Talk:Old Norse religion

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Citation System

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Simple question: Which citation style should this article employ?

• Option (1): {{sfn|Andren|2011|p=56}}
• Option (2): "Andren 2011: 56" (as plain text)
• Option (3): "Andren, p. 56."
• Option (4): "Andren, "Old Norse and Germanic Religion", p. 56."
• Option (5): "Andren 2011, p. 56."
• Option (6): {{sfn|''Old Norse and Germanic Religion''|p=56}}

Further explanation: According to WP:CITEVAR, "citations within any given article should follow a consistent style". As this article existed up till August 2017 ([1]), that was not the case, with a wide variety of different citation styles being employed. As there was no community of editors active on the page, I was WP:BOLD and in my expansion of the article standardised the referencing using Option 1, the sfn/harv style ([2]). I considered it particularly appropriate given that this is the citation system employed at thematically linked articles like Norse mythology and the FA-rated Heathenry (new religious movement). User:Yngvadottir has since started rewriting the article's prose, replacing instances of option 1 with a mix of options 3 and 4, on the basis that these are easier to edit with. Concerns have been raised by User:PBS that option 3 generates confusion in the context of this article, because "Andren, p. 56" does not stipulate which of Andren's works (for instance) is being referred to (multiple works by the same author are cited in this article). As per Wikipedia policy, there needs to be a standardised system introduced and the decision which to adopt should be made via WP:Consensus, after which all editors should abide by it in their edits. Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I have added an options "5" and "6" -- PBS (talk) 20:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
• Defer decision till rewrite is complete. The mixed situation we have now is temporary and I intend it to be so. It enables me to fix and improve the rewrite and keep track of my work. Per NODEADLINE and the fact both my short citations and the sfn system provide the reader with complete information - assuming I've now found and fixed all my errors? - the citations do not have to be made consistent yet. It's also better to wait because what is cited will continue to change; we may eventually not cite some references we cite now, and I have already added several and will add more. I have a personal opinion on the ultimate citation system but insofar as some editors intend to take this to GA, that becomes none of my business, and in any case I'm incompetent to adapt some of my citations to one format. At this stage, worrying about citation format is impeding progress on the article. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• An RfC like this will take a month, at the very least, before it comes to any form of conclusion. Even if a decision is made in this time, it need not inherently affect your edits, for we can always defer on implementation until a point that is convenient for all. Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:01, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• A good reason to close it down right away! -- PBS (talk)

• Use (1) or (5) and sometimes (6). Style has nothing to do with the use of templates (that is an old argument that goes back to about 2005 and editors like SV who hate templates), so as they appear visually the same options "1" and "5" are the same. I don't endorse "2" because it varies in looks/style from "1" and "5". "3" is inadequate because it does not fail-safe (as was proved earlier today). Sometimes it is necessary to use option 4 or 6 because there is no published date on the long citation (this is a common problem with web sites) so to link the short to the long article options 4 or 6 are needed, to link 6 via {{snf}} use ref={{sfnRef|''Old Norse and Germanic Religion''}} in the long citation. -- PBS (talk) 20:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
• Options 1 I think you misread CITEVAR. This RfC is a waste of time. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:57, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
• Nobody disputes that the article should use sfn when it's in a more complete state. There's no deadline for getting there. Yngvadottir is a subject matter expert who struggles with sfn and wishes to develop the article using a different citation system. It would be courteous and collegial to allow Yngvadottir to work with her preferred style for the time being and do the converting later.—S Marshall T/C 17:00, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

  I agree which is why I support among others options (5). -- PBS (talk) 08:37, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Generally supportive of sfn, but agree with other editors, converting will be quicker - if the article is being heavily developed, sfn can slow things down. Of course, editors working on the article should provide page numbers and complete cites, to make the conversion easier during cleanup. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:40, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Options 1 and 5 As per PBS, this provides an easy way to accommodate both editing styles in a uniform citation style. It also ensures that citations are unambiguous by including dates, the importance of which an expert on the subject should recognize. I see no drawbacks to going this route now, which will also reduce or eliminate the need to convert later. Clean Copy^talk 05:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
• Options 1 and 5 as per PBS and Clean Copy^talk (editor is a volunteer for Wikipedia:Feedback request service)--BoogaLouie (talk) 14:21, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

• • Comment. I'm seeing several people placing a great importance on dates. In addition to the fact that that is merely one way to differentiate between publications by the same author, and one I find opaque, there are two issues related to this topic that I feel I should point out. First, this is not a field that progresses linearly, such that later work is better, or even builds on all previous work; there are separate traditions of interpretation in different places, linguistic bariers, and rival theories (as in many non-science fields with a sprawling scholarship). Secondly and perhaps more crucially, many works have been republished and has multiple citable dates. Even Dronke's relatively recent Poetic Edda has been reissued. The third edition of De Vries's work on the religion/mythology is an exact reprint of the second, and has been further reissued. One of Ellis Davidson's handbooks turns up with multiple dates, partly because of paperback reprinting in both the US and the UK. Then there are Greenwood Press reprints of, for example, Turville-Petre (1977, I just checked Worldcat), and those are are identical in text (for some books they omit illustrations). For Dumézil's works in the original French, the year is important, because he revised them without the fact being clearly noted in the publication info, but for many other scholars, several years could be given and the text would be the same. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

    Using dates to identify a work is absolutely standard; as far as I know, there is no citation system that does not include these. When, as you say, there are multiple editions of a work, if a page number is referenced without a date, it can be impossible to find the cited text, as it is not clear which edition is referred to. Clean Copy^talk 20:48, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

    I'm not sure what you mean; of course all citation systems identify the date somewhere, but not all of them include the date in every parenthetical or footnote reference to a work previously cited. The issue here is that the format imposed in Midnightblueowl's rewrite attempt uses dates as the identifier in every repeated citation. By no means does every citation system do that, and it's actually a problem for many of the sources this article is citing and will need to cite. Nobody is suggesting the date should not appear at all, and one of the reasons I prefer other footnoting styles is that they provide a full citation the first time a work is referred to, rather than requiring the reader to click through or scroll down to see what's meant by the code. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:02, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

    Some citation systems use (ibid. p. 4), but its use is discouraged on Wikipedia because it makes inline citations fragile. All it takes is for someone else to add another inline citation to a different source between the first and the ibid. to break the ibid. citation. In a similar way relying on a source to be unique with only one edition is just a fragile and that is why it is best to include the year as part of a short citation. Then in future if another edition is added the year protects the initial citation, otherwise the short citation could be supported by one of two long cations making it impossible to tell from the text which one was meant. Occasionally there will be two editions in the same year (typically of a book published in the US and the UK by separate publishers, as was traditionally the case), in which case the Wikipedia templates have a build in solution—add a lower-case letter after the year (eg 1998a and 1998b)—so that the two editions can be identified and linked using the standard {{harvnb}} templates (see Help:CS1#Date range, multiple sources in same year). -- PBS (talk) 17:17, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

    I think you've missed my whole point, or maybe I've missed yours. Nobody's advocating the use of ibid. or yet separating refs from what they reference. Including the year as part of the short citation, as you call it, does nothing to deal with the problem of republished books, in fact it instils a false confidence that the source was only published in that version in that one year; there is nothing authoritatively identifying about a particular year if the source has been reprinted, and many of these books have. Also, the sfn format masks repeated refs; Midnightblueowl frequently reused the same page of the same source, but that repetition simply sinks in a sea of "name, year" refs in that system. Maybe that's where you get the idea ibid. is relevant here, since that is a method of indicating a repeated reference, one Wikipedia rightly avoids? Yngvadottir (talk) 19:26, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

    Reprinted editions do not change anything, as it is the copyright date, not the printing date, that is used. Clean Copy^talk 03:18, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

    It is??? First I've heard. Either way, it's not a clear way of distinguishing works by the same author in footnotes for readers; and it's unnecessary when tehre's only one work cited. So I do not see the necessity for the year to be present in every footnote. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:46, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

    This begins to seem a very clear situation.

    1. It is standard practice in any academic work to include dates in citations.
    2. This may seem unnecessary when there is only one work cited, but this is a dynamic encyclopedia, and there is a reasonable chance that other works by the same author may later be included, as well, at which point an undated citation will automatically become ambiguous, and someone will have to try to figure out which work is meant. Best practice is clearly to include the year from the beginning.
    3. I have heard absolutely no justification grounded in the needs of an encyclopedia for not including dates. None whatsoever. Clean Copy^talk 08:05, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

    The dates will be there in the full footnotes and the bibliography entries, either way. There is no purpose to imposing one method of short citations, and WP:CITEVAR applies. Academic works also continue to vary; footnotes or parenthetical references that use years as identifiers have spread out of the sciences, but are still far from pervasive. In any case, this is not an academic work; it's an encyclopedia. In my opinion, requiring the reader to click or scroll twice to identify a source is an impediment; others differ. But putting it in terms of absolutes is based on untenable assumptions. In any case, as I said far above, the citation format can be revisited when the article is completely rewritten to a decent standard, and I will likely have no part of that discussion since the long-term objective is to get it to GA, which is something I don't do. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:01, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mythology Section

Hello everyone. I see there's a lot of discussion going on here about sourcing and so on. I haven't had a chance to dig into this lately, but my schedule is opening up a bit.

As I see it, this article's main weakness is that it delves too deeply into details and relies far too heavily on authors who make dubious, general statements. The discussion regarding Heimdallr we had earlier is one such example (a runic inscription explicitly mentioning the god was in fact unearthed by archaeologists around the publication of Abram's book, despite his poorly considered claim).

First, let's talk about the "death" section of this article. There's a lot of conflation and confusion in this section about what the Prose Edda says and what it doesn't say. Much of this is unhelpfully referenced to "Snorri", who may and fact have not authored much of the Prose Edda. As the Heimdallr inscription circumstance details, statements like "There is no archaeological evidence clearly alluding to a belief in Valhalla" are totally useless. That applies to nearly everything in the corpus. It tells us nothing.

Next, the comment "The concept of Hel as an afterlife location never appears in pagan-era skaldic poetry, where "Hel" always references to the eponymous goddess" is also useless. For example, the etymology of the name Hel makes such associations inherent, as many scholars have discussed over the past few centuries. This is far too much reliance on Abram.

Then there's a comment on Fólkvangr cited to Abram. What is attributed to Abram here implies that the Prose Edda is the source of this claim, whereas the same stanza in fact appears in Grímnismál (and is even quoted in the Prose Edda). The statement "In mythological accounts, the deity most closely associated with death is Oðinn" is a bizarre statement — many figures, particularly female beings, are closely associated with death in the very same narratives. There’s plenty of specialized discussion about this out there.

These are just a few examples. I think this article needs to be reconsidered in an overview or directory format than its current state. We have detailed, highly developed articles on many of these topics, and there's no way this article can begin to cover the complexities surrounding specific topics such as, say, rebirth in North Germanic religion (which is currently not even mentioned here...). :bloodofox: (talk) 03:13, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I mentioned the rebirth article in a sentence I added regarding personal names. Yes, the sourcing needs to be improved; I've been gradually incorporating more Davidson and more Turville Petre, and adding de Vries (who covers a lot more) and Simek, so that we get away from Abram and Andrén, but as recent scholars they should be used. The sections I haven't yet rewritten, I've barely looked at; your points are valid but I'm not sure we should even have a separate Mythology section here.

Drmies raised an issue regarding the use of the word "sources"; he ultimately rewrote a sentence I had written on that. I had intended to deal in the Sources section with the fact that all the written evidence—including the heathen skaldic verse, the most reliably heathen literary evidence—was first written down after the conversion, presumably by Christians, and that we necessarily rely heavily on the Prose Edda, which contains a manual of Norse mythology as well as skaldic quotations, but was of course written by a Christian. Drmies sees the term "sources" as necessarily implying "primary sources", i.e., heathen sources. I don't see it as having that implication; how can we make that clear without saying the same thing in the Sources section and all over again later? Yngvadottir (talk) 03:28, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I've looked over the "Sources" section here and I think I see what you mean. Right now it's a bit of a mess in that, again, the section decides to dive into a handful of opinion-interjected specifics instead of providing a general overview of the literary record and saving the specifics for more focused articles. Currently, our Norse mythology article breaks this down the complex attestation situation both accurately and succinctly. Of course, as you know, solid familiarity with primary, secondary, and tertiary sources on this topic is a necessary requirement for working on this complex topic, something we're going to need to demand from anyone who approaches it. :bloodofox: (talk) 07:09, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Would the "heathen sources" be runestones? (And incidentally is it right to say "heathen" here? or "pagan"?)—S Marshall T/C 16:59, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Some runic inscriptions are explicitly heathen, some are explicitly Christian, and some could be read either way. Many are quite secular (or so we’d call them today) — the alphabet was used for all sorts of purposes before it was superceded as a byproduct of Christianization. “Heathen” and “pagan” are both widely acceptable today, though you’re likely to see most anglophone academics employing “pagan” over “heathen”. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:07, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall: What they said—plus, it becomes a continuum. Snorri was a Christian: but he undoubtedly knew more Norse myths than any modern, and he quoted reams of skaldic verse; the verses he quotes have a high probability of having been accurately transmitted to him as the heathen poets composed them, but it isn't 100% because it was oral transmission through a change in religion. Some sagas also preserve skaldic verses; they are a little less certain because there is less certainty about the date the saga was committed to writing (or composed), so there's a higher chance of fake verses having been added. The sagas themselves have all been subject to varying opinions as to their authenticity: once upon a time they were taken at face value, some later scholars have regarded them as entirely medieval fictions, between those extremes there are a range of opinions, including many scholars regarding the religious material specifically as likely to be fictional (such as the temple descriptions in a couple of Icelandic sagas). The ancient kings of both Sweden and Norway are represented as fictions by some individual scholars. There's a continuum of reliability to the written sources, but where its more reliable end is and what passage should be placed where on it are more or less vigorously debated. Then the article should mention the widely divergent interpretations of the petroglyphs. Some scholars also attach importance to the Trundholm sun chariot, and some regard the Gundestrup cauldron as Norse; others hardly mention these archeological artefacts. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:27, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

@Bloodofox: Well, if we limit editing of the article to those who know the scholarship inside out, I'm not sure that includes me. There's always going to be some recent hotshot I haven't read, and there are enduring disagreements. I'm mulling over how to reorganize the article, and considering getting the different scholarly views—including the shamanism theory, to which we are currently giving prominence—out of the way at the outset before diving into beliefs, cultic practices, etc. For one thing that would help explain the continuing deep disagreement over temples. On the whole, I agree, not just because it's a huge field, but also because the popular books tend to merge discussion of Scandinavian religion with discussion of continental German and Anglo-Saxon religion (Tacitus keeps coming up, for example, and many of the books we currently cite devote considerable space to the conversion of the English). Even though this is the version of Germanic paganism about which we know most, it takes knowledge to winnow out what's not relevant to this article. And I'd also like to see more attention paid to shifts over time. But I've been trying to honor Midnightblueowl's effort—and reflect the fact that they gravitated toward more recent sources, which we should try to use where we can—by initially at least, keeping as much of their work as possible. So some of what both you and Drmies have objected to is Midnightblueowl's work that I haven't yet even examined closely—notably the lead, which I really think should be rewritten last, after the shape and emphases of the rest of the article are more or less clear—and some is me trying to be respectful. And some is likely me having less than perfect mastery of the scholarship. I feel competent to rewrite the temples/hofs section. And I do see one of the major functions of this article as being to link to our existing articles, quite densely, although I think it should be done in running prose rather than an endless series of "Main article" notes. But please, jump in and rewrite, or re-rewrite (unless I missed a revert, the bits I have rewritten or added should be identifiable by using conventional short refs rather than sfn under the hood), a section, such as Sources. And I hope Drmies and S Marshall—and others who are good at explaining things—will continue to help out too. I would probably have written more clearly if I'd done the rewrite from scratch, but then there also wouldn't have been nearly so many references, and Midnightblueowl has stated that everything must have a reference. As it is, I'm all too aware that I haven't been producing prose with the clarity of a lecture. In addition to the likelihood that other experts will see stuff I've failed to include; heck, I only added in fulltrúi/godfriend the other day. Please further refine it. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:13, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Three further thoughts from me:-

1) I wonder if we're missing an article. Maybe somewhere between Vikings and Old Norse religion we need something like Old Norse society or Old Norse culture that contains less specialist concepts?

2) I'm almost scared to mention this, but did you know someone's written Viking Childhood? I found that by accident while I was looking at the article structure we currently have and comparing it with what we need.

3) Germane to religion, as opposed to mythology, seems to be a brief section on what people mean when they say "religion". Defining "god" is notoriously slippery but as I understand it the Norse "gods" were mortal and doomed to die at Ragnarok; and Baldr had already died. Other religions have figures that die and are reborn, as a metaphor for the seasons, but as a non-expert I'm intrigued by a religion where gods die and don't come back. I feel like the article is missing all this content on what makes this a religion, rather than a mythology attached to a culture.—S Marshall T/C 20:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I was hoping someone else would answer this - I don't have a background in comparative religion. But I personally think that would be stepping too far back. And I suspect what one expects of a religion varies depending on one's own history as well as philosophical leanings: Karen Jolly's book on the elves and the transition of religions in Anglo-Saxon England makes useful points about how most people just bumble along fitting things into how they already lived and thought. Those of us who discuss this religion run into assumptions about "earth religions" and about all religions being pacifist that make me tempted to recommend people just read "Hávamál" and then get back to me. Having so much material purporting to be about pre-Christian Norse life and thought is a privilege, but it doesn't include reams of commandments/rules, and of course it has to be treated somewhat sceptically. On the other hand, "mythology" can be seen from different angles. To get cynicism out of the way first, I have said in other contexts that "mythology" is the term reserved for sacred stories of religions that the speaker does not wish to grant full rights as religions. (Lindow puts it more diplomatically. This is the "lie" meaning of myth.) To flip that, myths are by definition the sacred stories of a culture, so by my definition, all mythologies are important to the self-definition of cultures, and that makes them religious within that culture. The most useful category is that of indigenous religions, many of which have seemed similarly hard to define or otherwise surprising to moderns studying them (Sami traditional belief, even more so than Norse, although part of that may be that they kept a lot of their secrets); although we have qualms today about using such a term for colonisers rather than those they invaded and killed, I am unaware of any cases of proselytisation of Norse paganism, so I don't feel too guilty about it. But there have been a startling variety of scholarly conceptions about how the religion worked. So I'm for just presenting it, including a representative selection of those scholarly views, past and present, and letting the reader fit it into their worldview. (Which from my experience, including reading the scholars, they will do anyway.) Yngvadottir (talk) 17:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

• I didn't think the Vikings were pacifist, but I think I will read the Hávamál. Is the Benjamin Thorpe translation reliable? And for Snorri's Edda, is the Anthony Faulkes translation reliable?—S Marshall T/C 21:44, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
  • It's a bit old; Bellows and Hollander are old, but less so; of those two, Hollander takes more liberties. I would recommend Dronke as best (however, I'm at work; in case Evans' edition includes a translation, that would also be excellent, but I don't believe it does). For the Prose Edda, Faulkes is adequate and has the advantage of being complete, but except for the poetry and the þulur, it's not a challenging text to translate, and so if you only want to read the prologue and the stories, the two old translations, Brodeur and Young, are fine. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:17, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Cultural Appropriation (Norse Mythology)

I am working on adding a section to the article Cultural Appropriation. I believe there is at least some, if not a lot, of disappointment on the part of Norwegians and other Scandanavians regarding the Thor comics and movies. This is not too well recognized in the Western world or by "modern" culture.

There are feelings that the Norse deities have been presented in a distorted and culturally insensitive way by Western media promoters. The characters of Thor, Loki, Odin, the city of Asgaard, and the litergy of Norse mythology have been made into cartoons and movies.

I am looking for citations in the news from reliable sources. If you have any links or citations you might be able to provide, I will appreciate your help. Please reply to this post below if you can add to this discussion.

Thanks in advance. בס״ד 69.112.128.69 (talk) 17:54, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I am a student studying Germanic religions and I would be very very interested in this. I have noticed that more liberties are taken with Germanic religions than any others on Earth and things are done to them that if they tried :with any other religion would have, well, violent and immediate repercussions. Whether it's the comical depictions of the gods in American Gods, or turning Heimdallr the White God into a black man in the Thor franchise these :liberties if taken for any other peoples culture would have pretty staunch and global repercussions. That said even just in the article I find discriminatory approaches, for example in ALL other religious articles oral tradition :by the adherents is considered a primary source when no written material is available, EXCEPT in this one it goes straight to written source. So we have physical artifacts going back 500 BCE at least, but I suspect because this is :the origin point of Ash and Elm / Aske and Emble and the flood myth (given the origin of the Germanic peoples being closer to the Black Sea which is probably where the flood originated) which would mean it predates the Abrahamic :telling of those stories and may well be the origin point. But to avoid that they suddenly change the rules to written primary sources only, meanwhile it is acceptable to say for Australian indigenous religions that it predates :the literal existence of humans because their oral tradition says so. 121.210.33.50 (talk) 03:18, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Such a segment would be great (especially regarding the weird genderfluid Loki stuff floating around). I would recommend emailing Jackson Crawford on the matter, as he is one of the more unbiased experts on "old norse religion" in our day and age.--Blockhaj (talk) 06:43, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I think this is not neutral POV - the politics and aesthetics section should be an article by itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kathybramley (talk • contribs) 00:56, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Cult-like and no priests??

As a Norse pagan I will say this, the priests are called Gothi’s, and they are spiritual leaders. And after seeing the world cult I know this was 100% made by a Christian. I would like to say, it’s not very cult, more like a standard religion, we never did things like sacrifices despite what media will tell you 2600:1700:ADEA:8800:A491:5030:6291:5786 (talk) 06:23, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

As far as I can see, there are no references to it being "cult-like". In religious studies, "cult" is used in a neutral sense to refer to religious practices often focused on a particular aspect such as a god or fertility. It is equally used about heathens and Christians, with a cult of saints being mentioned. As for priests, the article correctly states the scholarly consensus that there were not typically dedicated priest figures whose only job was religious. Instead elites (including goðar) would act as both religious leaders and rulers. I hope this clears it up. Ingwina (talk) 08:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)