Viking Friendship

"To a faithful friend, straight are the roads and short."—Odin, from the Hávamál (c. 1000) Friendship was the most important social bond in Iceland and Norway during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages. Far more significantly than kinship ties, it defined relations between chieftains, and between chieftains and householders. In Viking Friendship, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson explores the various ways in which friendship tied Icelandic and Norwegian societies together, its role in power struggles and ending conflicts, and how it shaped religious beliefs and practices both before and after the introduction of Christianity. Drawing on a wide range of Icelandic sagas and other sources, Sigurðsson details how loyalties between friends were established and maintained. The key elements of Viking friendship, he shows, were protection and generosity, which was most often expressed through gift giving and feasting. In a society without institutions that could guarantee support and security, these were crucial means of structuring mutual assistance. As a political force, friendship was essential in the decentralized Free State period in Iceland’s history (from its settlement about 800 until it came under Norwegian control in the years 1262–1264) as local chieftains vied for power and peace. In Norway, where authority was more centralized, kings attempted to use friendship to secure the loyalty of their subjects. The strong reciprocal demands of Viking friendship also informed the relationship that individuals had both with the Old Norse gods and, after 1000, with Christianity’s God and saints. Addressing such other aspects as the possibility of friendship between women and the relationship between friendship and kinship, Sigurðsson concludes by tracing the decline of friendship as the fundamental social bond in Iceland as a consequence of Norwegian rule.

This volume focuses on the literary and artistic exploration of female friendship in various geographical contexts, spanning the centuries from the medieval period until the present. The essays address the intense female bonding in world literature as a universal human need for intimacy, sense of belonging, and purpose. The main focus is on the reevaluation of friendships between women, which have been traditionally less epitomized than those between men. The authors of this volume demonstrate how the emotional unions of women offer compelling insights to various historical and contemporary societies, helping us understand gender relations, traditions, family life, and community values.

In Viking Friendship, Jon Vidar Sigurdsson explores the various ways in which friendship tied Icelandic and Norwegian societies together, its role in power struggles and ending conflicts, and how it shaped religious beliefs and practices both before and after the introduction of Christianity.

The Viking Congresses bring together scholars of archaeology, philology, history, toponymy, numismatics and a number of other disciplines to discuss the Viking Age from a variety of viewpoints. This volume contains 44 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the 18th Viking Congress held in Denmark in August 2017. The contributors take up the interdisciplinary challenge, and the papers cover a wide range of subjects, rooted in the past, but also connecting to the present.

Designed for use with children in grades K-6, this book provides a review of support groups: their nature and value; the tripartite model of children's needs, behaviours they need to learn and environmental conditions that support learning; the Keystone Learning Model, which encompasses the tripartite model, strengths and decision-making; and 'nuts and bolts' suggestions for creating and managing child support groups. The book also addresses various support groups chapter by chapter and homework ideas are provided with each chapter.

Myths & Legends. The Vikings and their norse gods fought a constant battle with nature. Their landscape, with its stark mountains and long nights created a particularly rough mythology, with profound contrasts and unforgettable heroes: Odin, Thor and Loki are just some of the familiar characters that maintain an influence over us today through movies, TV series and comics, to great fiction and epic poetry. This fabulous new book offers all the main tales with an introduction to the characters and the land that inspired them. FLAME TREE 451: From mystery to crime, supernatural to horror and myth, fantasy and science fiction, Flame Tree 451 offers a healthy diet of werewolves and mechanical men, blood-lusty vampires, dastardly villains, mad scientists, secret worlds, lost civilizations and escapist fantasies. Discover a storehouse of tales gathered specifically for the reader of the fantastic.

Through its revised and applied Aristotelianism, this book illuminates our understanding of friendship in moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral education. Friendship for Virtue has four main aims. The first is to give the virtue of friendship the pride of place it deserves in contemporary Aristotle-inspired virtue ethics. The second is to integrate Aristotelian theory with recent social scientific research on friendship through mutual adjustments. The third is to retrieve Aristotelian friendship as a moral educational concept, where 'friendship for virtue' is to be understood as 'friendship for virtue development'. The fourth is to offer a more detailed and realistic account than Aristotle did of why even the best of friendships can go stale and dissolve and why the human relationships they represent are so precarious - for example in circumstances where erotic love and friendship clash.

DigiCat presents to you a meticulously edited collection of Norse Mythology and Literature. This ebook has been designed and formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Content: The Elder Eddas of Saemund The Younger Eddas of Sturleson Norse Sagas Kings' Sagas Sagas of Icelanders Legendary Sagas Norse Ballads Norse Mythology: The Beginning Odin Frigga Thor Tyr Bragi Idun Niörd Frey Freya Uller Forseti Heimdall Hermod Vidar Vali The Norns The Valkyrs Hel Ægir Balder Loki The Giants The Dwarfs The Elves The Sigurd Saga The Story of Frithiof The Twilight of the Gods Greek and Northern Mythologies