Heimdallr

To be captured by the Northern Thing means to be taken with the Norse stories of the Gods. If that describes you, then The Norse Myths should help. It contains the most complete versions of the Norse myths available in the English language. The Norse Myths is presented as a narrative from the beginning of creation to the final great battle of Ragnarok, followed by the Rebirth. The Norse Myths is split into several parts: Part One: In the Beginning. Eight chapters that set up the Universe. Part Two: The Adventures. Twelve chapters about the adventures of Gods, Elves, Jotuns, Humans. Part Three: The Ending of All Things. Overarching in all the stories is Ragnarokr, the Doom of the Gods. Even in the humorous stories there's a sense of fatality. Part Three is eight chapters leading to the final battle (Ragnarokr) and the subsequent Rebirth into a more Utopian world. Finally, there is a complete Glossary of all the characters, places, and objects in the book. The spelling used in the book is presented with definitions of the word and alternate spellings, followed by a complete description. And there's a Genealogy chart showing the familial relationships of many of the characters. Norse mythology comes from the Nordic countries, including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland. These countries were heavily influenced by Teutonic (German) mythology. This book contains all of the legends which pertain to the Gods. Future volumes will be about family sagas like The Niebelungenlied (The Ring Saga). There is a deep foreboding, a sense of doom, that pervades Norse mythology. The Gods are not immortal. They can be injured and need to be healed. They can find themselves bent with old age. Against the right enemy they can be killed. From the beginning the Gods know they are in a violent battle of good versus evil. The Gods, mankind of Midgardr, and light elves, are doing what they can to stave off the last battle, Ragnarokr, the Doom of the Gods. They fight against evil giants, ferocious wolves, giant sea serpents, and the cunning Loki. The Nordic countries have harsh winters resulting in a mythology that is darker than most. The Norse hero wants to die a hero's death, in battle, fighting for right. The worst death is the straw death, in bed, old, infirm, and away from the fight. The hero who dies in battle goes to Valhalla or one of the other fighting halls to practice and prepare for the last great battle. Those who die straw deaths go to the torturous halls in Niflheimr. Glory does not await them. Pain, venous snakes, and starvation awaits them. Yet, there is hope . . . always hope. There is the vision of a better life filled with peace and tranquility, the Rebirth. Norse mythology has influenced many fantasy novels including The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, who taught Norse mythology at Oxford. The Norse Myths will take you to a world of legend with Thor, Odin, Loki, Gods, Goddesses, monsters, giants, and dwarves doing what they can to help or hurt each other.

Focuses specifically on the concept and role of islands in the medieval world. The main characteristic of an island is, of course, that of being isolated from the rest of the world; in geography by waters, in more abstract and symbolic meanings by other kinds of separating borders. Islands were the place 'on the other side', of difference, otherness and remoteness. As one of the articles in this volume puts it, islands are often depicted "as sites for extraordinary events and happenings".

This book is an edition and translation of one of the most important and celebrated sources of Old Norse-Icelandic mythology and heroic legend, namely the medieval poems now known collectively as the Poetic Edda or Elder Edda. Included are thirty-six texts, which are mostly preserved in medieval manuscripts, especially the thirteenth-century Icelandic codex traditionally known as the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. The poems cover diverse subjects, including the creation, destruction and rebirth of the world, the dealings of gods such as Óðinn, Þórr and Loki with giants and each other, and the more intimate, personal tragedies of the hero Sigurðr, his wife Guðrún and the valkyrie Brynhildr. Each poem is provided with an introduction, synopsis and suggestions for further reading. The Old Norse texts are furnished with a textual apparatus recording the manuscript readings behind this edition’s emendations, as well as select variant readings. The accompanying translations, informed by the latest scholarship, are concisely annotated to make them as accessible as possible. As the first open-access, single-volume parallel Old Norse edition and English translation of the Poetic Edda, this book will prove a valuable resource for students and scholars of Old Norse literature. It will also interest those researching other fields of medieval literature (especially Old English and Middle High German), and appeal to a wider general audience drawn to the myths and legends of the Viking Age and subsequent centuries.

Essays on Eddic Poetry presents a selection of important articles on Old Norse literature by noted medievalist John McKinnell. While McKinnell’s work addresses many of the perennial issues in the study of Old Norse, this collection has a special focus on the interplay between heathen and Christian world-views in the poems. Among the texts examined are Hávamál, which includes an elegantly cynical poem about Óðinn’s sexual intrigues and a more mystical one about his self-sacrifice on the world-tree in order to gain magical wisdom; Vǫlundarkviða, which recounts an elvish smith’s revenge for his captivity and maiming; and Hervararkviða, where the heroine bravely but foolishly raises her dead father to demand the deadly sword Tyrfingr from him. Originally published between 1988 and 2008, these twelve essays cover a wide range of mythological and heroic poems and have been revised and updated to reflect the latest scholarship.

As the Vikings began to migrate overseas as raiders or settlers in the late eighth century, there is evidence that this new way of life, centred on warfare, commerce and exploration, brought with it a warrior ethos that gradually became codified in the Viking myths, notably in the cult of Odin, the god of war, magic and poetry, and chief god in the Norse pantheon. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when most of Scandinavia had long since been converted to Christianity, form perhaps the most important era in the history of Norse mythology: only at this point were the myths of Thor, Freyr and Odin first recorded in written form. Using archaeological sources to take us further back in time than any written document, the accounts of foreign writers like the Roman historian Tacitus, and the most important repository of stories of the gods, old Norse poetry and the Edda, Christopher Abram leads the reader into the lost world of the Norse gods.

The most comprehensive guide to Norse literature, historical folk lore and more. Kvilhaug peels back the layers of the Eddas, Poems and Sagas to reveal hidden truths within Maria's background in research and archaeology is visible throughout with full illustrations, timelines and beautiful translations of passages providing the key to unlocking and deciphering the hidden wisdom within. Her exploration of modern interpretations, past parables, and related cultural mythos provides a deeper layer into the mysteries of Old Norse practices.

This book constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of 9 workshops held at the 35th International ISC High Performance 2021 Conference, in Frankfurt, Germany, in June-July 2021: Second International Workshop on the Application of Machine Learning Techniques to Computational Fluid Dynamics and Solid Mechanics Simulations and Analysis; HPC-IODC: HPC I/O in the Data Center Workshop; Compiler-assisted Correctness Checking and Performance Optimization for HPC; Machine Learning on HPC Systems;4th International Workshop on Interoperability of Supercomputing and Cloud Technologies;2nd International Workshop on Monitoring and Operational Data Analytics;16th Workshop on Virtualization in High-Performance Cloud Computing; Deep Learning on Supercomputers; 5th International Workshop on In Situ Visualization. The 35 papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected. They cover all aspects of research, development, and application of large-scale, high performance experimental and commercial systems. Topics include high-performance computing (HPC), computer architecture and hardware, programming models, system software, performance analysis and modeling, compiler analysis and optimization techniques, software sustainability, scientific applications, deep learning.

This book brings together Old Norse-Icelandic literature and critical strategies of memory, and argues that some of the particularities of this vernacular textual tradition are explained by the fact that this literature derives from, represents, and incorporates into its designs mnemonic devices of different kinds. Even if Old Norse-Icelandic manuscript culture is relatively silent about the mnemonic context of the literature, the texts themselves exhibit multiple reminiscences of memory. By showing that this literature reveals glimpses of mnemonic technologies at the same time as it testifies to a cultural memory, this study demonstrates how ‘the past’, and narrative traditions about the past, were constructed in a dynamic relationship with ideas that existed at the time the texts were written. Moreover, the book deals with the function of memory in early book-culture, with metaphors of memory, and with mnemonic cues such as spatiality and visuality. With its new readings of canonical texts like the Íslendingasǫgur, the Prose Edda and selected eddic poems, as well as of less widely studied branches of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, such as the sagas of bishops and religious texts, this book will be of interest to Old Norse scholars and to scholars interested in medieval Scandinavia and memory studies.