1.
Nerthus
–
In Germanic paganism, Nerthus is a goddess associated with fertility. Nerthus is attested by Tacitus, the first century AD Roman historian, the priests feel her presence by the cart, and, with deep reverence, attend her cart, which is drawn by heifers. Everywhere the goddess then deigns to visit, she is met with celebration, hospitality, all iron objects are locked away, and no one will leave for war. When the goddess has had her fill she is returned to her temple by the priests, Tacitus adds that the goddess, the cart, and the cloth are then washed by slaves in a secluded lake. The name Nerthus is generally held to be a Latinized form of Proto-Germanic *Nerþuz, while scholars have noted numerous parallels between the descriptions of the two figures, Njörðr is attested as a male deity. Nerthus is often identified with the Wane Njörðr who is attested in various 13th century Old Norse works and this form was proposed as an attempt to mirror the Old Norse goddess name Jörð earth. Writing on this topic in 1912, Raymond Wilson Chambers says strange has been the history of this goddess Nerthus in modern times, sixteenth century scholars found irresistible the temptation to emend the name of Mother Earth into Herthum, which nineteenth century scholars further improved into Hertham, Ertham. For many years this false goddess drove out the deity from the fortieth chapter of the Germania. Up until its superseding, the name Hertha had some influence, for example, Hertha and Herthasee play major roles in German novelist Theodor Fontanes 1896 novel Effi Briest. A number of scholars have proposed a location of Tacitus account of Nerthus as on the island of Zealand in Denmark. The reasoning behind this notion is the linking of the name Nerthus with the place name Niartharum located on Zealand. Further justification is given in that Lejre, the seat of the ancient kings of Denmark, is located on Zealand. However, along with the rejection of the reading Hertha, the location is now no longer considered as a potential site, Nerthus wagon tour of has been likened to several archeological wagon finds and legends of deities parading in wagons. Terry Gunnell and many others have noted various archaeological finds of ritual wagons in Denmark dating from 200 AD, such a ceremonial wagon, incapable of making turns, was discovered in the Oseberg ship find. Nerthus typically is identified as a Vanir goddess, two of the most famous literary examples occur in the Icelandic family sagas. In the same source, King Eric of Sweden is said to consult a god named Lýtir, davidson says that the evidence suggests that similar customs as detailed in Tacitus account continued to exist during the close of the pagan period through worship of the Vanir. The minor planet 601 Nerthus is named after Nerthus
Nerthus
–
Nerthus (1905) by Emil Doepler.
2.
Myth
–
A myth is any traditional story consisting of events that are ostensibly historical, though often supernatural, explaining the origins of a cultural practice or natural phenomenon. The word myth is derived from the Greek word mythos, which means story. Mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths, myth can mean sacred story, traditional narrative or tale of the gods. A myth can also be a story to explain why something exists, human cultures usually include a cosmogonical or creation myth, concerning the origins of the world, or how the world came to exist. The active beings in myths are generally gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, or animals, most myths are set in a timeless past before recorded time or beginning of the critical history. A myth can be a story involving symbols that are capable of multiple meanings, a myth is a sacred narrative because it holds religious or spiritual significance for those who tell it. Myths also contribute to and express a cultures systems of thought and values, myths are often therefore stories that are currently understood as being exaggerated or fictitious. According to Albert A. Anderson, a professor of philosophy, in these works, the term had several meanings, conversation, narrative, speech, story, tale, and word. Like the related term logos, mythos expresses whatever can be delivered in the form of words, Anderson contrasts the two terms with ergon, a Greek term for action, deed, and work. The term mythos lacks an explicit distinction between true or false narratives, in the context of the Theatre of ancient Greece, the term mythos referred to the myth, the narrative, the plot, and the story of a theatrical play. According to David Wiles, the Greek term mythos in this era covered an entire spectrum of different meanings, from undeniable falsehoods to stories with religious, according to philosopher Aristotle, the spirit of a theatrical play was its mythos. The term mythos was also used for the material of Greek tragedy. The tragedians of the era could draw inspiration from Greek mythology, David Wiles observes that modern conceptions about Greek tragedy can be misleading. It is commonly thought that the ancient audience members were familiar with the mythos behind a play. However, the Greek dramatists were not expected to faithfully reproduce traditional myths when adapting them for the stage and they were instead recreating the myths and producing new versions. Storytellers like Euripides relied on suspense to excite their audiences, in one of his works, Merope attempts to kill her sons murderer with an axe, unaware that the man in question is actually her son. According to an ancient description of reactions to this work. They rose to their feet in terror and caused an uproar, David Wiles points that the traditional mythos of Ancient Greece, was primarily a part of its oral tradition
Myth
–
Prometheus (1868) by
Gustave Moreau. In the mythos of
Hesiodus and possibly
Aeschylus (the
Greek trilogy
Prometheus Bound,
Prometheus Unbound and
Prometheus Pyrphoros), Prometheus is bound and tortured for giving fire to humanity at its creation.
Myth
–
1929
Belgian banknote, depicting
Ceres,
Neptune and
caduceus.
Myth
–
Fu Xi and
Nüwa represented as half-snake, half-human creatures
3.
Germanic peoples
–
The Germanic peoples are an ethno-linguistic Indo-European group of Northern European origin. They are identified by their use of Germanic languages, which diversified out of Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age, the term Germanic originated in classical times when groups of tribes living in Lower, Upper, and Greater Germania were referred to using this label by Roman scribes. Tribes referred to as Germanic by Roman authors generally lived to the north, in about 222 BCE, the first use of the Latin term Germani appears in the Fasti Capitolini inscription de Galleis Insvbribvs et Germ. This may simply be referring to Gaul or related people, the term Germani shows up again, allegedly written by Poseidonios, but is merely a quotation inserted by the author Athenaios who wrote much later. Somewhat later, the first surviving detailed discussions of Germani and Germania are those of Julius Caesar, from Caesars perspective, Germania was a geographical area of land on the east bank of the Rhine opposite Gaul, which Caesar left outside direct Roman control. This usage of the word is the origin of the concept of Germanic languages. In other classical authors the concept sometimes included regions of Sarmatia, also, at least in the south there were Celtic peoples still living east of the Rhine and north of the Alps. Caesar, Tacitus and others noted differences of culture which could be found on the east of the Rhine, but the theme of all these cultural references was that this was a wild and dangerous region, less civilised than Gaul, a place that required additional military vigilance. Caesar used the term Germani for a specific tribal grouping in northeastern Belgic Gaul, west of the Rhine. He made clear that he was using the name in the local sense and these are the so-called Germani Cisrhenani, whom Caesar believed to be closely related to the peoples east of the Rhine, and descended from immigrants into Gaul. Caesar described this group of both as Belgic Gauls and as Germani. Gauls are associated with Celtic languages, and the term Germani is associated with Germanic languages, but Caesar did not discuss languages in detail. It has been claimed, for example by Maurits Gysseling, that the names of this region show evidence of an early presence of Germanic languages. The etymology of the word Germani is uncertain, the likeliest theory so far proposed is that it comes from a Gaulish compound of *ger near + *mani men, comparable to Welsh ger near, Old Irish gair neighbor, Irish gar- near, garach neighborly. Another Celtic possibility is that the name meant noisy, cf. Breton/Cornish garm shout, however, here the vowel does not match, nor does the vowel length ). Others have proposed a Germanic etymology *gēr-manni, spear men, cf. Middle Dutch ghere, Old High German Ger, Old Norse geirr. However, the form gēr seems far too advanced phonetically for the 1st century, has a vowel where a short one is expected. The term Germani, therefore, probably applied to a group of tribes in northeastern Gaul who may or may not have spoken a Germanic language
Germanic peoples
–
Germanic
Thing (governing assembly), drawn after the depiction in a relief of the
Column of Marcus Aurelius, 193 CE.
Germanic peoples
–
The gilded side of the
Trundholm sun chariot
Germanic peoples
–
The Dejbjerg wagon, National Museum of Denmark
Germanic peoples
–
2nd century to 5th century simplified migrations
4.
Proto-Germanic
–
Proto-Germanic is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. The end of the Common Germanic period is reached with the beginning of the Migration Period in the fourth century, the Proto-Germanic language is not directly attested by any coherent surviving texts, it has been reconstructed using the comparative method. Fragmentary direct attestation exists of Common Germanic in early runic inscriptions, the Proto-Germanic language developed in southern Scandinavia, the Urheimat of the Germanic tribes. Proto-Germanic developed out of pre-Proto-Germanic during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe, Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c. Early Germanic expansion in the Pre-Roman Iron Age placed Proto-Germanic speakers in contact with the Continental Celtic La Tène horizon, a number of Celtic loanwords in Proto-Germanic have been identified. By the 1st century AD, Germanic expansion reaches the Danube and the Upper Rhine in the south, at about the same time, extending east of the Vistula, Germanic speakers come into contact with early Slavic cultures, as reflected in early Germanic loans in Proto-Slavic. By the 3rd century, LPGmc speakers had expanded over significant distance, the period marks the breakup of Late Proto-Germanic and the beginning of the Germanic migrations. The earliest coherent text in Proto-Norse become available c.400 in runic inscriptions, the delineation of Late Common Germanic from Proto-Norse about then is largely a matter of convention. Early West Germanic becomes available in the 5th century with the Frankish Bergakker inscription, between the two points, many sound changes occurred. Phylogeny as applied to historical linguistics involves the descent of languages. The Germanic languages form a tree with Proto-Germanic at its root that is a branch of the Indo-European tree, borrowing of lexical items from contact languages makes the relative position of the Germanic branch within Indo-European less clear than the positions of the other branches of Indo-European. In the course of the development of linguistics, various solutions have been proposed, none certain. In the evolutionary history of a family, philologists consider a genetic tree model appropriate only if communities do not remain in effective contact as their languages diverge. The internal diversification of West Germanic developed in an especially non-treelike manner, Proto-Germanic is generally agreed to have begun about 500 BC. Its hypothetical ancestor between the end of Proto-Indo-European and 500 BC is termed Pre-Proto-Germanic, whether it is to be included under a wider meaning of Proto-Germanic is a matter of usage. The fixation of the led to sound changes in unstressed syllables. For Lehmann, the boundary was the dropping of final -a or -e in unstressed syllables, for example, post-PIE *wóyd-e > Gothic wait. Antonsen agreed with Lehmann about the boundary but later found runic evidence that the -a was not dropped, ékwakraz … wraita, I, Wakraz
Proto-Germanic
–
Map of the
Pre-Roman Iron Age culture(s) associated with Proto-Germanic, c. 500 BC. The red area shows the areal of the preceding
Nordic Bronze Age in
Scandinavia; the magenta-colored area towards the south represents the
Jastorf culture of the
North German Plain.
5.
Christianization of the Germanic peoples
–
The Germanic peoples underwent gradual Christianization in the course of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By AD700, England and the Frankish Empire were officially Christian, in the 4th century, the early process of Christianization of the various Germanic people was partly facilitated by the prestige of the Christian Roman Empire among European pagans. Until the decline of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes who had migrated there had converted to Christianity, many of them, notably the Goths and Vandals, adopted Arianism instead of the Trinitarian beliefs that were dogmatically defined by the Catholic Church in the Nicene Creed. The gradual rise of Germanic Christianity was, at times, voluntary, from the 6th century, Germanic tribes were converted by missionaries of the Catholic Church. Many Goths converted to Christianity as individuals outside the Roman Empire, most members of other tribes converted to Christianity when their respective tribes settled within the Empire, and most Franks and Anglo-Saxons converted a few generations later. In the 3rd century, East-Germanic peoples migrated into the steppes, north of the Black Sea in what today is South West Ukraine, Crimean Peninsula and from there to Bessarabia and todays Romania. The Greuthungi or Ostrogoths lived in Bessarabia and the Thervingi lived in the provinces of Moldova and Valachia, Gothic culture and identity emerged from various East-Germanic, Sarmatian, local Dacian, and Roman influences. In the same period, Gothic raiders took captives among the Romans, including many Christians, Ulfilas, or Wulfila, was the son or grandson of Christians from Sadagolthina in Cappadocia who had been taken captive by the Goths. In 337 or 341, Ulfilas was sent by Arian emperor Constantius II to preach to the Goths in their language, and became the first bishop of the Goths. By 348, one of the Gothic kings began persecuting the Christian Goths, between 348 and 383, Ulfilas translated the Bible into the Gothic language. The Chronicle of St. Denis relates that, following Clovis conversion, a number of pagans who were unhappy rallied around Ragnachar, though the text remains unclear as to the precise pretext, Clovis had Ragnachar executed. Remaining pockets of resistance were overcome region by region, primarily due to the work of a network of monasteries. The Alamanni became Christians only after a period of syncretism during the 7th century, the Lombards adopted Catholic Christianity as they entered Italy, also during the 6th century. Until 1066, by time the Danes and the Norse had lost their foothold in Britain, theological and missionary work in Germany was largely organized by Anglo-Saxon missionaries. A key event was the felling of Thors Oak in 723 near Fritzlar by Boniface, apostle of the Germans, Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England began around AD600, influenced by the Gregorian mission from the south-east and the Hiberno-Scottish mission from the north-west. Gregory I sent the first Archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine, to southern England in 597 and this process was often only partial, perhaps due to confusion as to the nature of the new religion, or for a desire to take the best of both traditions. A famous case of this was king Raedwald of East Anglia and his suspected burial place at Sutton Hoo shows definite influences of both Christian and pagan burial rites. The last pagan Anglo-Saxon king, the Jutish king Arwald of the Isle of Wight, was killed in battle in 686 fighting against the imposition of Christianity in his kingdom, Scandinavia was the last part of Germanic Europe to convert and most resistant
Christianization of the Germanic peoples
–
9th century depiction of Christ as a heroic warrior (Stuttgart Psalter, fol. 23, illustration of
Psalm 91:13)
Christianization of the Germanic peoples
–
Figure carved on the Frankish grave stele of
Niederdollendorf (7th century), known as the earliest material witness of Christian presence in the German Rhineland; the figure is presumably a depiction of Christ as a heroic warrior wielding a lance, with a halo or crown of rays emanating from his head.
Christianization of the Germanic peoples
–
Ministry of Jesus &
Apostolic Age
6.
Norse mythology
–
The cosmos in Norse mythology consists of Nine Worlds that flank a central cosmological tree, Yggdrasil. Units of time and elements of the cosmology are personified as deities or beings, various forms of a creation myth are recounted, where the world is created from the flesh of the primordial being Ymir, and the first two humans are Ask and Embla. These worlds are foretold to be reborn after the events of Ragnarök, there the surviving gods will meet, and the land will be fertile and green, and two humans will repopulate the world. Norse mythology has been the subject of scholarly discourse since the 17th century, by way of comparative mythology and historical linguistics, scholars have identified elements of Germanic mythology reaching as far back as Proto-Indo-European mythology. In the modern period, the Romanticist Viking revival re-awoke an interest in the subject matter, the myths have further been revived in a religious context among adherents of Germanic Neopaganism. The majority of these Old Norse texts were created in Iceland and this occurred primarily in the 13th century. The Prose Edda was composed as a manual for producing skaldic poetry—traditional Old Norse poetry composed by skalds. Originally composed and transmitted orally, skaldic poetry utilizes alliterative verse, kennings, the Prose Edda presents numerous examples of works by various skalds from before and after the Christianization process and also frequently refers back to the poems found in the Poetic Edda. The Poetic Edda consists almost entirely of poems, with some prose narrative added, in comparison to skaldic poetry, Eddic poetry is relatively unadorned. Numerous further texts, such as the sagas, provide further information, the saga corpus consists of thousands of tales recorded in Old Norse ranging from Icelandic family histories to Migration period tales mentioning historic figures such as Attila the Hun. By way of historical linguistics and comparative mythology, comparisons to other attested branches of Germanic mythology may also lend insight, wider comparisons to the mythology of other Indo-European peoples by scholars has resulted in the potential reconstruction of far earlier myths. Of the mythical tales and poems that are presumed to have existed during the Middle Ages, Viking Age, Migration Period, numerous gods are mentioned in the source texts. In the mythology, Thor lays waste to numerous jötnar who are foes to the gods or humanity, the god Odin is also frequently mentioned in surviving texts. One-eyed, wolf and raven-flanked, and spear in hand, Odin pursues knowledge throughout the worlds, Odin has a strong association with death, Odin is portrayed as the ruler of Valhalla, where valkyries carry half of those slain in battle. Odins wife is the powerful goddess Frigg who can see the future but tells no one, and together they have a beloved son, Baldr. After a series of dreams had by Baldr of his death, his death is engineered by Loki, and Baldr thereafter resides in Hel. Odin must share half of his share of the dead with a powerful goddess and she is beautiful, sensual, wears a feathered cloak, and practices seiðr. She rides to battle to choose among the slain, and brings her chosen to her afterlife field Fólkvangr, Freyja weeps for her missing husband Óðr, and seeks after him in far away lands
Norse mythology
–
An undead
völva, a Scandinavian seeress, tells the spear-wielding god Odin of what has been and what will be in Odin and the Völva by Lorenz Frølich (1895)
Norse mythology
–
The
Rök Runestone (
Ög 136), located in
Rök, Sweden features a
Younger Futhark runic inscription that makes various references to Norse mythology
Norse mythology
–
The god Thor wades through a river while the
Æsir ride across the bridge
Bifröst in an illustration by
Lorenz Frølich (1895)
Norse mythology
–
The cosmological, central tree
Yggdrasil is depicted in "The Ash Yggdrasil" by
Friedrich Wilhelm Heine (1886)
7.
Anglo-Saxon mythology
–
A variant of the Germanic paganism found across much of north-western Europe, it encompassed a heterogeneous variety of disparate beliefs and cultic practices, with much regional variation. Anglo-Saxon paganism was a belief system, focused around a belief in deities known as the ése. The most prominent of these deities was probably Woden, other prominent gods included Thunor, there was also a belief in a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape, including elves, nicor, and dragons. There is some evidence for the existence of temples, although other cultic spaces might have been open-air. The belief system also included ideas about magic and witchcraft. The deities of this provided the basis for the names of the days of the week in the English language. What is known about the religion and its accompanying mythology have since influenced both literature and Modern Paganism, the word pagan is a Latin term that was used by Christians in Anglo-Saxon England to describe non-Christians. These pagan belief systems would have been inseparable from other aspects of daily life and they also suggested that early Anglo-Saxon Christianity had a similar structure, although acknowledged that this would be a controversial notion. As a phenomenon, it appeared to lack any rules or consistency, also exhibiting regional variation, thus, the archaeologist Aleks Pluskowski suggested that it is possible to talk of multiple Anglo-Saxon paganisms. Also adopting the categories of Gustav Mensching, she described Anglo-Saxon paganism as a religion, in that they concentrated on survival. Using the expressions paganism or heathenism when discussing pre-Christian belief systems in Anglo-Saxon England is problematic, historically, many early scholars of the Anglo-Saxon period used the terms to describe the religious beliefs in England before its conversion to Christianity in the 7th century. Several later scholars criticised the use of the term in this context, the term pre-Christian religion avoids the judgemental connotations of paganism and heathenism but is not always chronologically accurate. The pre-Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England was non-literate, thus there is no contemporary written evidence of the Anglo-Saxon practice of paganism. Far fewer textual records discuss Anglo-Saxon paganism than the belief systems found in nearby Ireland, Francia. There is no neat, formalised account of Anglo-Saxon pagan beliefs as there is for instance for Classical mythology, although many scholars have used Norse mythology as a guide to understanding the beliefs of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon England, caution has been expressed as to the utility of this approach. As Stenton noted, the connection between Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism occurred in a past which was already remote at the time of the Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain. Moreover, there was clear diversity among the pre-Christian belief systems of Scandinavia itself, Old English place-names also provide some insight into the pre-Christian beliefs and practices of Anglo-Saxon England. Some of these place-names reference the names of deities, while others use terms that refer to cultic practices that took place there
Anglo-Saxon mythology
–
The right half of the front panel of the seventh century
Franks Casket, depicting the pan-Germanic legend of
Weyland Smith also Weyland The Smith, which was apparently also a part of Anglo-Saxon pagan mythology.
Anglo-Saxon mythology
–
A 1908 depiction of
Beowulf fighting the dragon, by J. R. Skelton.
Anglo-Saxon mythology
–
One of the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo
8.
Germanic languages
–
It is the third most spoken Indo-European subdivision, behind Italic and Indo-Iranian, and ahead of Balto-Slavic languages. Limburgish varieties have roughly 1.3 million speakers along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, the main North Germanic languages are Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese, which have a combined total of about 20 million speakers. The East Germanic branch included Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, the last to die off was Crimean Gothic, spoken in the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history is unknown, as some of them—especially East Germanic languages—disappeared during or after the Migration Period. Proto-Germanic, along all of its descendants, is characterized by a number of unique linguistic features. Early varieties of Germanic enter history with the Germanic tribes moving south from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC, to settle in the area of todays northern Germany, furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. It is also a language in Nicaragua and Malaysia. German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Switzerland and has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia. German also continues to be spoken as a minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico, a German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch, is still present amongst Anabaptist populations in Pennsylvania in the United States. Dutch is a language of Aruba, Belgium, Curaçao. The Netherlands also colonised Indonesia, but Dutch was scrapped as a language after Indonesian independence. Dutch was until 1925 an official language in South Africa, but evolved in and was replaced by Afrikaans, Afrikaans is one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations as well, low German is a collection of sometimes very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Scots is spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. Luxembourgish is mainly spoken in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, though it extends into small parts of Belgium, France. Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border, Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish, and the only official language in the Åland Islands. Danish is also spoken natively by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Norwegian is the official language of Norway. Icelandic is the language of Iceland, and is spoken by a significant minority in the Faroe Islands
Germanic languages
–
Countries where a Germanic language is the
first language of the majority of the population
9.
Proto-Indo-European language
–
Proto-Indo-European is the linguistic reconstruction of the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, the most widely spoken language family in the world. Far more work has gone into reconstructing PIE than any other proto-language and these methods supply all of the knowledge concerning PIE, since there is no written record of the language. PIE is estimated to have spoken as a single language around 3500 B. C. E. during the Neolithic Age. According to the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis, the homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans may have been in the Pontic–Caspian steppe of Eastern Europe. Work has also gone into reconstructing their culture and religion, PIE had a complex system of morphology that included inflectional suffixes as well as ablaut and accent. PIE nominals and pronouns had a system of declension. The PIE phonology, particles, numerals, and copula are also well-reconstructed, today, the most widely-spoken daughter languages of PIE are Spanish, English, Hindustani, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian, Punjabi, German, French, and Marathi. There is no evidence of PIE. It has been reconstructed from its present-day descendants using the comparative method, the comparative method is based on the Neogrammarian rule that the Indo-European sound laws are applied without exception. The method compares languages and applies the laws to find a common ancestor. For example, compare the pairs of words in Italian and English, piede and foot, padre and father, pesce and fish. Since there is a consistent correspondence of the consonants that is far too frequent to be coincidental. Although his name is associated with this observation, he was not the first to make it. In many ways Jones work was less accurate than his predecessors, as he erroneously included Egyptian, Japanese and Chinese in the Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindi. In 1818, Rasmus Christian Rask elaborated the set of correspondences to include other Indo-European languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, and the full range of consonants involved. In 1816 Franz Bopp published On the System of Conjugation in Sanskrit in which he investigated a common origin of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German. In 1833 he began publishing the Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavic, Gothic, in 1822, Jacob Grimm formulated what is now known as Grimms law as a general rule in his Deutsche Grammatik. Grimm showed correlations between the Germanic and other Indo-European languages, and showed that sound change affects an entire language systematically, august Schleichers A Compendium of the Comparative Grammar of the Indo-European, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin Languages was an early attempt to reconstruct the proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European language
–
Classification of Indo-European languages. Red: Extinct languages. White: categories or unattested proto-languages. Left half:
centum languages; right half:
satem languages
10.
Proto-Indo-European religion
–
The hypothesized reconstructions below are based on linguistic evidence using the comparative method. Archaeological evidence is difficult to match to any specific culture in the period of early Indo-European culture in the Chalcolithic, other approaches to Indo-European mythology are possible, such as the trifunctional hypothesis of Georges Dumézil. Linguists are able to reconstruct the names of deities in the Proto-Indo-European language from many types of sources. Some of the proposed deity names are more accepted among scholars than others. The term for a god was *deiwos, reflected in Hittite, sius, Latin, deus, divus, Sanskrit, deva, Avestan, daeva, Welsh, duw, Irish, dia, Old Norse, tívurr, Lithuanian, Dievas, Latvian, Dievs. The supreme ruler of the Proto-Indo-European pantheon was the god *Dyḗus Pḥɑtḗr and he is believed to have been worshipped as the god of the daylit skies. He is, by far, the most well-attested of all the Proto-Indo-European deities, the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter, and the Illyrian god Dei-Pátrous all appear as the head gods of their respective pantheons. The Norse god Týr, however, seems to have been demoted to the role of a minor war-deity, *Dyḗus Pḥɑtḗr is also attested in the Rigveda as Dyáus Pitā, a minor ancestor figure mentioned in only a few hymns. The names of the Latvian god Dievs and the Hittite god Attas Isanus do not preserve the exact translation of the name *Dyḗus Pḥɑtḗr. *Hɑéusōs has been reconstructed as the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn, derivatives of her found throughout various Indo-European mythologies include the Greek goddess Eos, the Roman goddess Aurōra, the Vedic goddess Uṣás, and the Lithuanian goddess Auštrine. The form Arap Ushas appears in Albanian folklore, but as a name for the Moon, an extension of the name may have been *H2eustro, but see also the form *as-t-r, with intrusive -t- in northern dialects. *Seh2ul and *Meh1not are reconstructed as the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the Sun, *Meh1not is reconstructed based off the Norse god Máni, the Hittite god Myesyats, and the Lithuanian god *Meno, or Mėnuo. They are often seen as the children of various deities. The usual scheme is one of these celestial deities is male. The original Indo-European lunar deity appears to have masculine, with feminine lunar deities like Selene, Minerva. Even in these traditions, remnants of male deities, like Menelaus. The word *prihxeha-, meaning wife has been reconstructed based off the Sanskrit word priyā, meaning wife, the Old Norse word frī, meaning beloved, and the Old English word frēo, meaning woman. The name of the Norse goddess Frigg is derived from this root, Analysis of different Indo-European tales indicate the Proto-Indo-Europeans believed there were two progenitors of mankind, *Manu- and *Yemo-, his twin brother
Proto-Indo-European religion
–
Trundholm sun chariot pictured,
Nordic Bronze Age, c. 1600 BCE
11.
Heathenry (new religious movement)
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Heathenry, also termed Heathenism or Germanic Neopaganism, is a modern Pagan religion. Classified as a new movement, its practitioners model their faith on the pre-Christian belief systems adhered to by the Germanic peoples of Iron Age. To reconstruct these past belief systems, Heathenry uses surviving historical, archaeological, although lacking a unified theology, Heathenry is typically polytheistic, centering on a pantheon of deities from pre-Christian Germanic Europe which includes both gods and goddesses. It adopts cosmological views from these religions, including an animistic view of the cosmos in which the natural world is imbued with spirits. The faiths deities and these spirits are honored in sacrificial rites known as blóts in which food and these are often accompanied by symbel, the act of ceremonially toasting the gods with an alcoholic beverage. Heathen ethical systems place great emphasis on honor, personal integrity, a central division within the Heathen movement surrounds the issue of race. Many groups eschew racialist ideas, adopting a universalist perspective which holds that the religion is open to all, some folkish Heathens further combine the religion with explicitly racist and white supremacist perspectives. Although the term Heathenry is used widely to describe the religion as a whole, many groups prefer different forms of designation, influenced by their regional focus and their attitude to race. While a number of groups venerating Scandinavian deities use Ásatrú or Forn Sed, the religions origins lie in the 19th and early 20th century Romanticist movement which glorified the pre-Christian beliefs of Germanic societies. In the 1970s, new Heathen groups emerged in Europe and North America, in recent decades, the Heathen movement has been the subject of academic study by scholars active in the field of Pagan studies. Scholarly estimates put the number of Heathens at no more than 20,000 worldwide, with communities of practitioners being active in Europe, North America, scholars of religious studies classify Heathenry as a new religious movement, and more specifically as a reconstructionist form of modern Paganism. Heathenry is a movement to revive and/or reinterpret for the present day the practices, practitioners seek to revive these past belief systems by using surviving historical source materials. Some Heathens also adopt ideas from the evidence of pre-Christian Northern Europe and from recorded folk tales. Some, for instance, adapt their practices according to unverified personal gnosis that they have gained through spiritual experiences, conversely, others draw inspiration from the beliefs and practices of a specific geographical area and chronological period within Germanic Europe, such as Anglo-Saxon England or Viking Age Iceland. The anthropologist Murphy Pizza suggested that Heathenry could be understood as an example of what the historian Eric Hobsbawm termed an invented tradition, no central religious authority exists to impose a particular terminological designation on all practitioners. Academics studying the religion have typically favoured the terms Heathenry and Heathenism to describe it and this term is the most commonly used option by practitioners in the United Kingdom, with growing usage in North America and elsewhere. Many practitioners favor the term Heathen over Pagan because the term originated among Germanic languages. A further term used in academic contexts is Germanic Neopaganism
Heathenry (new religious movement)
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A modern reconstruction of a historical
Viking Age pendant worn by North Germanic pagans in the Viking Age—
Mjölnir, the hammer of the god
Thor —now popularly worn in modern Germanic Neopaganism
Heathenry (new religious movement)
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Outdoor temporary altar of the
Swedish Forn Sed Association.
Heathenry (new religious movement)
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Icelandic Heathen rite at Sigurblót 2009
Heathenry (new religious movement)
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Many followers of Germanic Neopaganism venerate the Æsir, deities found in Norse mythology. Here, they are pictured gathered around the body of
Baldur. Painting by
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, 1817
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National Diet Library
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The National Diet Library is the only national library in Japan. It was established in 1948 for the purpose of assisting members of the National Diet of Japan in researching matters of public policy, the library is similar in purpose and scope to the United States Library of Congress. The National Diet Library consists of two facilities in Tokyo and Kyoto, and several other branch libraries throughout Japan. The Diets power in prewar Japan was limited, and its need for information was correspondingly small, the original Diet libraries never developed either the collections or the services which might have made them vital adjuncts of genuinely responsible legislative activity. Until Japans defeat, moreover, the executive had controlled all political documents, depriving the people and the Diet of access to vital information. The U. S. occupation forces under General Douglas MacArthur deemed reform of the Diet library system to be an important part of the democratization of Japan after its defeat in World War II. In 1946, each house of the Diet formed its own National Diet Library Standing Committee, hani Gorō, a Marxist historian who had been imprisoned during the war for thought crimes and had been elected to the House of Councillors after the war, spearheaded the reform efforts. Hani envisioned the new body as both a citadel of popular sovereignty, and the means of realizing a peaceful revolution, the National Diet Library opened in June 1948 in the present-day State Guest-House with an initial collection of 100,000 volumes. The first Librarian of the Diet Library was the politician Tokujirō Kanamori, the philosopher Masakazu Nakai served as the first Vice Librarian. In 1949, the NDL merged with the National Library and became the national library in Japan. At this time the collection gained a million volumes previously housed in the former National Library in Ueno. In 1961, the NDL opened at its present location in Nagatachō, in 1986, the NDLs Annex was completed to accommodate a combined total of 12 million books and periodicals. The Kansai-kan, which opened in October 2002 in the Kansai Science City, has a collection of 6 million items, in May 2002, the NDL opened a new branch, the International Library of Childrens Literature, in the former building of the Imperial Library in Ueno. This branch contains some 400,000 items of literature from around the world. Though the NDLs original mandate was to be a library for the National Diet. In the fiscal year ending March 2004, for example, the library reported more than 250,000 reference inquiries, in contrast, as Japans national library, the NDL collects copies of all publications published in Japan. The NDL has an extensive collection of some 30 million pages of documents relating to the Occupation of Japan after World War II. This collection include the documents prepared by General Headquarters and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, the Far Eastern Commission, the NDL maintains a collection of some 530,000 books and booklets and 2 million microform titles relating to the sciences
National Diet Library
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Tokyo Main Library of the National Diet Library
National Diet Library
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Kansai-kan of the National Diet Library
National Diet Library
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The National Diet Library
National Diet Library
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Main building in Tokyo
