Really interesting read, and I want to add there is no wrong way to culture. Just as scandic culture have evolved a thousand times so have the customs and beliefs transformed as people traversed over the ocean. American heathenry might never be identical with scandic one, but nether will ever be identical to what old norse people believed a thousand years either. Sure, it might personally feel weird at times when you see something you are raised with made into something completely different in another country, but most likely, people one generation back, or people 10 mile north might also think you have it wrong too. As long you don't pretend you're way is the one true way it's all right. All our ancestors are confused over what we are doing anyway.

Okay. I have slept, I've thought about things and got some more persepctives, and I think I have better idea on the whole issue of "what is appropriation" versus "what is a product of diasporic continuation of culture" when it comes to Heathenry. I'm busy today so I won't be able to write about it now, but I'll get around to posting this at some point.

The one bizarre thing to me about textiles is that warp-weighted weaving is at least 6500 years old, but our oldest knitted artifacts are only ~1000 years old, and crochet 200 years old. Even though you need less equipment to knit (two sticks) or crochet (one hook) compared to warp-weighted weaving (frame, loom weights, batting, heddles). Why the big gaps between these inventions? And why did each one appear and spread when it did?

A rat

hello there! today i came across a claim that sort of baffled me. someone said that they believed the historical norse heathens viewed their own myths literally. i was under the impression that the vast majority of sources we have are christian sources, so it seems pretty hard to back that up. is there any actual basis for this claim? thanks in advance for your time!

Sorry for the delay, I've been real busy lately and haven't been home much. Even after making you wait I'm still going to give a copout answer.

I think the most basic actual answer is that it's doubtful that someone has a strong basis to make that claim, and the same would probably go for someone claiming they didn't take things literally. I think we just don't know, and most likely, it was mixed-up bits of both literal and non-literal belief, and which parts were literal and which parts weren't varied from person to person. We have no reason so suppose that there was any compulsion to believe things in any particular way.

About Christians being the interlocutors of a lot of mythology, this is really a whole separate question. On one hand there's the question of whether they took their myths literally, and on the other is entirely different question about whether or not we can know what those myths were. Source criticism in Norse mythology is a pretty complicated topic but the academic consensus is definitely that there are things we can know for sure about Norse myth, and a lot more that we can make arguments for. For instance the myth of Thor fishing for Miðgarðsormr is attested many times, not only by Snorri but by pagan skálds and in art. Myths of the Pagan North by Christopher Abram is a good work about source criticism in Norse mythology.

Though this raises another point, because the myth of Thor fishing is not always the same. Just like how we have a myth of Thor's hammer being made by dwarves, and a reference to a different myth where it came out of the sea. Most likely, medieval Norse people were encountering contradictory information in different performances of myth all the time. So while that leaves room for at least some literal belief, it couldn't be a rigid, all-encompassing systematic treatment of all myth as literal. We have good reason to believe they changed myths on purpose and that it wasn't just memory errors.

I know you're really asking whether this one person has any grounds for their statement, and I've already answered that I don't think they do. But this is an interesting thought so I'm going to keep poking at it. I'm not sure that I'm really prepared to discuss this properly, but my feeling is that this is somehow the wrong question. I don't know how to explain this with reference to myth, so I'm going to make a digression, and hope that you get the vibe of what I'm getting at by analogy. Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) described animism in terms of beliefs, "belief in spiritual beings," i.e. a belief that everything (or at least many things) has a soul or spirit. But this is entirely contradicted by later anthropology. Here's an except from Pantheologies by Mary Jane Rubenstein, p. 93:

their animacy is not a matter of belief but rather of relation; to affirm that this tree, that river, or the-bear-looking-at-me is a person is to affirm its capacity to interact with me—and mine with it. As Tim Ingold phrases the matter, “we are dealing here not with a way of believing about the world, but with a condition of living in it.”

In other words, "belief" doesn't even really play into it, whether or not you "believe" in the bear staring you down is nonsensical, and if you can be in relation with a tree then the same goes for that relationality; "believing" in it is totally irrelevant or at least secondary. Myths are of course very different and we can't do a direct comparison here, but I have a feeling that the discussion of literal versus nonliteral would be just as secondary to whatever kind of value the myths had.

One last thing I want to point out is that they obviously had the capacity to interpret things through allegory and metaphor because they did that frequently. This is most obvious in dream interpretations in the sagas. Those dreams usually convey true, prophetic information, but it has to be interpreted by wise people who are skilled at symbolic interpretation. I they ever did this with myths, I'm not aware of any trace they left of that, but we can at least be sure that there was nothing about the medieval Norse mind that confined it to literalism.

For multiple reasons this is not an actual answer but it's basically obligatory to mention that some sagas, especially legendary or chivalric sagas, were referred to in Old Norse as lygisögur, literally 'lie-sagas' (though not pejoratively and probably best translated just as 'fictional sagas'). We know this mostly because Sverrir Sigurðsson was a big fan of lygisögur. But this comes from way too late a date to be useful for your question.

When a meme is representing the "bad/wrong" opinion with an image of a drooling person with a dented head, especially contrasted to white people with blonde hair and blue eyes, maybe it's time to reconsider posting or reblogging it. Just a thought.

Ny (bättre!) könstillhörighetslag har gått igenom i riksdagen!

Nu går det att byta juridiskt kön från 16 års ålder utan en könsdysforidiagnos. 🎉 🏳️‍⚧️

DEN GICK IGENOM?!? 🎉

Viktigt tillägg är dock att du fortfarande behöver dina föräldrars samtycke för det.

Här är den första källan som dök upp på google

At a lot of Palestine protests in Europe at least, possibly America as well, Anti-zionist Jews have been heavily targeted. Possibly even disproportionately targeted. This is because their very existence shows the lie that Israel speaks for all Jewish people. Police and other institutions especially in Germany have been targeting these Jews to try and silence their opposition for Israel.

In the UK the labour party has thrown out a number of it's Jewish members for not supporting Israel. Jewish people who are out spoken against Israel have been arrested, including an Israeli woman and a rabbi.

In Germany over 30% of Jewish people have been arrested for Anti-Semitism charges because they were at or organising Palestine events. The German Jewish Voice for Peace has their bank account frozen. At least one holocaust survivor was blocked from an event held in her honour because she is outspoken again Israel.

While Israel and its allies main targets are Palestinians they will attack any Jewish person who does not support their narrative. We must be sure to protect and listen to our Anti-zionist Jewish allies who are instrumental in ensuring that Israel's support continues to dissolve

The fact that israel revels in the destruction of a hospital and gleefully attacks civilian centers while Iran responds to an attack on it by striking military targets, yet the former is called "restrained" and "democratically humanistic" while the latter is villified as "aggressive" and "dangerous" should tell you everything you need to know about both western liberal democratic imperialism and western media's class nature.

"A cishet person must have made this, no queer person would ever portray queerness in this way."

"This artist must be white."

"No SA victim would ever handle the subject in this way."

"No woman would ever write women like this."

"This creator is obviously neurotypical. Everyone with autism/ADHD/depression understands-"

Nope.

People who make these blanket statements are very frequently proven wrong when the creator comes out as a member of that group. And even when they aren't proven wrong, even in cases where the creator isn't from the group in question, actual members of the group who don't fit whatever arbitrary criteria are being expressed will see these statements and feel excluded and erased.

Not everyone in your group is going to share your experiences. No single individual gets to personally decide what does or doesn't count as a "valid" expression of trauma or being part of a particular group, and creators are also not obligated to out themselves in order to "prove" their validity.

If something doesn't resonate with you, all that means is that it doesn't resonate with you. You don't have to like it. But you don't get to decide what it means to someone else.

Natalie Portman being confused by the fact that you have to say “hi” to someone before starting a conversation in France got me like ?????

Jag svarade 5 för jag är från Gotland och över min döda kropp det är en del av Götaland.

London’s biggest screening party for the Eurovision Song Contest finals has been canceled, the venue Rio Cinema and organizer Eurovision Party London have said. “Following discussion with the organizers of Eurovision Party London, we have collectively decided not to screen the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest this year while Israel remains in the competition,” the Rio Cinema said in a statement on X. “The Eurovision Party London has been a beloved partner of The Rio Cinema for many years, and we will continue to work with them in the future. We firmly believe that the Eurovision Song Contest has the power to bring people together across the world, and when its core values of inclusivity, equality and universality are upheld, it can be a genuine force for good. With its own slogan in mind, we hope that we can all be United By Music again soon. We will continue to organize fundraising events for the charities we support, including Doctors Without Borders and Medical Aid for Palestine.”

the amount of things I seen described as dark academia that is neither dakr or academic...

I think OP of that post tagged 'dark coquette' as a fashion category - which iirc is basically just supposed to be 'dark academia' crossed with very frilly feminine fashion - not a personality trait. this is very very broad, i myself dont follow these trends so just hoping to clarify some slight misunderstanding. maybe you did mean that her dress doesn't correspond to this fashion category though, idk. Have a nice day!

Oh yes, I'm aware! I just find it amusing in view of the technical definition of "coquette" and the character's personality. Although annoying communities around certain aesthetics sometimes give me a bit of a subjective grudge against them, I freely admit.

(For example, dark academia, which started out as a very useful term for a literary sub-genre- The Secret History, the Physick World series, A Discovery of Witches, A Lesson In Vengeance, the Blue Is For Magic series, Picnic At Hanging Rock, arguably The Shadow of the Wind because libraries play a big part in it, etc. -and has now been warped out of all meaning by people who don't get that "old-fashioned Gothic" does not inherently mean the same thing. There has to be SOMETHING academia-related about the image you're tagging for it to count, damnit!)

one frustrating element of the new content bans on gumroad and patreon is that they're doing it to stay in line with their payment processors' policies, which themselves are in place to stay in line with FOSTA-SESTA.

which is a law passed in the united states, a country of which i am not a citizen and in which i do not live. i was legally prohibited from voting for or against FOSTA-SESTA, but because the platforms and payment providers i use are based there, i am expected to comply with it anyway.

and the tiktok situation shows us that any platform based outside the US can and will be either blocked from operating within it or forcibly divested from its foreign owners.

this is just another facet of american empire, by the way. it's more than bombs and guns and client states: it's that the US leverages its dominance over technology and finance to set policy for, effectively, the entire world.