And, contrary to popular belief... Saturday was named not after Saturn, but after Saetare, who was the bringer of Agriculture and beer, and is held by most scholars to be equivalent to the god Loki... Loki himself is much misunderstoo, especially by those coming from a christian background.. Loki is mischievous, but not totally evil... he and Thor are great friends, and in most of the stories, when Loki gets the gods into trouble he tries hard to get them out of it again... the Christians did their best to equate Loki with their devil, Lucifer... the names come from the same root, Lucifer meaning Light Bringer, Loki meaning Fire or Flame... but where outside influence had turned Lucifer from being an angel of light to being a rebel and then into the source of evil, Loki had only got to the rebellious stage... the christians drew further parallels between the Ragnarok and their own Book of Revelation, and held that as Loki was on the side of Hel and the army of the dead, he must therefore be a demon and evil... but a closer look at the ragnarok shows that far from being a battle between good and evil, the ragnarok is a war between the forces of imposed order in the shape of man and god on one side, and the raw force of nature on the other.... just as in the "real" universe, Loki (fire) outlasts the sun, and all the gods succumb to death... what the ragnarok tels us is that we are not immortal... that even the gods die, but that the universe goes on regardless...
A good site about all this is www.northvegr.com
Originally posted by dgeniu
"Ever come across the Voluspa dgeniu?"Not really...is it anther spelling of The Volsunga Saga, `cause I know about that.
nope.... Voluspa is different altogether... go to www.northvegr.com were you can find the Voluspa, the Poetic and Prose Eddas, and the Havamal.... and lots of others besides... and remember everyone... despite what they tell you in school, its not a dead religion.... there have been worshippers of the norse gods from pre christian times right up to the present day....