Sliter mitt hår!

Argh!

Sitter och krånglar med första uppgiften på uppsatsen som ska in till skolan imorgon!

Grejen är att jag ska vara källkritisk mot en berättelse ned skriven av ett arabiskt sändebud som heter Ibn Fadlan och hans möte med ryska vikingar på 920-talet.

Nu har jag varit källkritisk emot den i flera dagar men fortfarande inte fått ihop mer än 400 ord av ett 750 ord minimum, och jag har verkligen ingen som helst aning om vad mer jag ska skriva. Vi har läst Steinslands bok Fornnordisk Religion, men inte känner jag mig något klokare för det.

Det känns som att det är svårt att vara källkritisk mot något som man egentligen vet så lite om, låter som det ska vara lätt, men man kan ju inte komma med konkreta exempel.

Inte för att det blir lättare sen, könsperspektiv på den poetiska eddan låter inte helt och hållet som något jag vill spendera en söndag och hela måndagen med. Men å ena sidan, sen ska jag ner och se fotbollen som inte gick igår.

Men nu tror jag att mat är i vad som behövs!

Rostat bröd i massor!

A bit inspired

Well, studying religion this semester, and right now, Old Scandinavian religion, I had to re-read the book "Odd and The Frost Giants" by Neil Gaiman.

It is not a very long book, you read it in a few hours, but you have that Neil Gaiman feeling from the first page to the last.

Odd and The Frost Giants

Plot

The books protagonist is Odd, a (looking at the name, Neil is most probably inspired by the Norse and Norwegian names) boy who lives with his mother in Norway in ancient Scandinavian times.

Odd was crippled as his right leg had been injured, but he still moved away from his mother. In the woods (where he lived in his fathers old woodcutting cabin) he met three animals, a fox, a bear and an eagle. The animals brings Odd on an adventure trough the cold and ice Norway. The creatures turn out to be Tor, Odin and Loki, three of the most famous gods from the Old Scandinavia myths and legends.

Opinion

The book is cute, very suitable for one familiar with Old Scandinavian religious myths and believes. You can see the fun, but still dark and serious side of Neil Gaiman in the book, and it reminds a lot about other books he has written (Anansi Boy, American Gods for example). It is not a genuine "this happened" but it has many elements know, like the gods fights with the giants, nicely woven together with Odds daily life. This is not really uncommon in ancient beliefs with gods associating with humans. You can really see that Gaiman knows very much about this.

Read it if you can! If you are a teacher in religion or something, get your students to read it!

Picture found on:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51t-H6ss1hL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

An Old Scandinavian Space Pocahontas?

No one really can have missed to similarities between Pochahontas och Avatar?

For those of you who hasn't (or refuse to ;p), you can check out the following link to see what I speak about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UajX9NZlONE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn84d2VUlvQ&feature=related

but, reading my litterature on Old Scandinavian religion, Gro Steinland

writes: "Det kosmiska trädet Yggdrasil som växer i världen centrum (...) och omtalas som världsträd och som ödesträd."

(which would roughly translate to: "The cosmisc tree Yggdrasil that grows in t

he centre of the world (...) mentioned as 'world tree' and the 'tree of faith'."

This is rather similar to Grandmother Willow

from Pocahontas and the Tree of Souls in Avatar

I can see now how obvious stories from ancient times still are woven into more modern stories such as the Disney film (in the original Pocahontas I can not find a reference to any tree, but I have not really read into much of the right tribes religious believes, but as many N

ative Americans I guess they had the same view of nature in balance as many other tribes had/has).

But I would never have guessed to find such a similarity.

I was not going to make a long post on this (at least not with the very small knowledge I have in the subject, I just thought it was an interesting similarity and that Avatar and Pocahontas was the first thing I came to think of when I read the

book).

The picture is found on:

http://www.cel-ebration.com/WDCC%20POCAHONTAS.htm