Iceland to build first temple to Norse gods since Viking age

[shenmue]

Story here

From the article:

Icelanders will soon be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Thor, Odin and Frigg with construction starting this month on the island’s first major temple to the Norse gods since the Viking age.

Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.

[rug]

1. Fascinating. It looks like a private project, not governmental.

“I don’t believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet,” said Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods.

“We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology.”

[on point]

2. Good to point out to current dominant myths, that other myths existed before them

[cbayer]

3. I bet it is going to be spectacular.

Iceland is high on my list of places to go. You can do a self-drive and stay in some really cool and remote places.

[struggle4progress]

4. Why Norse Religion Rocks

... Basically Norse Religion is all about kicking asses and dying valorously in combat by bleeding to death on the battlefield after some jerk cut your arms off and stole your favorite hat. Anything else is for chumps. I mean how can you talk shit about a religion that has three gods of war. Three. Even the Goddess of Love, Fertility and Beauty is also the fucking Goddess of War. There's so much emphasis on dying a horrible bloody death that all murderers, cheaters, liars, and men who died of old age and/or illness get sent to Hel, a magical mysterious place where you spend all day wading around in a waist-deep river of blood while snakes spit poison in your eyes and people who you never met before run up and kick you in the ballsack. If you die in battle however, you get the honor of going off to a sweet afterlife where there's less ball-kicking and more drinking and singing, which is probably a better way to spend eternity.

The way it works is that after everybody is done bashing each other's skulls in battle the god Odin comes and takes half of the dead off to Valhalla, while the goddess Freyja takes the other half to her hall Sessrumnir. Once you get to Valhalla the shit really starts getting awesome. The routine goes like this - you wake up in the morning, go put on all of your battle gear and go out into this huge field where every warrior in Valhalla has a huge insane fight to the death. I imagine this sort of going down like a drunken game of Rune: Viking Warlord with a bunch of giant ripped barbarians running around chucking disembodied heads at each other and beating people to death with their own arms. At the end of the day, after almost everyone is dead and their body parts are strewn across the battlefield, they all get magically resurrected and return to Valhalla to talk about the battle, get wasted off their asses on mead and ale, hook up with babes, sing war chants and fall asleep. It's sort of like sleep-away baseball camp with battle axes or like a viking re-enactment where you actually get to murder other human beings. However, this is serious fucking business in Valhalla though because all of this shit is just practice for the super Omega battle at the end of the world - Ragnarok.

Basically at Ragnarok all these insane humongous fucked-up demons, giant wolves, dragons, fire giants, and all the pissed-off people who got chucked into Hel rise up and decide they're sick of getting poison spit at them and want to start whipping asses. They're led by a dude named Loki, who was once one of the gods but betrayed them many years ago. Since the badass Norse Gods don't fuck around re: revenge, Odin killed Loki's son and used his entrails to bind Loki to a magical rock for all eternity. Then he got a huge ass snake head and positioned it over Loki's head so it would drip acid into his face like a neverending money shot from Hell. At the end of the world, he's understandably pretty pissed about this unfortunate turn of events and is looking for some sweet delicious revenge. So all these crazy-ass monsters go up against all of the gods and all of the warriors from Valhalla and Sessrumnir, and the battle basically destroys the entire world.

You've got to love a religion that has it's central doctrine based around getting you pumped up to help destroy the world by killing ten foot tall wolves and magical dragons, hacking the legs off of divine beings and stabbing giants in the ass ...

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/norsereligion.html

[LiberalEsto]

5. The ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet was also a goddess of love and war n/t

[struggle4progress]

6. Let's try not to take lion-headed female torsos for granite

[okasha]

8. Also healing and justice.

Don't mess with Miss Kitty.

[freshwest]

7. How cool is that? Rainbows and Ragnarok in the same religion!

Last edited Tue Feb 3, 2015, 04:49 AM - Edit history (2)

Reminds me of Jared Diamond's Collapse and how the Greenland Norse on the lower end of the economic ladder finally ate the rich at the end, literally. And a bit of everyday violence in between, hacking each other to death over petty disagreements. Like today's excess 'stand your ground' events.



That book is but one of several blueprints for preppers:

http://www.backdoorsurvival.com/review-jared-diamond-collapse/

I bought this controversial book years ago, and it's not all about ecological collapse. There are some solutions to prevent collapse:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed&printable=yes

And you gotta love the Norse, at least I do. Norwegians I know don't dress up what they did with piety or make excuses.

Love the link, full of great stuff. Much appreciated. Keep 'em coming, s4p.

[brooklynite]

9. I trust they're not worried about disturbing the elves...because that would just be silly

Plans to build a new road in Iceland ran into trouble recently when campaigners warned that it would disturb elves living in its path. Construction work had to be stopped while a solution was found.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27907358

[roguevalley]

10. They take the elves deeply seriously and make sure not to disturb them. Its a

great country. Don't cut down the last tree around you because that's the fairy fort and they will get you. GO VIKINGS!

[okasha]

11. Don't mess with the Alfs, either.

They kick butt.