

02:19:25.940 in your in your family life so the relationship and the um obligation towards family

02:19:33.900 was much more balanced out directionally and like i said like i wouldn't take anything away from

02:19:41.780 your devotion to your children but that doesn't preclude you having devotion to your parents

02:19:50.920 and to your brothers and sisters and to the other members of your family and i think you know the

02:19:57.160 atomized world that we live in now sees that as very strange as opposed to a delicate balancing

02:20:04.400 act and it was much more of a balance to our ancestors than it is to us

02:20:10.180 um she then speaks this of course is the morning after the deed um i have seldom slept since the

02:20:29.660 hour they were slain baleful were my threats now i bid thee recall them thou didst say it was

02:20:36.400 morning, too well I remember, now is evening come, and this question thou askest. Now both of thy

02:20:44.700 sons thou hast lost, as thou never shouldst do, the skulls of thy boys, though as beer cups didst

02:20:53.580 have, and the draught that I made thee was mixed with their blood. I cut out their hearts on a

02:21:00.980 spit i cooked them i came to thee with them and the calf's flesh i called them alone didst thou

02:21:08.340 eat them nor any didst leave thou didst greedily bite and thy teeth were busy so this again too

02:21:17.780 is another huge component i think of the drama of of poetics the idea of eating um i can't remember

02:21:27.380 exactly right off the top of my head, there is the story of the folks eating their kinsmen

02:21:36.400 or eating their fellow warriors. I believe an easterly king utilizing language and the 0.77

02:21:46.580 lack of knowledge ends up feeding them one of their kinsmen or men. This is, again, a

02:21:54.120 the drinking of the skulls um all of this is just i really do believe is like whoa

02:22:01.000 everybody in the hall i think would have a visceral reaction to all of this

02:22:06.220 um but it overly emphasizes every single figure becomes the condensed version of their

02:22:16.940 kind of

02:22:20.940 theme. And Gudrun's

02:22:24.360 is that she was meek, and then she was quiet, and then she was

02:22:28.740 unwilling or unwitting, and now she is fully

02:22:32.120 winning, fully a swinger of swords.

02:22:36.600 She is now coming to her own as

02:22:40.520 an instrument of death, just like Brynhild was. 0.61

02:22:46.940 or perhaps I dare say worse.

02:22:53.760 Of thy sons now thou knowest,

02:22:56.400 few suffer more sorrow.

02:22:58.100 My guilt have I told,

02:22:59.680 fame it never shall give me.

02:23:02.060 And Atlee spoke,

02:23:02.900 and she just, again, right there,

02:23:05.160 I did not kill them out of fame.

02:23:08.460 She knows that it's going to be looked at badly,

02:23:11.060 but it doesn't matter. 0.90

02:23:12.740 He slayed her brothers.

02:23:15.300 Atlee spoke,

02:23:16.940 Grim wast thou, Gudrun, in so grievous a deed, my draught with the blood of thy boys to mingle, thou hast slain thine own kin, because these are her children as well, and she doesn't consider them that, because, again, she's betrothed under Atli by conquest of war.

02:23:38.320 Most ill it seemed thee, and little for me, twixt my sorrows thou leavest.

02:23:47.820 Gudrun speaks, still more would I seek to slay thee myself.

02:23:52.700 Enough ill comes seldom to such as thou art.

02:23:57.980 Thou didst folly of old such that no one shall find

02:24:01.600 in the whole world of men a match for such madness.

02:24:06.240 Now this that of late we learn hast thou added,

02:24:10.740 great evil hast grasped, and thine own death feast made. 0.95

02:24:14.760 I think that the visceral anger that Gudrun is speaking towards Atli is an echoing of the historical Attila and the tribal Germanic's hatred for him and the woe that he brought through Europe, especially amongst the Gutens. 0.92

02:24:38.120 So I think that that's some of this. I think Gudrun kind of represents that in a way. 0.92

02:24:44.760 Atli speaks, with fire shall they burn thee, and first shall they stone thee. So then hast thou earned what thou ever hast sought for.

02:24:57.680 Gutherland then speaks

02:25:00.020 oh sorry

02:25:03.140 it also makes point to this

02:25:04.600 this is a clear designation

02:25:06.400 of the influence of Christianity 0.73

02:25:08.740 the stoning of a woman

02:25:11.040 that's never been mentioned

02:25:13.860 in any of the poems

02:25:14.660 and again I did say

02:25:15.860 it doesn't mean it doesn't exist

02:25:17.480 but

02:25:19.580 Bellows is of the mindset too

02:25:22.160 that

02:25:23.300 that it's a fairly clear indication

02:25:27.660 of the influence of Christianity

02:25:29.820 in the late Nordic period.

02:25:33.640 Excuse me.

02:25:41.780 So, 0.96

02:25:43.340 he says, they're going to burn you. 0.53

02:25:45.300 But before they burn you, 1.00

02:25:47.000 they're going to stone you to death. 0.87

02:25:50.900 Gudrun speaks,

02:25:52.660 such woes for thyself

02:25:54.220 shalt thou say in the morning

02:25:56.520 for a finer death to another light fair.

02:26:00.540 Together they sat in full grim with their thoughts,

02:26:03.540 unfriendly their words and no joy either found. 0.98

02:26:07.000 In Miflum drew hatred. 0.98

02:26:10.100 Great plans did he have

02:26:11.860 to Gudrun his anger against Atli was told.

02:26:16.720 So,

02:26:17.000 So, Hogni had a son whose name was Niflung, with an H.

02:26:29.600 And this is just an indicator of kind of, again, their tribal name as well, the Niflung's.

02:26:35.360 So, but in reference is Hogni's son.

02:26:47.680 So Hogni's son, Hogni was cut, his heart was removed.

02:26:52.840 Hogni's son Nifnin, who great plans did he have to good ruin his anger against Atli, was told.

02:27:00.640 To her heart came ever the fate of Hogni.

02:27:03.920 She told him to wear well, if he vengeance should win.

02:27:09.220 So was Atli slain.

02:27:10.580 It was not slow to await.

02:27:13.040 Hogni's son slew him and Goodruin herself.

02:27:16.060 So in this poem, it's not Gudrun that alone kills Atli.

02:27:20.280 It is Gudrun and Hogni's son that ambush him.

02:27:26.420 Then the warrior's spike, as from slumber he had awakened.

02:27:31.660 Soon he knew for his wounds, would the bandage do not.

02:27:36.560 Now the truth shalt thou say, who has slain Boothley's son?

02:27:41.520 Full sore I am smitten, nor hope can I see.

02:27:45.920 That, of course, is Atlee speaking, saying that you have grievously wounded me so much that bandages will not save me. 0.78

02:27:55.480 Lutheran then speaks. 0.65

02:27:58.520 Never her deed from thee hides the daughter of Grimhild.

02:28:02.460 I own to the guilt that is the ending of thy life. 0.88

02:28:06.040 And the son of Hogni, tis, so thy wounds bleed.

02:28:09.360 at least says to murder has thou fared though foul it must seem i'll thy friend to betray who

02:28:19.560 trusted thee well not glad went i hence thy hand to seek good room so in this poetics you know

02:28:27.140 the story is there's the poetic side of the story where everything is aired for the audience to hear

02:28:33.360 and see but he is clearly referencing the idea that no it wasn't clear uh that she was cunning

02:28:41.920 she was hiding and then instant betrayal kills the sons then hogney's son and her go you know knives

02:28:51.280 out um he says to her as well in thy widowhood feigned but haughty men found thee my belief did

02:29:02.960 not lie as now we have learned i brought thee home hither and a host of men with us most noble was all

02:29:11.200 when of old we journeyed great honor did we have of heroes full worthy of cattle we had plenty

02:29:18.240 and greatly we proposed mighty was our wealth and many received it the famed one as a bride gift

02:29:25.920 i gave jewels fair i gave 30 slaves and handmaidens seven there was honor in such gifts

02:29:33.520 yet the silver was greater so in a way this is kind of a despite all i gave you

02:29:42.400 you betrayed me you know you you couldn't let go the dealings of what warriors do your brothers

02:29:48.480 fought me and died. Couldn't let it go. I gave you slaves. I gave you handmaidens.

02:29:55.040 I gave you silver. And still, it didn't cool your lust for revenge.

02:30:05.140 And he says further, but all to thee was as if not it were. While the land lay before thee,

02:30:12.800 that Boothly, my father, had left me. 0.96

02:30:16.920 Thou in secret did thou work.

02:30:19.720 So the treasure I won not.

02:30:21.820 My mother full oft to sit weeping didst make.

02:30:25.500 No wedded joy found I in the fullness of heart.

02:30:30.820 Gudrun says, thou liest now atly.

02:30:34.040 Thou little I heed it.

02:30:35.760 If I seldom was kindly, full cruel was thou.

02:30:39.380 So you're not just a giver of riches to me.

02:30:44.120 You were cruel all along.

02:30:46.700 There's no surprise that this was coming.

02:30:51.700 Full cruel was thou, ye brothers fought young.

02:30:55.240 Quarrels brought you to battle, and half went to hell of the sons of thy house.

02:31:00.240 And all was destroyed that should ever had done good.

02:31:04.000 my two brothers and i were bold in our thoughts from the land we went for with sigurd we fare

02:31:12.320 full swiftly we sail each one steering his ship for our fate stopped wherever till we came to the 0.99

02:31:21.080 east so you are the dastardly one and the nibelones rode alongside the great sigurd and we 1.00

02:31:28.840 were you know everything was a-okay which of course we know is not true so this is kind of

02:31:34.080 just a back and forth of uh of poetics and by this time especially in greenland i wonder if

02:31:41.800 the entirety of the story would be known by the audience so they might not know that this was all

02:31:48.120 kind of not quite true um she said but you know we found doom in the east when we came here

02:31:57.880 First the king did we slay, then the land we seized. The princes did us service, for such was their fear. From the forest we called them, we fain would have guiltless, and rich made we many, who of all were bereft.

02:32:12.780 slain was the hun king soon happiness vanished in her grief the wind the widow so young

02:32:22.460 sat weeping yet worse seemed the sorrow to seek at least house a hero was my husband and hard

02:32:29.800 was his loss

02:32:31.840 I really think that this is again

02:32:40.240 just the ending

02:32:42.440 the drop of all that

02:32:44.440 has come to

02:32:46.400 pass. Children slain

02:32:47.980 brothers slain

02:32:49.100 at least slain

02:32:50.900 just all this death and murder 0.51

02:32:53.940 drops with Guderun

02:32:56.320 and she says

02:32:59.100 From the thing thou canst never

02:33:03.280 For thus have we heard

02:33:06.240 Having won in thy quarrels

02:33:08.460 Of warriors smitten

02:33:09.700 Full yielding thou wast

02:33:12.000 Never firm was thy will

02:33:13.960 In silence did suffer

02:33:16.100 At least says

02:33:19.040 Thou liest now Gudrun

02:33:21.240 But little of good will it bring to either

02:33:24.600 For all we have lost

02:33:26.040 But Gudrun, yet once

02:33:28.440 be thou kindly of will

02:33:30.480 for the honor of both

02:33:32.380 and forth I am home

02:33:34.200 she then says

02:33:37.700 a ship will I buy

02:33:39.980 and a bright

02:33:41.520 hewed coffin

02:33:42.820 I will wax well

02:33:45.980 the shroud

02:33:46.620 to wind round thy body

02:33:49.580 for all will I care

02:33:51.480 as if dear were we ever

02:33:54.160 so this is kind of like

02:33:56.980 strange turn

02:33:58.700 there is the concept that

02:34:01.340 he deserved it

02:34:03.020 the murder was there

02:34:04.180 it was all done

02:34:05.180 but she will

02:34:06.600 in the last bit of grace

02:34:09.420 afford him

02:34:10.200 a goodly burial

02:34:12.360 by boat

02:34:13.680 as if she did love him

02:34:17.580 then did Atlee die

02:34:21.240 and his heirs

02:34:22.760 grief doubled

02:34:23.760 the high born one did

02:34:25.600 as to him

02:34:26.580 she had promised, then sought Githrin the wise to go to her death, but for days did she wait,

02:34:33.540 and twas long ere she died. Full happy shall he be, who such offspring has, or children so gallant

02:34:41.400 as Gyuki begot, forever shall live in the lands far and wide, their valor heroic, wherever men

02:34:50.520 may hear it.

02:34:53.080 So

02:34:53.640 there's this animosity

02:34:56.740 towards Atli through all of these stories.

02:34:59.000 And then again, too, the devotion

02:35:00.780 of Gunnar,

02:35:03.320 Hogni, and Gudrun.

02:35:05.220 Despite all of the

02:35:06.740 conspiracy against Sigur,

02:35:08.520 there's this redemption tale

02:35:10.660 in these later poems.

02:35:12.700 And I think this is, again,

02:35:15.360 the forest,

02:35:17.560 you know, losing the forest

02:35:18.500 despite the trees.

02:35:20.520 that ultimately the original poems are lost in their meanings and that the overarching meaning

02:35:27.840 is connection to clan, connection to siblings, and just the devotion to revenge. And we know

02:35:37.200 well into the Christian overtake of the Norse, blood feuds were still very much a thing. So

02:35:45.980 So I think this is just kind of the signs of the times that which was lauded was that if people wronged your kin, you went to the ends of the earth to get them back.

02:35:58.500 Well, and the other that is very important in this is the constant super tragedy fear of our ancestors

02:36:21.460 is the strife amongst kin

02:36:29.100 where the vengeance thing isn't clear.

02:36:31.280 It's like Gudrun to do the nuclear option deal. 0.93

02:36:37.800 She's becoming a kin slayer to avenge her kin knowingly.

02:36:43.680 And she realizes that there's no way out from that.

02:36:49.260 if they're not you know you can do a lot of you can hold a lot of malice in your heart and you can

02:36:56.220 do a lot when the enemy is external but when it's strife within a family or amongst kin or to where

02:37:03.980 there's mixed relations there's not a way out of that it's like anything you do only deepens the

02:37:11.660 whole and i think that our ancestors understood the conundrum that that was and the you know the evil 0.87

02:37:21.100 that's wrought by it uh that's kind of a a theme in this in this saga and we see this now we see it

02:37:29.580 earlier in the time of uh of sigurd and uh senfjolti we see similar mother killing children motif

02:37:47.580 that is gross and i think that you know some people when they encounter it for the first

02:37:52.460 time it's very shocking i think it's intended to be shocking for the original audience

02:37:56.620 but it is this like singular burning lust for vengeance that women are able to embody in a much

02:38:08.860 fiercer way and i don't think we always see that but i think the times that we do see it you see it

02:38:18.080 in a particularly shocking and over-the-top manner um that's a very unique female capacity 1.00

02:38:28.800 um but yeah i'm glad we made it through that this evening we have um 0.94

02:38:36.000 four i believe four more poems to read next time sapan and i are with you

02:38:44.880 and that will bring us to the end of the poetic edda um but we have a couple of questions that

02:38:50.800 have been generated svan has left the building for a moment but that's fine we can start um the

02:39:00.720 first one here is is easy but i do think it's important by stephen is it okay to leave a

02:39:07.840 donation to the afa as an offering to one of the gods such as instead of buying an apple

02:39:13.760 or beer and leaving it as an offering under a tree to odin i instead tell odin i will give

02:39:20.480 a monetary donation to the afa as his offering hail the gods so yes absolutely um

02:39:30.960 more than just kind of absolutely i would say that every one of your your donations to the afa

02:39:37.760 is an act of worship and an act of offering to the Aesir.

02:39:46.020 So I think, yes, the answer is resoundingly yes,

02:39:49.540 but there's options on it too.

02:39:52.180 So I think that a general gift to the Astru Folk Assembly

02:39:56.720 in the name of one of the gods, you know, 1.00

02:39:59.340 as an offering to them is absolutely appropriate.

02:40:03.640 And I also think that you have, with the various things that we are raising money for and the various Hoffs and the various, you know, projects, a way to specifically put it towards, you know, something you feel particularly drawn to in a way of honoring one of our gods.

02:40:25.440 So absolutely. And I don't just think it's, you know, kind of an OK option. I think it's a very good option because I think that the intention in an offering to the in a donation to the AFA is the same as the intention you would put in a beer or an apple, as you said.

02:40:47.820 But in a very tangible way that can be put to use to further the mission of the Aesir to bring our folk back into trough with them and, you know, can provide things to elevate them, such as Hoffs and stuff that way.

02:41:06.600 So I think it's a really, really good option and something I would encourage everybody to do.

02:41:11.820 our other question that we've got here tonight is good evening i'll hear you go with you matt

02:41:20.940 witness fawn folk builder nick we often hear a criticism from christians to people like us

02:41:27.600 that christianity is essentially is essential to the building of european civilization

02:41:33.440 and returning back to our foundational religion

02:41:36.960 is absconding everything post-conversion,

02:41:42.680 that Christian values allowed Europe to develop out of barbarism 0.91

02:41:46.460 and our civilization will just devolve without them. 0.99

02:41:50.540 Let's just assume for the sake of argument

02:41:52.500 that they are talking about Northern Europe

02:41:54.620 and not the ancient Greeks or the Roman civilization.

02:41:58.780 What would your retort be?

02:42:00.720 Thank you for all that you do.

02:42:03.440 spod do you want to take the first swing at that sure um i would say that it's it's again a broad

02:42:10.480 stroke and ridiculous notion to think that christianity somehow made europeans european

02:42:18.240 and i think that would denote deeply the undercurrents of a lot of european christians 0.93

02:42:23.360 who are actually anti-european anti uh when you look at the details when they flip through the

02:42:29.520 pages and they see the things that they don't like and that are staunchly European, they hate

02:42:34.960 them because they are so adherent to a lot of these kind of Semitic ideas. I will say this 0.82

02:42:43.680 much though. Christianity was the encapsulation or the banner, the shell that allowed Europe to 0.99

02:42:52.740 organized to beat off to a great success the ottomans or the east um but it was not the

02:43:03.480 entirety of that which kept the easterners out of europe um there was a lot of political

02:43:10.460 sense there was geographical reasons um obviously didn't work in spain but for so long um it's again

02:43:20.660 it's a broad stroke sense, like after the fact, it was like, oh, the reason why the Ottomans were

02:43:24.260 kept out was because of Sky Rabbi. That's basically what they're saying. There was a

02:43:30.720 great need for unification. And perhaps that unification did come from the very act of

02:43:36.500 like the Crusades. But the Crusades themselves were not built on Christian principles. They

02:43:43.100 were built on Germanic and European warrior ethic. I think that it's also foolhardy for them 0.99

02:43:53.640 to say that with how much they're unwilling to admit, like how Greek philosophers influenced

02:44:00.880 early Christianity or how very dastardly they were in their techniques and in becoming a state

02:44:09.380 recognized religion um where they could finally rub elbows with the with the big boys at the big 0.85

02:44:16.580 boy table of the of the um eastern empire the pagans were getting money from the uh the rule

02:44:23.240 the ruling class and and the emperor um and they wanted it too and they were willing to do anything

02:44:28.040 to do it and this even uh went all across the empire from alexandria to constantinople and

02:44:36.520 eventually to Rome. Um, perhaps there, there was a much more subtle positivity point because I don't

02:44:47.080 want to be, um, so negative. One of the things that Christianity did was emphasize the unification

02:44:54.080 through writing. Writing is something that I think our ancestors should have picked up sooner,

02:45:03.360 But they were, again, the warrior culture built on oracular speech is so tied and tight and is very Aryan in its genesis that if they had, I think if they had picked that up sooner.

02:45:26.380 But, again, you have these scholars, these people who are lamenting about the things that happened in the Middle East, and they want power in the present-day empire.

02:45:39.680 They were scholars.

02:45:42.640 Christianity was run as a kind of a scholarly death cult from its inception by Saul of Tarsus all the way to the Viking period.

02:45:52.660 and um even further so but it did eventually unite people mainly under money under linguistics 0.90

02:46:00.660 and under politics did that make it strong enough to fight off against the ottomans

02:46:07.560 uh i'm certainly i believe that there were levels of that but it was also the germanic

02:46:12.440 fighting spirit uh warrior classes knighthood ethos and all of the things that made europeans

02:46:20.600 European and was clearly not based in Christianity. That also helped, um, I'm going to say it,

02:46:29.840 galvanize Europe against the, uh, the, uh, encroaching outsiders. Um, but I digress. Uh,

02:46:39.800 I think that's, they're just, again, pigeons on a chessboard. They're going to broadly say these

02:46:44.840 things and they've, they've never done anything wrong. And everything has always just been because

02:46:50.360 their God, Yahweh, God of the Israelites, is

02:46:54.220 awesome. And that's not the case. History isn't black 0.97

02:46:58.360 and white. And so in essence, they're very reminiscent to the same people that were

02:47:02.220 oh, the Civil War was about slavery. Oh, well, your ancestors converted 0.55

02:47:06.380 to Christianity because of reasons. None of that 0.94

02:47:10.100 is true. It's much, much more

02:47:12.800 dynamic than that.

02:47:18.220 Oh, you're muted.

02:47:20.360 So Svon hit on a number of things.

02:47:23.420 I will always be grateful to the Jehovah's Witnesses because their approach to Christianity is to make it the church that Jesus taught and not all of the things that in the West had a cross on it. 0.83

02:47:53.420 And that's a really big difference. 0.95

02:47:59.900 Medieval Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus. 0.85

02:48:06.380 And it has nothing to do with peaceful desert Jews that renounce the world. 0.98

02:48:18.000 One of the things that's interesting, so for an example, and Jehovah's Witnesses aren't perfect, 0.93

02:48:22.720 but their attempt to clean slate let's go back to the scriptures and try to do christianity

02:48:31.040 in the most authentic way that is the teachings of jesus i think you see that with the jehovah's

02:48:37.280 witnesses i think you see that with like the amish i think you see that with some of these people

02:48:43.760 that are directly not what would have made europe awesome and that are lame 0.73

02:48:52.720 Jesus was about renouncing the world, being no part of it, being no part of its governance.

02:48:58.960 The whole world is in the power of the wicked one.

02:49:02.960 The world is literally Satan's.

02:49:06.880 And that's why Satan could offer Jesus when he tempted him in the desert, could offer him, you know, all of the kingdoms of the earth.

02:49:14.280 that's a big christian tenet of the early church was like no we don't want to be part of governance

02:49:20.180 or the military or any of the things that shape the world we're aloof from the world we live in

02:49:28.540 the world but we're no part of it you know well what about my taxes should i give my taxes well

02:49:33.540 whose face is on your coin you know rendering to caesar what's caesar's it was a removal from

02:49:40.680 worldly affairs um yes the roman catholic church was a big benefit to europe in the sense that it

02:49:51.740 unified all of the disparate tribes of europe into one faith and that unity made europe stronger and

02:50:02.700 able to do things. That has nothing to do with Christianity. It

02:50:09.160 has everything to do with, you know, Roman imperial efficiency

02:50:15.260 and the militant folk soul of the Germanic people. It has

02:50:21.960 everything to do with that. It has nothing to do with a rabbi

02:50:26.100 in Judea. And that's a really important difference.

02:50:32.700 yes with a cross stamped on it european culture did a lot of great things

02:50:39.980 you could have stamped a lot of different things on that that were much more authentic

02:50:45.420 and the same impulses would have happened those impulses were from the european

02:50:49.980 aryan folk soul and not from the semitic religiosity of judea um

02:50:58.060 but there's lessons to be learned yes a strong unified religious body for a religion is very

02:51:08.300 important to exist in in the world that we live in and to have influence to unite people under

02:51:16.000 faith and spirituality is very important i think that we would have avoided a lot of the pitfalls

02:51:24.000 with a much more honest version of that which would be ausitru or something very very close

02:51:30.000 to our understanding of ausitru in a modern sense unifying with one church and that's why we talk

02:51:38.320 about the afa being the church of the isir unifying with one body with one voice towards a goal

02:51:46.160 that was very important that did all of those things uh sky rabbi didn't defeat the ottomans

02:51:54.960 winged hussars and um unified response from warrior nobility from europe did that

02:52:05.480 all of those people were very much in contrast to the peaceful world rejecting religion that

02:52:13.580 jesus taught but we're absolutely in the greatest traditions of warrior kings of the house of true

02:52:19.220 um medieval and renaissance flourishing in europe is

02:52:25.540 very uniquely non-christian even though it was done with a heavy power structure of

02:52:35.000 roman catholicism but all of that has this ingrained

02:52:40.520 war with itself because it's not being authentically christian and as soon as

02:52:48.040 people became aware aware of that you have all of the disintegration of europe that occurred

02:52:52.840 with the reformation and people after that um i don't think that the teachings of the christianity

02:53:02.680 that these people want to talk about flourishing western civilization that's inauthentic and kind

02:53:09.720 of a slap in the face to their desert god all of those things would have and should have occurred

02:53:17.320 in pursuit of troth to the icier with different pictures on the stained glass and you know hammers

02:53:25.400 on the banners of crusaders and warriors of europe doing things and you know instead of focusing on

02:53:34.280 the levant focusing on europe and stopping muslim invasions and all of the other things that

02:53:41.320 were done in medieval europe but without the rot and the uh internal

02:53:49.080 dialogue of knowing that what was being done was in conflict with the Christianity. There was a

02:53:58.380 guilt that came with the Christian overlay of European warrior tradition. I think our people

02:54:07.020 would have and would still be flourishing in a much greater way if that built-in guilt and built-in

02:54:15.860 Well, if war with ourself wasn't there, I think we would have gotten an even more robust flourishing of European civilization that would still be in effect today and not be in retreat. 0.91

02:54:31.160 And you see the forces, you see all of the seeds of Western civilization's current regression within that Christian construct of a destruction of familial bonds. 0.95

02:54:45.160 A rejection of racial difference, a rejection of manly virtue, a rejection of loyalty to kin, the rejection of pride and of dignity. 0.97

02:54:59.600 Most of the virtues you see in medieval Christianity are things that are rejected explicitly by Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount, but things that were fundamental.

02:55:12.200 and i know for sake of argument we weren't supposed to reference greece and rome but

02:55:16.840 we're fundamental to like roman imperial virtues and we're fundamental to the understanding of

02:55:24.040 medieval european warrior aristocracy but all of those things are antithetical to you know 0.93

02:55:32.520 the rabbi that preached blessed are the meek uh you know the meek shall inherit the earth 0.66

02:55:38.920 uh the the least will become greatest the the proto-communism of 0.96

02:55:48.040 first century christianity has nothing in common with the flourishing of

02:55:52.840 medieval and renaissance europe and it's it's hard i get that people that don't

02:55:57.560 have the context and don't look into it far enough there is a cross stamped on everything

02:56:04.840 in that time and so oh that must be very christian but it's a very very thin

02:56:11.960 coat of paint over a very very different um soul

02:56:20.440 you're muted uh may i also say too christianity created an avenue for which it could readily pull

02:56:30.120 from the virtuous pagan the actual concept of the virtuous pagan is mentioned in the bible

02:56:37.640 by in romans by saul tarsus and he says um you know as many have sinned without law shall also

02:56:46.040 perish without law and as many have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law of course the law

02:56:51.080 is the rabbinical law or the covenant with yahweh by via the israelites or the jews uh for not the 0.60

02:56:57.480 The hearers of the law are just before God. 0.85

02:57:01.040 So those who don't know it, the pagans, will go before him.

02:57:05.900 That's a very interesting point I want to bring up. 0.98

02:57:08.540 For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by thy nature the things contained in the law, 1.00

02:57:15.660 these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves. 0.97

02:57:19.600 So he gives credence that in order for us to pull from these greats that have influenced us so much without it being seen as hypocritical is because they're acting in accordance with rabbinical law, even though they don't know the law.

02:57:37.480 And this, you know, includes Homer. It includes Hector. Another great, you know, pre-Christian. And I think this was Saul kind of recognizing the room. He was reading the room.

02:57:56.520 But more importantly, this also shows something that we see in Judaism now is the judgment day at the end in which all the bodies of those who have passed will rise up to be judged. 0.60

02:58:14.540 So kind of like waiting in the ground. 0.76

02:58:17.720 And Saul, who everyone calls Paul, is a Jew.

02:58:21.340 He's saying that even though the pagans don't know the law, the rabbinical law of the Jews, 0.55

02:58:28.720 there will come a time when their God, Yahweh, stands to judge everyone.

02:58:33.340 And they will rise from the grave and at the court with Yahweh and Jesus, they will be allowed in.

02:58:43.920 Because he said, which true their work and law was written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and their thoughts and meaning while accused are else excusing one another in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus, according to my gospel.

02:58:59.740 So he is saying that the early conceptualization of judgment is, again, very much like the Judaic concept of this kind of, again, the waiting of the soul and then the judgment shall be had and everyone will be put into their proper place.

02:59:22.520 And even some pagans will be allowed to sit at the foot of Yahweh.

02:59:29.740 very very interesting i never knew about this so recently so that's that's what they do though

02:59:39.080 um that's an that's a thing um saul of tarsus was a real interesting you know marketer and he's

02:59:49.000 you know the the apostle to the gentiles they like to say he got that you had to open it up

02:59:56.360 and make all these concessions and try to market it to europe who wasn't gonna weren't going to 0.93

03:00:05.780 accept the jewry of early christianity you had to make it something completely different and i think

03:00:14.840 the inauthenticity of that gets expounded upon a lot in the middle in the middle ages and popes

03:00:22.220 right explicitly especially in the the uh christianization of england like don't change

03:00:28.360 the stuff alter it as little as possible carry on all their pagan customs just slap a cross and

03:00:35.160 put jesus on it and it's all good and i think we see a lot of that so yeah the the thing that people

03:00:43.920 think is christianity if they read their bibles and actually were fair about evaluating it is

03:00:51.300 not Christian at all. It's like when you realize all of the things about Christmas that are awesome

03:00:57.120 are Yule traditions. You're left with a very much less fun holiday. Most of us are warm and

03:01:08.540 amazing, you know, imagery and thoughts about Christmas that are cool have very little to do

03:01:15.200 with, you know, a, a manger scene. And so, yeah, that's, that's that. We have one more

03:01:23.320 question tonight. Thoughts on Alex Jones. Do you have thoughts about Alex Jones?

03:01:30.820 Um, that's a good question. Um, I mean, I certainly have listened. I think the attraction

03:01:40.640 that I have to even entertaining

03:01:45.080 some of the stuff he talks about

03:01:46.420 is about free speech in general

03:01:48.360 in a broader sense.

03:01:51.440 I have a tendency to wonder what role they play,

03:01:57.900 whether it's Nick Quintez or Alex Jones

03:02:02.700 or any other kind of talking head sycophant

03:02:07.760 of the political ring.

03:02:09.060 i wonder about them i listened to them because i i think it's worth noting i think again too

03:02:15.240 some of the things that he did say i remember early on in that in the 20 teens

03:02:19.680 when he was saying some crazy stuff and then later on they were like it's it's true

03:02:26.440 was was interesting but by no means do i consider him like some sort of kind of pivotal pillar in

03:02:34.420 my worldview. It's just, it's interesting. So I like Alex Jones a lot. And I've recently

03:02:40.500 got bit by the Alex Jones bug. I've been aware of Alex Jones for a really long time. I've

03:02:46.080 listened to Alex Jones off and on. And he is such a buffoon in his presentation that 0.98

03:02:54.660 it makes it hard. Over the last 20 years, I've realized though, he's right a lot. And 0.97

03:03:02.620 lot of the stuff that he says and he presents it in the most ridiculous and extreme sometimes laughable

03:03:12.940 way the root of it is like real things and i think one of the things early on i didn't want

03:03:20.860 to listen to a lot of it because it's scary and i think that you know that's not the reasoning that

03:03:27.740 i used at the time but took me a while to realize that we are being lied to all the time

03:03:38.780 and betrayed all the time by our ruling class and that a lot of things are really really ugly

03:03:46.540 that i think they're so ugly that many of us don't want to open that door it's one of those

03:03:54.780 things you can't unsee things so once you accept something and you look in you can't not see it

03:04:02.940 and i think that i think that's where my dad is i think that's where a lot of people in the

03:04:07.100 boomer generation are they don't want to reject mainstream media and just kind of the narrative

03:04:15.500 that i think a lot of us have had presented to us most of the time what i appreciate about alex

03:04:23.020 jones and he's not right all the time but he's right a lot he's right about a lot of things that 0.58

03:04:26.940 i think people have written him off as a kook on and it turns out that they're right he opens the 0.95

03:04:32.860 door to a lot of that i don't like his constant need so here's the thing i like that i am also 0.99

03:04:41.980 entertained i'm entertained by his rants and when he starts losing his mind and going crazy and he

03:04:47.020 does a lot of that. I think he'd be more effective if he was less of a buffoon, but he is consistent 0.90

03:04:53.760 and he's been fighting for things that he believes are true for a very, very long time

03:04:59.040 against all opposition and appreciate that. He's also brought a lot of important things to light

03:05:06.320 that I don't think other people, you know, have. I think that if it weren't for him and some of the

03:05:11.880 work that he's done, a lot of people wouldn't be aware of things that many of us are now aware of.

03:05:20.260 He's also fun. So some stuff I don't like, though, to be fair, and give a

03:05:25.520 give a detailed analysis of Alex Jones. He rants on stuff ridiculously, which is kind of obnoxious.

03:05:35.580 he's at the center of a lot of things but if he's not he has this need to like try to put himself

03:05:42.120 there like I notice you know somebody else does something cool he's like yeah we were onto that

03:05:48.840 early on too but but but but yeah I digress yeah no that was really good but but I do cool stuff

03:05:53.640 too and he does that a lot he tries to like insert himself into things sometimes which is frustrating

03:06:00.180 he uh

03:06:06.260 he's way too obsessed with like

03:06:12.020 i don't know i think that he doesn't

03:06:21.220 he doesn't look at things in terms of right and wrong he looks at things sometimes in terms

03:06:26.340 of their level of conforming to the founding fathers generation i think there's a value to

03:06:35.220 that i think that's instructive but i think there's another level of like yeah but those

03:06:40.820 guys weren't perfect either did is this right or wrong and i don't think he always looks at that

03:06:46.580 and he always has a need to like um

03:06:50.180 so there's better words for this and it's late but he's like so if he's going to criticize

03:07:00.280 israel no i'm not anti-semitic i'm not anti-israel i'm not anti-israel but

03:07:05.220 israel does this israel does that now i'm not i'm not against this thing but he apologizes too much

03:07:12.060 instead of just presenting like hey israel's doing this and this is kind of messed up

03:07:16.020 but he's willing to say stuff other people aren't like he openly talks about

03:07:20.580 crime statistics like no blacks commit way more violent crime and it's shocking now i'm not

03:07:26.800 against black people but i wish he would apologize less and just present things um but i think he

03:07:33.640 struggles with a generational guilt of you know people in his age bracket and i think that's a

03:07:39.540 thing but overall like i said like i like alex jones i will admit i download i listen to his

03:07:45.840 show every single day um but only only since October I just started listening to his uh his

03:07:52.740 show again in October but I say a very long-winded way of saying I'm Alex Jones fan I'm not obsessed

03:08:00.480 but I do enjoy Alex Jones informative and entertaining what say you do you look like

03:08:09.540 you had something to add on that oh i was no i i um i think that that ultimately when he has those

03:08:16.080 apologetics it's again you you cannot go but so far before you know the realization that uh even

03:08:23.860 though he's criticizing israel as a modern state he is a christian by proclamation and so therefore

03:08:30.380 he can only go but so far i think also too you know he um has kind of low pinged the radar when

03:08:38.920 it comes to that kind of stuff as opposed to other people who speak very vocally um and are

03:08:44.160 proclaimed you know as anti-semitic and and alex jones is kind of 50 50 sometimes he's look oh he's

03:08:51.280 an anti-semit and then other times it's like oh you know he's just a crazy old boomer so that's

03:08:56.200 the thing is he's i think alex jones is fundamentally very honest i don't think he is

03:09:01.520 uncomfortable i think he is uncomfortable with honest things he discovers so i think his discomfort

03:09:08.000 comes out when he says things he's no he's he's not supposed to say but are true i think he has

03:09:15.840 to like couch them in a certain amount of and we all have those things we're hung up on um i have

03:09:22.600 grown tremendously in my understanding of the world and at different times in my life i've

03:09:28.620 struggled with having to do that on a lot of things i i get it um some of his stuff like 0.96

03:09:35.440 Oh, they're turning the frogs gay. 0.96

03:09:38.480 But they were, in fact, turning the frogs gay. 0.97

03:09:41.440 Like, it's a thing. 0.87

03:09:43.660 You know, he called 9-11 before it happened when nobody else did.

03:09:49.680 And I'm pretty sure Alex Jones didn't do it.

03:09:52.120 He just saw things lining up a certain way, and he called it.

03:09:55.180 He's on record.

03:09:56.220 And people kind of go back and like, no, that happened. 0.97

03:09:59.940 He's called a lot of things, and he calls it in a ridiculous, silly, takes his shirt off and, like, yells about it in a way. 0.83

03:10:10.120 But the substance is often very, very correct.

03:10:16.820 And so, yeah, what I think is going to be maybe our real last question, unless we talk over long and another one sneaks in.

03:10:25.320 So I didn't acknowledge that either.

03:10:27.520 I want to acknowledge that, too.

03:10:29.940 um not often lost says a quick thank you to swan and matt for holding these weekly meetings i

03:10:39.120 really appreciate hearing from you both directly at link thank you for saying so i'm glad um

03:10:45.040 yeah i appreciate you saying so we love doing this something i look forward to all the time

03:10:50.560 and i really hope that it's valuable to people and i appreciate you being in the audience and

03:10:55.140 asking questions and so he is the the guy that asked this last question i say the guy i don't

03:11:00.420 know he is the person who asked this last question can you please speak to the notion of suicidal

03:11:08.420 empathy in christianity it's fun do you want to take that first yeah it's easy um christianity

03:11:15.380 when you hear the the christ bros say you know i came not to bring peace but the sword

03:11:20.820 they always leave out the rest of that verse and that is suicidal empathy the sword to do what

03:11:28.780 yeah oh well i pulled it up because i knew we were going to talk about this and i was like oh

03:11:34.600 i gotta hit this one um when it comes to it's in it's in matthew and he says um you know i do not

03:11:45.160 come. Do not think I came to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword

03:11:52.760 or I have come to set man against his father and the daughter against his mother or her mother 0.64

03:11:59.760 and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and a person's enemies will be those of their

03:12:06.300 own household. For whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.

03:12:12.980 and whoever loves a son or daughter more than me if you love your sons and daughters

03:12:19.700 more than sky rabbi you do not deserve his love um this is uh suicidal empathy is really just a

03:12:31.280 breakdown of the framework of society and that's what makes christianity so paradoxical

03:12:39.180 it was highly bent on destroying the roman empire's moral framework of society and then in turn it had

03:12:50.460 to very quickly build up its own in order to maintain structure by the time of the rise of

03:12:54.680 the holy roman empire so it becomes paradoxical but i love to bring that up because that is

03:13:00.860 suicidal empathy. The idea is you love someone, a stranger who loves Christ more than you will

03:13:09.720 love your father or mother who either does not know him or rejects him outright. Those bonds of

03:13:17.680 birth, those bonds of guidance, those bonds of protection mean nothing. And I think this was

03:13:24.640 ultimately like the downfall what was that tubby bastard who ran um he ran the trad workers party 0.97

03:13:32.780 oh um heimbach heimbach the old yeah the pack of the pack of sausages neck um that guy and a lot 0.89

03:13:44.280 of the guys that followed him i argued with them a lot online but he was his downfall the one thing

03:13:49.800 that really you know brought his um fabulousness down was when he said you know i share more with

03:13:57.800 a christian from africa than i do with a european who is a pagan that is suicidal empathy that's a

03:14:05.880 more blatant version of it flag on the play i don't like the term because i don't think the

03:14:15.400 terms accurate i don't think it's based on empathy it's not based on putting yourself in the other

03:14:22.360 person's place and then relating your feeling to them it is a humiliation ritual because the only

03:14:30.600 way you are acceptable to their god is through completely debasing yourself and that's kind of

03:14:39.800 of the one of the biggest and most important themes to this and it goes to what is commonly

03:14:47.720 talked about is um suicidal empathy but i don't think it's just that because it's not you should

03:14:56.340 love everybody it is you should love everybody but you should love your enemy and that's a

03:15:04.320 different thing. That's not empathy. That's groveling. That's gross. A general love for all

03:15:15.200 of humanity may or may not be a good thing. A particular love for your enemy and refusal to

03:15:25.720 respond in kind when you are mistreated is a different kind of thing. It's not empathy when

03:15:34.220 we see this race and we saw this really recently publicly with um charlie kirk's murder his widow

03:15:41.420 racing to see how fast she can apologize the man who killed her husband and the father of her

03:15:49.400 children it's gross like my wife and i and i appreciate that i found a good woman who

03:15:59.920 agrees with me on this it is disgusting when we watch the parents of murdered or abused children

03:16:10.240 race to forgive their you know the person who killed or abused their children

03:16:19.340 or to see people's family rush to forgive the murderer of their kin that's not empathy

03:16:28.920 There's no empathy to that. That is just self-diminishment and let's deny our most basic instincts to elevate the very worst amongst us.

03:16:45.680 And some of it goes to the very root of that theology. And this is a big part of why I left Christianity.

03:16:51.920 The disgusting level of, like, jealousy and vanity of their God. 0.71

03:17:10.400 One of the biggest themes of Christianity is that there is one, man is not saved by works, but by faith.

03:17:26.580 The idea that, and specifically that none should boast.

03:17:33.460 This idea that the only thing that saves you is you believing in Jesus

03:17:40.660 and giving yourself up to God and his Prince, Jesus.

03:17:47.500 What is the term? 1.00

03:17:49.700 There is no Jew. 1.00

03:17:50.840 There is no Gentile. 0.57

03:17:52.400 There is no slave. 0.99

03:17:53.920 There is no free man.

03:17:54.820 They are all united in Christ.

03:17:57.240 Well, yeah, he is the way, the truth, and the light.

03:17:59.740 And there's no way to the Father but through him.

03:18:04.020 The only thing that qualifies you is Jesus.

03:18:07.960 And they forgive you of every slight you do to another human.

03:18:13.180 Because the only thing that matters is that you submit to their God.

03:18:20.480 He can't stomach a mortal taking any kind of pride in any level of accomplishment. 0.99

03:18:29.740 That's gross and disgusting. 0.96

03:18:34.800 And the biggest thing that pointed that out to me was all of the nomenclature of him as heavenly fathers, as a father figure. 0.95

03:18:45.280 I could not imagine if my daughter came in here super proud of a picture that she drew or a thing that she made.

03:18:55.520 and me being so offended that I needed to take credit for it.

03:19:00.960 Like, how dare you be proud of something you did?

03:19:04.740 And I'm just some dude.

03:19:07.440 I'm not the God of the universe. 0.94

03:19:12.260 That's disgusting.

03:19:13.640 And I don't think that it's, again, I don't think that it's about empathy.

03:19:19.400 This equality of people isn't because you're so empathetic to the migrant or empathetic to the criminal.

03:19:27.860 It's you're taught to forgive the unforgivable as a way of you submitting to all people are worthless before Yahweh. 0.63

03:19:40.560 And that's terrible.

03:19:44.040 It's terrible to us.

03:19:46.580 It's terrible to them, whoever them might be, but it is a constant act of humiliating yourself before your foes.

03:20:02.780 And we see that with the Pope, you know, washing everybody's feet all the time and stuff.

03:20:09.880 There are these rituals where you are celebrating people that are not worthy of celebration.

03:20:18.000 And I think that, and specifically when you pair it with the Sermon on the Mount, it's not about empathy.

03:20:26.800 It's a deliberate assault on the heroic in order to level the playing field.

03:20:34.300 You know, it is anti-success and pro-losers so that we are all unified in worthlessness before their God.

03:20:47.720 And that is antithetical to everything I believe.

03:20:52.160 And one of the reasons that I'm here and not there, probably the biggest reason I'm here and not there, is the realization of, whoa, this is wrong.

03:21:02.020 I don't know what's right yet but this is wrong and if this is all there is I want to be on the

03:21:08.000 other side and that opened my that freed me to come back home to Ausitru and back home to what's

03:21:15.420 natural and makes sense you know we naturally empathy is wonderful empathy being able to feel

03:21:23.040 what someone else is feeling and approach other beings from a point of understanding that way is

03:21:30.320 beautiful. Humiliating yourself in front of your foes is a

03:21:36.140 very different thing. You know, I can empathize with a lot of

03:21:41.800 people who are on the other team, it doesn't mean I'm giving

03:21:44.120 them my stuff. It means like, hey, I get you, I see where

03:21:46.900 you're coming from. But you stay over there on that side of that

03:21:50.060 line, and we're gonna have problems. Like that's

03:21:52.980 empathetic. But that's not what's being taught. That's not

03:21:56.520 what um that religion is taught and then sure enough we did uh i i specifically flapped my

03:22:04.920 gums a lot on that so we got the next question uh if you still have time and i'm joking about all

03:22:12.520 that i've got all night we got as much time to answer any questions you guys have we love doing

03:22:16.440 this this is i look forward to this all week um if you still have time thank you for sharing uh

03:22:22.840 those were great thoughts to hear another thought that is on my mind a lot is that christianity has

03:22:28.600 been the spiritual path of my ancestors for the last 800 to 900 years and the end result is that

03:22:34.840 we are dying as a people do you have any thoughts on that we have infinite thoughts on that well and

03:22:43.080 you kind of where would you like to start with some of your thoughts on that you were kind of

03:22:47.640 heading in a direction when we talked about becoming free, coming home. I think that is

03:22:53.840 the end result. Just as we had talked in the culmination of all the things that we talked

03:22:57.540 about, perhaps the political unification of the church allowed Europe to better defend

03:23:05.820 itself against the incursion of an external threat, an alien threat, even though that

03:23:13.980 which they used to unify themselves was alien as well um we are coming to the point now where our

03:23:20.760 people must survive and what that really comes down to is they must come home and those two are

03:23:29.340 parallel they're analogous to each other so it is important that everyone here say i know that a lot

03:23:36.640 of folks don't want to say we don't proselytize we don't do this we don't do that no um it is about

03:23:43.220 telling people, look at the folly of this. Look at the fallacy of this. Look at what it's doing

03:23:50.920 wrong. And look at the people who have to drastically change what is clearly written in the

03:23:55.660 book in order to substantiate correct thought. A lot of these Christ bros, these Christian 0.92

03:24:03.200 nationalists, these semi or fully religious fascistic folks, they are clearly going against

03:24:13.460 what is written. And the cognitive dissonance is so loud in the room that I think it's imperative

03:24:24.240 that we just simply speak the truth. You don't need this book. You don't need this text. You

03:24:30.580 don't need this rabbinical law you don't need this covenant what you need to do is come home

03:24:34.840 and you need to live a religion in the now instead of constantly slipping and sliding

03:24:42.060 on your belly in preparation for the punishment of a foreign god upon your soul um

03:24:50.420 so i i yeah i just i think that unification coming home and blatantly showing people with

03:25:00.000 honest and sincerity this does not say what it truly takes this does not have the spirit

03:25:06.960 of what people need in order to thrive anymore

03:25:14.000 yeah i

03:25:23.920 so the way the question is posited you know we've spent a thousand years

03:25:30.880 under this veil of

03:25:37.440 outwardly you know where this christianity it has built within us a deep

03:25:45.680 self-loathing and you know as the bible says a house divided against itself can't stand

03:25:53.600 it is intentionally meant to sow that kind of division to bring us all to our knees

03:25:59.800 internally we have been made to feel guilty for the things that we know are true and right and

03:26:08.160 just and to try to force ourselves into something that isn't and the extent that europe has been

03:26:18.320 glorious in that is us acting contrary to the teachings of

03:26:22.580 Christ. And then we have this guilt complex that yeah, we got

03:26:28.440 to do these things, but then we've got to like reconcile it

03:26:32.000 with something that's irreconcilable. The freeing

03:26:36.860 feeling the liberation of just stop pretending and be real

03:26:45.460 lets you and this is i don't know that this addresses the question in the way that you

03:26:50.500 asked it but i do think that it is my answer and is meaningful to it um

03:27:03.380 you don't convert to aussitrew you revert to aussitrew when you cast off the foreign

03:27:14.740 shackles you return to your natural state of being all of a sudden you don't have to feel guilty

03:27:24.760 for all of the noble inclinations of your soul you don't have to feel guilty for the noble

03:27:35.560 inclinations of your sex you don't have to feel guilty for prioritizing family and people and race

03:27:48.040 above humanity you don't have to do that you can be proud you can be proud of who you are

03:27:58.360 as an individual you can be proud of who you are as a race you can be proud of your family

03:28:04.680 you'd be proud of your accomplishments and you can do great things in order to achieve fame and

03:28:13.880 success and not feel bad about that you can live boldly without giving yourself a complex um

03:28:28.200 there's a beauty in being able to come home to what's natural

03:28:32.280 and to stop the mental gymnastics.

03:28:36.940 And that's why we describe, you know, it's longstanding

03:28:40.580 and long before I became the Al's Heria Gothi,

03:28:44.000 kind of the AFA slogan is about roots, it's about connections,

03:28:48.100 it's about coming home.

03:28:51.480 You come home to Ausatru. 0.96

03:28:55.300 This is what your soul was designed to be

03:28:58.420 in relation to the gods that designed that very soul.

03:29:04.180 And yeah, it's sad to think of the thousand years

03:29:10.160 that we lost and that we could have done so much better in

03:29:16.600 and been so much further ahead in.

03:29:18.900 But we don't need to cast off all of the progress

03:29:22.120 that we've made as a people.

03:29:23.660 We need to reintegrate that with the spirituality that was left off way back when and nurture our soul to keep up with our technological progress and meet us where we are and lead us into the future.

03:29:42.300 and we need to learn the lessons of the past that allowed us to be brought under the yoke of

03:29:51.800 christianity and be resolved not to repeat those to fix the things that were broken we talked about

03:29:57.740 earlier in this in this broadcast we should have been unified under house to true and we weren't

03:30:04.160 let's fix that and be unified.

03:30:08.140 We should have had the infrastructure as a faith that we lacked,

03:30:15.340 that Christianity in the early papal administration had.

03:30:21.740 Let's build that.

03:30:24.080 We should have had the strength of writing and communication

03:30:30.020 and codifying our beliefs and having that system in place.

03:30:35.420 It wasn't in place when we needed it.

03:30:37.780 Let's build it and make sure it's in place now.

03:30:40.500 Let's learn those lessons.

03:30:42.720 We owe that to our ancestors.

03:30:45.760 Another quick question.

03:30:47.240 I'm a member and trying to figure out how to start with worship.

03:30:52.520 What's something simple that you would recommend doing on a weekly basis?

03:30:57.860 Svani.

03:31:00.980 Okay. I have actually recently been talking to my son. He's passed his man-making, and he is tackling the spiritual for young men. I think that's something, the world is bigger than them, but they are so dependent kind of on the material and the physicality of the world that it's kind of hard to broach.

03:31:21.640 So I told him something very simple.

03:31:26.240 I said, if you get a bowl and you get a cup, if you fill the cup up and you drink from it, that cup becomes you.

03:31:35.740 And if you pour that into the bowl, that bowl being the gods, there is a deed of transference of physical substance between you to the deed and the divine around you.

03:31:49.320 And that is symbolic in that.

03:31:51.640 So if you take that cup and you gift over to the gods through the bowl, you are physically making this transfer.

03:32:00.140 And then I suggested to him that he come with three things after he sips and pours, that he comes with a statement, with a question, and with an observation.

03:32:15.660 and so uh not necessarily in this order but the idea of the statement being simple as i give this

03:32:24.480 to you to better understand or to to take away my ignorance of the of everything around me

03:32:32.640 um and then to ask what when i go forth from here what must i do to be better in your eyes

03:32:42.780 and third and and and lastly is an observation is is more or less i will continue to do this

03:32:50.360 or i intend to do this or i am doing this to return home it's it's it's a blanket statement

03:32:57.680 that that tells yourself why you're there and then at the same time the other two are

03:33:04.100 pointed towards the external or that which is outside of you which is the divine the divine

03:33:10.540 reflection in that which is the physical world um that might be overly complicated but you could

03:33:17.560 take something from that i think ultimately though once per week taking something physical

03:33:25.460 and transferring it to a bowl and having a sincere moment with the divine or with your ancestry

03:33:33.400 in that act of transference that that nexus point of the gifting where something comes from you and

03:33:42.560 is no longer a part of you but given unto them is a repeated act that i think leads us

03:33:51.100 sets up the guideposts so that when we go from that place and we live our lives we gain great

03:33:57.480 wisdom from it. And it's kind of constantly regrounding yourself. It's the watering of your

03:34:04.240 roots. It's the continual action of gifting. It doesn't have to be perfect. Don't get into

03:34:11.960 analysis paralysis. It can be water. It can be milk. It can be wine. It could be dependent

03:34:18.020 greatly upon how you feel. And in your mind, you should understand that it could change in the

03:34:22.320 future. As you grow more accustomed to being culturally inundated in Ausitru, your expressions

03:34:28.560 may change. Right now, the very basic, at the very beginning, is about doing a deed of transference

03:34:36.160 and gifting with your sincere intention placed upon the table outside of yourself. I think a lot

03:34:44.000 of people either don't do that, or they are so inundated by Christian thought that they

03:34:52.380 internalize prayer, they speak about perhaps themselves, or the only third position that

03:35:00.200 they attack or talk about is via a book. No, but what I'm ultimately getting at is these questions,

03:35:08.380 these statements and these observations help move your soul and your mind away from yourself

03:35:15.340 and towards the deed of making connection and relationship with the gods they may show up in

03:35:24.540 your life in ways that are more intimate to you i'm very weary when i meet people that are like

03:35:29.900 i had a dream about the gods and you know he had a big giant helmet and um you know he had like

03:35:34.460 wolf underwear and a big double-headed axe it was awesome um because i feel like they're kind of

03:35:41.500 padding perhaps some fake framework but when they sincerely reach out and they know that someone in

03:35:51.420 the room in a dream who's telling them something of great importance is not them is not their

03:35:58.380 ancestors it is the divine reaching out to them and telling them a path to take that is the start

03:36:05.900 of kind of really beginning to understand this is a living religion it's not about placating

03:36:12.140 a divine form to get out of trouble at the end of school no it's about physically giving up

03:36:20.380 self stepping outside of yourself to have a relationship with the gods that can show you

03:36:30.380 ways in the world towards better things towards a better self there's a better

03:36:35.580 community all of that but it all starts with again that gifting cycle

03:36:46.460 all of that um

03:36:50.380 So, as opposed to suicidal empathy, I think empathy becomes something we should think about in terms of our relationship with the divine.

03:37:05.020 so we should

03:37:14.500 think that the very least the gods are

03:37:20.660 is the very best imaginable version of people

03:37:24.800 that we can come up with

03:37:26.340 they are much better than that

03:37:29.220 but that's a place for us to start

03:37:33.440 So the gods, and I believe this fully, whatever you do in your worship should be from the heart in the best way that you know how to express that.

03:37:54.060 And when I say this, some people that like to script their bloats or like to compose a poem or plan what they're going to say.

03:38:06.220 If that is authentic to them and that's the way that they are able to best present themselves authentically to the gods, I don't fault that.

03:38:14.980 I am much more comfortable just speaking from the heart because I get lost in trying to memorize something or trying to do a complex sequence of things.

03:38:30.260 But the gods see through all of our pretension or all of our nonsense.

03:38:37.560 You cannot fool the gods with whatever way you want to present yourself.

03:38:44.980 the gods know who you are at least as much as they care to

03:38:53.300 you so any any pretense before them is just insulting maybe at best it's comical and they

03:39:02.580 chuckle um but you're not fooling anybody so rather than say things you don't mean

03:39:12.180 or being grandiose i think you're much better served to start out simply

03:39:19.620 um and i look at it this way and it sounds cheesy and i don't mean it that way

03:39:27.940 but it's like when a child says something nice to you or gives you some stick figure drawing that

03:39:35.300 they drew you don't need stick figure drawings that look terrible but it's the effort that

03:39:43.380 they thought you would like this thing and that they gave it to you and that's beautiful and

03:39:48.660 touching the gods don't need anything from you the effort and the thought of you giving them something

03:39:59.460 means something to them and is meaningful.

03:40:04.100 So I would keep it simple, and I would be very honest.

03:40:09.320 Don't claim that you have some devotion you don't have.

03:40:13.280 Don't claim that you're anything more or anything less than you are.

03:40:18.820 But be open-hearted and open-minded.

03:40:22.900 And if you've never interacted with the gods before,

03:40:26.420 It's very easy to go in with a mindset of skepticism or, you know, or whatever.

03:40:40.480 And a little bit of that, depending on where you come from, makes sense.

03:40:44.800 But I challenge you to open yourself, open your mind, open your heart.

03:40:48.320 The best things that I ever did was when I first came home to House of True,

03:40:56.100 and I didn't know anything, and I wanted to start somewhere with my worship practice,

03:41:01.900 I would set up an altar, and I remember exactly where I was.

03:41:07.560 I was at my mom's house for whatever reason.

03:41:09.900 I think she was out of town because I was an adult by then,

03:41:13.480 but I was at my mom's house.

03:41:15.180 and i uh set up an altar space on top of a dresser i didn't have you know statues of the

03:41:25.780 gods or anything fancy i had a candle and i made you know i i resolved to do like a week

03:41:36.440 with a number of our gods and i forget how many are just all of which ones but a certain number

03:41:44.560 of them a week at a time i was gonna read the lore that was available about them and then

03:41:53.040 go before the altar light a candle make an offering and it was very simple and the one

03:42:00.480 that i remember and i think with all of them it was you know some kind of uh you know

03:42:07.760 like i'd pour them a shot and then i would take a shot and we would share a drink and

03:42:12.720 And just say, hey, I'm, you know, sometimes I think with a stick of incense also.

03:42:19.240 And, you know, I will always remember the, I think the Odin one was well received.

03:42:28.140 But the offering I made to Freya, I really felt powerfully like she received and like that went well.

03:42:37.340 and it was so just silly and you know whatever but it was well-intentioned

03:42:42.860 I knew that gold was special to Freya and that she had two cats that pulled her chariot

03:42:50.760 and this would have been way cuter if I was like seven but I wasn't I was like 20 or something

03:43:00.200 um but I got some fancy feast because she had some cats and it was fancy and I opened it up

03:43:09.140 and I had uh a shot glass of uh of Goldschlager and I took a shot and I poured her a shot

03:43:15.920 and just said you know hey I'm here I'm trying to come home I'm reaching out

03:43:24.500 I would like to build a relationship with you

03:43:29.600 and I'm here and I'm listening

03:43:32.120 and I sat there and did some meditation

03:43:36.640 in front of the altar

03:43:37.740 and kind of absorbed things

03:43:40.520 and collected myself

03:43:42.120 and from such a small

03:43:47.120 and I don't know insignificant offering

03:43:50.140 I feel like I was very very blessed

03:43:52.740 And I feel like that doing that, not just to her, but to many of our gods at that time, really opened all of this and opened my heart up to letting the Aesir in.

03:44:09.880 And that brought me to where I am today.

03:44:12.960 And I don't remember all of the gods that I made offerings to or just how that all worked in order.

03:44:18.960 I made it to many, but I don't want to misspeak.

03:44:22.320 But I know that specifically I did this with Thor and with Odin and with Freya, with Bragi.

03:44:31.860 And I believe that I did it with many others, but that's the ones that I remember.

03:44:38.020 Oh, and with Tyr, very specifically.

03:44:41.460 And with Freya.

03:44:44.140 And I invited them in.

03:44:47.740 And it is simple and it's not a lot, but it meant a lot in my development in my life.

03:44:56.220 And I think that it initiated my participation in that gift cycle.

03:45:04.180 Our gods have given us, you know, consciousness and goodly hue and all of the things that make up our soul and make up our existence.

03:45:13.920 so they put the gift cycle into motion it's on us to reciprocate our end and then it keeps going

03:45:23.660 and so i think that started that cycle going in my life and it's led me here in a really

03:45:31.940 beautiful way and so i would suggest doing something simple and similar to that

03:45:39.060 um but yeah that'd be my suggestion appreciate you guys being here this evening i will figure

03:45:47.700 out what the game plan is for next week between now and then um next time i get together with

03:45:54.180 svan here we will finish out the poetic edda um the plan is to go and i know that all of these

03:46:05.860 poems at the end about the uh the volsung saga it's a lot it's a lot and soul fragments and

03:46:15.300 a lot of you guys are looking for the higher mythology stuff and i think we'll hit that

03:46:21.220 pretty quick when we go into um the prosetta and i'm very excited to get in the guild forgetting

03:46:27.700 because that is such a foundational text that poem if there's only one you can read

03:46:37.300 that one tells you about what aussitrew is

03:46:42.340 um so i'm excited to go through this with you guys i appreciate y'all um

03:46:50.180 so you will i will see you guys during you but you will is going to start

03:46:54.180 here uh before i see y'all next so stuff to kind of be on your radar tomorrow is the very first

03:47:03.220 day of remembrance of king seward uh one of the kings of essex that brought our faith back to our

03:47:14.740 folk for a time there with his brother and fought against that tide we celebrate him for the first

03:47:22.340 time tomorrow. So please join us in doing that. Coming up on Saturday, Saturday will be Mother's

03:47:29.660 Night and the start of Yule. Celebrate Yule. Celebrate Yule with other Alcetruar. Celebrate

03:47:36.740 with your family. If it's just you at your altar, it's not just you at your altar. It's you with

03:47:43.300 your gods and your ancestors. Bring them in and celebrate Yule this season. It's going to be

03:47:51.120 awesome. I look forward to seeing you this time next week, if you can make it to a Hoff. So here's

03:47:56.380 the other thing. Reduce my calendar here. Nuff and Laust, who is in fact a male, they assure us

03:48:06.720 in the chat on side. I don't know where you're at. If you're close to a Hoff, each and every one of

03:48:12.860 our Hoffs are celebrating you all this Saturday. If you can make it there, you should. Anyone

03:48:20.460 listening to this.

Asatru Folk Assembly - December 18, 2025

12⧸17⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Ep 180 - Atlamál hin groenlenzku

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