VIKING WISDOM - HÁVAMÁL - the SAYINGS of ODIN
Well described as the wisdom of the North, Hávamál is one of the most important documents from the Viking Age Scandinavia.
Havamal is a collection of sayings, attributed to Odin, and is one of the most important documents from the Viking era. It is a reflection of its time, influenced by the Viking life and way of life.
Here is a richly illustrated book about Havamal, with a new translation in modern English.
Over many decades, Tyr Neilsen has worked on his own interpretions of the original Hávamál, fine tuning it as his understanding continued to grow. Now, together with journalist Bente Wemundstad, they have created this book with the specific intention of delivering the Hávamál in an easy and understandable language to reach new generations.
There is much wisdom and inspiration to retrieve from Hávamál, inherited from our ancestors from an era that was subsequently named after them, but because it can be extremely difficult to understand verses that were translated over a hundred years ago, the purpose of this book was to make the Vikings wisdom accessible to a modern audience.
In Viking times the sayings of Odin were delivered as a performance. Here the Hávamál is illustrated with fascinating photographs of models and modern Vikings to recreate the original way the sayings of Odin was delivered.
A MEETING WITH THE ORIGINAL HÁVAMÁL:
For Scandinavian culture, Hávamál is as important as the Tao is to China, the Vedas to India and The Iliad to Greece.
Vikings were no ignorant savage race, but intelligent and creative people with a wise culture. Already in 930 the Vikings formed the world's first parliament, the Althing in Iceland. It was based on the Norwegian legal system and is still in use in the Western world today. The rules that were applied were based on Hávamál.
The original Hávamál manuscript from the 11th Century is kept in the Arni Magnusson Institute in Reykjavik, Iceland. Whilst working on this project, the book’s authors flew to Iceland for an exclusive meeting, and were photographed with the original Hávamál manuscript.
FOREWORD
"The Sayings of the High One is one of the most famous wisdom poems in all literature ... Along with the Icelandic sagas it is one of our Most Important sources of information for what the Vikings were like as people."
This is the Hávamál books foreword by Robert Ferguson, the novelist, playwright and leading authority in Scandinavian studies, whose book Vikings - The Hammer and the Cross was used as basis for the Vikings TV series.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
BENTE WEMUNDSTAD is a Norwegian journalist and has written several books about food and social issues. After interviewing Tyr Neilsen and writing an article about him for a local newspaper, Bente became fascinated with Tyr’s views on Norse mythology, Nordic history, and the Viking Age. The main reason for this was because he was using modern language to make it easy to understand these themes that Bente had difficulty understanding when it was taught at school.
Tyr explained that language changes drastically over the decades, to the point that a modern audience has difficulty reading books that were written 100 years ago, never mind something written over 1000 years ago. Tyr’s point was that important cultural wisdom has to be continually translated and delivered using the language of the day in order for most people to understand.
Bente was fascinated with this idea and in a follow up interview Bente discussed the idea of collaborating on a version of Hávamál for the modern Norwegian. Within hours of recieving Tyr and Bente’s email proposal, several Norwegian publishers replied with interest, and within weeks a contract was signed with Nova publishing. The publishers were interested enough with this idea of a modern tranlslation, that they also wanted to publish a book of Tyr’s English translation.
As a photojournalist, Bente was responsible for taking photographs and writing relative information about Norse Mythology, with obvious focus on Odin, as these are his sayings. Bente also worked on the modern Norwegian wording of Tyr’s Hávamál translations and the history of Hávamál.
TYR NEILSEN has lived in Norway for 30 years and is one of the most experienced people in the world regarding Viking armed and unarmed combat. He is senior instructor at the Academy of Viking Martials Arts and President of the Norwegian Glima Association.
Tyr has participated in the largest Viking events in Scandinavia og Europe, and in 2011 he travelled some 25,000 kilometers to 9 countries and participated in 25 Viking arrangements, including the world's largest steel weapon re-enactment.
Tyr is dedicated to keeping the Viking culture and heritage alive and has held exhibitions and seminars at museums, schools and festivals in Norway and Europe.
Tyr is also experienced in different martial art styles and has studied in England, France and the USA with many of the worlds most famous martial arts masters, such as Dan Inosanto, Larry Hartsell, Nino Bernado, Salem Assli and Terry O'Neill. Tyr started his martial arts journey with Ju Jitsu in 1973 and was for several years the main instructor at Drammen Ju Jitsu Club, a member of Ju Jitsu Norway.
Through Glima, Norway’s original martial art, Tyr is an unbroken link to the Viking Age and its people.
If the book is not already in your nearest book store, simply order the book through the book store using the ISBN number: ISBN: 9788282810593
Viking Wisdom - Hávamál - the Sayings of Odin (in English)
From Nova publishing . ISBN: 9788282810593
An English version is also available as an eBook Available from Amazon
Also:
Viking visdom - Håvamål - Odins tale (in Norwegian)
VE: 9788282810586
