Lecture 3 - Belief

o Lombards  Actually come from scandanavia, move from Sandinavia, moved all the way to Italy o There isn’t a single Germanic society who doesn’t have a Thor like figure - Worship (How they practiced their belief systems) o We’re mostly in the dark, basically no documentation besides:  Observations from others,  Objects and inscriptions  The Icelandic sagas which were written generations later  Don’t even knoew if they really had temples] o Tactius, c. 100 (Roman) (a few centuries before they’d become what we think of as the Vikings)  He describes them gloriously to throw shade on the romans, trying to encourage them to go back to former greatness  He gives a description of their beliefs  Human sacrifice (performed by a female priest)  Periodic celbrations during the the year  Twigs were tossed and read  There were groves that were considered holy or special o Most of our info comes from 13 th century - Power and Place o Pantheon vs. particular o There’s little info to present all these gods as all a family, most likely a fabrication later on. But human families would often choose a single god that was there main dude  Thor  Very old and universally popular god  Believed about ¼ of Icelanders had “Thor” in their name  Frey  Very popular in sweden  Odin  Unsure whether ir nit he was  Valhalla  Chiefs ruled a clan, Kings ruled a bunch of clans and presented themselves in a fatherly role, above the rest. Odin, the ‘all father’ becomes the king of gods  Usually a distant character, interested in himself, reflects Icelandic attitudes about kings. o Eddas  Prose Edda  Singular story of the world from creation to apocalypse  People who came to be known as gods were originally known as just legendary heroes  Odin is the descendent of the dude who founded rome  Considered non-cannonical