Hi I wanted to ask you about Vikings because you seem really skilled at knowing which common myths are bullshit. I’m reading American Gods and so far Im pretty sceptical of a fair amount of it (the obsession with breasts and genitalia is not helping) I did try to find out if the vikings sacrificed humans and why but only got conflicting accounts. Also if you have any opinions on American Gods I’d really like to hear them if you’d like to share. Feel free to ignore

deadcatwithaflamethrower:

I haven’t read American Gods and Anansi Boys yet, despite owning them, because I’m often really not in the mood for Neil Gaiman’s writing style. (I tried to read Neverwhere recently. Fuck, but that was a mistake.) Dude has great ideas, and worked great with Pratchett, but his storytelling works MUCH better when it’s combined with a visual medium–which is why you’ll always hear me wax insanely poetic about The Sandman comic series (you can get the whole story in 10 available tpb collections.)

The “Vikings practiced human sacrifice bit” varies. Historically, we know that when great rulers died, they often took a few friends with them into the afterlife with them, like Egyptian Pharaohs. Their wife and kids were left behind to rule in Midgard, but slaves in the household might go with their king, willingly or not. (Yes, they practiced slavery, but much like the ancient Hebrews, slaves that adapted to their way of life were pretty much immediately made part of the household and well-cared for, not treated as sub-human disposable workers like the fucking horrific shitshow that was the African slave trade that supplied the U.S. and the islands. This isn’t an excuse for *any* sort of slavery, just a historical explanation.)

Ritual human sacrifice seems to have been made up wholesale by white mainland Europeans in regards to the Vikings/Norse and the Britons.There are tales of people being stuffed into baskets and burnt over fires in Briton and amongst certain Gaulic peeoples, but it’s often conveniently left out that those were criminal executions, despite that information BEING WRITTEN DOWN by Roman historians. These were not simple thieves or basic misdemenor-committing criminals, either. That sort of execution tended to be reserved for people who had well and truly fucked up.

Vikings didn’t tolerate rape. At all. They valued their women, who were equal to and often more important than men, so rape was absolutely abhorrent–you weren’t even supposed to do that to slaves, no matter their status. A woman could get a man severely fined, castrated, or even DEAD if a man so much as touched her without her permission, though that depended on where the touch took place. (There was weird-ass rating system, but it worked for them.) Criminals, even in the cases of a woman calling out a man on his shit, were tried before the entire group, and despite what the show Vikings suggests, women were part of those trials, too. (Vikings is very pretty and follows history pretty well, but they’re not treating women correctly in Norse culture and it’s fucking annoying.)

Viking/Norse Women were recognized warriors if that was what they wanted to do; women were in charge of all finances, even if they didn’t participate in raiding; women were *historically* recognized as the only ones who were meant to perform magic, and yes, we have dug up magic wands and staffs from volva graves. Wotan (Woden/Odin) had to sacrifice his life (temporarily) and his eye after hanging on the world tree for months to be able to use magic–that’s how verboten magic was for men, and why Wotan was/is so honored. Those men who practiced magic without sacrificing like Wotan had were treated as blaspheming outcasts for going against what the Vikings considered to be the natural order.

Vikings thought of death differently than modern Western thought. What we’d see as casual killing was for them–they firmly believed there was an afterlife for everyone, and since there was an afterlife, someone dying, be they friend or foe, was just that person moving on to the next life, whether they were allowed into Valhalla or not. Valhalla often gets treated as the *only* afterlife in Viking culture, but no; it was merely considered the *best* option for the afterlife, esp. for warriors. A warrior who failed to enter Valhalla had done something to truly fuck up during their life on Midgard. Not everyone was a warrior, though, and to quote S. King from a time when he wasn’t writing like shit: “There are other worlds than these.”

….I think I tangented away from what you were asking, but since people have told me they like the historical ranting, here is more nerditry!