History or mythology?

[Agmund]

This is an (almost) exact copy of the post you just did in another thread on this same forum?
It's a bit much, once is enough.

And me personally feel that going in to post links to other sites without forum interaction, this being primarily a forum for fans of the band Amon Amarth, is a bit, well, not that thought of.

I am a fan of Amon Amarth. I've seen them twice live and own several shirts and albums by them.. Have listened to them for over 6 years..

The viking age started in 793 CE with the invasions of Lindsfarne, and ended around the year 1200 CE. If you're talking about northern people of indo-european descent in general, they believed their mythologies and folklore to be a part of their history which spawned back much further. What we know of their mythology/history was passed down by word of mouth and written in the runes. What we know of the runes was passed down in the lore and rune poems. From the Havamal we know Allfather Odin had won the runes through his sacrifice of himself unto himself thereby giving birth to the ancestral culture associated with them. The gods were viewed as senior kin, as ancestors who were mortal and would die. They were immortalized through their deeds, as anyone who had the courage and honor to die in battle to preserve their way of life. Our ancestors lived their "history" through their "mythology".

 

[Brisantni]

Hi fan of Amon Amarth! What's there on your avatar? What does it mean?

 

[Agmund]

Hi fan of Amon Amarth! What's there on your avatar? What does it mean?

Hi! It's an image of Odin that I found on google image search lol. As the chief god of the Aesir pantheon (gods of consciousness), he represents the unrelenting will to seek deeper wisdom and understanding of one's self. He's the one known as Allfather to the Norse people that followed his example.
From the Hávamál in the words of the High One himself:

I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.

No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
downwards I peered;
I took up the runes, screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there.

 

[Brisantni]

Ah, ok, now that I know I can see Odin. Thanks.

 

[Freki]

Well the problem is they still don't actually know that much of what actually happened at the time.

The contemporary sources are few and sparse and can't be trusted to be accurate.

Take the battle of Svolder for example. Noone knows where Svolder is, or if the battle actually happened.

Or the Jomsburg vikings, there is no actual proof of them existing.

Berserkers? Who knows what they really were or how common.

Human sacrifice? Maybe, still no evidence.

And so on and so on. Hopefully someone finds some lost book from the time or some incredible lost runestone that tells us all we want to know.

 

[Freki]

Sorry, Jomsborg vikings seem to be historically confirmed that they existed, my bad. Still, there are a lot of things from the viking age we don't know for certain.