The Culture of the Teutons

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
Welcome to another jive book review. I'm Tom Rawssel, and
today I'll be reviewing a book from the early twentieth
century that was very influential on Germanic philology in general
at the time, but falling out of popularity coming to
the public domain. That wasn't actually available in print anywhere
until now, and it's been republished by Antelope Hill Publishing,

(00:45):
who have released it in several editions. It's by Wilhelm
Grunbeck and it's called The Culture of Tutans. It's you
can either get the hardback like this, which is the
volume one and two, or you can have the paperbacks
of volume one and two in two separate editions. I

(01:10):
haven't actually read volume two, so this review is only
for volume one. That's a lot, that's only half the
whole work. In other words, it's a very large, comprehensive
work on the Germanic people as a whole. This form
of philology, where it sees the Germanic people as one

(01:32):
group of one coherent cultural identity, is not particularly popular
in mid twentieth century onwards. Because he's using Norse sources
to look at Viking Age Germanics and going back to
the earliest literary source on Germanic people Tacitus the Roman,
and he's mixing them with the Christian sources as well

(01:54):
from the Middle Ages, in between talking about the Goths,
the Lombards, Anglo Saxons, and he's assuming, this Danish expert
in Germanic people that this is there is a coherent
shared culture between all these disparate nationalities, these groups, even
over this one thousand year period. And I think he's

(02:17):
got a good point. Actually, I mean you read them.
I mean I think nowadays some academics are actually softening,
returning to this idea that there is actually something valid here,
or that you can talk about the Germanic people, because
actually that is what you see in their own sources,
like the Viking aid sources are stories about the Goths

(02:40):
from five hundred years earlier fighting against the Huns and
the Anglo Saxon. Main epic poem Bellwolf is set in
Sweden and Denmark, and it's about the North Germanic peoples,
the Danes and the Gutta, the which are a Gothic people,
not the East Gramanic Goths moved into the continent, but

(03:01):
the Goths of Sweden. So they themselves obviously felt kinship
and culture relation to other Germanic peoples who had lived
hundreds of years previously. So the idea that we, through
academic caution, refused to recognize the coherent notion of a

(03:22):
Pan Germanic identity is actually anachronistic. It's not academic caution
so much. It's like a sort of unnecessary pedantry really
in my opinion. So anyway, it's very refreshing to go
back to this kind of academia of the early twentieth century.
Wilhelm Greenberg A little about him first. He was born

(03:44):
in eighteen seventy three died in nineteen forty eight, and
he was a religious historian. His focus was religious history.
He was a professor of religious history at the University
of Copenhagen. This book and his work important for Danish
identity and the national identity of the Danes. In that respect,
he was a critical of like scientism of the age

(04:05):
and like the obsession with science, and he was very
knowledgeable about linguistics and history. And this work is not
exclusively on the subject of religion at all this way,
his focus being on religion. But this book is particularly
useful for Heathens like myself or any who may be listening,

(04:29):
because a lot of what the Germanic religion is really
is an expression of culture of the people, and there
isn't really like the idea of religion as being something
other than just the culture of a people is entirely
new in terms of the span of human history and
comes out of Christianity, which, like you profess a faith

(04:52):
which is something other to your culture. So you could
say you were a Greek Christian or an English Christian,
but that's not really at all how people in pre
Abrahamic Europe thought about religion. They didn't have that notion.
The traditions that we call paganism were not in any
way separate from the general customs of a people. So

(05:15):
that's why when you you know, like Roman ancient historians
and ethnologists like Herodotus or Tagetists, when they're talking about
a people, they talk about their gods in the same
way they talk about their food and their bathing habits.
It's just all a part of the cultural package of
what makes that people a people. So when we are

(05:38):
trying to understand as Heathens today what we should how
to behave as Heathens, actually the general cultural package of
what a Germanic person is is extremely important to understand.
It's not really separate from the religion. Like we now
have the idea of religion and when we have a
census and something, I'll say I'm a pagan or whatever,

(05:58):
and I'll put down that, and people naturally in the
modern world understand that as being a part of my life,
a part of me, an aspect of my personal religious
beliefs that is compartmentalized as pagan. But actually that isn't
really what being a pagan is because heathen rey is
part of a holistic view that encompasses everything about you,

(06:20):
so you can't It encompasses your idea of what economy is,
of friendships, lower allegiances, and duty in your duties, how
you respond to your family members, how you treat your
family members, how you respond to an enemy, how you
respond to an insult. All these things are encompassed in

(06:41):
what heathenry is. And although we can now say we
live in the modern world where religion is a separate
part of life for people and can be considered something
other than the rest of their professional life or their
personal life, we have to understand that that is really
that's anachronistic when we're trying to about practicing the Heathen religion,

(07:02):
because it would be impossible for an actual historic an
ancient even to understand those distinctions. So that's enough about that.
Let's talk about some of the cool stuff in this book.
Are reading quotes Compared with the celt The Northman is heavy, reserved,

(07:23):
a child of Earth, yet seemingly half awakened. He cannot
say what he feels, save by vague indication in a long,
roundabout fashion. He is deeply attached to the country that
surrounds him. Its meadows and rivers fill him with a
latent tenderness, but his sense of home has not emancipated
itself into love. The feeling for nature rings in muffled

(07:48):
tones through his speech and through his myths, but he
does not burst into song of the loveliness of the world,
of his relations with women. He feels no need to speak,
save when there is something of a practical nature to
be stated. Only when it becomes tragic does the subject
enter into his poetry. In other words, his feelings are

(08:09):
never revealed until they have brought about an event. They
tell us nothing of themselves. Saved by the weight and
bitterness they give to the conflicts that arise. Uneventfulness does
not throw him back upon his inner resources, and it
never opens up a flood of musings or lyricism. It
merely dulls him. The celt meets life with open arms,

(08:30):
ready for every impression. He is loath to let anything
fall dead before him. The Teutan is not lacking impassionate feeling,
but he cannot and will not help himself so lavishly
to life. So you can see this style of ethnology.
Anthropology is not popular now, but it's very appealing. It
has mass appealed because it's like how people generally talk

(08:52):
in a way about the difference between the Teutan, which
you mean, by which he means the Germanic people including
nor Sand West Germanics, compared to the celt which I'm
not sure exactly which groups he's referring to there, but
presumably is referring to the medieval onward sources of insula
Celtic people like the Welsh and the Irish. By a
love too ready and too undiscerning the poets and historians

(09:15):
has smoothed away the strong and wayward features of the
saga men and toned down these bitter figures into recognized
heroes and lovers. The old characters have been imperceptibly modernized
with a view to making them more acceptable. The hardness
and implacability of the Northmen have been pushed into the
shade of their heroism and generosity, and tacitly condoned as limitations,

(09:39):
while the fact is that these qualities are based on
the very constitution of their culture. Let us imagine that
this idea of his, writes Greenberg, his meaning the Norseman
or the Teutan, is not merely a piece of poetic imagery,
but that life itself, with all its tasks, appeared as
a lawsuit where a man with many and powerful kinsman

(10:00):
could further his aims and fortunes materially and spiritually, gaining
power over his surroundings not only by battle, but by oath,
in virtue of that power of race which he possessed.
Let us further imagine that his faith, this faith in
the power of kingship, kinship, is great enough to reach

(10:21):
out beyond life and embrace death itself within its scope,
believing itself capable of summoning and outswearing the gods, aye,
shaking heaven and earth ageless Aigles scalagrim song from the
Icelandic Sagas. You can see my new documentary film about
him and other Psarcha characters. Agel's words have then a

(10:43):
new significance and lose nothing of their weight. He's talking
about when Agele threatens the gods themselves in one of
the passages which I read in the documentary, but they
become anything but modern. The Titanic defiance disappears, or almost disappears,
and in its place we have the despairing cry of

(11:05):
a suffering human soul. The paradox lies then, not where
we at first discerned it, but in quite another direction.
He's trying to understand the psychology of Aegle Scalagrimson, which
is misunderstood so often by modern people because they hear
a man like challenge the gods and see a kind
of modern atheistic view which is not at all. What

(11:26):
is there the problem with people going directly to the
primary text, which I do encourage, and just sitting down
and saying I want to learn about the Norse or
other Germanic people. Just read the sagas, you'll enjoy them.
They're great. But actually if you don't have a background
knowledge of the culture of these people, then you'll misinterpret
what the meaning of these things is. So when you

(11:47):
know people say things about the gods, it's not like
something you know, a modern atheistic person would say, such
as the false representation of Dragner Luthbrook in the popular
dramatization series called Vikings. What you have there as a
man who is nothing like the pious man who was
actually Ragna Lothbrook, who was a full believer in the gods.

(12:10):
But they would you know, they've made him into an
atheist basically in that case, I think I'm neglected to
give a proper context of the book here about its publications,
The complete edition Volumes one and two was published in
nineteen oh nine for volume one which been doing the

(12:32):
review of now, and volume two came out in nineteen twelve,
and I don't know how long it's been out of print,
but for quite a long time. The blurt describes Greenberg
as a pre eminent professor of the history of religion,
and his vast breadth of knowledge of world cultures and
religions had profound effect on Danish academic thought. In the

(12:52):
culture of Teutons, Grumberg turns his keen analysis towards his
own culture out of Germanic Europe. He was also an
expert on the Turks, so that was one and you know,
he wasn't just exclusively an expert on Germanic people. The
book is divided up into sections which he considers very
important for understanding the Tutans as a race. One of

(13:13):
them is frith, another is Honor, another's luck and the
view of the world. Life and the soul, the art
of life itself, the soul of man, distinct from the
section on life and the soul, Birth and the significance
of birth and death and immortality. These are things that
still concern modern men, and they have such different approaches

(13:35):
to those topics than the ancient Teutan. So absolutely vital
that people come to grips with these concepts in order
to understand heathenry itself and the values of Heathens. And
also just interesting for anyone who you know, wants to
know about history and philology and it's just generally interested
in humans and ancient cultures. But as particularly recommend this

(13:58):
book if you're a Heathen. Now let's begin with some
quotes on frith Ah. He writes, we cannot gain speech
of the individual human being. Here lies the difference between
Helenic and Germanic culture. The Helene is nearer to us,
meaning a modern European, for we can go straight to him,

(14:20):
speak to him as man to man about the life
of man. Let him introduce us to the strange world
as it seems to us in which he lives, and
let him show us the aims that determine his daily
thoughts and actions. His utterance and expression form an idea
as to how he reacts in the face of what

(14:41):
he meets. The barbarian does not move. He stands stiffly
and uninvitingly. If he speaks, his words convey no meaning
to us. He has killed a man. Why did you
kill that man? We ask? I killed him in revenge?
How had he offended you? His father had spoken ill

(15:01):
words to my father's brother. Therefore I craved honor as
due from him to us. Why did you not take
the life of the offender himself? This was a better man.
The more we ask and pry, the more incomprehensible he becomes.
He appears to us as a machine driven by principles.

(15:23):
This is very important, I think, because we're getting at
what the tutineers like, so and how is you know,
a machine driven by principles, an automaton in a way
whose actions are predetermined by customs that cannot be breached,
and that includes killing people that you would like. You know,
talks about honor and justice, but the teutan to Tutin

(15:46):
killing a man who had no involvement in wrongdoing is
just because he has a blood relation to the wrongdoer,
and west modern Westerners just can't get their head around that,
I don't think. But that is a completely different idea
of honor and vengeance than what people think it means.
So we're in the norsement walks of honor. It's not

(16:07):
quite what the average guy with a Viking tattoo who
says he loves honour actually believes. In another quote, and
behind every law decree, there is a perceptible fear, a
sacred dread, of interfering with one particular thing, the ties
of kinship. We feel that all law paragraphs are based

(16:31):
upon an underlying presumption that kinsmen will not and cannot
act one against another, but must support one another. When
the Church began to exercise its supervision in matters of legislation,
it noticed, first of all, an essential failing in the
ancient code, namely that it knew no provision for cases
of killing between kinsmen. This crime therefore came within the

(16:52):
clerical jurisdiction. The Church determined its people code, just as
it provided terms for the crime by adaptation of words
from the Latin vocabulary. When the law givers of the
Middle Ages gradually found courage to come to grips with
this ancient frifth, in order to make room for modern

(17:12):
principles of law, the attacks had first to be made
in form of in the form of indulgences. It was
permitted to regard a kinsman's suit as irrelevant to oneself.
It was declared lawful to refuse a contribution towards the
fine imposed on any of one's kin. It took centuries
of work to eradicate the tacit understanding of this ubiquitous

(17:34):
frith principle from the law and established humanity openly as
the foundation of equity. So here us talking about how
Christianity completely disrupted the culture of Germanic people. Because Frith,
which is usually translated as peace but doesn't mean peace,
actually as what was trying to understand was disrupted because

(17:56):
frith really means like the peace between kins and the
and the balancing of wrongs and rights between uh, you know,
competing into interested parties like various. It's form arbitration, arbitration
between the course like a piece a balance of peace.

(18:16):
It doesn't exactly mean peace as we mean it now,
which has a very wide meaning. And you know, the
worst thing you could possibly do is like to kill
someone from your own kin and the the these the
introduction of like a humanity as the subject of law

(18:37):
and equity, which is a Christian idea, and that's from
it we have like the Enlightenment and all like communism
and liberalism and all these ideas where the subject is human,
whereas the subject of the Heathen worldview is not humanity,
which didn't really exist. It's the kinship, and frith only
exists in relation to kinship networks, so there is no humanity.

(19:00):
There is only the kinship groups and their competing interests.
Another quote on fifth in the Saga of Hervor and Hadris,
where Angantyr, upon finding his brother's body on the field
of battle, says, a curse is upon us that I
should be your bane. The thing will be ever remembered.
Ill is the doom of the norns. The words express

(19:23):
his sense of being a monster. So desperately meaningless is
his fate that it will force the thought of posterity
to hover about it, that he will be a song
for coming generations. The close of Hildebrand's complaint runs in
Saxo's paraphrase approximately as follows. He's talking about Saxo Grammaticus,
the Danish chronicler, an evil fate, loading years of misfortune

(19:47):
on the happy, buries smile in sorrow and bruises fate,
for it is a pitiful misery to drag on a
life in suffering, to breathe under the pressure of sorrow,
burdened days, and go in fear of the warning omen.
But all that is knit fast by the prophetic decree
of the passee, all that is planned in the Council

(20:11):
of high Providence, all that has once by four vision
been fixed, and the chain of fates is not to
be torn from its place by any changing of worldly things.
Interesting fatalistic view. The Norns, who govern all things and
have predetermined everything, even when fate seemed meaningless, and it

(20:38):
causes desperation. That is still the governing principle of things
for the Germanic Man. Another interesting quote on Frith. He
could take little liberties with the Frith as long as
he was careful not to affect any actual breach, however slight,
but he must always be prepared to find it rising

(21:00):
inflexibly before him. It was quite permissible to let one's
kinsmen know that one personally preferred another way of life
than the one they had chosen to follow, and then
what one would be happier to see them adopt one's
own principles. This at least could be done in Iceland
at the period of the Sagas, and I do not
think this freedom was then of recent date. But Frith

(21:21):
stood firm as ever. He's referring here to a saga
where a man is sucked into a vengeance cycle because
of the actions of his kinsmen killing another person, and
he then, of course is judy bound to go and
join in by taking revenge on another, you know, back
and forth like killing people between these two competing families.

(21:44):
But he doesn't have to say that law ofty doesn't
extend to him having to pretend that he doesn't think
his kinsman's an idiot for going and drawing them into this.
He can say to his kinsmen, you're stupid in your actions,
bring problems on us, and that this vengance cycle is woeful,
and I don't like it, and I don't want to
have to go and do these things. You can say

(22:05):
all that thing, but none of that expression excuses you
from the duty of actually taking vengeance and being law
to your kinsmen, so that there's a difference between what
you say and what you do. As for disowning the
action of one's kinsmen and taking up a personal neutral standpoint,
such a thing was out of the question. Groenburk writes.

(22:28):
A man is brought home lifeless, the question of what
he has done of his antescedants generally fades away into
the dimmest background. There remains only the fact that he
is our kinsman. The investigation seeks to answer whether he
was slain by the hand of man or by something else.
Has he sustained wounds, If so, what sort? Who was
the slayer? And thereupon the kinsmen choose their leader or

(22:51):
gather around the born avenger and promise him all assistance
in prosecuting the case, whether by force of arms or
by law. The kinsmen of the slayer are well aware
of what needs to be done. Now they know that
vengeance is on their heels. So simple and straightforward is
the idea of Frith. It reckons with facts alone, taking
no count of personal considerations and causes which lead to

(23:14):
this violent conclusion. Another quote, Frith constitutes what we call
the base of the soul. It is not a mighty
feeling among other feelings in these people, but the very
core of the soul that gives birth to all thoughts
and feelings and provides them with the energy of life.
Or it is that center in the self where thoughts

(23:35):
and feelings receive the stamp of their humanity and are
inspired with will and direction. It answers to what we
in ourselves call the human humanity in them bears always
the mark of kinship. In our culture modern people, a
revolting misdeed is branded as inhuman, and conversely we express

(23:56):
our appreciation of noble behavior by calling it genuinely human.
By the Tutans, the former is condemned as destroying a
man's kin life, the latter praised for strengthening the sense
of Frith. Therefore, the slaying of a kinsman is the
supreme horror, shame, and ill fortune in one. Whereas an

(24:20):
ordinary killing is merely an act that one may or
may not be objectional on the killing is merely an
act that may or may not be objectional according to circumstances.
So the center of the moral framework is kinship Frith
translated as peace obscures the fact that there is no

(24:41):
knowledge of a piece that doesn't concern your kinship network.
Peace is just about peace between kinship networks. That's important
message grim books bringing about what it means. He has
a note here on the Anglo Saxon poetry and the
use of the word frith. When they start a transition
into Christian culture and they're trying to understand the Christian

(25:02):
ideas of peace, which are so different to frith, he says,
the translator of Anglo Saxon poetry is faced with innumerable
difficulties because no modern words will exhaust the meaning of
terms like frail and seep indicating Frith. If the translator
contents himself with repeating peace again and again in every context,
he will thereby wipe out the very meaning which gives

(25:24):
sense to the line. If he attempts to vary by
different interpretations. He can only give the upper end of
the meaning. He pulls off a little tuft of word,
but he does not get to the root. The energy
of the word, its vital force, is lost when in
one place, when in one place enemies or evil doers
beg for frith. When in one place enemies or evil

(25:46):
doers beg for frith, the word means fully, an acceptance
in a pardoning will admission to inviolability. When God promises
the patriarch in Genesis in the Anglo Saxon translation of
Genesis is referring to Frith. It bears the full meaning
of grace the earnest intended to be with him and

(26:06):
protect him, fight for him, and if need be committed wrong,
for his advantage. And it is not only men, but
also for instance, places are strongholds which can furnish those
in need of frith. So yeah, he's talking there wasn't
talking about The Anglo Saxon translator's talking about modern translated
as Anglo Saxon poetry, including the Ah the Anglo Saxon

(26:28):
translation of Genesis, which uses the word frith in a
way that isn't really equivalent to the Biblical Originals language
the Greek or Hebrew. Moving on from Frith, let's look
at honor, a very important concept for the Tutan, and
one that easily distorts our view of them because we

(26:49):
have so many ideas about what honor means in the
modern world. Here Grumbeck tells us of powerless Diaconus, who
wrote of an aged lombard Sigvald, who, like Havari, was
solely tried, and also like Harvard, reached reaped joy in

(27:09):
many folds. For his sorrow. He had lost two sons
in battle against the invading Slavs. In two battles, he
avenged them with great eagerness, and when a third battle
was about to take place, he insisted on going out
to fight in spite of all protestations, for he declared,
I have now gained full restitutions for my sons. Now

(27:30):
I can meet death gladly if need be. And so
he went to his death out of sheer abundance of vitality.
Honor at once brings up the thought of vengeance. It
must be so that he who thinks of honor must
say vengeance, not only because the two are always found
together in the stories, but more because it is only

(27:51):
through vengeance that we can see the depth and breadth
of honor. Vengeance contains the illumination and the explanation of life.
Life as it is seen in the Avenger is life
at its truest and most beautiful, life in its innermost nature. So,
just as we're talking about Frith, the idea of peace
is inseparable from the idea of kinship and blood loyalty

(28:14):
and the necessary acts of vengeance to maintain that peace
between kidship things. So to honor has an exact tied
up to is very much inextricably tied to the ideas
of vengeance. The tutant's entire life is so tied to
vengeance that it's hard to even say that the Germanic
people remained Germanic when they became Christian and the idea

(28:36):
of forgiveness was introduced. Because vengeance is the ultimate expression
of good loyalty and of honor and of courage in
the Tutan. And that's why I think some people just thought,
like they described twenty twenty two film by Robert Egger's
The Northman as morally ambiguous. It's completely stupid to say

(28:59):
that because You just have not understood that the entire
morality of the suitan is vengeance. It's not just that
vengeance is okay, it's that vengeance is morally right and expected.
You have a positive duty to commit revenge. If someone
wrongs you and you don't take revenge on that person

(29:21):
or their kinship network, that is a wrong. That is
an evil. It's not just that you are it's a
failing of your character that you're not brave enough. It's
an evil. It's a social evil that a person would
not take vengeance. It's something that is seen as socially
negative for the entire culture. If people are not taking

(29:42):
active revenge, men are not actively taking violent revenge or
legal you can you know you don't. You can't take
legal revenge and accept money. But it's got to be
either you get a lawsuit or you kill someone. It's
pretty cut and dry. And that's not just the Norsemen.
That's the Anglis, Saxon and Lombard. This is across the
Germanic world. It's such that this this Lombard sigvald He

(30:07):
after he had taken revenge for his two dead sons,
only then did he feel that he could welcome death.
And then he was like, now I can die, I'm happy,
and who was ran into a battle knowing that he
would die joyfully because he had balanced out the necessary
you know, imbalances, social imbalances caused by his son has

(30:28):
been murdered, so that he was now considered honorable. It's
only with vengeance that he could achieve honor. And then
only once you have achieved honor can you can you
welcome death? Because once you've achieved honor, death is no
longer a threat. To die in a state of dishonor
results in a trouble in the afterlife. But what you

(30:50):
want to do is leave a name behind where everyone
could say that he was an honorable man, and that
honor has to be achieved for re vengeance. Grombek writes,
vengeance makes them great because because it develops every possibility
in them, not merely a few bloodthirsty attributes. It strains
their power of achievement almost beyond its reach, and makes

(31:11):
them feel stronger and bolder. But it teaches them also
to wake and bear in mind and to calculate. Year
after year, A man can wait and watch, arranging all
his plans and actions, so as to grasp the most
fleeting opportunity of satisfying his honor. Aye, even to his
daily work about the homestead, looking to his hay and
his cattle. It is so disposed that he can watch

(31:33):
the roads and see at any moment if the wanted
man should ride that way. Vengeance teaches him to reckon
time and space as trifles. One may come through time
by remembering, and one can be driven over sea and
land when one has an object in view. A boy
of six, seeing his father slain before his eyes, can

(31:55):
at once find the right word, not weep, but remember
the better. That sums up very well the importance of
vengeance to their notions of honor. There's a noose phrase
in one of the sagas. The peasant seeks vengeance immediately,

(32:19):
the coward never. The implication, of course, is that the
best and highest form of honor to aspire towards is
vengeance as a dish best served cold. So you shouldn't
immediately take revenge. You should wait, maybe years, carefully, and

(32:39):
calculate a perfect revenge. Another quote, neither did these barbarians
understand the symmetrical morality which restores the balance by striking
out an eye for an eye. The Germanic mind had
as little conception of the word retaliation as of the
word punishment. If the first for vengeance is understood as

(32:59):
meaning the wish to see one's desire upon one's enemies,
then the word does not accord with the Germanic IDEA
vengeance was planned with every care and carried out in
the most cold blooded fashion, one is tempted to say,
with a business like san Foix. The avenger plants his
axe in his opponent's head, wipes off the blood in

(33:21):
the grass, covers the body according to custom, and rides
on his way. He has no lust for further dealings
with the fallen man. Mutilation of the dead is in
the history of the Northmen a thing so unique as
to mark the doer of such a deed as an exception,
that is to say, as an inferior man. I think

(33:41):
there is an exception to that when you are trying to,
for example, there is a form of mutilation of the
dead that prevents them coming up as a revenant, as
a draugre, or like when you fight a drouga, you
may like try to, you know, do some mutilation of it,
like unusual mutilations to stop that happening again from the

(34:04):
zombie coming. But the yeah, but generally they don't do
even someone they hate, they just kill them. They don't
do anything else. And they also don't kill at night time.
It's like it has to be done in the day
like generally, like they did have a concept of murder,
like cold blooded murder. If you slipped into your opponent's
bedroom at night and slit his throat quietly and then

(34:27):
slipped out, that would not be seen, that would not
be looked at favorably at all by the culture in general.
That would be horrific to them. But if you waited,
if you knocked on his door the next morning in
the morning and said you wanted and then just running
through the sword, that's that's fine. If it was you know,
you still have to pay a virguild yourself to pay
his family the compensation for killing him. But if you,

(34:48):
I mean, that's the aristocratic way of getting vengeance. You
announce that you want intend to kill them, you go
to them, you kill them, and then you pay his
family off. But so it's not the same as like
a murder like cold blooded murder in the night time
in the dark sneaking around that they would did not
like at all. But yeah, they they didn't have this

(35:10):
idea of eye for an eye vengeance either. It wasn't
like motivated what he's trying to say. It's not motivated
like by like some Italian vendetta like oh, I'm so
emotionally like distraught. And I think that was kind of
in the Northmen it did seem that way, and I
think people misunderstood, like the the the vengeance is so
essential that it can't you can't really go to your

(35:33):
death until you've sorted it out. It's something that it
lies on your on your soul in that you haven't finished.
You know, you haven't finished this this this duty. So
and it was really like you know, balancing the books
of an accountant, like rather more than like instead of
thinking of like a mafia boss like passionately, you know,

(35:56):
taking vengeance, you should think of a bailiff collecting debts
or something like that. That's the kind of attitude they
had to revenge, like you've done this, I've got to
do this back. That simple, nothing else to it. Another
quote from Everything. There is but one form of vengeance,

(36:17):
vengeance in blood. If it were only a question of
retribution or self assertion. Payment could no doubt be made
in the same coin. When men have such faith in
the power of scornful words over honor, one might think
they would also regard their own taunts as of some effect.
But to give all words for a words did not
win on a back the sting of the other's words remained,

(36:38):
and one might lose one's revenge. A man, that is
a right to revenge. That is, a man would hardly
dare to take his enemy prisoner and put him to
scorn instead of putting him to death. At once. There
was the fear of bringing degradation on oneself instead of restitution,
and thus it was reckoned unmanly to humiliate an enemy

(36:59):
instead of killing him. Vengeance was too costly a matter
to jest with. So it's very limited in what you
can do. You can't like torture, you can't in prison
and enslave. You can't even just return an insult for insult,
and I hope that that would be fair. It's like
pretty much even if someone if someone calls you unmanly,

(37:22):
it's in some respect, you know, calling you a homosexual.
It's the main invitation to kill someone. So when you
imply homosexuality of another man in the Germanic culture, the
next step is death. Someone has to die. Basically, if
you say if you went to someone and said they're homosexual,
you are saying that you don't believe they're strong enough

(37:43):
to fight you into the death, and you're inviting them
to try to kill you. There is no way you
can allow an accusation of homosexuality or what they had
in the term. They didn't have the term homosexual they
had neath, which basically encompasses any unmanly action and include
association with homosexuality, even if it's like cowardice. If you
call someone a coward, that implies an association with homosexuality,

(38:06):
you call someone a homosexual that implies an association with cowardice.
The whole things of our manualis are one constellation of
shameful activities that are all grouped under the heading of Neith.
And if you are accused of neith, the only way
to escape the accusation is to kill someone from the
kinship network of the accuser. So you don't have to

(38:28):
kill the person who said it, but you've got to
kill one of his kinship network. So that shows an
extremely negative view of unmanualis in any form. It's basically
the worst thing that can happen, and the only way
to address that is to kill death. There is no
other way in that culture of the time, and not

(38:50):
telling you to kill anyone. Now, please don't say that.
Please don't let it be said that Tom Rouse will
encourages people to murder or indeed, I don't think grown
there was encouraging any of that, but that is an
honest appraisal of the culture of tutants. The process of
Germanic law rests on the principle that an accusation brought

(39:11):
forward in due form of course, is enough to compel
a man to defend himself via the law process. Anyone
must be ready to nullify the mere unfounded charge by
his own oath and that of his compurgators. If not,
he succumbs to the accusation. According to the old mode
of thought, the matter is as fully decided if he

(39:31):
had publicly declared himself guilty. So I'll say that again.
According to the old mode of thought, the matter is
as fully decided as if he had fully as if
he had publicly declared himself guilty. So failing to, you know,
go for vengeance or take the law is just saying
it's true. So if someone makes insults you and says
you allowed yourself to be raped by a troll, and

(39:53):
you don't do anything about it, that makes it true.
It is not known how widespread the fear was of
an innocent man being sentenced by this method, because silence
was really not regarded as a mute confession. Rather, the
charge itself was considered as a way of introducing guilt
into a man. He who fails to fling back the
charge lets it sink into him and mark him. The

(40:14):
accused does not prove himself clean, he cleanses himself. This
is the dominant principle in the Germanic law process, the
bond that holds the people ununited in a community of law.
In everyday life, also, it seems as if one man
had power over another by virtue of his mere word.

(40:35):
One can egg on a man to show his strength,
his courage, and his fool hardness in the way one
suggests one can force him by expressing a doubt of
his manhood. The Northman have a special term for such
compelling words three would They are called words whereby one
indicates one's belief in another man's lack of manly qualities,

(40:58):
a word of power that force action. So this kind
of thing like nowadays, people you know, on the internet
and stuff can throw work insults back and forth like
that like they mean nothing. But to the Heathen, to
the Teutan, accusations of unmanialists are magic because they force

(41:19):
action and events to happen. There is no way to
call a northman, or to call a dramatic person unmanly
without resulting in killings. Because even if he doesn't commit
the action of vendors his you impose upon all of
his kinship, all the men in his kinship network, the

(41:40):
duty to kill someone in your family by doing so.
And that is something that in civilized cultures you can't
understand because to quote the you know, the Conan, the
barbarian or the Robert E. Howe he said, like I
can't remember the exact quote, but civilized cultures are generally

(42:00):
throw insults around with impunity with that because they don't,
you know, there's no fear of having your head chopped off,
but that in a barbarian culture you cann't do that.
So when you're throwing insults around like that. It's actually
with the full knowledge that you are this is going
to result in bloodshed. There will be blood from the

(42:22):
words you're speaking. So when that puts entirely different light
on what it means when you see someone in a
saga use those kind of words, they know full well
they're not just like today, like you call someone, you
call someone a slur, you know, for fun. It's knowing
full well that someone's going to die from that. They
know you know full well that you're inviting violence upon

(42:43):
your entire clan. We encounter the wordnything now at every step.
Right to grindek In, it lies the whole fear of
a loss of honor not made good, And at every
encounter the word has a deeper and more illboding ring.
Anathing means that a man has lost his humanity, although

(43:05):
earlier Grindeck said they didn't have an idea of humanity,
but their equivalent of humanity, their manhood, would be a
better idea. He goes on, he is no longer reckoned
as a human being, and the reason is that he
has in fact ceased to be so. The state in
which Rethel and his fellow sufferers find themselves. Forms a

(43:26):
diametrical opposite to Harvard's fullness of life. In men without honor,
a dissolution of all human qualities takes place. First and foremost,
the frith of kinship is destroyed. The strong coherence that
alone enables the members of a family not only to enact,
not only to act unanimously, but to act at all,

(43:47):
fades away. The lack of honor eats through the frith,
so that the kinsmen wither as rush all different ways
as a mob of solitary units, that is to say,
a mob of neil. In the house where a kinsman
lies unavenged, there is no full and true frith. The

(44:08):
family lives in a state of interregnum, a miserable and
dangerous pause in which all life lies as it were, prostrate,
waiting its renewal. The high seat is empty, none may
sit there until honor is restored. The men shun their

(44:29):
neighbors and do not go to any meetings of men.
Their avoidance of others is due to the fact that
they have no place to sit where people are gathered together.
Wherever they go, they must submit to be regarded as shadows.
Nilinghood is in a process of growth, encroaching over a

(44:49):
new stratum of the soul. For every opportunity of vengeance
suffered to go by, there is no joy. What is
told of an Icelander that he did not laugh from
the day his brother was slain till the day he
was avenged applies in a wider sense, inasmuch as the
power of joy itself was frozen. That really brings home

(45:12):
the severity of the knitting hood. Like to be accused
of knitting. It's not the same thing as someone tweeting
that you're gay. Nowadays, it's something you can't brush off.
But it only applies if it was someone who's of
equal birth. A slave can say anything and it means nothing.

(45:32):
You don't have to commit revenge. You don't have to
get avengers against a slave because his words carrying a weight.
Someone who's descended from slave, someone who's with a slave bloodline,
his words carry no effect. They have no power because
the power of man's words come from his honor. So
you have to start off with some amount of honor
in order to damage the honor of other people, And
someone of ignoble birth has no honor with which to

(45:54):
harm your honor. So you don't have to listen to
every single insult. But if these words come from someone
of equivalent social standing, than they are extremely extremely powerful.
Quoting Verlispor, the words of the sir s from the
eddor near poetic edda of that tree which seems so slender,

(46:15):
came a fateful arrow of sorrow, who the f loosed
it from the bow. Balder's brother was born in haste.
He that son of Odin brought knight Old his slaying.
He washed, not his hands, combed, not his head ere
he bore to the flames him who had shot at Boulder.
And then another edic poem writes Grendech Boulder's dreams. The

(46:37):
avenging of Boulder is prophesied as prophecied as follows Rhem
gives birth to Vali in the western halls. That son
of Odin reeks knight Old his slaying, washes, not hand combs,
not ed, not his head ere he bears to flames
the shooter of Boulder. So here this shows the necessary
social observations and privations associated with vengeance actually performed by

(47:01):
the gods themselves when Boulder is killed by Hudre. So
you can't you have to do things that if you haven't,
if a duty of revenge is imposed on you, you
can't cut your hair, you can't comb your hair, you
can't wash your hands. That you can, you basically have
to be in this like liminal state of non manhood,
like where you can't even you have to be like

(47:23):
a wild thing, not washing or combing your hair or anything,
and not smiling or laughing until you kill the necessary
person to balance the fifth and regain honor. What a
weight to bear. Within that culture, even women had some

(47:46):
duties of vengeance, but not quite the same. They didn't
have to kill. Grunbeck, writes. The fari Icelandic widow third
set a joint of beef on the table, carved into
only three pieces, and let the sons interpret for themselves
that their brother was hacked to larger pieces. After the meat,
she served a stone to follow his dessert. This was

(48:08):
to mean that they were as fit to be in
the world as stones on the table for food. Since
you have not dared to avenge your brother hole such
a man as he was, ye are fallen far from
the men of your race. Sigrid, sister of Erling Skagerson Skaguslon,
accompanied her brother in law, Thori Hund, to his ship

(48:31):
after showing him the body of her son as Bjorn,
who had perished in open revolt against King Olof the second.
Before Thuri went aboard, she spoke her mind, I, Thori,
so my son Asbjorn followed your kindly counsel. He did
not live long enough to repay you after your deserts.

(48:54):
But if I cannot do so as well as he
would have done, it shall not be for lack of will.
I have a gift here I would give you, and
glad should I be if it might be of use
to you. Here is the spear that went in and
out of his body. The blood is on it. Still
it fits the wound as beyond bore you can surely see. Thorgud,

(49:18):
the wife of all of the Peacock, was a daughter
of Egele and had her father's pride of race. One
day she bade her sons go with her on a
journey westward. When the party arrived outside the homestead of Tunga,
she turned her horse and asked, what is the name
of that place? The son's answer that you surely know
it is called Tunga? Who lives there? Do you know

(49:41):
that mother. Thorgod answers with a deep breath. Aye, I
know it full well. There lives he who was your
brother's bane. You are little like your brave kinsman, you
who will not have end such a brother as cartan
Egel your mother's father would have acted. Thus it is
ill to have deedless son. They such as you are,

(50:03):
you should have been your father's daughters and given in marriage.
So says the proverb, Oh Lord, there is a dullard
in every family. One misfortune all I've had. It is
not to be denied is that his sons turned out badly,
and now we can turn back. It was by Errand
to remind you of this if you did not remember.

(50:29):
Hold there is right when he says, we shall not
hold it any fault of yours mother if it passes
from our mind. Nor were the women afraid of using
eloquent and easily interpreted gestures. Procopious relates how the goth women,
upon seeing what little fellows their husbands had surrendered to,
spat in their husband's faces and pointed with scorn at

(50:52):
the triumphant enemies. So here all these examples provided by
ground there mostly from Mycelandic sagas, but that final one
of the of the Goths shows that women drove their
men onwards to vengeance. Women suffered in the dishonor associated
with not having committed veeance achieved vengeance against a slight

(51:16):
But the women were not themselves capable of achieving the
honor of killing vengeance through killing, so they had to
instead drive their sons and husbands on to kill, and
they do repeatedly, and there's multiple Even Tacitus wrote of
the women standing at the side of the battlefields bearing

(51:36):
their breasts and driving their men on to kill. So
actually women were very much in favor of vengeance. Some
of the Icelandic sagas seemed to indicate that women were
also keen on Christianity because it allowed a route out
and escape from the cycle of vengeance, because every killing
has to have another killing, back and forth, back and

(51:59):
forth until some kind of legal our arbitration is it reached.
But the fact is that actually the doroity of them,
a lot of women in the sagas are actually very
keen on vengeance and angry when men aren't killing to
achieve vengeance because that honor is on them and they,

(52:20):
you know, women in all cultures at all times extremely
conscious of their social status, and they're driven primarily by
preserving their social status. And so within a Teutonic culture,
that means that they needed to be kin to men
who had achieved vengeance. And so if their sons hadn't

(52:40):
killed their enemies, then it was very bad for those women.
So they would do makes certain gestures to ensure that
their meant their kinsmen would do so. But women also
could bring this honor onto a family, and they had
to be punished as well. But killing women wasn't generally done. Certainly,

(53:01):
you couldn't kill a woman and achieve any honour through that.
There's no honor in killing a woman in their culture,
so Gunmt writes. Swedish laws refer to the right of
parents to drive their daughter away. If a woman has
dishonored her father's or her husband's house, she is whipped
from house to house or forced to take her own life. Thus,

(53:24):
Boniface describes the domestic rule of the Saxons in pagan times.
Here he's comparing like recent Swedish history to ancient Pagan
continental Saxons, as described by the Anglo Saxon Saint boniface.
The latter alternative points back from the judgment of society
to what we have called racial amputation. The shame is

(53:45):
wiped out without any direct violation of frith on the
part of the kinsman. The reason why the family took
such extremely harsh measures against their womenfolk was not that
the Germanic standard regarded women's frith and inviolability as inferior.
On the contrary, since women occupied the very innermost place
in the family's frith, the danger arising from a decay

(54:07):
of her honor was the greater. Therefore, the misfortune caused
by a wife or a girl must be checked at
once and effectively. But we have sufficient indications to show
that men with fatal shortcomings too were cut off with
the same rude hand, but also with the same wariness,
lest any guilt of blood should attach to the survivors.

(54:28):
You don't want to kill one of your kinsmen. That's shameful.
There are punishments for women in various Germanic societies for
things that are shameful. I mean that post the Christian
era Swedish thing of driving a woman away from the
family earlier, I mean Tatius describes like women could be

(54:50):
drowned in a bog for certain crimes. It's like in fidelity.
But later Norse codes show that the women and Germanic
coast of women could be have her head shaved. An
adulteress had a head shaved and could be flogged in public.
So these kinds of punishments for sexual impropriety among women
were away for regaining honor, and some of them involved

(55:14):
duties of her own kinsfolk against her to harm her.
The following quote explains how the Tutan's sense of honor
informs his ethics. Ancestral ways and ancestral measures constitute the standard.
On this point, kettil Raum speaks as the man of
experience Olif could find no better way of expressing his

(55:35):
sense of duty than by saying, Harold Fairhair's inheritance, and
men of lower rank could find no other way of
determining what was good for them than by saying, thus
our kinsmen of old would never do, or thus our
kinsmen of old were wont to do. Family tradition constitutes
the entire ethical standard. A fixed line of demarcation separating

(55:58):
evil from good was not known. There was, of course,
a broad average as among all peoples. The Germanic people
knew that certain acts such as stealing first and foremost,
and murder alongside others, brought dishonor upon a man, whoever
the culprit might be. Just as they knew that killing
was killing, they knew injury was injury. But that did

(56:20):
not mean that anyone keeping himself free from such dishonored
acts was to be regarded as an honorable man. His
tradition told him that what was evil for himself and
what was good. Sorry, his tradition told him what was
evil for himself and what was good. This distinction served
as a complete moral compass. To accept blood money, for instance,

(56:41):
was for most people honorable and decent enough. But if
one came from a stock that boasted of never having
carried its kinsmen in the purse, or having ever or
always having demanded double fines for a kinsman slain, a
breach of such tradition was considered hypocrisy. The constitutional honour
of the race could not bear such a departure. So

(57:02):
we're saying, normally, most people, if your kinsmen were killed,
you could, instead of killing one of their people, accept
a blood playment of their guild. But guild. But if
your family had boasted in the past of never accepting
wearguild and always seeking blood vengeance, then you couldn't really
break from that tradition because you had a personal kinship

(57:24):
tradition for your family that you had to maintain as well.
So that's interesting. So the main governing, you know, force
there is for ethics is the traditions of your kin group.
Another quote on kinship an honor. Familial history is not
sensed merely as a series of events following one on

(57:44):
the heels of another. Nay, the living are filled by
their ancestors. All history lay unfolded in its breadth, so
that all that had once happened was happening again and again.
Every kinsman felt himself as living all that one of
his kin had once lived into the world. And he
did not merely feel himself as possessing the deeds of old,

(58:05):
He actually renewed them in his own doings. Any interference
with them, any interference with what had been acquired and
handed down, even if required from raiding or robbery, had
to be met with vengeance. Because a field of the
picture of honor was crushed by the blow. But an
openly expressed doubt as to whether that old grandfather really

(58:28):
had done what he was said to have done. Is
just as fatal to life, because it tears something out
of his living kin. The taunt touches not only the
dead man of old, but still more him who now
lived through the former's achievements. The insult is a cut
into the man himself. It tears a piece out of
his brain, making a hole which is gradually filled with

(58:50):
ideas of madness. So you know that shows you can't
just go willy nearly insulting a man's ancestors. It's dangerous
to do so. Tramaic people had a kind of notion
of a soul that was shared with their group, with

(59:12):
their clan. So the metaphysical dimensions to this idea of
honor and kinship Goodandeth writes. The traditions and reminiscences of
his people, The enjoyment of ancient heirlooms and family property,
the consciousness of purpose, the pride of authority, and good
repute in the judgment of neighbors found in his circle

(59:34):
make up his world. And there is no spiritual treasury
outside on which he can draw for his intellectual and
moral life. And he's talking about the student. A man
nowadays may be excluded from his family, whether this consists
of father, mother, brothers and sisters, or a whole section
of society. He need not perish on that account, because

(59:55):
no family, however large, can absorb the entire contents of
a reasonably well equipped human being soul. He has parts
of himself placed about here and there. Even nature is
in spiritual correspondence with him. But man, as a member
of a clan, has avoid about him. It need not

(01:00:16):
mean that his kinsmen lack all wider interest, and it
does not mean that he is unable to feel himself
as member of a larger political and religious community. However,
these associations are in the first place disproportionately weak, so
that they cannot assert themselves side by side with frith. Furthermore,

(01:00:37):
they are only participated in through the medium of kinship
or frith, so that they can have no independent existence
of their own. A man cast off from his kin
cannot appeal to nature for comfort, for its dominant attribute
is hostility, save in the form where it faces him
as inspired by humankind, cultivated and inhabited, and in the

(01:00:58):
broad fair field, it is only the land of his
inheritance that meets him fully and entirely with friendly feelings.
It will also be found that in cases where a
NEThing is saved to the word sorry, it will also
be found that in cases where a NEThing is saved
to the world by being received into a new circle,

(01:01:20):
a family or a company of warriors, he does not
then proceed by degrees from his former state over to
the new. He leaps across a channel and becomes a
new man altogether. So a man is so defined by
his kinship network that if he, through shame, has to
leave his kinship and enter a new one, he literally
has to become a new person, an entirely new man.

(01:01:44):
Very interesting in such an exotic, exotically foreign view perspective,
sometimes people assume that the Domanic tutean ancient man of old,
was more like us than he is. This quote on
honor expresses honor as immortality, which is another central part

(01:02:08):
of the Teutonic worldview. Gronbeck writes, honor has the reality
of life or soul, and therefore the bitterness of death
is removed by hope of resurrection. In fame, the hero
rejoiced to think not only that so and so may
the hero rejoiced to think not only that so and
so many would utter his name hereafter. His confident faith

(01:02:32):
in the future lay in a certainty that in his
naming and this praise, his innermost self spread out, ruling
and enjoying and living life. Now we come to the
subject of luck, very important for understanding the Germanic Man.
It's not quite the same as the modern idea of luck,
but it's pretty similar. Well. The main difference is that

(01:02:52):
they had such a very strong belief in luck as
governing the value of an individual. Grundek writes, the dweller
on a barren strip of coast had little use for
luck in the fields, but would, on the other hand,
probably be lucky with fishing. Elsie would be birsol, which
means he would always have the wind in his favor

(01:03:13):
for sailing. There was a famous family in northern Norway,
the men of Rafniste, of whom it was said that
as soon as they hoisted sail, a wind sprang up,
even though it had been perfectly calm a moment before.
According to Saxo Hadding, Us too had a peculiar power
to make best use of a wind, even though his

(01:03:34):
pursuers were running before the same wind and did not
have fewer sails. They would not overtake him. They could
not overtake him. Are the winner of battles. The king
is often called in Anglo Saxon, and the name expresses
what the Germanic people asked of and trusted to in
a ruler, in the great leader of the land, the
king himself, the minor leaders and local princelings, as well

(01:03:57):
as freebooter kings without land. The presence of the chieftain
was a guarantee to the people of victory in the fight.
The Anglo Saxons gathered boldly to oppose the foreign vikings,
if only they had a man of chieftain's rank to
take the lead and call the local forces together. As
long as he was standing, they would fight with scorn

(01:04:18):
of death for half an home. But when word went
round to assemble a mutual aid, without the inspiration of
a born leader, they would remain at home, or they
would run off into the woods and leave the invaders
to work their will in the village. Once, when the
East Anglians were attacked by Pender, the victorious and generally
feared King of Mercier, they found no other resource in

(01:04:41):
their need than to go to their old king Siegbert,
who out of love for the heavenly light, had renounced
the throne and shut himself up in a monastery. They
begged him and implored him to come out and lead
the host, and though he thrust aside the weapons and
with uplifted hands calling to witness his monk's vow to

(01:05:02):
God in heaven, they forced him into battle. The picture
of the king in the monk's cow, dragged into the
fight with a willow stick in his hand and their
slain is the more touching for its deep historical significance.
That's a fascinating story of the Anglo Saxons wanting to fight,
and they can't fight without a leader, because the luck

(01:05:24):
of the leader is what gives them the luck to
have that victory in battle. They can't have a fight
without a lucky leader. And having a leader who adopted
this strange alien religion and become a monk and said
he won't fight, it's just in incomprehensible to themselves. They
just force this monk king to go and fight anyway
and get killed because they can't fight without the lucky

(01:05:47):
king lucky leader, you know, has to beat The luck
of the leader is so important because you share and luck.
If you have a lucky king, or a lucky y'all
or lucky whatever your chieftain is lucky, then that's your luck.
And his value is that he has this luck that
he imparts to his people. And all sorts of different
other kinds of luck exists, as previously mentioned in the

(01:06:07):
other quote, like you know you have field luck, luck
of the farmer, luck of the sailor, luck of the
luck with women, luck with battle, all kinds of different luck.
And if someone has one of those types of luck
and you want that luck, you have to be associated
with him to share in his luck. Old sayings sum

(01:06:30):
up the hardness and the massiveness of the chieftain's gift.
It is hard to fight against the king's luck, and
much avails against much avails the king's luck. The wisdom
implied in these sayings amounts to such sage councils as this,
One must not set oneself a swarp. One must not
set oneself a thwart the great man's luck, but let

(01:06:53):
oneself be born on it by it. When a man
entered the king's ranks, and let his own war luck
be inspired by the higher he became in the most
little sense worthmore himself. The king was so full of
luck that he could radiate it out to all those
near him, and could even send it away to act
at a distance. If one could get a chieftain to
approve an enterprise by his words, I will add my luck,

(01:07:17):
then one had his war luck in one's weapons, and
his weather luck in one's sails. Of such a man,
it can simply be said he goes not alone, for
king's luck goes with him, and a request to undertake
a desperate enterprise on the king's behalf was often granted
with the words I will attempt it with your luck.

(01:07:39):
So luck is something you give and receive, but you
can also receive bad luck from words. This quote reveals
once when the Britons were attacked by the King of
the Northumbrians, they had taken a small army of monks
with them and placed them in a safe spot to

(01:08:00):
pray during the fight. King Ethelfrid, with practical sense, first
sent his men to cut down the monks, and then
proceeded to deal with the warriors if they call on
their god to help them against us. He said, then
they are fighting against us, even though they use no weapon,
since they oppose us with their prayers. Granted, such prayers

(01:08:23):
were actually addressed to the God of the Jews. But
Ethelfred knew that even though the strong words made a
slight detour, they would certainly end in the men for
whom they were intended. The power of words is such
that they can transform a man when they enter him,
and make a craven or a knitting of a brave man.

(01:08:44):
So in this case, prayers, a Christian prayer against you
is an act of violence and has to be met
with violence. If someone a Christian prayer or a foreign
religion person tries to pray, or any religion, if they
pray in a way that would harm you or your
kinship group, you have every right to act with violence
against them and kill them. But also insults, as I

(01:09:08):
said previously, act upon you. They bring bad luck upon you,
and you have to act against them with real actions.
So words and actions are the same, almost the same
thing in many cases. For a tutor in Ghisli saga,
there is an exchange of words, writes Grunbeth Grunbech, where

(01:09:29):
un luck and villainy are used alternately with equal force.
After Gislie had killed his sister's husband, he was hunted
from one hiding place to another. However, the incessant pursuit
by his enemies was for a long time successfully thwarted
by the exertions of his wife Ord. On one occasion,

(01:09:50):
when the leading of the avenging party, aof tried to
drive Ord into giving up her husband, she pours out
her scorn and insults him so cuttingly that he shouts,
kill that dog, even though it is a bitch. Thanks
to another brave man of the party, Harvard, Alf was
saved from the ignominy of laying hand on a woman.

(01:10:11):
Upon seeing Ale forget himself, Harvard exclaimed, doing here is
shameful enough without wreaking such villainy as this up, and
do not let him get at her. Ale now turned
his wrath towards his friend, saying, it is a true word.
Choose your company badly at home, and you will rue

(01:10:32):
it on the road. But the saga proceeds. Harvard was
much liked, and many were willing to follow him. Also,
they would gladly save Ale from that unluck. So here,
the unluck of having been insulted by a woman is
almost results in the violence against a woman, but it

(01:10:57):
was stopped by someone who recognizes that the unluck of
receiving an insult from a woman is not as great
as the unluck that would be would entail from killing
a woman. Because you're not a man. Hurting a woman
is unlucky and villainous, seen as dishonorable, and to be
dishonorable is to be unlucky. So it's very hard to

(01:11:18):
if you're If you're insulted by a woman, you can't
get revenge so easily. You have to probably take revenge
against one of her kinsmen, kill one of her sons
or her father or something like that instead. As far
as the tutent is concerned, luck is in a sense morality.
They haven't got a universal system of morality quite like

(01:11:41):
what emerges out of the actual age elsewhere in the Mediterranean,
but they have some version of morality associated with luck.
Luck is goodness. Here's the quote from Groenbech. It is
luck that enables men to maintain their frith and their friendship,
to keep their promises, and to refrain from dishonorable acts.

(01:12:03):
But luck is more. It gives men the will to
act morally. Rather, it is moral will itself. When Frout
utters his misgivings, I do not know whether we two
will have luck together. He is thinking of their power
to have and keep mutual love and their ability to
create friith in their home, as much as of their

(01:12:24):
power to enjoy each other and have offspring. In the
Germanic idea, the moral estimate is always ready to rise
to the surface. In fact, for the expression of goodness, piety,
and uprightness. The students have no better words than lucky
Old English, Selic, Gothic sales and similar terms, which embrace

(01:12:47):
the idea of wealth and health, happiness and wisdom and
Germanic view. Really, if you have evidence of luck, like
you have power and wealth and you're healthy and good
looking and everything, that's the same thing as being a
good person. It's not like a distinct thing, like you know,

(01:13:10):
if you're when you're raised like I was in a
Christian times, you're talking not to judge a book by
its cover and all this kind of thing, and you know,
to have pity on the weak and the feeble and
the poor. But that's just completely opposite of heathen way
of thinking. The cosmology of Germanic peoples is mostly preserved

(01:13:32):
in the Norse sources, as most of what we notice
about Germanic pagan religions and ideas, But there are some
things that seem to be common to all of them.
Quite clearly, there is a Germanic religion that is represented
by the Norse religion. In the section on the world
and their idea is the cosmology ground Beech writes on

(01:13:54):
the subject of hell common to all things of the
underworld is this quality of the incalculable confusing eye and ear.
A branch turns to a serpent as one grasps it
and strikes one dead. There are creatures that can twist
the neck of a stranger by a mere glance. Fruits
and fluids have powered to maze a man's wits. There

(01:14:16):
is no knowing the nature of things so as to
avert ill consequences by countermeasures. Utgart extends, as we know,
under the earth, and can shoot up into it through
innumerable openings at any time. Here and there in the
middle of the fair fields are gateways leading down into
the home of monsters. It was perhaps through one such

(01:14:38):
way of entry that this or that bold explorer penetrated
into the innermost region of the realm of death. One
could at least get as far that way as by
the long way around through the horizon. It means to
the end of the world. But this home of giants

(01:14:58):
under our feet is not the province of the main
land out beyond the horizon. Can one go down into
the earth and then home around by the frontiers of Earth?
Who can say? Here? What Grenbeck is trying to do
is conflate Nifflheim or Hell with urton Heim, the land

(01:15:24):
of the giants, and both there are some overlaps, but
actually I think there's some distinction. But the point being
that like it's a realm that is other, but also
threatens to bleed through into this realm through various ways
like and that it can be accessed also by the
living through certain rituals and explore explorations. But it's hard

(01:15:46):
to explain because when people draw these maps of like
Norse cosmology, they don't really make any sense because they
wouldn't have see they didn't see tomography that way that
you could actually map it out like that. The divine
cosmology is quite different, he writes. Topographical reality is not
set arbitrarily aside to give place to an imaginary landscape,

(01:16:08):
but to give a true likeness of the Teutonic universe,
it must be adapted to include also the spiritual reality.
If we can use such a word as adapt without
necessarily supposing a conscious severe arrangement of obviersations in the
question as to the relative position of the two realms
and the nature of their boundaries, All accidents of place
must give way before the overwhelming influence of difference in character.

(01:16:30):
The land of Luck is a whole which is not
and cannot be broken by enclaves of unluck on Haora,
and all that is on Haora has its place as
a whole outside, something only to be eached by passing
beyond the landmarks of Meadgard. Far from needing any subterranean
connection between the cave under the earth and the land

(01:16:51):
beyond the horizon. The fact is that in the conception
of the Teutons, they are one in the same place,
including in the geographical sense. To go out into the
night is traveling in demonland. He's saying, like you know,
the land of the Urthens is simultaneously a land at
the edge of the world of men. Far beyond the horizon,

(01:17:11):
but it's also present whenever it's dark, whenever there's an
eerie liminal space in here and now that's also that
place made manifest in a more palpable, tangible sense. In
the Teutonic mindset, gladness is a virtue. Being a jolly
chap is a sign that you're a good person and

(01:17:32):
that you're probably noble. To quote, the Germanic prince must
be glad minded, cheerful, and gentle, whatever the actual circumstances.
When Grendel harries herot Throthguard is all the same. Theland,
the glad minded rothguard, the good king, who, in all
his sorrow had nothing to reproach himself. A man must

(01:17:56):
be adi steadfast in his luck. And this is the
quote that talks about the distinction between body and soul,
which we're all familiar with from Christianity and many other
religions like Islam. But it comes and modern view of
it comes ultimately from platonous views of the soul, anima
that we're so influential in antiquity in the Mediterranean, But

(01:18:19):
the Germanic version is not really influenced by that at all.
So we stumble if we attempt to impose this body
soul dichotomy onto a Germanic worldview. Quote. When we cannot
find the boundary between the inner and the outer, there
is nothing to be done but give truth to the
credit and say that the body is a part of

(01:18:39):
the soul, or even the soul itself. The moment we
grasp a stone firmly in the hand, we have grasped
the soul of the stone. It is the soul we
can feel. It is always possible for the body to
be sucked up by the soul and vanish away, to
emerge into the light again some other time. The spiritual

(01:18:59):
can and leave the material to reveal itself under other forms.
But when it does appear and lets itself be seen, heard,
and felt, then the manifestation takes place in virtue of
that nature the soul possesses. However far away it may go,
it still has matter bound up in it. To a
certain degree, it is possible to speak of soul and body,

(01:19:21):
but the distinction does not go so deep that it
is possible to wrench the one from the other. Continuing
on the subject of the soul, we moved to the
chapter on life and Soul. On the subject of name, fame,
and reincarnation. Quote. The name then goes out from him
who bears it as a conqueror, lays the world at

(01:19:43):
his feet, and goes forward undeterred by life or death,
because he has in himself the soul. If the man
dies in body, then all life shrivels in his honor,
his fame after death, and his name, and lives its
life therein, undisturbed, and at any moment fill out a
new body and inspire it to a life in honor
and luck. When the name is given to a kinsman,

(01:20:06):
the soul emerges into the light again, as if nothing
had happened. He has come again. Men said. This is
why Germanic people give the names of their ancestors to
their children. It's a way to facilitate rebirth. It's important
to do so. On the subject of fate and the

(01:20:26):
ancestors quote, a man's age is determined from his birth,
say the Norseman, meaning thereby that one's history, as we
should say, or one's fate, as they themselves will put it,
is a given thing. Through such and such happenings, he
is to be led to his end. One can recognize
a hero of the past in one's contemporary, by his

(01:20:47):
courage and by the content and strength of his honor.
His career also provides it evidence, and this perhaps is
the clearest as to the connection between past and present.
When we know what sort of a soul there is
in a man, we can say with immediate certainty what
awaits him and what his end will be. A man's
fate is predetermined, and therewith friends and enemies alike, alliance

(01:21:10):
and conflict, tradition and aim, with the characteristics of erase
their follows. In the rhythmic repetition the same history, the
Northmen did not let themselves be dragged off by fate.
They went willingly chose themselves that which they knew was
their destiny. They chose the inevitable of their own free will.

(01:21:32):
Paradoxical as it may sound, fate was to them a
necessity men could not avoid, but they felt it nevertheless
as a matter of will. They took up the councils
and plans of their kinsmen as warmly as their own,
And in the same way they lived through the fate
of their forefathers with eager appetite. They grasped firmly at

(01:21:54):
their destiny with a will that is the will of
fate itself. Here lies the secret of their sturdy sense
of life, the imperturbable contentment with the solidity of the
existence that keeps them from ever ever going into the
depths to search for treasure. All the while they never
think of dreaming and consoling themselves away from what is

(01:22:15):
and must be. Name and fate penetrate. The name was
a mighty charm because it carried the history not only
of the bearer, but of the ancestors and of the
whole clan. Deeds lie concealed in its sound, and they
may blossom out into an addition, so that the name
becomes an epic in brief. It's fascinating the way that

(01:22:39):
fate and will, though seemingly contradictory, are both influential on
the idea of destiny and life, and both are also simultaneously
tied to the fate of a clan and of the
ancestors who are reborn and continue to live through their

(01:23:03):
descendants who are named after them. And by naming things
you imbue them with the same spirit of other things
that share that name. So naming is a metaphysical action.
Giving the name to a child is giving life to
the dead. But also they could indicate the character of
an individual, not only from his associations, by his clan,

(01:23:25):
associations and his name, but by his phenotype. Phenotype as
an indication of character. In this quote, Saxo's description of
Olo Vegatus is a study in the heroic glance. His
eyes were so sharp that they smoked the enemy harder
than other men's weapons. The boldest cringed under his glance.

(01:23:47):
He comes unknown to the king's court. The king's daughter
was accustomed in passing around the hall to observe the guests.
From the features of their faces, she could read their
quality and standing. But at the sight of Olo's countenance,
she falls three times, swooning to the ground. Here is
a kingly born hero, she says, and all cry to

(01:24:07):
him to throw aside his hood. When he obeys, all
the men present sit staring in admiration at his beauty
and his yellow locks. But he catches eyelids lowered deep,
lest they should see and be afraid. Saxo moderness. He
is wonders at the girl's perspiscuity. At any rate, he
thinks it is as well with such a remarkable piece

(01:24:29):
of divination that he puts it in inverted commas. Men
believed that she could read the standing of the guests
from his features. But as a matter of fact, it
needed no great art to point out a king. It
is hopeless for him to disguise himself. I think a
lot of people on you know that a lot of

(01:24:50):
certain right wing online people generally agree with the ancient
Heathen practice of identifying a man's characteristics by phenotype alone.
You can tell a man is noble by the way
he looks. You can tell of a man is a
criminal by the way he looks. I had to unlearn
the Christian teaching of like don't judge a book by
his cover, after having negative experiences with criminal types. But

(01:25:11):
soon I learned, you know, you can look at a
man and immediately tell that he's a criminal from his features,
like often that just you can tell of someone's bad news.
They have features that cause your entire body to convulse
and you know, hairs to stand on end. This is
a dangerous individual. This is not the phenotype before you

(01:25:35):
represents a threat. Your instincts will tell you this, and
the Heathen culture merely gave you know a traditional convention
to instinctive human behaviors. The soul, also in Germanic religion,

(01:25:55):
involves multipart. It includes one section or one aspect called
the filgure, which is kind of like it can refer
to a presenter, but it also refers to a animal
or a spirit, that kind of animal spirit, a total animal,
that or spirit represented by an animal that follows you
through life and only makes it self seen usually at

(01:26:18):
birth and death. And this is a component of your soul,
and it can give you luck and fortune, and it
can help you in other ways. And in this story,
the filigure, someone with the snake filigure, which is an
aristocratic filigure to have, finds treasure with the help of
that filgure quote. No one will dispute the power of

(01:26:39):
the soul to separate itself from the body in order
to live a free, untraveled existence. While the body, apparently
and perhaps also in reality lies idle as a house
without a tenant, the soul can go to whatever place
it will, set out on its own errands, spying out, preparing,
and also acting on behalf of the whole person. There
is a story to point out the frankest King Guntram.

(01:27:00):
There is a story to point about the Francist king Guntram. Once,
it is told, while out hunting, he was overtaken by
great weariness and lay down to sleep beside a stream.
When he woke, he could still remember how he had
crossed the river by an iron bridge into a mountain
where lay great treasures of gold. The soul had seen correctly,

(01:27:22):
for when men went to dig in the place the
king had pointed out, they found enormous treasure. But he
who sat with the king's head in his lap, had
seen that. Out of the King's mouth came while he
slept a little snake that hurried backward and forward along
the water, until he laid a sword across the brook,
when it at once disappeared across the bridge and into

(01:27:42):
a little hole in the mountainside, returning shortly after the
same way. So that episode of the concerning the Frankish
king having a filio of a snake is, you know.
The aristocratic association of the snake filigure is also seen
at the Sagas with the son of Radna Luftbrook, who
said to a snake in the eye, meaning to have
the aspect of a snake, which is an aristocratic sign.

(01:28:05):
Connecting the individual to odin that most aristocratic of the gods.
Birth also has a chapter, and we go over again
some of the notions of the soul and naming, and
the process of reincarnation, which is so important in the
Germanic religion. Quote. But in the rebirth of the family,

(01:28:25):
the thought dwelled more on the idea of its reincarnation
than that of his coming again. The dead continued their
life until they were forgotten, or so to speak, dissolved
in the luck. Meanwhile, the regeneration of the inexhaustible went on.
On the birth of a child, the luck of the
kinsman breaks out again in a new individual. Possibly, the

(01:28:46):
event may have an external occasion, in that a portion
of luck has fallen vacant. But death and birth, to
the deeper insight, do not stand in any so straightforward
relation to one another. The living cannot, by simply plunging
into the reservoir of soul make its waters ooze, For
in a successor. When one is born, it is the
well spring of luck overflowing. And if a dead man

(01:29:07):
is to bring about such overflow, it must be in
virtue of all that honor he has in himself, all
that the avenging of his death brings with it. When
the race increases his honor, then kinsmen rise up and
make the fence wider. So it's connected to honor, the
honor of the ancestors and his kinsmen. It assures the

(01:29:29):
rebirth on the nature of those with high birth. Quote
for the Northmen, high birth was the only qualification for
honor and respect, or, in a deeper sense, the sole
condition that enabled a man to possess the skill and
self assurance that honor and respect presupposed. No fourth pretender

(01:29:51):
could remain long undiscovered. The changeling could not hide the
fact that he lacked a soul, as we witness in
Queen Hagney's vain attempt to exchange her two ugly black
sons for a fair slave child. Black hair does not
mean black as in the black race Subterhian Africans. Black,
of course, in recent history, just meant someone with a

(01:30:12):
swarthier complexion, and in the Germanic religion, having a Swarthier
complexion was a sign of inferiority within the white race.
We're not talking about racial hierarchy. We're talking about darker
white people being seen as inferior to lighter white people.
The two spurious slave children lay one day playing in
the straw upon the floor, while live the changeling. Live

(01:30:36):
the changeling sat in the high seat playing with a
finger ring. Then said one of the brothers, let us
go and take the ring away from him. The other
black mit was ready enough to try, but leave only cried.
In this little scene, Bragi, the scold finds sufficient indication
of the real state of things. He tells the queen

(01:30:57):
to her In here they please me, Hammond V and Germund
King her sons. But that boy leave is the slave
woman's son, not yours. Woman, a wretch beyond most. So
the true nature of an aristocrat is revealed through behavior.

(01:31:21):
There's also a concern with breeding and half breeds in
Germanic religion or Germanic culture. On the subject of half
breeds and Thralls, quote, it was the mark of birth
of the Thrall's descendant, as Thrill, being a slave, that
he saw the lesser thing first, and it grew in
his eyes, whereas men of the true frostock saw only

(01:31:45):
the thing that mattered. The Northman had a keen eye
for psychological signs of mixed race, as saying often on
their lips, was who is it that you take after?
And we have no grounds for suppose that it was
only the one side that counted. So in other words,

(01:32:05):
both your mother your you know your mother and your
father's heritage was of consequence if you, because if you
had any negative traits, it was seen, and you had
some you had inherited them from a negative ancestor who
wiught not to have. And mixing of race here is
perhaps this is the translation from the terms he used,

(01:32:25):
but race here is used in an older sense. It's
not talking about scientific race, is talking about races and lineage,
which is the actual original meaning of race. It means lineage,
so it's talking about mixing lineages, having linea having a
noble lineage and an ignoble lineage mixed together. Was a
concern for the Teutan on the subject of naming and

(01:32:50):
the luck associated with names. Returning to that again, the
son inherits birth and luck from his mother, but his
maternal birthright is not derived from that little moment when
the acts and the father waits. It depends fully as
much upon the life that his father names into him.
Going back through history to find the moment whence the
act of birth derives its weight and its power. We

(01:33:12):
pause first at the evening, when the pair solemnly clements
their life together. The fact of their openly going to
rest together is more than a merely legal sign that
their connection is to have all the effects of a marriage.
But then too we shall find that the intercourse between
before the leading to the couch is emphasized as a
short sign of the depth and genuineness of the alliance.

(01:33:35):
This intercourse is called the ale, the wedding ale. From
the ale, we are led further to the bargain made beforehand,
the legally binding contract sealed with gifts and given to
understand that this buying is the sign that the two
are married in truth. To finish the review, I also
want to touch on the chapter which talks about death

(01:33:58):
so important. I've said in some years before that the Northman,
his whole world was centered on death. The dead are
present in him. He worships the dead. He welcomes death
when he has achieved honor, so that he can live
with honor in the afterlife. He seeks immortality as his

(01:34:18):
ultimate goal. In that sense, through honor quote, when a
man has received the assurance that his luck and honor
are in safekeeping, and he closes his eyes. He sets
off to the place where his kinsmen dwell, sets forth
to visit his kinsman, as Agele says of his son,
and arrives there in his whole full person, with body
and soul and entire equipment, not as a spirit that

(01:34:41):
has laid its case aside and comes with chattering teeth
stealing down the road to hell, but as a human
being with human nature. The whole man simply continues his
life under somewhat different conditions, but always in luck, probably
somewhat less than before, perhaps also in certain respects a
little stronger, because the undead and the dead have certain

(01:35:05):
magical powers that they receive, but they're also not particularly
happy necessarily with death. All of this really adds to
the picture of the Northman that is quite different from
what you first assume. And I think that to summarize
this review now, because I've done enough quoting, it isn't
enough to read the Eddas and the sagas and impose

(01:35:27):
upon them your prejudices about what honor and luck and
heaven and hell mean. Having been indoctrinated into the worldview
of a modern Western and there are certain prejudices you
need to overcome to try and understand the otherness of
your ancestors. Our domatic ancestors didn't think like us, and

(01:35:51):
in order to understand them, we need to understand those differences.
Now not necessarily possible or desirable to as erected all
of the worldview of our Teutonic ancestors, but it is
absolutely necessary to understand it. And Wilhelm Grunbeck's work, The

(01:36:12):
Culture of the Tutans, is most welcome. In its republished
formed by Antelope Hill. You can buy it directly from
the publisher, Antelope Hill Publishing. If you google that you
will find them probably available on Amazon and other places too,
But I'll put a link to the description for it
or in the pin comments underneath for you to buy it.

(01:36:33):
But yes, if you're a heathen, definitely I recommend reading
this book. It's an excellent book. Thank you to Antelope
Hill Publishing for sending me a copy. But also, if
you want to learn how to be a heathen, you
need to learn about ritual and this doesn't tell you
how to do that. So what's this ad? Are you

(01:36:54):
interested in worshiping the gods of ancient England and Scandinavia,
but you're not sure how to do it. Starting heathen
is a ritual focused online course which will furnish you
with the knowledge and confidence to practice the Heathen religion
alone or with others. The course teaches you how to
construct Heathen prayers for yourself, not according to the established
rights of any modern group, but according to what historical

(01:37:15):
sources show. Starting Heathenry assumes you're interested in Germanic paganism,
know about the gods and myths, and want to begin
practicing this religion, but require guidance on how to do so.
It is based on a micro learning structure, which has
proven to improve knowledge attention by up to eighty percent
in students compared to other learning methods. You get more
than five hours of learning material bit by bit as

(01:37:36):
you please, a modern method of learning about an ancient religion.
Your path to knowing the gods through ritual starts here.

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark