A fact from Death in Norse paganism appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 19 April 2008, and was viewed approximately 3,936 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
Did you know... that there was an element of eroticism concerning death in Viking culture, and that the dead were often described as being received by a lady?
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Latest comment: 6 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Yngvadottir, don't you think this should be called "Death in Norse religion" or some such thing? Drmies (talk) 15:21, 20 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
There is ongoing debate about what name to use for the religion (did the article get moved again? I honestly don't know). Somewhere on Talk:Norse religion you can see me expressing no strong preference in the latest rename proposal, but I think the earlier rename proposal at the top of that page also deserves some deference. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:25, 20 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
OK. Another question. I'm trying to verify the relatively simple statement that Odin got us the alphabet by way of his hanging, and it's proving to be remarkably difficult--the sources I'm finding are self-published and unreliable or worse. I can easily prove, by way of those sources, that "modern" folks believe this, and that they say "according to the old Vikings" or whatever--but not that the old ones actually believed this. I looked for both alphabet and runes, and you know the literature for runes is difficult (Page says nothing about it), and the best I found so far is this--but it's an offhand comment in a book published by Peter Lang. It's by Graeme Davis (mediaevalist), whose Wikipedia article and publication record really don't inspire that much faith. Please note this. In other words, I think someone is rehashing received wisdom in print in the way I almost did in this article. Do you know what's correct here? Drmies (talk) 15:34, 20 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
This concerns the passage in "Hávamál" (verses 138–39) about hanging on Yggdrasill and taking up the runes. The "runes" do not refer to (simply) the incised characters but to the mysteries of their use; for example verse 144 asks whether we know how to carve and tint them. Dronke, p. 61 refers to the runes in these verses as "the keys to superhuman power". Yngvadottir (talk) 15:52, 20 September 2017 (UTC)Reply
