Asatru Folk Assembly - 9⧸17⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 167 - Guðrúnarkviða in fyrsta

00:00:00.000 Transcribed by ESO, translated by —

00:00:30.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:01:00.000 Thank you.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 hello ladies and gentlemen welcome to this week's exciting edition of victory never sleeps

00:03:14.400 i am joined tonight by witness fawn harrell who and we are going to talk about a

00:03:21.760 a small um a small poem in the editor night uh the guth run raqveda uh in firsta so

00:03:40.880 appreciate that anyways we're gonna we're gonna hit that tonight um

00:03:46.080 It is likely a very old poem, but it's rather small.

00:03:54.540 As always, we're going to talk about topics that you guys ask us about over in the side chat, so we encourage that, certainly.

00:04:08.580 Coming up in October, we are celebrating winter nights for the second time.

00:04:16.080 um at othala acres in new hampshire so we're very excited for that it was really cool last year

00:04:26.640 that's at the property of our folk builder there ron boardman him and his family were excellent

00:04:32.640 hosts i look forward to seeing them again here in a little bit even about a month so that's october

00:04:41.520 10th through the 12th if you're able to make it. Again, that's in New Hampshire. We'd love to see

00:04:46.880 all of our family, all of our AFA family in that part of the country, or if you can make it there

00:04:52.380 from wherever you find yourself, please do so. If you are not a member and you're interested in

00:04:59.460 attending, please reach out to any of us, but in particular your local folk builder, they can get

00:05:05.800 you all set up. If you are a member and you want to attend and you'd like to know more, folk builders

00:05:11.060 can also tell you more about it we'd love to see you guys there um yeah it's gonna be a very nice

00:05:17.220 event it's beautiful in that part of the country uh in that part of the fall gonna be you know

00:05:24.980 really special i kind of look forward to it every year we always do winter nights over in

00:05:31.060 in the northeast there and uh yeah i'm really looking forward to it that's coming up also um

00:05:38.980 because i'll let you guys know weekly update on where we're at as far as phraseoff fundraising

00:05:44.900 you guys continue to be extremely generous we have um

00:05:51.540 eighteen thousand one hundred and ninety five dollars so far for that effort so that's awesome

00:05:58.980 guys that is amazing it's in a relatively short amount of time um like that's about

00:06:05.860 three and a half months worth of fundraising so you guys have been extremely generous

00:06:13.460 if you're interested and if you're able runestone.org donate has a lot of options of things

00:06:20.820 you can donate to including the phrase off donation but yeah you guys have been amazingly

00:06:25.380 generous we appreciate you uh thank you uh angela donated fifty dollars towards that phrase off

00:06:34.260 Fund and $50 Schwartz Folk Services. Andy and I got married on Sunday, and we'd like to thank

00:06:44.300 Al's Heria Gauthier, Flabel, and Witten's Fawn for their advice for the ceremony, and folkbuilder

00:06:49.320 Tyler Saugert and Mrs. Saugert for a wonderful bloat they performed for us. Thank you. Well,

00:06:56.260 congratulations. That's awesome news, and I am very happy for you both.

00:07:00.800 that said

00:07:04.560 uh what's fun is there anything that folks need to know before we go into the text tonight and

00:07:13.000 i suppose i should also plug we take it for granted i apologize if you are following along

00:07:18.540 we are going to be reading on veluspau.org um you're welcome to follow along in whatever

00:07:26.480 translation you happen to have. That one is a convenient and easy one for you to get to if

00:07:32.860 you're looking online. Nick's got the link up for you, but that's where we're going to be reading

00:07:39.020 directly. But again, as always, whatever translation you have, maybe yours has something

00:07:43.500 interesting that ours does not. So feel very free to do that. And yeah, Svon, the floor is yours.

00:07:53.560 What do folks need to know before we get into the text this evening?

00:07:58.200 Well, so as we've been doing this adventure of going through the Volsunga saga and then other

00:08:06.280 angles, one of the big things is understanding different poets contributing different things

00:08:17.160 to the story uh different perspectives different motifs um perhaps uh you know

00:08:25.400 with with fafnir there's this dripping sense of doom he's dying but he knows what's coming

00:08:34.040 for sigurd and it is far worse because it's a treacherous death um where he's he's deceived

00:08:42.600 and and what have you um out of all of this there is gudrun and gudrun is truly

00:08:54.280 one of the most tragic or i would argue the most tragic um character in the stories so

00:09:04.760 just to give everyone a synopsis briefly um sigurd after slaying the dragon he meets brinhild the

00:09:18.200 valkyrie on top of the mountain well he leaves her there and when he goes to the where the um

00:09:29.560 I can't believe I forgot his name.

00:09:33.000 The king, Gudrun's father, Gyuki.

00:09:36.340 Gyuki is his name.

00:09:39.280 He goes to Gyuki's kingdom.

00:09:42.140 And Gyuki's wife, the queen at the time, 0.59

00:09:47.280 sees Sigurd and bewitches him with sorcery 0.74

00:09:52.440 so that he will forget Brynhild on the mountain

00:09:56.440 and fall in love with their daughter Gudrun and Gudrun doesn't know this she's not a conspirator

00:10:06.800 in the whole situation so this happens and Gudrun thinks that this is all genuine so

00:10:18.560 So, at this point, the poem is talking about Gudrun's reaction to her husband's death.

00:10:30.540 He has been assassinated by her brothers.

00:10:37.200 And there is a deep emotional pull in the poem.

00:10:46.800 um and at this point there is there are some tropes that are very interesting and there's

00:10:56.160 also a good note that even though this isn't probably the oldest poem this is very very old

00:11:06.320 so a lot of people think about oral traditions kind of changing but it's really worth noting that

00:11:13.600 all of this story originates in the migration era and on the eastern side of europe so amongst the

00:11:24.240 goths amongst the the uh you know therovingians and the heralds and all of the the folk that made

00:11:34.160 up the gothic empire um this is probably where this story originated

00:11:42.960 and gudrun is expressing her sorrow another thing is there is an arian trope of uh and i

00:11:58.640 maybe trope sounds bad there is this is almost necessary in our faith uh so much

00:12:11.520 so that it changed christianity gave it a trinity but the number three is so important so there are

00:12:19.600 three um women who express their sadness to good room and all the while she does not weep

00:12:35.760 so we we talked about that before with the uh lady of the hall poisoning a horn is an absolute sign 1.00

00:12:45.840 that everything in that hall is poisonous because the the feminine is directly connected to the 1.00

00:12:55.120 health of the hall and um it was to reach out to the audience and if they like a a queen poisoning

00:13:10.960 that's bad that the hall is corrupted but in this case one of the more unnerving things is that

00:13:18.320 her lack of tears she doesn't cry and it's not seen as emotionless but that she was outside of 0.79

00:13:30.320 her nature so i think it's worth pointing out that that expression of emotion amongst women

00:13:40.680 was seen as natural and anyone who didn't uh shed tears was seen as questionable um

00:13:55.160 so guthrun suddenly becomes questionable about this um and i i think that is important to 0.77

00:14:05.640 to point out but she is in the millstrom of her husband being tricked to fall in love with her

00:14:16.820 uh and the one that he originally fell in love with is a powerful

00:14:25.380 a demigod um Valkyrie and then he makes oaths with her brothers and all three of her brothers

00:14:37.960 are involved in the conspiracy to assassinate him it is kind of a moment of pause because I

00:14:46.920 I didn't really think about it till now

00:14:52.360 about the tragedy of Gudrun.

00:14:59.000 And so that's what this poem is.

00:15:01.760 This is the first poem or lay of Gudrun.

00:15:10.720 That's the name, the Gudrun,

00:15:15.320 the first means first so um there are other things and i i would also there are parts of

00:15:28.600 this poem that go all the way back to that migration era we can see it in the style that

00:15:38.120 it's written there is another one connected to all of this that is entirely but we see that pieces

00:15:47.880 fragments were carried on and then most likely expounded upon because they were lost over time

00:15:59.160 as people uh memorize these poems they don't memorize the entirety often their idea was to

00:16:07.320 memorize you know a few verses and multiple people would do that and it would kind of come

00:16:17.800 together if they were presenting it um in its entirety but um very very tragic just this is a

00:16:27.560 heavy one. All right. Well, that said, are you ready to take us into the text? Almost. I was

00:16:44.920 looking at another poem because I will take the time to thank GW Farnsworth as usual coming in

00:16:59.460 with the generosity $25 of VNS $25 phrase off and $50 to folk services thank you so much for your

00:17:07.920 consistent and much appreciated

00:17:10.580 generosity

00:17:11.300 yes

00:17:13.860 with these folk

00:17:16.220 that are giving

00:17:17.220 I mean

00:17:18.380 I have no doubt

00:17:21.360 you will

00:17:22.880 get us there

00:17:26.320 like they are

00:17:27.740 they are helping and you have the

00:17:30.260 drive the engine

00:17:31.980 and the church is working

00:17:33.620 for you so

00:17:35.060 it's

00:17:36.840 uh it's gonna be glorious yes indeed yes indeed yeah um another side note for folks

00:17:51.320 after the this the slaying of sigurd is convoluted through two stories as that in one he's mentioned

00:18:01.000 as biting the three brothers but the one that we read and the one that is in detail is that he is

00:18:10.840 sleeping next to his wife gudrun and they come into the hall and they have convinced the youngest

00:18:17.080 of the three brothers the eldest brother has convinced the youngest to initiate the attack

00:18:23.640 there's mention of dark sorcery in which he consumes wolf flesh and builds up his fervor

00:18:36.440 and because of the negative view of wolves amongst our ancestors at that time especially

00:18:44.640 And they attack and drive a spear through Sigurd.

00:18:53.740 So she is now at his side when all of this begins.

00:19:06.300 And it starts with a little pre-section before the actual verse begins.

00:19:14.640 Gudrun sat by dead Sigurd. She did not weep as other women, but her heart was near to bursting with grief.

00:19:30.400 The men and women came to her to console her, but that was not easy to do.

00:19:38.060 It is told of men that Gudrun had eaten of Fafnir's heart

00:19:46.200 and that she understood the speech of birds.

00:19:51.360 This poem is about Gudrun.

00:19:56.520 So one of the things worth noting too is this is entirely new.

00:20:03.440 The idea that Gudrun also ate of the blood or the, of the heart of the worm and was able to hear birds. Is this an aspect added in for better storytelling and better poetics?

00:20:27.720 most likely um because it wasn't mentioned anywhere else but another interesting thing

00:20:37.800 to think about is a lot of this poem is older than the nordic period so what if it's the other way

00:20:46.200 around, and the Nordic Volsunga saga was edited, if you will.

00:20:59.080 But in one, verse one, then did Gudrun think to die when she by Sigurd sorrowing sat.

00:21:14.220 tears she had not nor wrung her hands

00:21:20.180 nor ever wailed as other women and i think it's important too like this first verse is super clean

00:21:32.800 when it comes to understanding for me this log for me this log style always kind of it emphasizes

00:21:42.660 a consonant or a vowel in the beginning of the first sentence. And then it will emphasize

00:21:55.140 the next. But due to translations, that doesn't quite work out. But it still has the alliterative.

00:22:04.580 When she by sigurth sorrowing sat.

00:22:10.260 Now they're, again, utilizing alliterative rhyming.

00:22:17.460 Gunnar spake.

00:22:22.640 To her, the warriors, wise there came.

00:22:27.820 Longing her heavy woe to lighten.

00:22:30.780 Grieving could not Gudrun weep

00:22:34.660 So sad her heart it seemed would break

00:22:39.060 And bear in mind Gunnar is her brother

00:22:42.900 The one involved

00:22:47.000 They are all the son and daughter of King Gyuki

00:22:52.380 And he is speaking of her

00:22:57.420 At least that's my understanding of it

00:23:00.120 Then the wives of the warriors came, gold adorned, and Gudrun sought, each one of them, of her own grief spoke, the bitterest pain she had ever borne.

00:23:21.420 so at this point there seems to be this deep sense of um there's a drought of feeling there's

00:23:34.600 a drought of tears and this is unnerving in our culture of the woman not expressing tears but just

00:23:47.320 entering oblivion and 0.88

00:23:51.460 there is

00:23:56.300 the sense that these women are sought out

00:24:00.820 to break her from her

00:24:04.120 trance

00:24:06.460 and there's interesting stuff like again

00:24:12.140 gold adorned

00:24:14.340 um i think a lot of folks in aussitrew today are uh deeply uh

00:24:24.980 afflicted or you know they have a condition of like a sense of protestant modesty but our

00:24:32.900 ancestors did believe in adorning themselves with their riches and being of opulence especially in

00:24:42.180 royalty and um there's another thing one of the wives is mentioned specifically about being

00:24:53.220 uh queen of the huns and we know that they've been mentioned kind of peripherally but they're

00:25:03.300 she's never been mentioned and she is also an addition but she may be of the original

00:25:11.220 sourcing

00:25:12.700 consideration that

00:25:15.260 the Old Norse version happened

00:25:17.400 hundreds and hundreds

00:25:19.420 of years later.

00:25:20.920 So she may have been edited out.

00:25:26.920 So the bitterest pain she had ever

00:25:29.440 borne

00:25:29.880 in stanza four.

00:25:33.760 Then spoke

00:25:35.100 Gyao-Flao,

00:25:38.940 Yuki's

00:25:39.620 sister

00:25:40.120 This is Gudrun's father's sister, so her aunt is the first.

00:25:51.000 Most joyless of all on earth am I.

00:25:57.640 Husbands, five, were from me taken.

00:26:03.900 Two daughters then, and sisters, three.

00:26:07.540 Brothers hate, yet I have lived

00:26:12.440 The level of survivor guilt is clear

00:26:19.840 Here's another example of the level of

00:26:31.620 Humor

00:26:32.100 That our ancestors had to deal with

00:26:35.500 Especially in the royal courts

00:26:37.180 you know i'm not saying that it's any less in the lower rungs of society but

00:26:45.420 oh i was here to go there are you on mike

00:26:53.340 i still i'm still picking up audio just to let you know um

00:27:01.580 so uh

00:27:07.180 All of her husbands, five of them, taken from her.

00:27:13.780 She doesn't specify, you know, I'm assuming battle, but disease could be as well.

00:27:20.420 Just very, very brutal.

00:27:23.440 And even then they knew it was brutal.

00:27:26.480 um so in five grieving could not gudrun weep such grief she had for her husband dead

00:27:41.160 and so grim her heart by the hero's body.

00:27:51.400 Then Herborg spoke, the queen of the Huns. 0.98

00:27:57.980 She's the one I was referring to.

00:28:00.960 I have a greater grief to tell.

00:28:04.160 my seven sons in the southern lands and my husband fell in fight all eight

00:28:15.960 so she confirms it specifically to battle and that is a very interesting point

00:28:26.780 uh you know generally people think of the cartoonish sense that if you die in battle

00:28:35.560 you go to val hall or you go to valhalla and um you know that the the difference between

00:28:43.500 fighting in battles and being chosen and chosen doesn't always equate to death

00:28:50.180 but more so this shows the other side the grieving side and I think Snorri and kind of the after 0.75

00:29:01.020 Christianity they didn't understand how the the grieving process for people would be

00:29:12.900 and i don't think they changed any of this they just went with it but it's very very interesting

00:29:21.820 in relation to the opposite of what we've been told and i think that this is actually

00:29:28.680 more correct and it is again much older um so it does speak of the kind of the loss of the mother

00:29:39.220 um what the what the sister what the daughter may feel about the loss of the menfolk in their

00:29:46.880 family in their clan dying at war um and it's also interesting to think too

00:29:56.140 she is the queen of the huns so the southern land could be the days like thracian

00:30:03.820 And Dacians, actually, I think would be more correct time wise or even further with a great amount of the Gothic peoples actually coming out into the Aegean and kind of button hooking back to Athens and sacking Athens. 0.61

00:30:31.320 So maybe it's there. 0.91

00:30:33.820 Um, in seven, father and mother and brothers four amid the waves, the wind once smote and the seas crashed through the side of the ship.

00:30:51.840 so she lost her mother's her mother her brother her father and her brothers to a ocean

00:31:02.500 um and a lot of people might be wondering if uh she's the queen of the huns didn't they

00:31:10.840 just come from asia or eurasia and a lot of people forget about the black sea the caspian sea

00:31:21.840 vulgar river and uh there was a huge contingency of goths that moved down into the aegean sea and

00:31:36.400 um sacked athens and many other places around there

00:31:41.040 um while it was under roman control so anywhere of these could be um

00:31:47.920 and then she says the bodies all with my own hands then I decked for the grave and the dead

00:31:59.440 I buried a half year brought me this to bear and no one came to comfort me

00:32:09.280 Now, a couple of things. One, the poem consists of these queens telling Gudrun in comparison of woe.

00:32:26.300 Not to outdo her woe, but in order to tell her that she must grieve, she must let this out, she must go on and not be in this catatonic state.

00:32:47.140 And so we can kind of see culturally that idea of like a catatonic state of of a woman would be perceived as uncanny and unnatural.

00:33:00.980 And we also get a glimpse into the funerary practice.

00:33:07.600 She buried them.

00:33:08.920 And we have to understand that our ancestors buried and did cremation based on many different things.

00:33:19.300 There's not an ausitrue one-all catch-all throughout history.

00:33:27.860 Now it has become the preferred and predominant way of doing things.

00:33:35.020 And I would concur. I think that it is the best way to do this. But it was done because ultimately our folk, and especially the folk of the Germanic migration period, came from the same as the Dacians.

00:33:55.060 And, you know, these folks are the Kurgans, and the Kurgan is the burial mound.

00:34:02.820 So the burial mound never leaves, but it ends up becoming something more relegated towards perhaps royalty. 0.92

00:34:13.060 And maybe that's why she buried them and that the Barrow Mound being constructed is more geared towards royalty, whereas cremation is for the warriors.

00:34:29.740 And then, you know, kind of anyone that kind of falls out of that is it's variable and and is left to guess.

00:34:43.060 But she says that no one came to comfort her after half a year of the process of burying.

00:34:52.900 Grim to think about considering decomposition, but having to keep your loved ones around so that you could properly bury them, keeping them perhaps in a temporary place.

00:35:07.900 place um then she says then bound i was and taken in war so she was kidnapped from um

00:35:20.140 the enemy and that could happen at any time after since she no longer had her kinfolk to protect her

00:35:29.340 um a sorrow yet in the same half year they bade me deck and bind the shoes of the wife of the

00:35:42.140 monarch every morn so she became a thrall a slave working and i really love the fact that

00:35:52.960 There are some key words being utilized here that really start to pull and elevate our faith and just the imagery and the aesthetic of it out of shoulder pelts, face paint, Viking go bonk.

00:36:14.900 And we are, our ancestors are the royalty. They have royalty. They have lands. They have, you know, thanes, et cetera.

00:36:29.500 And I was just speaking to a member here in Thorshoff district about how I place that aesthetic upon the gods.

00:36:42.640 And that is, you know, a lot of people might look at Lord Thor in a certain way, but I look at him in a different way, like a regent and a defender of borders.

00:36:55.920 um anyways so 10 uh so she's wrapping this monarch's feet every morning and she's basically

00:37:07.180 a thrall and she says in jealous rage her wrath she spake and beat me oft with heavy blows oft

00:37:17.900 meaning often never a better lord i knew and never a woman worse i found

00:37:27.420 so very just kind of snapshots into

00:37:36.300 um these uh these lives and again implied that the queen hated her out of jealousy

00:37:45.980 perhaps a beauty or as or perhaps of honor or duty um but the king liked her but the queen

00:37:58.380 did not and we're still we're talking about hair uh herborg the um queen of the huns

00:38:06.700 Grieving could not Gudrun weep. So now we go back to the narration.

00:38:17.800 Grieving could not Gudrun weep. Such grief she had for her husband dead. And so grim her heart

00:38:26.260 by the hero's body. And this is a repeat of the exact same verse earlier on. And that again is

00:38:35.180 for the poet to kind of anchor okay i've done and memorized this section i repeat this verse and

00:38:43.740 then i will do this section so now shifting then spoke the third golond kyuki's daughter

00:38:55.420 thy wisdom finds not my foster mother the way to comfort the wife still young

00:39:02.780 she bade them uncover the warrior's corpse. The shroud she lifted from Sigurth laying,

00:39:13.420 his well-loved head on the knees of his wife. Look on thy loved one and lay thy lips to his

00:39:26.300 as if yet the hero lived so just in that those two stanzas one of the things i wanted to bring

00:39:34.220 up is you can already see the foundational work for medieval poetry we've talked often about how

00:39:44.620 how Christianity did not lay the seeds for knighthood and for chivalry. It was this age

00:39:55.520 in Europe and the poetics showing that there was these budding seeds of what would eventually

00:40:06.880 become the knights of Europe. And I think that if they were not interjected by the ursery

00:40:15.180 and the kind of scheming of the Catholic Church, they still would have. 0.87

00:40:24.220 so she bids her to kiss him on the lips once alone did Gudrun look his hair all

00:40:40.640 clotted with blood beheld the blind eyes that once shone bright the hero's breast

00:40:49.800 that the blade had pierced

00:40:52.880 then Gudrun bent

00:40:56.500 on her pillow bowed

00:40:58.640 her hair was loosened

00:41:00.800 her cheek was hot

00:41:04.440 and the tears like raindrops

00:41:08.140 downward ran

00:41:09.700 then gudrum daughter of gyuki wept and through her tresses flowed the tears and from the court

00:41:27.700 came the cry of geese the birds so fair of the hero's bride

00:41:34.500 and i think this is again either referring to the her fondness of geese or

00:41:44.020 i mean i don't know if we could go so far as to say that geese are somehow connected symbolically

00:41:52.760 um with death or grief i don't i don't know but um in this case you know i think it's

00:42:03.640 more about her fondness of them as if they were crying with her

00:42:11.480 then gold runs spake the daughter of gyuki never a greater love i knew than yours among all men on

00:42:22.520 earth this translation to uh men being all a mother all people not a gendered sense but um

00:42:39.560 she says to her and remember goldrond is is technically her sister or half-sister

00:42:46.040 i think she's her half sister um but that good room cared for her uh and

00:42:56.600 cared for her like a mother

00:43:00.280 and uh she says you know i've never known anyone greater in that has shown love and kindness to me

00:43:08.760 than you uh nowhere was i happy at home or abroad sister mine with sigurd away

00:43:20.440 so she's saying i i too share in the lament now that he he's a gone he's gone and um

00:43:29.640 now that he's when he was leaving traveling i was sad with you but now i am sad with you

00:43:37.560 in his passing um gudrun speaks in 18

00:43:46.760 so was my sigurd over gyuki's sons as the spear leak grown above the grass we see that again that

00:43:57.160 was in the volsung saga the idea of the leak or the spear leak the gar which is the spear

00:44:04.840 rising above the rest of the grass

00:44:08.420 or the jewel bright

00:44:13.540 born on the band

00:44:15.080 the headband

00:44:18.140 the precious stone that princes wear

00:44:21.800 to the leader of men

00:44:25.080 I loftier seemed

00:44:26.900 and higher than all 0.87

00:44:29.080 of Heron's maids

00:44:31.400 Hir-Yarn

00:44:33.880 Hir-Yarn 0.59

00:44:35.100 is Lord Oven 0.61

00:44:37.500 so

00:44:39.540 she's speaking about the Valkyries

00:44:41.480 and at that point that's when

00:44:43.520 the poem's starting to

00:44:45.220 shift in a direction

00:44:47.080 with purpose

00:44:49.100 as little

00:44:51.280 now as the leaf I am

00:44:53.600 on the willow hanging

00:44:55.620 the hero

00:44:57.580 is dead 1.00

00:44:58.580 in his seat in his bed i see no more my heart's true friend the fault is theirs the son of gyuki

00:45:13.420 her brothers for all my grief that so their sister sorely weeps

00:45:22.000 so this poem i cannot emphasize it's really well done and it is highly polished it's the

00:45:34.780 combination of really old with new and just really really good um 21

00:45:45.420 so shall your land and its people lose as ye have kept your oaths of yore

00:45:54.780 so basically she's saying your lands will be broken like the oaths you broke

00:46:02.240 um gunner no joy the gold shall give thee the ring shall soon thy slayers be

00:46:14.220 who swearest oaths with Sigurth once.

00:46:20.520 In the court was greater gladness than the day my Sigurth.

00:46:27.340 Granny saddled, granny is the horse, faithful horse of Sigurth, 0.60

00:46:33.100 and went forth Brynhild's hand to win that woman ill in an evil hour.

00:46:40.420 then so okay this is an interesting part Gudrun speaks in before 23 and then it immediately comes

00:46:54.460 out with then Brynhild spake and I've been looking at that spot to try to figure out

00:47:00.760 They're speaking in the past, or if there is a mistype here, and Brynhild now has entered the area near Gudrun.

00:47:15.460 But we'll read it as it is, and hopefully I can get some gleaning from it.

00:47:21.740 Then Brynhild spake, the daughter of Boothli, may the witch, now husband and children, want, who Gudrun loosed thy tears at last, and with magic today hath made thee speak.

00:47:41.740 so i'm taking this as

00:47:46.940 brinhild enters the hall the three ladies are there they're trying to console her

00:47:54.400 she finally drops tears and then brinhild shows up to see those tears she was not there before

00:48:04.520 and ultimately this was her doing

00:48:06.620 she shows up

00:48:09.040 after

00:48:09.760 so the three

00:48:13.000 ladies are still there with her

00:48:14.740 then Golrond 1.00

00:48:17.100 daughter of Gyuki 1.00

00:48:18.780 spoke

00:48:19.420 speak not such words thou hated

00:48:22.800 woman

00:48:23.280 bane of the noble 0.52

00:48:25.680 thou ever hast been

00:48:27.940 born thou art

00:48:29.840 on a full wave

00:48:31.320 sorrow hast brought

00:48:33.360 to seven kings, and many women has loveless maid. So the villainous nature of Brynhild

00:48:49.240 the Valkyrie is not understood till later on in the story. And it comes from a place

00:48:57.940 of vast and powerful emotion she loved sigurd and if she couldn't have sigurd because of

00:49:10.820 sorcery and oaths no one could and so that's kind of her position in this sense

00:49:20.560 And Galderon says it

00:49:26.400 You are a bane

00:49:28.300 Then Brynhild, daughter of Boothley, spake 1.00

00:49:32.880 Atli is guilty of all the sorrow

00:49:36.440 Son of Boothley and brother of mine

00:49:40.920 So this part is interesting because Atli is, of course, Attila

00:49:45.540 And the notes here

00:49:49.400 say that this stanza itself is in bad shape in the original

00:49:56.560 and may be of two separate stanzas.

00:50:03.100 But Attlee is Brynhild's brother

00:50:06.560 and she blames him, not herself.

00:50:13.720 That the warring between the brothers

00:50:16.300 is because of the warring that they had with Attlee.

00:50:21.580 And a lot of what Gunnar

00:50:24.700 marrying against his will, according to her,

00:50:33.380 and just how Sigurd kind of showed their cowardliness. 0.95

00:50:37.620 in 26 when we saw in the hall of the hunnish race the flame of the snake's bed flash round

00:50:57.060 the hero for the journey sense full sore have i paid and ever i seek the sight to forget 0.90

00:51:05.320 But ever since Sigurd showed up in the capital or the land of the Huns, in the main place, the flame of the snake's bed is gold.

00:51:23.300 It's a kenning for the bed upon which a dragon sits.

00:51:27.620 And she says, I have cursed that moment on

00:51:36.400 By the pillars she stood and gathered her strength

00:51:42.900 From the eyes of Brunhild, Boothley's daughter

00:51:46.780 Fire there burned and venom she breathed

00:51:52.040 When the wounds she saw on Sigurd then

00:51:56.040 so she lays eyes on Sigurd and she sees the deed that she ultimately orchestrated

00:52:01.980 and she grabs the pillar as she is again overtaken by these emotions

00:52:09.740 Gudrun went thence away to a forest in the waste and journeyed all the way to Denmark

00:52:17.880 and was there seven and a half years with Thora, daughter of Halkan.

00:52:25.960 Brynhild would not live after Sigur.

00:52:30.380 She had eight of her thralls slain and five serving women,

00:52:38.800 and then she killed herself upon the sword.

00:52:41.560 as it is told in the short lay of Sigurd.

00:52:49.400 So this is also referencing another poem.

00:52:53.300 And this brings us to the end, an abrupt end.

00:53:00.340 She leaves because it's so far gone with Brynhild and her brothers. 0.98

00:53:08.000 leaves goes to denmark and she then performs a ritual in which she slays eight of her thralls 0.96

00:53:22.420 and her serving women and then kills herself so that she can go and be on the other side 0.97

00:53:30.500 with 1.00

00:53:31.760 her love.

00:53:35.560 And it's just, again,

00:53:37.040 almost kind of vacuumous at the end.

00:53:40.080 And then it's

00:53:42.060 abrupt.

00:53:45.360 Well, thank you, Svon, for

00:53:47.040 reading that. Like I said, guys,

00:53:49.200 it's not a long one this week.

00:53:51.480 Ironically,

00:53:52.460 the next one we're going to read

00:53:54.940 is

00:53:56.100 almost thrice this long,

00:53:58.740 and it is the

00:54:00.500 The short, the, what the short lay of cigarette. So it's oddly named, but yeah, we're going to read that here next time. It's 70 something stanzas.

00:54:17.500 this is really well composed uh the imagery is really powerful and i like to

00:54:34.140 i like to look at these fragments and pieces and stories in the edda as being

00:54:41.180 stuff to add to and like background and depth material for the volsunga saga

00:54:47.500 It's interesting, the Niblungenlied was written near the same time as the Walsunga Saga was recorded.

00:55:05.300 and when you read the the writing they appear to take place at different uh

00:55:12.580 different periods in in history because i think a lot of the time at least when i read it

00:55:21.140 it reads as though in the niblungen lead it's you know current to the author writing

00:55:27.860 And I think in the Volsunga saga, it's the imagery and the material culture is depicted as being from an earlier time.

00:55:39.000 But they're both kind of contemporary, and this is a continental story that moves into Scandinavia and is told by the Scandinavians.

00:55:54.320 So I think a lot of the extra material from things like this is legitimate addition and things that perhaps predate the Volsunga saga the way we have it.

00:56:09.260 So I think, you know, it's valuable, I don't know, extras that flesh out the story more and give us a deeper and richer understanding of it.

00:56:20.180 So I really like that in these.

00:56:22.260 And each of them puts a really fine point on particular aspects of the story, and I think that's really well done, too.

00:56:36.400 I want to take a minute to thank Gilbert, who donated $150 to the Phrasehoff Fund.

00:56:42.880 Thank you so much. We appreciate you. Your generosity is astounding and continues to be, so thank you for that.

00:56:52.260 There you go. We had the little money noise from Nick. Appreciate that also. Got a couple

00:56:59.980 few questions. We're always open to taking more questions. From Jilly, what is the name

00:57:10.440 of the Thorshof Hausbloat tradition or bloat that features participants dressed in animal

00:57:18.700 masks and robes representing darkness and light. Is there a script available for this?

00:57:29.280 So, actually, did you want to, I assume you were going to.

00:57:35.540 No, this one's yours. Go for it.

00:57:36.900 Um, one of the things I think is that it's really important to remember, uh, that this is hopefully an organic growth of things across, uh, Ausatru, um, our church, uh, wide.

00:58:00.940 so i'm really glad you're asking the question um and it it comes from a very very old tradition

00:58:09.500 that in essence is a ritual to perform in which we kind of foreshadow the uh the coming of winter

00:58:22.780 almost like a groundhog's day um you know in our lore acceptance of the light is always priority

00:58:34.060 and then when it comes to darkness it's conflict uh ostra or you know the bringing in of the light

00:58:42.460 is always about acceptance but when it starts to shift it's about fighting and conflict and then

00:58:51.500 in uh yule it's about holding the light in the darkest time um

00:58:59.100 so i find that very very interesting but this tradition came about after bloat so uh bloat

00:59:07.740 happens and then everyone goes outside and conducts this but it's very very fitting in

00:59:17.180 relation to house bloat house bloat being dedicated to lord uller uh to even and this

00:59:25.900 time about remembering eternity as everything starts to die and about judiciously pulling

00:59:34.060 from the land around you as our ancestors went into winter and needed meat um and all of those

00:59:41.980 considerations um but the land spirit fight where one side dresses as the light side and wearing

00:59:52.780 all white and wearing masks um uh comes forth to defend the light which is usually a fire of some

01:00:04.540 sort and then the dark side comes the winter tide side and they come in to battle the light side

01:00:16.620 and what you end up having is a ritualistic dance or well it's not a dance it's like a

01:00:25.980 uh well-placed movements in which the sun or the light side is moving sunwise and the dark side is

01:00:34.700 moving uh widershin and they fight each other um and uh i think a lot of people generally

01:00:44.700 immediately think it's tongue-in-cheek that they're actually beating each other up but

01:00:50.940 But what it is, is the staves that are being utilized in the ceremony as they are conflicting with each other.

01:01:03.000 If your stave is broken, you then are out of the fight and everybody's given a stave.

01:01:14.020 The staves are random, equal, and then it is red.

01:01:20.520 It's read as to if the light side wins, if the dark side wins, whether or not we're going to have a light or a harsh winter.

01:01:30.160 That's pretty much it.

01:01:32.400 There isn't so much a script for it, but I could definitely reach out to you and talk to you about organizing how to do this.

01:01:44.340 I want this.

01:01:45.840 I hope that, you know, you would do this.

01:01:48.500 but it does require this is a community ritual just like the maypole requires multiple people

01:01:54.180 this ceremony does at least require nine people you need four on one side and four on the other

01:02:03.300 and one person to kind of observe and and run run the rotations to make sure everybody's kind

01:02:11.160 of working together especially once you uh wear masks and the masks are representations of land

01:02:17.900 spirits or the summer or winter tiding. So no giraffes, no animals from, you know, Siberian

01:02:29.360 tigers. Hold on. What if this ritual were taking place on the Serengeti or in Siberia?

01:02:39.200 That absolutely is, is pertinent then, but it's generally the animals are always of the local area. And then the, there are other masks that some people do, which if they just don't want to do an animal, because you have to choose an animal and they're kind of themed.

01:03:05.180 You know, generally bovine, deer, anything of the air, eagles, hawks are summer tidings, seen as part of the light.

01:03:22.400 and then um coyotes wolves owls um even the white rabbit has been on the dark side or the buzzard

01:03:35.360 the turkey vulture um and so each of the sides kind of do that but some people just kind of get

01:03:41.480 tossed up in that and they don't know which one to do so the other one that they generally do is

01:03:47.200 just make a mask out of the foliage of each side one side has coniferous and the other side has

01:03:55.760 deciduous i've seen like pine cone horns and big bristled mustaches out of pine needles um and then

01:04:06.340 like oak men um and the idea about this is this has been around for a long time but the organization

01:04:15.180 of our faith has really given way to opening this up.

01:04:21.580 And I would love to see this in comparison to perhaps the Swiss herdsman dressing up

01:04:31.140 or a Krampus style where people are excited, the children choose sides,

01:04:37.700 they make a big noise for each other when they want, and then the battle commences.

01:04:42.760 um and i hope that it gets a lot more um detailed and intricate as we go but that's pretty much the

01:04:53.140 basic breakdown of it um and it happens in reverence to the land spirits it's their time

01:05:00.900 of great conflict as well that um the darkness is coming the food is disappearing and

01:05:08.180 The hunting is coming about. So that's kind of the ultimate motive of the battle during Housed Bloat. But it does happen after Bloat. They are connected, but not completely.

01:05:29.360 it's uh they're kind of one is faith and religion and the other is cultural and semi-magical i would

01:05:40.980 even argue with the predictions um part because seeing certain light sides being taken out or

01:05:50.920 dark sides being taken out and reading that as oh you know the first couple months will be right

01:05:56.800 and then we're going to get hit pretty heavy at the end.

01:06:00.800 It's not an exact science, nor is it definitive.

01:06:07.540 It's just more fun.

01:06:09.700 It's just for fun.

01:06:11.040 No, it sounds fun and exciting,

01:06:12.380 and I'm looking forward to participating in that at some point.

01:06:16.220 I've yet to engage, but it sounds exciting,

01:06:21.860 and I know a lot of people are getting excited about it.

01:06:23.900 It's a fun thing and a cool thing that you've kind of initiated there.

01:06:31.280 Also from Jilly, why was winter finding in September changed to house bloat?

01:06:39.220 Because of the similarly named holiday winter nights in October?

01:06:45.760 No, actually.

01:06:47.840 so first it's um haust bloat with a t at the h-a-u-s-t b-l-o-t um

01:07:00.480 son of iceland why is the letter called something different when the o's got the dash over it

01:07:08.800 no yeah it's the o it's the uh with the dash over it is the actual i think more close to

01:07:17.120 the English version of O.

01:07:21.340 Does it have a different name or is it O?

01:07:23.840 No, it's O.

01:07:25.860 What is O?

01:07:28.460 Are they both O?

01:07:29.760 It's the common usage of O and then there's all,

01:07:35.460 which it has the two dots.

01:07:36.900 No, I mean, like, are they separate letters

01:07:39.160 or is one the inflection of a different letter?

01:07:41.280 Like.

01:07:42.840 no uh in the i'm trying to think back into the alphabet um that may be an esoteric question

01:07:53.240 uh i'm i'm losing the uh the actual question i'm trying to answer and apologize for that

01:07:58.840 no it's uh all right so it's a process of a number of things

01:08:03.000 there for a very long time in the uh reforging of modern ausitru

01:08:16.360 there is a recognition of the pan-arian nature of our faith a number of our traditions

01:08:26.200 and the names of those traditions were getting cobbled together from different sources ancient

01:08:36.920 and modern and spread over time and space of our ancestors um

01:08:46.440 And in, I don't know, in the modern Alistair True that I came into, we would regularly use English words, Anglo-Saxon words, Swedish words, Old Norse words, German words, and it was really kind of a hodgepodge of things.

01:09:12.800 I talk on here a lot about the concept of wholeness and how getting things to match up and to synchronize is a key to a lot of success in our faith and in life.

01:09:29.940 And so it has been a particular effort of mine to try to codify our practice in either the, you know, the lingua franca of wherever it's being practiced or have Old Norse be the point of commonality.

01:09:54.100 the old north source is where we get the abundance of our lore it's where we

01:10:00.900 get our terms so increasingly we're trying to bring those things together there's no

01:10:07.940 no penalty or no like shame or scorn in calling it winter finding but at least officially

01:10:16.340 we want to call it a house bloat because it's already an existent thing we always want to be

01:10:23.920 really honest in the afa2 there is no shame in innovating or in coming up with new ceremonies

01:10:32.360 coming up with new holidays and new things

01:10:35.640 so when that happens cool let's call it that let's do that but one of certainly

01:10:45.540 the original efforts and one of the reasons we celebrate many of the things that we do

01:10:51.080 is we connect with our ancient ancestors in time-honored celebrations of our folk

01:11:01.420 in attaching our celebration with the history of things that our ancestors in the elder

01:11:11.460 Alcatru period practiced connecting with that carrying that tradition forward is also part of

01:11:18.900 what we do it's a nuanced thing it's easy to be all reconstructionist and larpy or to be completely

01:11:28.580 modern and cast all that aside but in in my view the best way to do that is to be judicious in

01:11:39.460 practicing in an authentic and modern way, but also celebrating our lore and our history and

01:11:46.620 where things come from. And the September celebration of our Ausitru ancestors was

01:11:55.220 called in Old Norse, housebloat, which means like the fall, the autumn, the autumn sacrifice or the

01:12:03.340 autumn religious ceremony, the autumn pouring out of libation, I guess, most etymologically.

01:12:13.600 So it's, this is literally that it is autumn bloat. And that's what we're doing. It's what

01:12:21.580 we're celebrating. It winter finding is completely appropriate. But no, that's the reason that we 0.78

01:12:28.080 changed is when we were trying to standardize and codify our tradition in a consistent linguistic

01:12:37.920 tradition. And it's an imperfect process, but it's something that, you know, it's never going to get

01:12:44.560 perfect if we don't start trying to move that direction. And so we decided to do that and move

01:12:49.760 forward with it. And I appreciate you asking, because I think a lot of people are probably a

01:12:53.940 bit curious so from autumn does each god have a specific bird that represents them

01:13:05.940 for example odin has ravens idun has a sparrow

01:13:13.940 frig has a falcon are there any other birds connected to other gods so

01:13:19.540 So, funny that you ask that. I was, I have a long-term project that I'm kind of in the processes of thinking of and working on.

01:13:34.040 And I asked the Gothar at different Hoffs that we have to come up with the bird that most symbolizes or is, you know, the mascot bird of that particular Hoff.

01:13:52.800 And it could either be a bird related to the god of the Hoff, or it could also be something regional to that area.

01:13:59.820 um both were kind of valid things but we talked about it and it got kind of a

01:14:05.420 a uh i don't know the creative juices flowing on that because you're right

01:14:09.820 some of our gods specifically have birds related to them in the lore or traditionally

01:14:17.500 um i have never heard that frig has a falcon a falcon i have yeah heard is traditional with lady

01:14:25.260 freya um frig though there's a tradition of her having an owl and i'm not sure

01:14:35.820 and yes and i'm not sure where the owl tradition comes from

01:14:43.500 but in german lore that was a point of association and the

01:14:48.700 there's a poem by herman loans where he references that owl that might have something to do with

01:14:59.840 athena she's very often referenced with an owl yes that yeah i see that and i don't know if it

01:15:08.040 was just directly taken there wholesale or if there's some deeper piece of lore on it i think

01:15:12.420 it's a really interesting subject you're right uh odin uh with the ravens i think is a is an

01:15:18.420 obvious one that's that pops out um and i personally have always associated the owl with

01:15:26.460 the maidens of fensaller and clean and the you know the the idea of the always watching

01:15:34.680 always kind of knowing without having to move and i think that's where the the thing comes in is

01:15:42.380 the the owl's association with wisdom and a lot of the wisdom tradition the foreknowledge

01:15:51.300 the knowing things to come but being silent about them I think it lends itself really well to Frigg

01:15:58.400 in that way um there's a rich tradition of uh swan maidens and the the Valkyrie uh

01:16:08.880 either you know being able to transform into swans having swan uh cloaks to put on to take

01:16:17.960 on their swan form that is talked about a lot in our lore uh spawn are you aware of any other

01:16:26.100 specific bird connection with uh with our gods well and i know that i spoke about how

01:16:34.880 um some people who like make proclamations about our ancestors um the owl is a perfect example of

01:16:44.840 it is in our lore um and again i could be wrong but i going through the only time it is ever

01:16:55.100 mentioned is the owl's beak um is made reference to now these are poems and they're very very very

01:17:04.600 tightly uh written for sake of meter but um if we were to just simply look at the lore and think

01:17:14.200 that okay this is all our ancestors knew then it would be very very questionable as to whether or

01:17:21.560 not they have ever seen or heard of of an owl which is ridiculous but um that's i think another

01:17:30.520 point is when the poems are written what's seeping into them is the saturation of cultural norms

01:17:41.560 and they may have very well have been different i know that in germany the cuckoo has a huge

01:17:49.800 significance um so or or the egret um and i believe the i think it's the white egret

01:17:59.880 amongst like the Dutch or the Phrygians is I think the better way for us to look at this is

01:18:10.160 is that there is this local generalized understanding of the birds especially the

01:18:18.180 birds that people would understand in their local area and then it's brought into the poems

01:18:25.080 for poetic flair um the speaking about the herons that fly over the host in the halvamal

01:18:35.800 is the theory is that um the ladles that were held inside the large mead containers

01:18:48.160 had a heron head or a heron body and that's what was dishing out into the horns so when the heron

01:18:57.120 flies over the host everyone's drinking and everybody's getting very very into their horns

01:19:03.480 so that really is about the the knowledge of the animal kind of showing up and being utilized

01:19:17.060 poetically but i think that means that that leaves us to a lot of ability to bring forth

01:19:26.180 and i mean we've already done it in our church um the the marlin for njordshoff as a symbol

01:19:36.500 uh you know oh i'm you know some basement wizard saying i don't think the vikings actually ever saw

01:19:44.100 marlin and it's like all right you know out of the way but we've we've done yeah so if they would

01:19:54.100 if if we were to under uncover some kind of uh hof to to norther in ancient

01:20:04.820 norway then yes it would be really odd if the marlin were were depicted in those those carvings

01:20:11.380 i bet you vikings never saw marlins but we're not vikings and we're not trying to be the people that

01:20:17.700 worship at new york's off have seen plenty of marlins right yeah that's that's a silly argument

01:20:26.980 i i actually remember somebody arguing about like oh it should have been a salmon

01:20:32.020 uh i guess because they're more in the northern climes but if we were going to open it in

01:20:38.340 in seattle we absolutely would have done that right oh yeah or up in the northeast

01:20:44.820 yeah that would all of those things were on the table if it were a different location 0.86

01:20:50.820 um yeah those people are silly we're not trying to lark something our ancestors did we're doing

01:20:56.740 things that are relevant to where we are and what we do and it goes very well into the birds 0.95

01:21:02.340 um you know it's funny there's a lot of good choices to represent each of each of our gods

01:21:11.960 in different ways and we'll draw different associations between the natural world around us

01:21:18.580 and the gods will make use of the animals in different place we find ourselves to

01:21:27.380 reveal things to us or to deliver messages to us or you know contextualize the world around us

01:21:38.520 and i think that's completely in keeping with the best traditions of our ancestors

01:21:43.440 um i don't think that the the animals that the vikings would have utilized and been familiar

01:21:52.320 with with their imagery are the same uh animals that one would find you know in the caucuses

01:22:00.160 and in different you know places our people found ourselves um so that's really a very

01:22:06.560 i don't know small-minded argument from the basement wizards well and you were the only

01:22:11.360 person that didn't kind of scoff at my uh interpretation of thor's hof as a for the bird

01:22:18.000 um the red bellied uh woodpecker the the striker of the oak um and you were the only one that was

01:22:26.640 like oh interesting and you just kind of i think you were writing some stuff down and

01:22:31.520 um speaking i mean speaking of birds people that have issue with that are silly geese

01:22:36.160 this next one is interesting and i'm curious about the spawn take on it also speaking of birds um

01:22:59.840 Um, no, just calling you in.

01:23:06.940 Good evening, Alls Harry Gauthier, Matt, Witten's Fawn, and Folk Builder Nick.

01:23:11.460 Witten's Fawn, I was wondering if you heard of the Bronze Age Golden Hats and what you thought about them.

01:23:19.120 Could they have any significance to our modern faith?

01:23:25.080 I would welcome Matt's thoughts, too.

01:23:28.180 Thanks for all you do.

01:23:29.840 Um, so Svan, this was directly aimed at you with me for rebuttal.

01:23:34.580 So let's, let's answer it in that fashion.

01:23:37.860 Okay.

01:23:38.680 Well, um, I, I assume you're talking about the, uh, brimmed and linked various leveled

01:23:49.060 hats and the speculation as to why they were.

01:23:55.240 So, Nick, could you get a picture and put up so that we folks listening that may not be familiar know what we're talking about?

01:24:04.980 Unless I'm off, because I don't know, like I'm just going off of kind of memory right now.

01:24:15.100 I was looking, I didn't actually see this question.

01:24:18.280 I was looking up a question down below because I wanted to kind of formulate a better answer.

01:24:23.240 and i didn't see this one so now totally off of my memory i'm assuming you're talking about

01:24:30.660 those hats um now as far as like the research and speculation around them i don't know a lot

01:24:40.320 but um you know i think it's interesting because the same linking method that was used

01:24:48.540 on the levels was the same later on used with gold and silver and and bronze with horns as well

01:24:58.000 this kind of um folding of sections that wasn't like they weren't welded so um as far as their

01:25:10.180 usage i mean when we look at comparative pieces oh yeah there it is it looks like a giant

01:25:18.860 um uh shield boss it's very kind of uh you know perhaps symbolically phallic um

01:25:29.880 they got them even more phallic than that

01:25:32.560 right well so and then that one i wonder is that truly a hat you know based out of function

01:25:43.400 or what have you but uh the other one before it can you go back to that so down at the bottom

01:25:49.020 near the brim there is a linking method that they do and that's how i i know about these uh is

01:25:58.800 because looking into the linking methods for building metal drinking horns and making them

01:26:07.100 so that they don't just drain everywhere. Um, and this, uh, these hats, I often wonder if this

01:26:20.200 is simply, and I don't mean to actually downplay it, but I think it's a very, very important part

01:26:26.700 of our culture because we see it continuously throughout our history is the adornment of either

01:26:36.380 like warriors or kings of high renown um i know some people speculate religion

01:26:48.700 but one of the things that it instantly kind of made me think of was um

01:26:54.380 um uh the adornment of art like ceremonial armor uh and swords ceremony oh that that

01:27:07.820 one in the middle kind of bells out for like a head um the other thought is I you know

01:27:17.300 do we have proof that they were worn or were they placed on the ground much like akin to

01:27:27.100 a lingam amongst the uh later hindu way well after the araya um that would be interesting

01:27:40.760 if that can be confirmed but i don't know enough to know if we i i can't recall at all

01:27:47.340 if there was an actual uh like skeleton found with it on on its head but it strikes me very much as

01:27:59.220 um kind of in the same cord as when the spanish king gets a completely bedecked suit of armor

01:28:12.020 that is masterfully made but was not intended for the battlefield um it was intended for him

01:28:20.840 to go forth amongst the folk and bring out a sense of awe, bring out a sense of glory

01:28:31.180 when they see him. And I think that that's ultimately kind of the purpose. If this is a hat

01:28:39.520 again, um, and I'm still kind of more leaning on that, uh, with the idea of the presence and,

01:28:47.680 uh taking that kind of space it would also too i think the height of it is symbolic i think that

01:28:55.820 the idea of where it is and how it's um how high reaching it is could it have been something of

01:29:05.720 the priest class i don't know um i need to look into that a little bit more but um

01:29:13.920 Again, we see throughout all of our people in Europe, there is this decoration of the kings, decorations of the warriors, where they go forth in things that are not at like at all.

01:29:36.200 they don't make any sense like as far as um for battle they're not functional that's the word i

01:29:43.980 was looking for but instead take on this almost bombastic sense of of uh purpose and i you know

01:29:56.380 decorative now in use in our modern day faith perception is a huge part of the world um

01:30:11.020 and it is the reality that none of us can escape um we dressing nice you know and people were

01:30:18.780 complaining like vikings don't wear ties and et cetera et cetera um but that really was about

01:30:27.660 perception it was about letting people know like our place is a place for the folk to come home

01:30:35.260 and there are normal good people here who take care of themselves who want their children to

01:30:43.580 be healthy and to to look good and this is western civilization so you know and then the stole 0.55

01:30:52.780 which is a greek but if you wear a stole and you go into a hospital to perhaps administer the last 0.96

01:31:02.940 and final um bloat and rights of an ausitru man or woman nobody in that hospital is gonna doubt

01:31:13.580 what you are if you show up wearing a wolf head and have charcoal paint and a wolf pelt and a 0.97

01:31:22.940 loincloth people are gonna think you're crazy you escaped their loony bit right that's ridiculous 0.93

01:31:31.820 so that's another reason why when people see our godies wearing the stole and i in a way if this

01:31:39.500 was a priestly sense um the stole kind of offers that as uh the regalia but um

01:31:52.620 i don't know about modern you know we were just talking about masks the the adornment of masks

01:31:59.820 And I surely could see someone building a mask that was big, loud, crazy, and certainly light side if it's made out of gold.

01:32:16.140 But as far as just everyday total usage, I don't know.

01:32:24.620 I don't find a lot of that there.

01:32:27.820 I just think it's way more interesting in relation to the way that it was

01:32:34.880 binded and, again, the mystery of the possible uses.

01:32:41.400 So in my understanding of them, they've got,

01:32:46.620 it's like their gold leaf over top of some kind of a fabric or some other material underneath

01:32:56.540 them for a lot of the body and that they're thought to be hats a little bit because of how

01:33:02.140 the part at the bottom is situated with whatever liners inside them to fit on a on a head um but

01:33:11.020 i also read some theories about them having a function as a calendar they've got different

01:33:17.500 little discs and things on them um i think that the

01:33:28.460 we may never know what they were for i genuinely have no idea people associate them with some kind

01:33:37.020 of a solar cult because they've got little circles like stylized circles all over them

01:33:44.780 and it's made out of gold and other overtly I don't know overtly solar related objects from

01:33:54.600 a similar time period make heavy use of the gold uh gold gold leafing

01:33:59.860 I don't think that's definitive by any means I think it's just pointing out some similarities

01:34:08.240 could be that could be completely unrelated they're being

01:34:13.080 phallic looking could be related to, you know, virility, fertility, just whoever's wearing it,

01:34:26.460 literally being, uh, prominent of phallus to make them, uh, stand out as important and special and

01:34:38.620 and powerful have no idea um what i think spawn said that's really meaningful

01:34:48.940 it sidesteps a lot of scholasticism it just keeps it real

01:34:55.260 it matters what stuff looks like and if it's aesthetically appealing to your audience or not

01:35:00.620 not what does the art or the uh dress what does the fashion evoke in the people who

01:35:13.100 observe it and how does it cause those people to respond

01:35:20.540 I think I would look very ridiculous if I were to wear one of these prominent gold hats

01:35:27.260 for different things. I think in a small group of people, and if we had a really 0.55

01:35:33.600 specific reason and everybody was brought up in the tradition of the gold hat, 0.76

01:35:39.660 it might not seem so ridiculous. So it matters. There is a certain cool factor. And I think it's

01:35:49.340 funny because sometimes things were just done because they were cool looking if you look at

01:36:01.740 why there are trends in certain fashion today sometimes it's very meaningful and it's very

01:36:10.060 purposeful sometimes somebody tries something their peers are like wow that's pretty cool

01:36:16.780 that's awesome and then they double down on it and try to you know make use of those things that

01:36:22.940 look good i don't think any of that's wrong so i do think that stuff that looked cool was probably

01:36:32.860 very relevant to how older fashion came about i certainly we know that in the medieval period

01:36:41.580 as soon as people could write about it and talk about it you have you know kings and nobility

01:36:48.060 trying to get particular fabrics because they were hard to get and they looked exotic or they looked

01:36:53.020 fancy or they were all the rage and you know the court in paris so other places in europe would

01:36:59.500 want to have them i think there's a lot of that that goes on now these i think they absolutely do

01:37:03.900 have a bigger religious significance and like in the art on them and in their purpose in the exact

01:37:11.100 way they looked i think it's probably has something to do with what was thought to look

01:37:16.620 really cool at the time i think gold always looks cool so putting gold on prominent things for kings

01:37:24.540 or priests has always been something and has done a lot in the bronze age in europe you find

01:37:34.620 gold leaf things very prominently and gold used, you know, everywhere because it has been

01:37:42.540 universally recognized as being, you know, very special. But yeah, I wish I had a really cool

01:37:50.420 answer about their exact usage and meaning. I don't. But it is something that's fascinating

01:37:57.740 to a lot of people i remember um a friend of mine anders when i was in in sweden asking me about

01:38:05.740 these and that was the first time i'd heard of them so yeah i think that remains a mystery and

01:38:12.140 uh i don't have meaningful uh meaningful things to add on exactly what the what the original meaning

01:38:19.340 of those were the one comments fawn made um would the vikings wouldn't have worn ties the vikings

01:38:28.620 are very well known for their beard combs and for smelling nice dressing nice if the viking had

01:38:35.500 shirts and ties yes they would have been wearing shirts and ties i mean yeah we can't say for

01:38:41.900 certain but i i agree with you i think that they would that's the thing i think we can because when

01:38:50.140 you have emissaries from scandinavian courts that go into europe and see what the more fashion forward

01:39:00.140 courts of europe do you see the scandinavian royal courts adopt fashion things from those

01:39:07.980 you see travelers bring back hay in you know the greatest cities of the mediterranean this

01:39:13.340 is stuff that they do and you do see um vikings adopt those kind of fashions and those kind of 0.80

01:39:22.540 things it's interesting when you see the um the uh russ go closer and closer to byzantium they

01:39:32.140 start getting these like baggy pantaloon kind of britches that certainly aren't the the Nordic

01:39:42.800 fashion there's something adopted from the culture that they found like wow these are cool this is

01:39:47.160 what's this is what's cool to wear in the in the fancy cities of the of the Mediterranean

01:39:53.500 will adopt that fashion you see that all around so I don't think that's a an odd thing to think

01:39:59.540 I remember speaking to some insignificant person who was talking about, oh, folkishness versus universalism. 0.98

01:40:14.000 And there is a part where the Kievan Rus' like are coming down and they are just blown away by how the city is run. 0.98

01:40:26.880 The lawfulness, the efficiency, they're very, very, and the wealth. 0.99

01:40:34.200 Think about the wealth. 0.73

01:40:35.380 And this person, of course, perceives this as, that's why you should let everybody into your country, which I think is ridiculous. But what it really does show is, again, our ancestors were not like, you should dress like they did in the Bronze Age.

01:40:56.140 no they were on the forefront of everything going on and what was available to them at their time

01:41:03.420 and since they were well traveled they did just pick up so many things um and so us doing

01:41:13.860 and dressing a certain way has a double statement and i think that double statement is um especially

01:41:21.580 in relation to the ties and the nice, is because it's Western civilization, and I think the

01:41:27.360 stole's because it's universal in our culture as religion, as a religious point, so. 0.81

01:41:36.420 Next up, also for you to start out, Svan, are Albanians white? 0.69

01:41:42.160 oh okay um this is kind of i i this is actually an easy

01:41:51.280 answer but it's a hard kind of thing to get around the ottoman empire

01:42:01.600 coming into the mediterranean there was a time and people don't think of it

01:42:08.000 it. There was a time when Greeks were blonde, light-skinned. There's still many Greeks in

01:42:16.700 the area that are like that. Because I remember somebody referring to them as spicy white, 0.99

01:42:26.560 and that just basically means black hair or whatever. And again, black hair, I don't think

01:42:35.800 uh removes folk from being folk i mean you know we we see this in a in a pan-arian sense where the

01:42:47.340 the the darker hair darker eyes but when you have turkic influence then you know but

01:42:59.020 i think the big thing is is just like uh folk in argentina just like folk in mexico um we normally

01:43:10.660 try like i think most people not the church but normally people think about oh like just simply

01:43:20.940 germanic but there are other pockets of the arian folk in europe that we have to i think it's

01:43:29.580 important that we maintain and don't just cut off because you could fracture yourself to death

01:43:36.140 you know and i'm hearing internet spurgs yelling about the irish and i'm like oh but um

01:43:42.220 Um, you know, when you go to Mexico and meet Germans who have been living there for a couple

01:43:52.460 of generations, but they've all kind of lived around each other and, um, and they're genetically

01:44:00.880 German, um, that's they're Mexicans, but they're folk. Um, and that's another thing is like,

01:44:10.240 because of modern politics and things people are trying to constantly consist the idea that

01:44:15.600 like being mexican is race no it's it's a big combination of things and you have folk mexicans

01:44:23.840 you have folk argentinians you have folk albanians you have folk greeks um it's just that it's

01:44:31.280 It's it gets a lot harder to kind of sift through.

01:44:40.960 But generally, because one of our big things is, you know, if you look folk, if if if people look at you and they're like, yes, this person is me and everyone around me says this person is me. 1.00

01:44:55.340 and there's not like a uh you know carving out the spergs that like ah the welsh um

01:45:06.940 i think that's important that we we don't fragment and purity spiral that is uh such

01:45:15.180 a fallacy that is absolutely a weapon used against the folk uh who are uh getting together and and

01:45:27.340 worrying about their self-interests so yeah the ottomans did an absolute they were a terrible

01:45:35.260 force and anybody that researches about the atrocities of the ottomans um is in for terrible

01:45:44.700 awakening of how evil um they could be but um again it is more so not about you are born in 0.59

01:45:56.220 this nation so now you are this you are you know you could you're from africa but you're born in

01:46:01.900 sweden so now you're swedish no you're folk we can see it or you're not folk because our nations

01:46:10.300 have come and gone it's beyond nations so that's kind of my my take i don't know if that's 0.50

01:46:17.980 controversial um oh are you okay sorry i didn't know if you were if you had left no i was eating

01:46:30.460 costco shrimp cocktail and i felt it would be impolite to eat it in front of our amazing audience

01:46:40.300 And I did not. So, son, are Albanians white? 1.00

01:46:49.240 Oh, that's what I just answered.

01:46:51.080 No. It's what you attempted to just answer.

01:46:54.640 Oh, I...

01:46:56.440 It is a yes or a no question, and I heard neither.

01:46:59.700 Oh, well, there are folk in Albania.

01:47:03.700 Are ethnic Albanians... Do ethnic Albanians tend to be white?

01:47:10.300 i honestly don't know not i um i don't have a lot of experience with albanians i do know again

01:47:20.960 their origin goes all the way back to the the uh al the albanoi tribe um they are which doesn't

01:47:32.000 have anything to do with al albino um they were part of the turkish west coast and um

01:47:43.920 just like the greeks

01:47:47.520 most likely then yes very much so a product of indo-european dis uh as they are descendants of

01:47:55.760 but there you already have the admixture with the pho the phoenicians or canaanites and um

01:48:06.000 all of that kind of movement through there so that starts it and then the ottomans come in

01:48:11.680 and really wreak havoc on the genetic landscape so i mean i don't think it's fair to say um 1.00

01:48:20.800 in that sense like yes all of them are white

01:48:26.920 because we have to be able to look at and sift through and see and not anybody coming in

01:48:37.540 through maybe the last hundred years and or doing something or the ottomans coming in

01:48:43.960 doesn't automatically make every Albanian folk.

01:48:48.980 So that's why these are fun questions.

01:48:54.120 You got me on the light.

01:48:57.780 Well, I do because I'm trying to cut to the heart of the matter

01:49:02.120 for our loyal audience.

01:49:07.040 There is a frequent pick obscure border area of Europe

01:49:12.260 where there's a convergence of peoples and ask if they're white or not.

01:49:18.260 And it's an interesting question because certain parts of Europe have suffered,

01:49:24.200 or suffered may not be the right word, sometimes it is, sometimes it's not,

01:49:28.740 have experienced many different migratory waves of people

01:49:36.720 and clash of civilizations and things.

01:49:39.360 um and albania is no different in that sense

01:49:45.020 i will venture that i am not an expert on that part of europe i've never been to

01:49:54.500 albania i have met albanians or people who claim to be albanians that are

01:50:03.860 dubious in their whiteness. My understanding is that Albanians, 1.00

01:50:17.060 yes, Albanians are white. If you Google Albanians and you look at a picture, 0.89

01:50:22.800 it brings up a lot of white folks. It also brings up some folks that you can see

01:50:28.620 their ancestors probably had some close contact with some Middle Eastern peoples.

01:50:39.160 I think there's certainly mixture that goes on there, but I think that the Ur population of Albania is white

01:50:48.380 and their language is an Indo-European Aryan language group, which is kind of a good indication.

01:50:55.360 I think Albania is one where you have some mixes, I think, that those are identifiable.

01:51:04.980 And I would say as a general, like Svan's absolutely correct. 0.99

01:51:11.940 There's absolutely some white Mexicans. 0.97

01:51:14.580 But if you said, are Mexicans white, I would say no, even though some certainly are. 0.86

01:51:19.980 If you say Albanians are white, I would say yes, though some certainly are not. 0.99

01:51:25.360 i think that's about the closest that we can get unless you have an albanian lineup to present to

01:51:32.520 us and we can we can itemize i was going to say when i lived in italy i was there were two albanians

01:51:39.800 that lived in town one of them was definitely white and the other world was definitely not

01:51:44.720 see so there you go there is a diversity of answers to that question yeah um

01:51:51.500 unknown suggests that uh perhaps they are not

01:52:02.280 there's certainly some uh the muslim turkish influence there but those people did not

01:52:12.340 originate there they got to albania from somewhere and there was people already existent

01:52:18.580 People who are already existent, they are white folks.

01:52:22.180 And then you have some displacement going on, as as we mentioned. 0.51

01:52:28.000 Oh, and just speak on that just briefly.

01:52:31.120 Sure.

01:52:32.320 He says, no, they are Muslims now.

01:52:36.640 It is worth noting that Islam and Christianity is not folkish. 0.85

01:52:45.980 Yeah.

01:52:46.540 Yeah, I think that's something that we should emphasize as well. That is clearly Middle Eastern. And for European Christianity, we have a lot in common with Europeans, because we are European descent, but their Christianity only goes so far before you're, you know, talking about crusading to the Middle East.

01:53:14.300 So, yeah.

01:53:18.380 So, yeah, that's interesting to note, whereas, you know, other faiths have an ethnic component.

01:53:29.800 Those faiths do not inherently by doctrine.

01:53:34.660 They do tend to by circumstance sometimes. 0.70

01:53:38.200 That's how you get Korean Jesus. 1.00

01:53:39.600 I mean, that's how you get House of Pain and Sinead O'Connor both being Muslims. 1.00

01:53:50.060 So we live in strange times.

01:53:54.800 What are your thoughts on the translations by Jackson Crawford?

01:54:02.680 It's fine.

01:54:03.620 Thoughts on Dr. Crawford and his translations?

01:54:06.020 Okay. I'm going to give completely just more or less an unemotional take. His translations are simplified. I think that if you are trying to wrap your head around concepts, might be worth taking a look.

01:54:27.800 Um, he has kind of built his entire, uh, translational, uh, persona around simplifying

01:54:40.940 things in order to make them more digestible.

01:54:45.200 That's all the non-emotion.

01:54:48.540 The emotional part is in his attempt to make things easier to be digestible.

01:54:56.180 there's an air or a sense of complete removal of the majesty of it there's removal of the you know

01:55:06.800 if you spoke about it as the european spirit didn't say the scary a word um i don't think

01:55:15.380 would matter he has just kind of his translations are good but

01:55:26.580 if you're looking again for the spirit if you're looking for the kind of invigorating

01:55:35.140 uh power that poetry has i think you're better served to find it elsewhere

01:55:40.740 so but if you're looking for simplified in order to get concepts and learn i can understand that

01:55:50.220 so i

01:55:54.000 his

01:55:57.800 judging his cowboy have them all is not fair it's intended to be like a recasting it with

01:56:08.460 American

01:56:10.320 colloquialisms.

01:56:12.720 I actually am kind of fond of that one.

01:56:15.920 Yeah, and I don't

01:56:17.300 dislike it, but I think

01:56:18.600 the harm in it

01:56:21.040 is less because

01:56:23.040 it's obvious

01:56:25.340 in its intention.

01:56:27.080 It's not tricking you into

01:56:29.100 thinking that that's the original

01:56:30.940 wording.

01:56:33.260 He's specifically

01:56:34.540 recasting it that way.

01:56:38.460 his other translation work and I'm I can't claim to be an expert on exactly how he does

01:56:46.980 and I do think that what's fun saying is accurate I also um as far as I know he is an authoritative

01:56:55.680 source on languages specifically on the languages relevant to translation both modern descendants

01:57:06.480 those languages and the original old norse and that's you know that's admirable that's enviable

01:57:16.160 that's really cool um what i would say is when you when anyone translates it's almost unintelligible

01:57:27.440 if you were to translate completely accurately word for word because other languages specifically

01:57:35.440 Old Norse, the word structure, the like sentence structure is different. So it just wouldn't work

01:57:45.260 out into an English translation. You have to reorder and restructure your sentence.

01:57:50.480 You have to adjust certain words to make them work. We've seen translations where, you know,

01:57:57.140 you make choices you translate

01:58:02.240 sad as forlorn or melancholy or depressed or displeased each of those things can have

01:58:18.700 subtle implications linguistically that are different and every translator has to make

01:58:24.280 certain word choices are you going to make it flow with the meter of the line or are you going to make

01:58:31.940 it word for word accurate are you going to keep the grandiosity and scale of the original text

01:58:42.200 or are you going to make it clunky because of the linguistic choices there's a lot of different ways

01:58:49.800 you can go. You will get a different result if you have someone translating it depending

01:59:06.200 upon their assumptions about the material and the culture it was created in. If you

01:59:15.500 are a person of faith, you will translate religious texts differently than if you're

01:59:23.100 a scholar of Old Norse poetry. So I think that there's different ways you can go.

01:59:32.340 So, Dr. Crawford's trivialization of our faith makes me skeptical of his translation work.

01:59:52.000 I would feel less so if he were devoutly Ausitru, or if when discussing Ausitru, he was respectful about it.

02:00:02.340 The fact that he finds it absurd is, I wonder in what ways that goes into his translation work.

02:00:15.240 But no, as far as the scholastics involved, I think he is eminently qualified and an expert in his field.

02:00:23.260 So I think all of that's probably very, very legitimate. 0.82

02:00:26.720 what is the afa's stance on circumcision

02:00:32.440 so well i was going to say for the caveat so a couple of things circumcision is bad

02:00:45.040 the afa is absolutely anti-circumcision unless you are a jew and that is what your people do

02:00:54.960 for your ethnic faith then you know that's what you guys do for your ethnic faith for 0.78

02:01:02.800 ausitruar uh for white people the afa is is fundamentally opposed to circumcision

02:01:09.680 i was gonna say unless there's some kind of medical necessity like if you say have some

02:01:15.280 kind of genital malformation that requires a corrective surgery when you're little

02:01:22.400 And this sounds absurd, but I knew someone who that was the case. Their kid had some kind of a skin problem that needed to be corrected when he was a baby. And so that's how that ended up happening.

02:01:37.580 I don't know that so here's the thing I am not I have a daughter and not a son so I don't know 0.56

02:01:47.020 how that works at present that in my understanding wasn't really a thing for white people in Europe

02:01:57.440 it was a thing it was the default thing until at least recently if not currently in the United

02:02:06.700 states so a lot of men find themselves not having had an opportunity to make that choice

02:02:15.100 yet still missing that that chunk of foreskin that they cannot you know regrow or reattach

02:02:24.180 so it kind of is what it is um but no circumcision is very specifically a covenant between yahweh

02:02:35.680 and his chosen people and how they would mark their loyalty as his chosen people.

02:02:43.760 So we are opposed to that as a practice.

02:02:52.540 I kind of have something as well I really want to add to this.

02:02:57.500 No, by all means.

02:03:00.460 Because it kind of emphasizes what I said.

02:03:02.720 yeah go please speak on uh on circumcision swan well because it's not practiced in iceland

02:03:10.700 um to this day and they've actually outlawed it which is an interesting move because of the

02:03:20.740 effects that that has you're not allowed to do that there um maybe the laws have changed since

02:03:27.200 but the last i remember is that they they were like no we outlaw this which gets rid of a lot of

02:03:33.360 uh situations um but remember how i was talking about how christianity you dig deep enough

02:03:43.440 and you will find the semitic middle eastern religion and this is where i love to bring up

02:03:50.880 about the holy preface and how there were sects in christianity that had relics and those one of the

02:04:02.320 most famous relics was the foreskin of jesus it was charlemagne gave this foreskin

02:04:13.120 to pope leo the third and there were like pilgrimage to see the you know fried calamari

02:04:23.920 of the rabbi and this is in europe at what a lot of you know european christians would just

02:04:32.160 consider like the apex of european deuce vault and out there making pilgrimages to

02:04:41.360 you know see the little ring um and i just it blows my mind that people don't know about that

02:04:52.720 at all it's it's very interesting uh their choice of relics i don't know how charlemagne came across

02:05:03.120 that i don't know if there's like a like a back alley uh kind of thing or i i don't i don't know

02:05:10.400 So our European ancestors who converted to Christianity absolutely knew that Jesus was Jewish because of the circumcision, and they were Gentiles because the tradition of circumcision was not suddenly and magically picked up then.

02:05:32.120 It was absolutely understood and celebrated.

02:05:37.240 so do with that knowledge what you will

02:05:42.200 yeah there you go so

02:05:47.560 but it do we got a little bit of a history lesson it um yeah that's a strange american practice

02:05:59.680 that i think more and more for a variety of reasons people are choosing not to have that

02:06:06.700 done to their sons now, which is good. And we would encourage, you know, again, unless you are

02:06:13.000 a Hebrew person wanting to worship the God of your folk through that particular sign of your 0.97

02:06:19.380 covenant with Yahweh, no, don't circumcise your sons. 0.62

02:06:23.920 Side note, Rover, if you want to know more, email me at mattflavell at runestone.org, and we can talk about that.

02:06:46.600 um i've always want i should stipulate unrelated to the circumcision question

02:06:55.240 all right uh i've always wanted to ask if you have time cut the ties between the two

02:07:02.120 ah well done always ask wanted to ask if you have the time what are your opinions on those who work

02:07:10.040 with uh frau hola holda not as brekta and your general thoughts on holda spawn what are your

02:07:21.080 thoughts okay so this is an interesting question because as we in the in the true log mal we have

02:07:31.160 we have talked about the core um of divinity that there are four distinct groups there is the ouse

02:07:43.320 who are the the the gods um the our senior the goddesses the him and verder the heavenly

02:07:52.760 wardens and then there are the oust veneer the beloved ones and the beloved ones um

02:08:02.600 is a place generally you'll see in other like writings of aussitrew that they call them the

02:08:09.560 the jotun brides the troll brides and they're emphasize they're trying to emphasize

02:08:14.600 that somehow they're magically some different race like lord othen wasn't born of 0.88

02:08:20.760 of, you know, and the whole origin of the divinity coming from Jotun and Aus, but that's why they're

02:08:32.040 doing it. So Ausdvenir means beloved because they specifically choose to join the Aesir in their

02:08:42.160 battle various levels but they join them they marry or they have children or they aid or

02:08:52.880 in some cases are brought under heel by the dominion and i speak specifically about

02:08:59.280 and round or agar and and ron um the anglicized version um of the ocean so the australian fit

02:09:12.160 a list of beings that for most people may have never even considered.

02:09:20.660 A perfect example is, again, giving birth to a holy God makes an ausvenir.

02:09:26.600 That's their part of the order side now. 1.00

02:09:31.700 And most people don't ever give prayers to rinder. 0.96

02:09:35.360 They'll give prayers to skadi, but never to rinder or to grither,

02:09:39.860 who are both mothers of the holy divine beings that are ours.

02:09:46.780 So along with that, the Oustvenier list has another function,

02:09:53.860 and that is if there are folk who are honoring localized gods

02:10:06.080 that may not be expansive they would be considered beloved ones of the gods and

02:10:14.720 free to to worship that's um there's no extradition away or like like you sax not no but we would just

02:10:25.120 simply say oh yes they're of the aust veneer now um that the beloved ones don't have to be

02:10:32.720 only female but they are beloved by the gods or the folk that's the kind of the best way to look

02:10:40.640 at it so i i i'm saying that uh you know your belief in honoring frajola uh we do not cram

02:10:50.320 we do not hypostasis we're not going to tell you that uh oh well she's just really you know holy

02:10:58.240 frig that's absolutely uh you know rude to the gods so no uh she is unto her own and we have

02:11:10.720 structured the hierarchy that we observe remember we don't tell the gods where they're at we just

02:11:18.640 observe this and as the guild beginning says and the best place is the oust veneer they are beloved

02:11:26.960 and i do not you know think that they're um somehow out it's just that when you go to

02:11:34.560 church proper and i mean the house of true church i see of church you're going to have a lot of

02:11:40.320 focus on the ice here and the farther out you go sex not nahelania and um you know not knowing

02:11:50.000 fully whether the divinity status of them being elevated in in what ways we don't know because we

02:11:59.840 have so little i would relegate they are beloved and uh and we and we move forward

02:12:07.840 um i honestly have zero to add about

02:12:24.720 frau holda that's never been that has always been something that i don't have any connection to i

02:12:33.520 I don't have any tradition of that's never been an element of folklore that's come my way.

02:12:44.200 And as I've run into it later in life, it doesn't fit cleanly or I don't know, call to me to reconcile or to figure something out with.

02:12:57.460 I'm not delegitimizing it or speaking out against it in any way.

02:13:02.020 It doesn't have a clear spot in our lore that has come down to us in a way that fits and makes sense and connects to the rest of our practice in a way that's been particularly accessible to me.

02:13:22.960 So it's not something that I've spent a lot of time pondering or finding, you know, finding the right way to fit that in.

02:13:33.740 I know that's not a real satisfying answer, but it's honestly what I've got.

02:13:37.580 um so my friend's boyfriend wants me to ask you about which material was used to craft

02:13:52.140 thor's hammer originally

02:13:57.420 it's fine do you have some particular insight on this uh to my knowledge

02:14:04.060 it is not mentioned um as a tangible material but it's an interesting question because a lot

02:14:13.140 of people don't realize at thorsoff in his belt he has an iron rod and there's even arguments as

02:14:22.820 to whether that's supposed to be a club or a staff um but it is specifically mentioned as being

02:14:31.800 iron, just like

02:14:33.800 the gloves.

02:14:36.900 So that

02:14:41.820 is an interesting thing.

02:14:43.920 But it's not mentioned.

02:14:46.540 The deceit

02:14:47.860 of Loki to trick the

02:14:49.520 dwarves. And I think

02:14:51.860 during that poem,

02:14:53.600 I can only remember

02:14:55.300 their referencing to gold.

02:14:59.640 And that being used,

02:15:01.520 i think during gulen bursty and skeet the blobner this the the ship but there is no mention

02:15:10.160 specifically of a medal that i could think of right now i could go back look in there

02:15:15.360 and maybe there's something but um the mention of uh the iron club or iron staff that uh thor gets

02:15:29.840 from an oust veneer she becomes an oust veneer i would argue when she helps thor but she later is

02:15:40.000 brought into the the domains of the gods and gives birth to vidar the wide ruler so um

02:15:51.840 that's something that a lot of people don't know about and when we look back at the axes the clubs

02:15:57.520 through the bronze age and stuff that is a very interesting kind of question but i we don't know

02:16:05.200 but i would go out on a limb to say following

02:16:12.080 the association of power with it iron would be and again the usage of iron to stave off

02:16:22.080 ill and evil spirits um the usage of bronze to call them in like bronze bells

02:16:30.160 and then iron to stab them away and uh lord thor is the one who rides on the edges

02:16:38.480 of the realm he keeps the the chaotic powers at bay they do slip by and that's what the fighting

02:16:47.360 is is about and the re-emergence of trying to create balance and pushing those forces back out

02:16:54.320 so that they cannot interfere in weird as they do um ultimately i i would think fits the motif of

02:17:03.680 of iron but it doesn't say yeah it really doesn't i mean

02:17:17.360 trying to think if there's more to it or not it is oh long handle short handle

02:17:26.720 like what you you and i've discussed yeah so in um anglo-saxon england the versions

02:17:36.720 of mjolnir that you find are long handled exclusively

02:17:41.120 because you know if you wanted a hammer for battle purposes that's what you would get to where you

02:17:51.920 have closer to like you know either a traditional warhammer or like a modern sledge you can get you

02:18:00.960 know you can choke up on the haft and really get momentum in it's the story of the the forging of

02:18:07.760 the hammer talks about how it's, you know, less potent than it's the most devastating

02:18:15.180 of the gifts, or of the, well, they really count as gifts because they're compensation

02:18:22.160 pieces. But yeah, it's less potent than it could be. Because during the process, the

02:18:35.540 dwarf is distracted and he doesn't he's not able to make the full um the full handle so they're 0.99

02:18:41.300 short handled in scandinavia in the tradition in the in the wearing of them they're all like

02:18:48.420 short handled um that that myth wasn't known in anglo-saxon england or wasn't understood so you

02:18:56.660 don't see it there in the representation in the lore it doesn't really talk about

02:19:01.540 what the material is i think it's tempting to like wonder what that might be what it might be

02:19:09.640 made out of and it's interesting as fawn said stuff that is made out of iron is named you know

02:19:19.240 iron stuff it's not named um yarn hammer which would be iron hammer it's named uh mjolnir which

02:19:30.880 etymologically folks are speculating is is you know like grinding lightning um

02:19:39.740 so i wonder about that i've heard people talk about thinking it's meteorite iron before because

02:19:48.780 it you know comes crashing to the earth like that that's kind of a cool idea but there's nothing that

02:19:54.880 that says that or whatnot the dwarves are known to you know fashion other things out of

02:20:06.560 magical non-comporally existent materials like um

02:20:14.960 like the the binding they used to fetter uh fenrir um there's so there's no telling but no it doesn't

02:20:23.120 doesn't say exactly what that material is or if it does uh i'm not aware of it well and i wanted to

02:20:30.560 say too because we're talking about poetic motifs about the the queen poisoning the horn or the

02:20:37.360 bride or the the wife not crying at the side of her husband and how you know these have strange

02:20:43.840 effects based on cultural intentions i really do the shortening is about having to be to get close

02:20:55.120 the weakness of having to get close the the kind of um it's just i i think very like instilled

02:21:03.760 in the poetics of it where lord thor is dreadfully powerful and terrifying but his

02:21:12.400 one fallacy is that he has to get close and that creates a lot of um motion but

02:21:22.160 the reality is is that you know to view the gods view thor is actually carrying an object like that

02:21:29.680 or looking at it as the beings of the earth and of the material and of energy and and material

02:21:40.080 and energy interacting, are gifting over this powerful force to the Lord of the earth and

02:21:50.540 heaven. And perhaps the iron rod is polaric magnetism. We could go into a lot of that

02:21:59.740 and the iron belt, the earth belt, and the right and the left being almost like a positive

02:22:06.240 and negative and we're we're going into some other stuff and what i'm saying is is that uh the stories

02:22:14.560 are they they have their purposes and that the gods are gods separate of the stories obviously

02:22:22.800 they're cultural the anglo-saxons that are different to to the norse but um the power and

02:22:30.240 and the majesty of it all is still there it's just realizing those differences and definitely

02:22:37.120 not speaking into literalisms um which i think we should be careful of and understanding that

02:22:46.260 the gods are bigger um but that the stories are part of it it's like a rope they're they're one

02:22:52.040 definite strand of the faith uh that we have towards our gods but you get people say oh you

02:22:59.280 literally believe uh that thor is riding a chariot and carrying a hammer i mean we tell our children

02:23:06.720 this yes but do i believe that he is a binding and barriered force that keeps chaotic forces

02:23:14.000 from coming in and pulling and creating polaris rifts in weird or orlaw or fate yes yes i do so um

02:23:24.000 Um, I, I think that's, you know, something I think all of us should consider.

02:23:30.160 Uh, Al Saragot, he once told me about a story where he was kind of present in a chat room

02:23:34.660 when they were talking about Thor's protein intake or something, like making him complete.

02:23:43.120 They just, you hemorrhaged him completely.

02:23:46.220 Well, yeah, because you get some, sometimes you get new people to things that try to

02:23:53.440 They're used to religious lore being explicitly literal to the point of it's heresy if you think that some of it is symbolic.

02:24:11.280 So they need to know Thor's PRs on lifts and stuff to make it make sense to them.

02:24:22.260 And it's just it's wrongheaded. But sometimes you get, you know, people come from a lot of different places on it. And this is in a world where at times you would be put to death if you questioned that the Eucharist was not literally at the moment where they said the magic words on it didn't literally become like actual flesh and actual blood.

02:24:49.060 if it represented or was had the same important if you moved any degree away from no it is literally

02:24:59.160 human meat and human blood that is supreme heresy and bad things that happen to you

02:25:07.300 you're always going to get a sacrifice that's i mean that's the world we live in it's not the

02:25:12.220 time we live in but it is dealing with contemporary religious traditions um so next up

02:25:25.260 uh matt and svan now that you are both experts in old norse would you consider writing the first

02:25:32.700 ever devotional translations of the eddas um at which time at some future point when i become an

02:25:40.540 expert in old norse uh perhaps i would consider doing that uh i don't know old norse i know just

02:26:03.340 a little bit of old norse i can speak just a little bit i'm working on it i'm working on

02:26:10.300 making a little bit of progress here and there um my wife came around the corner and was like

02:26:18.540 see you should and i'm like no i will also i will recommend pimsleur to get icelandic

02:26:27.100 i am under the my plan is to learn icelandic and then from icelandic

02:26:35.020 turn my Icelandic into Old Norse. It's mutually intelligible. Icelandic to Old Norse in the way

02:26:46.220 I understand it is modern English to Shakespearean English. Like it still works, but you phrase some

02:26:54.740 things archaically, you do some things differently. That is also a really good resource that Svon

02:27:00.520 just held up as far as going word for word um old icelandic old norse it's um yeah so that would be

02:27:11.000 really cool i think it'd be fun to do what we are already seeing though spawn and i when we're going

02:27:17.480 through especially because we use the the list by battleworks site where it's got the uh the

02:27:22.760 parallel script of the original material and the translated material next to one another something

02:27:29.640 sounds funky we can look over and not always but we can read the original material and we can

02:27:39.480 make note of some things that are just off and that has helped us in going through the lore so

02:27:45.880 far it is something that both spawn and i have caught things that look strange and then we look

02:27:51.000 over at the the old norse and we're like hey now that's not what these words mean

02:27:56.040 that's really valuable even with the little bit that we know it helps um

02:28:03.720 so yeah it'd be cool to get there at some point and i i was gonna my big contribution

02:28:11.000 i'm hoping in the future is to map out the rivers of heaven midgard and of course the

02:28:19.000 The Elvigar, Elvigar, are already kind of known,

02:28:24.200 but nobody's ever talked about the other rivers

02:28:26.680 and kind of dissected them.

02:28:29.020 And I know it's kind of a nerdy thing to say,

02:28:31.600 but I really want to be the guy who's known for that.

02:28:36.040 But there you go.

02:28:41.520 um i just picture you like uh like elder year teddy roosevelt floating down trying to map the

02:28:51.360 amazon i gotta find the 14 rivers in midgard that are in grimness mal see i was thinking of the guy

02:29:01.980 who does the monster fishing uh that's the first dude that popped in my head so last question of

02:29:10.460 night um do you have to be openly and devout also true to join the afa

02:29:20.140 so this is a nuanced question and i want to put it

02:29:26.620 this way how how open you are with your faith is a personal choice of yours

02:29:33.820 you should be maximally open and completely open about your faith but we have members at all

02:29:43.660 different levels of openness and that's something that you come to in your own time or not um

02:29:56.060 there's kind of two ways to take this question so i'm going to put this out there first

02:29:59.900 it is a unfair ask to demand that you have a deep and sincere relationship with the isir

02:30:18.060 before we allow you to take the steps necessary to explore or build such a relationship

02:30:26.060 our gods don't demand that of you in the same way that other faiths do but we are a religion

02:30:36.360 and we have people that are christian nominally or atheists or whatever else they are but they

02:30:44.040 like what we're doing they think it's cool they think it's fun it supports um and aligns with

02:30:52.320 their politics or their worldview or things they think are overall good for the world and so they

02:31:00.560 want to be members and be part of it i appreciate that i appreciate the goodwill i appreciate wanting

02:31:08.160 to help i would appreciate donations from said people but we are a church and in order to

02:31:16.080 participate in our church there does need to be a sincere desire for religiosity and a sincere desire

02:31:27.280 to be devoutly also true understanding that you learn that through participation and through the

02:31:34.160 gift cycle but it does have to be what you're going for you can't join under false pretenses

02:31:40.080 like hey i'm not religious but i really like what you guys are doing and i'd like to join

02:31:44.320 that's not good enough you have to actually want to develop faith in the gods but that looks

02:31:50.160 different for different people different people start with different assumptions and as long as

02:31:55.280 you would like to explore that and you would like to build that relationship with the icier then

02:32:00.560 yes that's you know you're you're welcomed and encouraged to join the austral folk assembly

02:32:06.480 we've had a lot of people that really like the idea of alsatru they like the idea of you know

02:32:17.700 we will have atheists that see the cool stuff about religion and want to have those cool things

02:32:27.580 without actual faith or actual devotional religion and it doesn't work that way a lot of the time

02:32:36.960 when these things are part and parcel and inseparable from one another there's a reason for

02:32:42.440 that they're whole gotten in our uh not an argument but a discussion with uh one of our

02:32:48.200 folk builders the other day about the word holy and we started looking at the etymology and

02:32:53.260 and things and it's interesting how that word in the english language evolved because it goes to

02:33:02.020 the concept fundamentally all the way you know from aryan into old english before it

02:33:09.360 bifurcates to mean those two very different things as whole and complete or sacred

02:33:15.700 um but yeah the concept of wholeness is a part of that when you're practicing your life in right

02:33:26.360 order and right action all of the different parts of your life synergize with one another

02:33:32.520 you are living wholly you're living hail and that makes it all work you can't have

02:33:41.060 all the benefits of religion without the sincere belief and devotion to divinity the one fuels the

02:33:51.340 other the other that it fuels strengthens the faith and back and forth in a cyclical way to

02:34:00.520 where it builds momentum and it builds energy and that's such a fundamental principle i would say to

02:34:07.380 any religious practice but very specifically to our religious practice swan do you have anything

02:34:13.220 to add on that yeah i think that understanding the faith in the gods versus loyalty and the

02:34:24.500 development of the two when you come into the faith you don't have to know everything you don't

02:34:31.940 have to be a uh full scholar believer and and know all the lord no you come home and our clergy

02:34:42.820 help you our fellow folk that are in leadership meet with you teach you guide you help you

02:34:53.380 through many things whether it's religious or life you know weddings and marriages and

02:35:01.220 and even funerary everything is complete but it has to be that as al-siragoti said a sincere desire

02:35:11.140 to attempt to start to understand and i think we find ourselves all too often lumped in with

02:35:19.140 with hobby, Ausatru, or hobby paganism, which is just, I detest the word, but I have met people

02:35:33.180 who are of, their parents are ethnically one faith, whether it's Orthodox, Christian, Roman

02:35:43.740 catholic um and i say that in the sense of where they were raised and the traditions they were

02:35:49.740 raised in then their parents are excuse me yeah their grandparents are of that faith

02:35:55.980 their parents are atheist and then they want to find something but they just can't stand

02:36:03.660 you know that religion or they don't know where to start so then they become

02:36:08.220 hobby ausitru and they still add concepts or bring over the atheism in and that's not a good place

02:36:20.820 that's not a place that we're willing to relent and give space to within our church our church

02:36:29.000 wants sincerity the gods i i believe want sincerity they want us to be able to express

02:36:37.420 and vocalize our soul sickness so that we can fix it together.

02:36:46.400 But then you don't need the entirety of war.

02:36:50.860 You don't need to know fully.

02:36:55.440 A lot of people start with community first.

02:36:58.580 They're agnostic and they feel community.

02:37:02.140 They feel like this is something so familiar to them.

02:37:05.860 they can't quite place their finger on it but it's so close to them and then they begin to learn

02:37:13.620 slowly we have to remember our ancestors got that from birth and uh we have not at a great belief it

02:37:23.300 is much less challenging to go from a different faith to also true than to go from no faith to

02:37:33.940 faith um because the way we conceive of the world since we're very small dictates kind of patterns

02:37:45.940 in our brain and how we process information and things that we're open to and things that we're

02:37:52.200 not and if you find yourself an adult and you've never been open to metaphysical reality or to

02:38:02.500 transcendence or divinity, it's very hard, like figuring out how to start that journey is really

02:38:12.540 tricky. There's a certain muscle memory, if you come from a different faith, to learn at least 0.97

02:38:21.780 how, what belief looks like, what worship looks like, and then go from there to shape that in an

02:38:30.140 appropriate way to house a truth but truth is really important and what i would say is also

02:38:36.880 extremely important is openness you have to be open and want to build your faith and build your

02:38:46.500 relationship in the iser or with the iser rather and that requires you other thing is our gods are

02:38:56.600 gods. You're not going to fool them with your elaborate trickery by pretending you believe

02:39:03.180 something you don't. You may very well offend them by being dishonest. Truth is one of our virtues,

02:39:11.580 especially when you're approaching the divine. They know if you are sincere, you are not sincere.

02:39:18.320 So be honest, be open. And I've found it is very beneficial for other people and for myself when

02:39:26.320 I started down this path to just be open with them when you're making your offerings or approaching

02:39:35.060 them in prayer saying hey I don't know if you're there or you're not but if you are I'm I'm open

02:39:44.660 I'm listening I want to believe here you go you know make a good faith effort and I think it goes

02:39:52.320 long way because again they're gods you're not fooling them by pretending to do something

02:39:58.640 so be honest with where you're at but maintain the openness to develop that faith and if you do that

02:40:06.320 some really really special things happen um that's what we have for this evening

02:40:12.560 i appreciate you joining us and reading the lord for us spawn absolutely look forward to talking

02:40:19.760 to you again here in a few weeks um please join me next week as we have another edition of adulting

02:40:27.520 with alan and this time we're going to talk about parenting and if you are able i would love to see

02:40:36.800 you guys at winter nights in new hampshire so if you can make that happen it's going to be a good

02:40:43.760 time it's going to be wonderful and i would love to see you guys there uh until we talk next time

02:40:50.080 hail the icer hail the folk hail the afa remember victory never sleeps

02:41:13.760 We'll be right back.

02:41:43.760 We'll be right back.

02:42:13.760 Thank you.

02:42:43.760 Thank you.

02:43:13.760 Thank you.

02:43:43.760 Transcription by CastingWords

Asatru Folk Assembly - September 18, 2025

9⧸17⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 167 - Guðrúnarkviða in fyrsta

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