The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe PDF Author: Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415049369
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
"Fragments of ancient belief have been incorporated into folklore and Christian dogma with the result that its original tenets have merged with the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson sifts through centuries of cultural and religious influences to locate evidence of these "lost" pagan beliefs. Davidson illustrates how northern pagan religions have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition and throws light on the nature of such beliefs and how they have been preserved. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating pre-Christian faiths and emphasizes the need to separate speculation from scientific proof. This book will be a useful tool for students with a serious interest in archaeology as it illustrates with examples how objectivity is not necessarily the driving force in forming our supposedly scientific view of the past. It will also appeal to the general reader who wants to understand the true nature of Northern European pagan belief as opposed to the oversimplified view popularized by the media. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe argues for intellectual rigorousness rather than romanticization of the past, and challenges the reader to rethink accepted interpretations"--Publisher description.

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe PDF Author: Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 0415049369
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Fragments of ancient belief have been incorporated into folklore and Christian dogma with the result that its original tenets have merged with the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson sifts through centuries of cultural and religious influences to locate evidence of these "lost" pagan beliefs. Davidson illustrates how northern pagan religions have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition and throws light on the nature of such beliefs and how they have been preserved. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating pre-Christian faiths and emphasizes the need to separate speculation from scientific proof. This book will be a useful tool for students with a serious interest in archaeology as it illustrates with examples how objectivity is not necessarily the driving force in forming our supposedly scientific view of the past. It will also appeal to the general reader who wants to understand the true nature of Northern European pagan belief as opposed to the oversimplified view popularized by the media. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe argues for intellectual rigorousness rather than romanticization of the past, and challenges the reader to rethink accepted interpretations"--Publisher description.

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe PDF Author: Dr Hilda Ellis Davidson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134944683
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Fragments of ancient belief mingle with folklore and Christian dogma until the original tenets are lost in the myths and psychologies of the intervening years. Hilda Ellis Davidson illustrates how pagan beliefs have been represented and misinterpreted by the Christian tradition, and throws light on the nature of pre-Christian beliefs and how they have been preserved. The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe stresses both the possibilities and the difficulties of investigating the lost religious beliefs of Northern Europe.

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe

The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe PDF Author: Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description


Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

Gods and Myths of Northern Europe PDF Author: H. Davidson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141941502
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Surveys the pre-Christian beliefs of the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples. Provides an introduction to this subject, giving basic outlines to the sagas and stories, and helps identify the charachter traits of not only the well known but also the lesser gods of the age.

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe PDF Author: Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719025792
Category : Celts
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description


Roles of the Northern Goddess

Roles of the Northern Goddess PDF Author: Dr Hilda Ellis Davidson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134778015
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
While much work has been done on goddesses of the ancient world and the male gods of pre-Christian Scandinavia, the northern goddesses have been largely neglected. Roles of the Northern Goddess presents a highly readable study of the worship of these goddesses by men and women. With its use of evidence from early literature, popular tradition, legend and archaeology, this book investigates the role of the early hunting goddess and the local goddesses who were involved in all aspects of the household and the farm. What emerges is that the goddess was both benevolent and destructive, a powerful figure closely concerned with birth and death and with destiny of individuals.

The Barbarians

The Barbarians PDF Author: Peter Bogucki
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780237650
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Beginning in the Stone Age and continuing through the collapse of the Roman empire, a fascinating exploration of the increasing complexity, technological accomplishments, and distinctive practices of the non-literate peoples known as Barbarians. We often think of the civilizations of ancient Greece and Rome as discrete incubators of Western culture, places where ideas about everything from government to art to philosophy were free to develop and then be distributed outward into the wider Mediterranean world. But as Peter Bogucki reminds us in this book, Greece and Rome did not develop in isolation. All around them were rural communities who had remarkably different cultures, ones few of us know anything about. Telling the stories of these nearly forgotten people, he offers a long-overdue enrichment of how we think about classical antiquity. As Bogucki shows, the lands to the north of the Greek and Roman peninsulas were inhabited by non-literate communities that stretched across river valleys, mountains, plains, and shorelines from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Ural Mountains in the east. What we know about them is almost exclusively through archeological finds of settlements, offerings, monuments, and burials—but these remnants paint a portrait that is just as compelling as that of the great literate, urban civilizations of this time. Bogucki sketches the development of these groups’ cultures from the Stone Age through the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, highlighting the increasing complexity of their societal structures, their technological accomplishments, and their distinct cultural practices. He shows that we are still learning much about them, as he examines new historical and archeological discoveries as well as the ways our knowledge about these groups has led to a vibrant tourist industry and even influenced politics. The result is a fascinating account of several nearly vanished cultures and the modern methods that have allowed us to rescue them from historical oblivion.

Gods of the Ancient Northmen

Gods of the Ancient Northmen PDF Author: Georges Dumézil
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520035072
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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The Pre-Christian Religions of the North

The Pre-Christian Religions of the North PDF Author: Margaret Clunies Ross
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN: 9782503568805
Category : Europe, Northern
Languages : en
Pages : 635

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Book Description
Over the millennia since pre-Christian religions were actively practised, European - and later contemporary - society has developed a fascination with the beliefs of northern Europe before the arrival of Christianity, which have been the subject of a huge range of popular and scholarly theories, interpretations, and uses. Indeed, the pre-Christian religions of the North have exerted a phenomenal influence on modern culture, appearing in everything from the names of days of the week to Hollywood blockbusters. Scholarly treatments have been hardly less varied. Theories - from the Middles Ages until today - have depicted these pre-Christian religious systems as dangerous illusions, the works of Satan, representatives of a lost proto-Indo-European religious culture, a form of 'natural' religion, and even as a system non-indigenous in origin, derived from cultures outside Europe. The Research and Reception strand of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North project establishes a definitive survey of the current and historical uses and interpretations of pre-Christian mythology and religious material, tracing the many ways in which people both within and outside Scandinavia have understood and been influenced by these religions, from the Christian Middle Ages to contemporary media of all kinds. The previous volume (I) traced the reception down to the early nineteenth century, while the present volume (II) takes up the story from c. 1830 down to the present day and the burgeoning of interest across a diversity of new as well as old media.

Myth and Religion of the North

Myth and Religion of the North PDF Author: Gabriel Turville-Petre
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description