Odin:
one-eyed Wanderer;
lord of war;
father of wizardry;
hanged on the world-tree for nine nights to gain the runes of power;
bore the mead of poetry into the world;
raised the dead to foretell;
went beyond death, into hell;
is always in and of the sky;
leads Aasgard's Ride, dead men on bone horses with fiery hounds on the night wind after a ghost quarry;
decides who should win or die in battle.
Thor:
red-bearded slayer of trolls;
brings lightning, thunder and rain.
The Vanir of soil and sea are good to worship in childbirth or for a good harvest. In Finnmork, men, no less than gods, can steer the world and are needful for its life.
Christians:
do not drink to the gods;
worship indoors;
believe that there is only one god who was born as a man, walked on earth, was killed and returned to Heaven; (Later: see Comments)
are ruled in worship from Romaborg through bishops who are like lendmen or jarls and might help kings to rule.
Christ:
died not for knowledge or power but a wergild;
takes his followers to Heaven from where they return like elves or other Beings to help those who offer to them.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Just a slight correction: orthodox Christians believe Our Lord "...was born as a man, walked on earth, was killed, ROSE FROM THE DEAD and returned to Heaven."
Sean
Sean,
Thank you. I was paraphrasing Gunnhild's early understanding and she left out the "...rose from the dead..."
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Oops! My mistake. That was GUNNHILD, not you. I really need to reread MOTHER OF KINGS. i'm currently rereading "The Sensitive Man" in THE PSYCHOTECHNIC LEAGUE.
Sean
Sean,
Hence also, of course, the statement that Christ died for a wergild and the comparison of saints with elves.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, that makes sense! It would naturally be the way either a non Christian Scandinavian or a recent convert would think. It would take time for either converts or interested non believers to come to a deeper knowledge of Christianity.
Sean
Sean:
Something you may find amusing ... or appalling, or of course a mix of both (as I do).
Another site I visit often has a page mentioning that:
"Most Japanese are not Christian. They hear Westerners talk about it; and most of it gets lost except for the imagery of some poor guy getting ritually killed and then reanimated, and a vague understanding of a specific kind of afterlife and hell. Ironically, this makes the more unfamiliar aspects seem somewhat morbid to those unfamiliar with the context—in fact, similar to how many Westerners view Vodou/Vodun/Voodoo."
So if you think Gunnhild's take on Christianity was OFF, consider that there're people in Japan TODAY who think of Christ as some sort of benevolent ZOMBIE.
Hi, David!
Yes, that is MORDANTLY interesting, that many non Christian Japanese think of our Lord as a ZOMBIE.
And Japan might even have become a Christianized nation if the early Tokugawa Shogunate hadn't savagely persecuted Japanese Catholics in the 17th century. More and more Japanese had been converting to Christianity by the late 16th century. Needless to say, this alarmed many Shinto/Buddhists, who eventually persuaded the Tokugawa Shoguns to take brutally repressive anti Christian measures.
Sean
Hi, Sean,
I think that that was largely political. The shoguns mostly didn't care which variety of Buddhist, Shintoist, or Confucian their subjects were, but saw Christianity as tied up with allegiance to foreign powers, or at least with openness to an alien culture. As you say, Christianity was advancing in Japan before Toyotomi and then his Tokugawa successors ceased to tolerate it.
Best Regards,
Nicholas D. Rosen
Kaor, Nicholas!
Of course I agree with you: political factors played a role as well as more religiously motivated Shinto/Buddhist hostility in why Japanese Christians were persecuted. Esp. the strange new ideas that this being open to a non Japanese, non Confucian/Shinto/Buddhist culture was starting to bring in to the "Land of the Gods."
Sean
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