The Golden One - Survive the Jive and The Golden One at a Viking Gravemound

00:00:00.000 Greetings and salutations. Welcome to this Jule special with my good friend Tom.

00:00:05.280 Welcome back to the channel Tom. Thanks mate, good to be here. Yeah good to have

00:00:10.080 you here and we are actually at a special place of the dead, it's a

00:00:13.320 grave field. Yes this is Åse Grafveld in Sweden and it's a very it's very old

00:00:20.680 and very large pagan burial ground with many barrows like these you see here

00:00:26.100 dating. I'm gonna move out of the way so you can properly admire them. Here's two

00:00:30.180 beautiful ones and these probably date to the Iron Age but some of the ones here

00:00:34.600 are more recent from the Viking Age and there's also stone circles, stone ship

00:00:40.020 settings as well here but from that from somewhere between the Iron Age and the

00:00:44.400 Viking Age. So this was used for well over a thousand years as a burial ground

00:00:48.420 for many pagans. Yeah so we're at the western shores of Mälaren and Mälaren

00:00:54.120 is well a central lake which connects to Stockholm and all around Mälaren

00:00:59.820 you can find a lot of Viking burials etc and obviously I know Tom you've made

00:01:06.940 videos from Uppsala and the thing is that the level of the sea was much higher

00:01:12.240 back in the day so probably where we stand now I don't know how high up we are but

00:01:17.940 with this burial ground is all on a ridge you can do a shot afterwards to show

00:01:22.980 exactly what we're looking at but we're really high up and all these mounds are

00:01:26.820 on this ridge but this ridge used to be an island so what we can see now is feel

00:01:31.920 like agricultural land surrounding the ridge was of course just the lake and

00:01:37.200 that meant actually the lake itself was more of the sea then because it was

00:01:40.300 connected right out to Stockholm with this with the Baltic so like all the Viking 0.98

00:01:44.700 boats could come up here and they'd see the burial mounds very prominently as

00:01:48.980 they're sailing past because it's like a motorway of those times so people

00:01:52.660 wanted their mounds to be known like runestones set like on roads or near to

00:01:58.380 like waterway so everyone can see the names of the dead or the barrows of the

00:02:02.760 dead so they can be remembered for many years to come yeah definitely so if you are

00:02:07.380 interested in these sort of things and you plan a trip to Sweden the region of

00:02:12.060 Mälaren definitely including Uppsala because that's connected via the waterways

00:02:17.640 so anyway since this is a Jule slash Christmas special do you have any any

00:02:23.680 take on Jule or Christmas as a pagan it's pagan origins I thought you would be the 0.94

00:02:28.440 best to answer this question because I know a lot of my subscribers have have

00:02:32.280 asked this as well well of course you may celebrate your how you choose you may if

00:02:38.180 you're a pagan you may have established your own rights and ways of doing things

00:02:41.740 and that's fine I'm not trying to say there's anything wrong with the way you've

00:02:44.820 chosen to do stuff but let me say what I understand from about how Germanic pagan

00:02:50.280 Yule was practiced both the the Anglo-Saxon and the Norse sources say that

00:02:55.140 it was two months of Yule so that's December equivalent to December and January but

00:03:00.060 they used a different calendar so it wouldn't be exactly the same times but yeah

00:03:03.320 so two months long two moons and in the main big celebration would be in the

00:03:09.220 second month but within the Yule time these two months there's many celebrations

00:03:14.740 many sacred events for different gods so and for different reasons during this

00:03:20.600 holy time the main one which is called which is also called Yule I think that

00:03:26.680 would happen on the new moon following the full moon following the solstice but

00:03:31.320 many people like to just do it on the solstice because now we have a solar

00:03:33.980 calendar but the Germanic people use a lunar solar calendar so they used they

00:03:37.900 calculated by both the moon and the sun combined so in any case that main

00:03:42.880 festival was all about Odin he was the main person celebrated for that one and it

00:03:47.560 and it began with a sacrifice of a horse or something like that to Odin and then

00:03:53.380 many days of drinking that would last and feasting because the word Yule was

00:03:57.920 actually used as a kenning to mean feast and other times of year as well because

00:04:02.600 the Yule feast was such a big meal so that big celebration of drunkenness and

00:04:08.780 feasting and coming together was the main Yule celebration but as I said it's two

00:04:14.000 months long and there are other things one of them is only attested in

00:04:17.740 anglo-saxon sources they say the night before Yule they had something called

00:04:21.500 Modernicht which means night of the mothers and I think that would be very 0.97

00:04:27.320 similar to what the Norse had called Disirblut which or Disirblut because and

00:04:32.060 that was actually at the end of February but the but the anglo-saxon one was the

00:04:35.540 night before Yule and it's about celebrating and worshipping the clan mothers the

00:04:40.920 ancestral mothers of your race so not really just all your not actual you know 0.91

00:04:46.640 your great-grandmother or whatever but rather like symbolic representatives

00:04:50.720 like divine female like goddesses almost who represent your people and that 0.74

00:04:58.040 they you know they help their instrumental in bringing the luck and fortunes of

00:05:02.480 your people so that would be an important and very solemn occasion too and we can

00:05:08.240 see for the fact that Odin is the Lord of the Dead and that they have the

00:05:11.800 Modernicht as well which is about ancestral deities or something like a

00:05:17.440 deity there's definitely a connection this time of year with the dead and I

00:05:22.480 think that that is why we should remember our ancestors at this time of

00:05:26.920 year and come to maybe somewhere like this or to wherever you can wherever is

00:05:31.360 appropriate for where you live and think about the about your ancestors and

00:05:35.680 your people and remember that your ancestors are watching now another thing

00:05:40.180 that most of my subscribers will be somewhat familiar with is the wild hunt

00:05:45.820 because I usually issue my wild hunt challenges and that is set to usually

00:05:50.740 something to do with self-improvement that you embrace the embark upon the wild

00:05:54.820 hunt to do something and I do this to get this mythic heroic epic feel but that's

00:06:01.300 connected to the winter solstice as well correct yeah the wild hunt is is

00:06:07.180 preserved in all different folkloric sources from around Europe and I'm sure

00:06:13.300 that some of them connected to midwinter definitely in England and I mostly only

00:06:17.740 know about the English folkloric English folkloric sources where it's

00:06:21.040 definitely associated with winter I don't know this associated specifically

00:06:25.120 with Christmas in England but it may well be in other parts of Europe but it's

00:06:29.020 widely agreed although over the centuries the wild hunt has become

00:06:34.000 associated with different figures such King Arthur some local famous person

00:06:39.760 like Barbarossa or whatever but originally it's most likely that it was all

00:06:44.560 about Odin and that it derives from Odin and in Sweden it's always been

00:06:48.400 connected to Odin because they never departed from that original a meaning of

00:06:51.880 it all right cool yeah we will actually make a another video in try to find some

00:06:56.880 sort of cafe or some warmer place to talk a bit more about the Arthurian legend and the

00:07:01.360 green knight because yeah that will have to be we'll talk more in in the next video so

00:07:06.520 thank you Tom and and yeah thank you for watching good you hail our ancestors

The Golden One - December 23, 2018

Survive the Jive and The Golden One at a Viking Gravemound

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