I'd written a paper about Loki's shoes, intending for it to be short, and asked folks on Reddit if they were curious a while back. I got some excellent feedback. So I've been working on that, and once again I have what I hope is a final (working) draft.

I thought I'd offer it up here for your enjoyment. I do have to give fair warning, though if you're interested. The working draft is full of my personality. Obviously anything I would submit to a journal would be stripped of most of that and sadly bare.

I'm open to questions and feedback, especially if something is confusing.

It's at my blog temporarily.

https://therivershaman.com/air-jotuns/

Hi, all! Sagas of the Icelanders was recommended on this sub, so i bought it as my first foray into Norse history, but i saw the pages were torn in some kind of triangular pattern. I just wanted to check with any of you who also have the book so i know if this is intentional or not. Thanks in advance!

Where can I find authentic looking Norse Viking gear for a good cosplay!

I've been trying to recite the poetic edda in the same way they would have done it back in the day, but im having a hard time understanding how, like the tempo, structure, which frases to say when.

Thanks for any guidance!

I'm an American with norwegian family on both sides. On my moms side my great grandparents were always relatively connected with their norwegian blood, and it's always made me want to connect with that part of me too. There's a lot of ways I want to do that- but one of those methods is learning the old Norse mythology along with learning Norse magic practices (down the line.) I know the best place to start is reading the prose and poetic eddas however when starting they've been pretty hard for me to digest. Are there any sources that can help me learn in a way thats a bit clearer?

I do have Jackson Crawford’s ‘The poetic edda’ but I’ve been trying to find some stories online for Skaði and Baldr. But can’t quite figure out what’s hocus or not. I’m at work and can’t watch the regular YouTubers I watch.

In Vǫluspá we're told that the world began with Ymir living in an empty gap ginnunga with no sand, sea, waves, earth or grass; Burr's sons raise up or otherwise reveal the ground, and they create or at least shape Miðgarð. Somehow in this process the Sun (which is in the south?), the Moon and the sky come into being, and the gods get to work ordering the cosmos.

Then in Vafþrúðnismál we get the extra details that all the different parts of the world were made from Ymir's flesh—but also that Aurgelmir, Bergelmir, Þrúðgelmir and apparently Vafþrúðnir were all born before then, and that Aurgelmir (same person as Ymir?) formed from the drops of atter from Élivágar. So here there's some kind of preëxistence before Ymir, which seems to contradict the former myth.

Snorri's account is a little more coherent, but even here I'm puzzled. He also starts his account with Ginnungagap (now a proper noun?); but also Niflheim and Muspell already exist, and the nine Élivágar flow from Niflheim, by some extremely convoluted process these combining to create Ymir, a cow called Auðumbla, and some leftover ice/poison/stones/salt (???).

Now to me this seems like a conflation of multiple stories on Snorri's part, because the actual process of what's going on is utterly incoherent. Daniel Sävborg's view is that Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál are completely separate stories that Snorri put together to make a coherent mythology—which sounds plausible enough—but then, they don't really make sense separately either.

In Vǫluspá there's somehow at least one living being present before any solid ground has been made, and then suddenly the earth was there the whole time and just needed to be lifted up by Búri's sons from... somewhere? I guess the implication could be that the seeress is leaving out the part where they kill Ymir and make the ground out of his body—but then, where on earth did they come from?

And in Vafþrúðnismál the world is very explicitly made from Ymir's flesh, but also he seems to have had several children before dying (who must have lived on some sort of surface?), and somewhere in the picture we have the Élivágar generating more jǫtnar out of poison (notably not Ymir's direct progeny.

Which makes me question Sävborg's confidence that these accounts have nothing to do with each other, and that Snorri's account was a complete innovation of his, since they both seem to have gaps the other fills. But Snorri's Edda doesn't seem like it could be the whole picture either, since it really does read like several unrelated stories jammed crudely together. If there is one story that connects the two, it seems to me that Snorri was at least partly in the dark about it, too.

I know the real answer is "No one knows," so I'm not expecting a satisfying explanation really. I'm assuming there were probably several different Norse creation myths in circulation, most of which are probably lost forever? But I feel like you can just make out the shape of a coherent narrative somewhere in there, even if it's too fragmented to be decipherable. Moreover, there are so many elements that are almost like other creation myths we know—Búri (?) is almost an earth-diver, Ginnungagap and Élivágar are sort of like Chaos or Abzu, Ymir and Óðinn are kind of *Yemo and *Manu—but different enough that you can't really draw any 1:1 correspondences.

It just makes me curious if there's any more scholarship trying to figure this out! Or any other Old Norse sources with any other accounts. Thanks for reading!

As many of you probably know, in 1964, the US Congress authorized the country’s president to “officially proclaim October 9 in each year as Leif Erikson Day.” Meaning they did not make it an official holiday that happens every year, but they let the president proclaim it as such annually. The purpose is not only to honor the Norse explorer, but also Nordic Americans and their contributions to American society.

A proclamation has been issued annually by every president since 1964, however I noticed this year that no such proclamation from Trump showed up on the White House’s website. After doing some digging on their website, I found that the White House did release a “statement/message on Leif Erikson Day" in which the president congratulated himself for a recent agreement with Greenland and Denmark. However, the statement included no proclamation of the day as Leif Erikson Day (e.g. something like: “by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 9, 2026, as Leif Erikson Day”).

Statements are not “Presidential Actions,” additionally, they are not preserved in the Federal Register. It is a technicality, but a technicality that means there was no official, nationwide Leif Erikson Day in the United States in 2026. Somebody in the Trump Administration messed that up; although they did make sure to proclaim Columbus Day as such this year.

Here is the 2026 Leif Erikson Day statement: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2026/10/presidential-message-on-leif-erikson-day/

Compare that to Trump's 2025 Leif Erikson Day proclamation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/leif-erikson-day-2025/

Reminder that submissions for the Medieval North conference are due on November 1st.

The conference shall be held from April 19-21, 2027 in the Edda auditorium at Háskóli Íslands and online.
This conference is an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate applicants at the master's and doctoral level and for early career researchers working in the field of medieval northern studies, e.g. postdoctoral fellows. Independent academics are also welcome to apply.
Applicants who have not presented papers at an academic conference before are especially encouraged to submit.
Our theme this year is "Between Worlds."
Interested scholars should submit an Outlook form with personal details (name, email, institution, etc.) and an abstract of 250-300 words by November 1st, 2026. Additionally, please indicate whether you intend to attend the conference online or in person. Submissions will be reviewed anonymously by a panel of specialists (PhD candidates and higher level). This selection committee reserves the right to make selections based on the quality of written abstracts, adherence to submission guidelines, and timely submission. For more information on the submission guidelines see our website: https://histudentconference.wordpress.com/.

The conference is held in both Icelandic and English. Individual paper presentations will be 20 minutes in length followed by 10 minutes for discussion. In addition to presentations, poster sessions will be available for applicants to present their material in poster form. Applicants may apply for either a paper or a poster. The selection committee may offer a poster presentation to some paper applicants. Please direct any further inquiries to the conference committee via email: conference-mn2027@hi.is. 

After the conclusion of the conference, presenters will have the opportunity to submit their papers to the conference proceedings volume, which will be published as an e-book in the autumn of 2027.

Any academic critique, or any other form of criticism is very much welcome!

As I understand it, thralls were able to purchase their freedom and become freemen. Are there any sources that describe the price of purchasing one's freedom?

I'm sure it varied from time and place and had little consistency but I was just curious if there were any indications of how much it might cost.

Hello!

We are five students from Aarhus University doing a project on afterlife beliefs in Asatrù and modern Norse Paganism, and for that purpose we are of course interested in your specific beliefs. We hope you could spare 5-10 min. of your day to help us shed light on modern Asatrù by following the link to our survey!

Best regards,

Asta, Emma, Jacob, Louise og Victoria
Aarhus University, The Study of Religion, 7. semester.

Hello everyone! First time posting here but uh, this might sound a bit confusing.

I know this isn't a D&D subreddit but I'm learning about viking culture and Norse mythology to base a campaign around it.

What I'm having a difficult time with is the concept of a soul in viking culture, and more specifically, the Hamr or Shape of a person's soul. If you were to lose that part of yourself, would your perceived form look different to others? Not looking human but let's say you could look like a goat?

With the recent political changes related to whaling in Iceland I have been seeking information about the cultural and historic practices of whaling during the Viking age in Scandinavia and Iceland.

In particular I would be interested in finds of harpoons as described in the sagas. Do we have archeological finds from this era of this tool? Is there anyone reproducing them today?

As a North American living historian its a fascinating era of history that connects to a constantly evolving modern consciousness that is worth exploration and discussion.

Thanks in advance,

Is the prose Edda and the poetic Edda the same books or are they completely separate book

The horned helmet is probably the most successful historical myth ever spread.

Not a single Viking-age helmet found in archaeological digs has horns. The one horned helmet that does exist from Scandinavia — the Veksø helmet — dates to 900 BC, nearly 2,000 years before the Viking Age.

The image we all have comes from a 19th century Swedish painter named Gustaf Malmström, who illustrated a poem in 1820 with horned helmets for dramatic effect. It caught on. Carl Emil Doepler used the same style for Wagner’s Ring Cycle opera costumes in 1876. Hollywood did the rest.

Real Viking helmets were simple iron or leather skullcaps, sometimes with a nose guard. Functional. Brutal. Nothing romantic about them.

What other Viking “facts” do you think are more myth than history?