INTRODUCTION uring the Middle Ages Latin became the language of writing and of much religious storytelling in many lands of Europe So for example in Germany and France people would speak German or French to friends and business associates but when they wrote books or told Christian stories they used Latin The countries in what is today Scandinavia spoke Old Norse common to all three countries Norway Denmark and Sweden However even after Latin writing came to lceland which was settled by Norse people they wrote their own stories in Old Norse not Latin In Iceland the tradition of skaldie poetry and song was fundamental to daily culture People gathered in large halls at any excuse to listen to stories often because a visiting poet had come to the village Stories could warm a long cold night after all This might well be the reason why some Norse people tenaciously maintained the worldview you will encounter in the stories here until the middle of the 12th century in opposition to the rising strength of Christianity in neighboring countries The Norse stories in many ways reflect the geophysical world the people of Norway and Iceland inhabited Norway is covered with mountains the tallest of which are essentially barren and four are volcanic Iceland is covered with volcanoes many of which are active And both countries INTRODUCTION EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
have snow and ice in many areas in winter and in some areas even year round and each has a long coast lapped by an icy ocean In such an environment the land and sea themselves must have seemed alive At any moment the earth might roar spit fire and swallow you or it might shake and an avalanche of snow could smother your homestead Even a piece of rock if smacked against a glassy stone could produce hot sparks that set afire whatever dry twigs were at hand It s no wonder then that not just living beings had names but all sorts of objects had names too Bridges and halls trees and swords nimate objects of so many kinds had personalities and powers and it was important to show respect through calling them by name and never never to do so frivolously The world must have seemed outrageously dangerous death waited behind any door and oh how savage that death might be Nevertheless these people got in boats and braved seas turbulent with storms as they explored and exploited other worlds The Norse both paid homage to and defied the unknown The spirit of courage colors their mythology even as trickery leads to tragedy And perhaps facing adversity all the time is at least partly the reason why they had a democratic society in which all free men not women and not slaves had a vote just as all gods had a vote in the assemblies that the major god Odin led Lives depended on decisions made in communal meetings so it was best to share both the privilege and the responsibility INTRODUCTION
NOTE ON NORSE NAMES ld Norse used letters that don t appear in the modern alphabet for English Suc ch as B which indicates the first sound in think which indicates the first sound in the and ae which e indicates the first sound in act They also added marks above or below vowels to indicate a variety of sounds While these Old Norse alphabetic symbols are beautiful I feared that using them here would inhibit you from reading passages aloud I wouldn t risk robbing you of that joy So I have anglicized all proper names here Further Norse names often end in rbecause a final r can be a nominative case marker showing that the word is the subject of its sentence Since English does not use case markings on names for the sake of consistency I've chosen to leave out nominative case marking final r s Thus Odinn the Alfadir of the Esir is known here as Odin the Allfather of the Aesir Por who swings his hammer Mjolnir is here Thor who swings his h ammer Mjolnir And so on If you would like to know more about Old Norse please consult a site for the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA such as www phonetics ucla edu course chapter1 chapter html or en wikipedia org wiki International Phonetic Alphabet Then use the IPA to help you understand a site on Old Norse such as www omni riglot com writing oldnorse htm Please watch the wonderful video there NOTE ON NORSE NAMES 8 OR REPRESENTREPREFEREERRERREE
ODIN LOKI THOR FREYJA BALDER HEL EADS KVASIR FREY IDUNN HEIMEDALL JORMUNGAND FRIGG A FENRIR NOTE ON NORSE NAMES
