Ooh, can I provide a visual aid?
Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory”
In the dream world (which surreal art like this is intended to depict), clocks lose their meaning… time as we know it ends and is lost to insect-eaten decay. The elemental landscape persists, eclipsing our vain instruments of enforced rationality.
I’d like to think that in some distant past these elements were included by someone who saw the need to preserve that wisdom.
Ragnarök makes a great metaphor, if we take the ‘order vs chaos’ view prevalent in many written sources, for the collapse. Growing tension, coming to a final showdown, and great mutual destruction, but a new age begins.
Thor slays Jormundr, but later dies from the venom which that battle imbued him with. We have ‘beaten’ aspects of nature, but at what cost to ourselves?
Thor’s sons Magni and Modi, will survive the battle, the new gods of an era of peace. Not all is lost, it’s not the end of the world, its the end of an era.
This said, I am unsure about the duality present in the mythology, given the sources for much of the knowledge were Christians who openly undermine many aspects, and related much of it to their own religion.
Most of these sources pit gods vs giants, but forget about the other 7 worlds and other races within them. They give you Valhalla or Helheim, as heaven or hell, forgetting the many halls of the Aesir, and many layers of Helheim, some of which are not even a bad place to be.
Edit: I should also note that the fire giants which ride from Muspelheim destroy all people, except for two which Odin hid away, where else? In the forest. 
I’ve never thought that the whole Order vs. Chaos interpretation held any water. Some of the Aesir continually show themselves to be just as much forces of Chaos as the Jotuns. Thurisaz, the fourth rune in the Futhark, can mean Thor the Thunderer and giants. Thor, of course, really is a giant. Odin becomes blood brother with Loki partially because they both share an aptitude for using less-than-honest methods to achieve goals. His various quests have to do with preserving the Aesir (i.e. delaying the foreseen Ragnarok), not necessarily preserving Order. Skadhi is a giantess who marries into the Aesir, her husband demanded as payment for the slaying of her father.
Basically, I see it more as two feuding tribes, and one of them happens to be on the side of humans.
Just a word about the Jotuns in the world of contemprorary neo-paganism. There is an author named Raven Kaldera who is sort of the center of a movement of Northern Tradition Shamanism that actively embraces the Jotuns as the main powers they work with. They also take the view that many of the Jotun powers (and Alfar and other beings of Norse/Germanic cosmology) may represent older powers especially related to nature that were supplanted by the arrival of the Aesir worshippers. I think there’s even some speculation about the Jotuns being representation of animistic forces that Neolithic northern Europe had connection with. Raven also has some interesting history of shamanistic techniques from Northern Europe including Finnish, Norse, and Lapps.
The website is www.caldronfarm.com and check out the jotunbok section.
pathfinder, your link is not working.
my 2 cents, as someone who has dealt w/ the Aesir & Vanir for several years:
Willem, I think you’re spot on to point out the progression. Both the Aesir & Vanir have changed; they’ve changed since the Viking Age to now, and I see no reason to think that they hadn’t changed prior. Obviously, this can make it a little difficult to make broad sweeping statements about them.
I’ve never understand why a duality of Order vs Chaos has been drawn over the Aesir/Jotun relationship either. In my experience, no such relationship exists*.
As for the entire concept of “god(dess) of _____”, i’m no anthropologist, obviously, but I suspect that’s a very recent view spread from too many poorly designed & written role-playing games 
Again, based on my experience, neither the Aesir nor the Vanir work like that. They have their own personalities and “feel”, which at times can lead to a superficial resemblance to “god(dess) of ____”, but that resemblance doesn’t go very deep.
However, I don’t see how I could dispute that Norse paganism, at least in the Viking Age, was a farmer’s religion. Even in the sense that it was also a king’s religion and a warrior’s religion and a trader’s religion, all of that ultimately and increasingly rested upon agriculture.
Myself, I find it more useful to ask, what can I learn from these relationships and beings? Granted, the Aesir & Vanir may want to teach me different lessons than the ones I actually learn from them, but… I’m fine with that. ;D
*Just to clarify, I very much see the trends of hierarchy in Norse paganism, however, I don’t necessarily see hierarchy as “Order”, neither do I necessarily see anarchy as “Chaos”.
As for the entire concept of "god(dess) of _____", i'm no anthropologist, obviously, but I suspect that's a very recent view spread from too many poorly designed & written role-playing games
Quite right, though the source is really more from Victorian era writers and such. Not that the crappy RPGs helped.
However, I don't see how I could dispute that Norse paganism, at least in the Viking Age, was a farmer's religion. Even in the sense that it was also a king's religion and a warrior's religion and a trader's religion, all of that ultimately and increasingly rested upon agriculture.
This is one of the reasons I’ve always been more interested in Icelandic traditions of polytheism. The people who moved to Iceland, though they did have some small farming, got quite a large amount of their subsistence in fishing and to a lesser extent hunting. They also had a representative government, which although not really egalitarian was still much more democratic than any European country at the time. As such, their religion reflected these facts, and vice versa.
Since we’ve veered off specifically to Norse/Germanic traditions, it probably warrants mentioning that these cultures were far from homogeneous. Their subsistence methods varied, as did the political structures and cultural traditions. Some were certainly 100% farming people; others, not so much.
In my experience, pagan and heathen are synonymous. They are used by many to cover nearly everything outside of christianity, judaism, and islam. I consider myself pagan, though my interactions with this earth are governed by beliefs that do not include gods or rituals inspired by past forms of paganism. I’m pagan cuz I’m not christian and still spiritual, I think the terms pagan and heathen are the only terms that could be fit under. Plus it bugs a lot of uptight christians.
Reading the icelandic sagas I got the impression that the reason their relationship was beneficial because the vikings were afraid of the Saami magic and so didn’t fuck with them too much. they negotiated a little more with them, as opposed to conquering them for long enough to make off with their valuable goods.
Okay, a couple things.
Once again, I have no interest in pooping on someone else’s earth ethic. If you’ve found a way to make a relationship with Norse gods a nourishing one, then great. If it meant you changed something about the religion, great; if it meant you didn’t have to change a thing, because in your opinion it already works, great.
When we have these kinds of conversations, I prefer to have everything on the table. If you truly don’t care what I say about Norse religion, fine. If you do care, because you have received help and wisdom from the religion, and you don’t want someone pooping on it, then please tell me, rather than arguing the details. Because the details appear pretty consistently. And I’d rather not pin insects to a board in the name of “correctness”, not noticing that the insects still squirm and suffer.
As far as the soundness of “gods and goddesses of_______”, this concept goes back for as long as we’ve had civilized gods. The Romans took special note that each one of their gods had a greek correspondence. I haven’t said something new here; it doesn’t have anything to do with pop culture or role-playing games; you can find it appearing even with catholic saints and in other such appropriate contexts.
I don’t, myself, find much benefit between discriminating between hierarchy and order, or chaos and anarchy. To a civilized mind, I think those seem synonymous. I love semantics, but that goes a little far for me.
Perhaps I’ve just gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but I don’t think I have any more interest in following this conversation. It has begun to rub me the wrong way. I feel like much of what I’ve said above somebody else in this thread could have offered up themselves, if they felt safe and generous in this conversation. This feels too much like defending/attacking Norse religion.
Well I’d personally prefer you stick with the conversation, Willem, since you’ve contributed some great stuff, but if it makes you uncomfortable at all then it probably isn’t worth it.
And as for the Romans, one of the reasons they were so quick to equate their gods and goddesses so easily with other cultures’, and labeled them as such was because they had divorced the worship of the gods entirely from any mythology. Most of the gods were simply worshiped out of habit. They instead historicized their mythology, swapping in kings and heroes where the gods and goddesses had previously been. It’s interesting to compare their history with a lot of the “history” the U.S. has today.
huh
well, i had no intention of coming off defensive. frankly, you can poop over whatever you like as long as it’s not my food/drink
my relationship w/ the Norse gods is very mixed, and i have some pretty serious issues with some of them. mostly, i bring up that i actually have a relationship because all too often discussions like this tend to go to the same place time after time: scholarly, academic study of a dead religion. i just wanted to point out that that’s not a representation of my relationships to these guys, i have an active, living relationship, not a static dead one; and when it comes down to actually understanding what’s what, i think that makes a big difference.
re: hierarchy v order; chaos v anarchy; that actually draws a lot from my math training, any religious/philosophical applications came after that. which is to say that this isn’t something i tacked on as a semantic band-aid, so much as an application of an actual perspective on what constitutes hierarchy, order, chaos, anarchy.
i figured i had some decent perspectives to toss in this discussion, but i certainly didn’t want to shut it down. i have my own opinions on the subject, and i’m more than willing to admit that you (or anyone else) would be hard pressed to change to my mind. it’s taken a lot of time and searching to form those opinions! and i’d be the first one to admit that this isn’t something that’s easily reducable to pinning insects to a board, there’s far too much feeling and experience required for that. in fact, the only real point i had was just that: that trying to pin this shit down in a nice clearly labeled way with pretty, concise pictures is doomed to failure.
in short, i’m not interesting in either attacking norse religion or defending it. just trying to throw in my 2 cents.
sorry for the disruption.
hey guys, no biggie. for some reason i’ve had difficulty communicating what i want to get out of this conversation. also i did get up on the wrong side of the bed that morning.
i’ll think about this and come back to it when i’ve figured out my intention here. 
i see paganism as an “umbrella” term for nature based spirituality. like some1 else said b4 i too respond to “whats ur religion” as “pagan” . But i have found that there seems to be a rather “narrow” view on paganism in the general public. Since (to most ppl i know) pagan means something wiccan or wiccan-ish. (Try looking for a book that not related to wicca under ‘paganism’ or ‘new age’ section in library or book store). Although i do share SOME ideas with wiccan religions, my spritual path lies elsewhere.
Animism as i see it is a term used to describe a specific belief. I AM an animist, which means that said belief is part of my spiritual belief system etc.
sad tho. I am through and thruough a shaman, as far as i can tell.
now getting down to rewilding, i really dont see paganism or animism as a tie in to it. But as far as i can tell that must be a big driving factor to a lot of people who decide that “rewilding” is what they wanna do. I have always wanted to go and live in the wild, due to my love of a simplistic life, and more than anything my pagan/animistic beliefs.
I mean, i see everything as a part of the “great spirit” we are all just individual parts of a whole, all equal in that way. So a modern life is really a BAD thing to me, i mean we suffocate the earth, kill of animals, and really a modern mans respect for a tree makes my cry.
-tj
Taught Native American (Apache) beliefs alongside those of Southern Baptist Christianity presented me with some very contradictory information and lead me to do a lot of soul searching and research regarding spirituality.
What I discovered is that humans as a whole have a need for some form of spiritual guide in their lives. Not everyone mind you but the vast majority of people look to something above or beyond what is part of everyday life.
A god or spirit is given control for a natural occurance or event, this then leads to an even stronger god or spirit that controls or rules the first one.
Within a specific area or region this forms the basis for a religion and all the trappings that come with worshipping something.
One of the terms used to express people with no spirit belief system is Pagan in English. Therefore I am a Pagan in that I hold no worship system and follow a path of self belief/self guidance.
Despite many attempts to clarify the Native belief systems into some semblance of order, I have found that none of them truly promote any one lifestyle of living with the earth as being better or worse than another.
Many Native American tribes are veiwed as being strictly hunter/gathers which after further research is shown to be not true. Even the most nomadic of tribes cultivated fields to better the tribes chances of survival.
The Apaches wandered all over the American southwest yet they still utilized certain areas to grow certain types of foods and medicines that were difficult to find during their travels.
The Navajo and Hopi tribes also raised extensive flocks that had become more or less domesticated by the time Europeans started to land on the East coast of the Americas.
Trying to place a spiritual meaning to a lifestyle choice perpetrates a system of beliefs that leads to the conclusion we humans can CONTROL what happens, wether thru our own actions or thru those of some kind of diety or god.
Just my 2 cents worth.
A point against other pagans:
I’ve basically been verbally attacked in every conceivable way for suggesting that corporations negligence of animal deaths is murder. Not just argued and debated with, but violently and angrily called rude names and having many aspects of my personal character attacked.
Most pagans are just as likely to be entrenched in civilizations’ dysfunctional memes as people of other religions. Many ‘pagan’ philosophies are just as mired in hierarchy and oppression as Judaism and Christianity.
Sometimes I feel like someone needs to draw a line between factions of civilized and not-so-civilized groups of pagans.
Re: incendiary dan’s last comment: How about we try to establish the distinction as something like “Heathen” - one of the wild religions, “Pagan” - one of the rural religions. Ai think this distinction is etymologically accurate, as heath grows in wild places - hence a person who dwells in the wild and latin “paganus” means roughly, citizen (and comes from the largest empire in that region).
Some communities already try to make that distinction, mostly Asatruar and other more traditional heathens. It seems to work pretty well, too, since most of those groups are much more tribally focused, and less concerned with their new-agey, fluff-bunny powers of awesomeness, and their awesome “majiks”.
/snark
Hi, I’m writing this on my cellphone, which restricts the number of letters I can put in a post, so I hope you wil forgive me for double-posting:)
Me being Norwegian I feel I should chip in here. First of Norse mythology still resonates with us here, we hear these stories growing up, and Thor get’s mentioned in an off-hand sort of way almost every time lightning strikes. However
I do feel like the giants of the mythology represents a much older, more animistic and in many ways more genuine religion.
I base this mostly on the fact that atleast around here where I grew up every large mountain and impressive natural formation has a story explaing how they came to be, and in these stories they always start out with being giants of some form or other. However, and this is the animist part, they are NOT seen as humans! Anthropomorfic(sp)yes, but the stories never gives you the impression that it’s simply giant humans they’r talking about. They are basicly other-than-human, yet possessed of personality.
i think that most of our native european traditions, there are beings other than human. the dwaves, trolls, and giants in your norse traditions, and the sidhe in irish traditions being but a few.
they have all the human virtues and vices though, mirrors of ourselves.