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| In Our Time
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| | | The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. | | | | | LISTEN AGAIN | | | |
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| | | | | "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
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|  | | THE NORSE GODS
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Thor’s huge hammer, the wailing Valkyrie, howling wolves and fierce elemental giants give a rowdy impression of the Norse myths. But at the centre of their cosmos stands a gnarled old Ash tree, from which all distances are measured and under which Valhalla lies. In the first poem of The Poetic Edda, where the stories of the Norse Gods are laid down in verse, the Seeress describes it in her prophesy:
“I know that an ash-tree stands called Yggdrasil,
a high tree soaked with shining loam
from there come the dews which fall in the valley,
ever green, it stands over the well of fate.”
It is from this tree that the father of the Gods, Odin, will ultimately hang himself: an image of divine sacrifice so problematic for thirteenth century Christians that they left it out when they wrote the myths down.
What was the theology that inspired the Vikings and what role did their myths and religion play in their daily lives?
Contributors
Carolyne Larrington, Tutor in Medieval English at St John’s College, Oxford
Heather O’Donoghue, Vigfusson Rausing Reader in Ancient Icelandic Literature in the Department of English at Oxford University
John Hines, Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University
Further reading
The Poetic Edda translated by Carolyne Larrington (Oxford World's Classics, 1999)
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