29 APR 2021 · Freya was the most important goddess in Northern mythology and religion. She was immensely popular throughout the entire Germanic world. Her name translates to “Lady” which is actually more of a title than her actual name. This is due to the fact that Freya journeyed many times into the mortal world under various names in search of her lost husband. Like most Anglo Saxon gods and goddesses Freya had countless names and nicknames. The nicest way to describe Freya, while still being polite, is to call her the “party girl” of all gods. It was said that she slept with every single god and elf in Asgard at some point or another, including her own brother Frey. Freya was a lover of fine material possessions, more specifically jewelry. Gold was said to be the tears of Freya which fell all over the earth while she searched for her lost husband. Her husband was Woden, but he went under the name Od during his travels throughout the mortal world. Of all Germanic gods and goddesses, only Woden rivaled Freya when it came to magical abilities. She was the divine model of a sorceress. It was said in one Old Norse poem that she went from house to house in the mortal world giving prophecies, chanting, and performing all kinds of rituals for her human hosts. Freya taught Woden much of what he knew when it came to magic. Frigg was Woden's official wife, but it has been determined that she is an exact duplication of Freya, making them one and the same. The other difference between the two women was Woden was simply called Od in reference to Freya, but he was called Woden by Frigg. Frigg was also noted for sleeping with both of Woden's brothers while Woden was exiled. She also slept with a slave at one point. Freya and Frigg were very popular with the woman during the Viking Age because of her connection to fertility.

6 MAR 2021 · Beowulf is the longest epic poem in Old English, the language spoken in Anglo-Saxon England before the Norman Conquest. More than 3,000 lines long, Beowulf relates the exploits of its eponymous hero, and his successive battles with a monster named Grendel, with Grendel’s revengeful mother, and with a dragon which was guarding a hoard of treasure. How old is the manuscript? Beowulf survives in a single medieval manuscript. The manuscript bears no date, and so its age has to be calculated by analyzing the scribes’ handwriting. Some scholars have suggested that the manuscript was made at the end of the 10th century, others in the early decades of the 11th, perhaps as late as the reign of King Cnut, who ruled England from 1016 until 1035. The most likely time for Beowulf to have been copied is the early 11th century, which makes the manuscript approximately 1,000 years old. Nobody knows for certain when the poem was first composed. The contents of the manuscript Apart from Beowulf, the manuscript contains several other medieval texts. These comprise a homily on St Christopher; The marvels of the east (also known as The Wonders of the East), illustrated with wondrous beasts and deformed monsters; the Letter of Alexander to Aristotle; and an imperfect copy of another Old English poem, Judith. Beowulf is the penultimate item in this collection, the whole of which was copied by two Anglo-Saxon scribes, working in collaboration. Who owned the Beowulf manuscript? The first recorded owner of Beowulf is Laurence Nowell (died c. 1570), a pioneer of the study of Old English, who inscribed his name (dated 1563) at the top of the manuscript’s first page. Beowulf then entered the famous collection of Sir Robert Cotton (died 1631) – who also owned the Lindisfarne Gospels and the British Library’s two copies of Magna Carta  – before passing into the hands of his son Sir Thomas Cotton (died 1662), and grandson Sir John Cotton (died 1702), who bequeathed the manuscript to the nation. The Cotton library formed one of the foundation collections of the British Museum in 1753, before being incorporated as part of the British Library in 1973. Why is the manuscript damaged? During the 18th century, the Cotton manuscripts were moved for safekeeping to Ashburnham House at Westminster. On the night of 23 October 1731 a fire broke out and many manuscripts were damaged, and a few completely destroyed. Beowulf escaped the fire relatively intact but it suffered greater loss by handling in the following years, with letters crumbling away from the outer portions of its pages. Placed in paper frames in 1845, the manuscript remains incredibly fragile and can be handled

19 OCT 2020 · Anglo-Saxon Paganism or Anglo-Saxon Heathenry is a modern religion based on the ancient pagan tribal religions of the Germanic tribes that moved into what is now England in the 5th century. These tribes are generally thought to be the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, although portions of other tribes such as the Frisians may have migrated also. It is therefore closely related to the ancient Norse pagan religion and shares many of the deities such as Odin (Woden) and Thor (Thunor).

8 OCT 2020 · When Edward Ironside was murdered in 1016, Canute the Dane seized the crown of Wessex. The following year, conscious of the threat posed to his rule by Edmund's small sons, Edmund and Edward Ætheling, he banished them to Sweden, with a `letter of death'. The Swedish king, however, spared their lives, and the Continental wanderings of the Anglo-Saxon princes began; their uncertain fate greatly exercised the minds of contemporary English chroniclers. Forty years later the aging, childless Edward the Confessor learned that his nephew Edward was living in Hungary; he invited him to return home, casting him in a crucial role in the struggle to avert a Norman takeover, but forty-eight hours after his triumphant homecoming he was dead, and the events that were to lead to the Norman conquest of 1066 were set in motion. Drawing on sources from as far afield as Iceland and Kievan Russia, this account of the extraordinary years of the princes' exile is a story stranger than fiction, unraveled by Gabriel Ronay with all the excitement of a modern-day crime study. GABRIEL RONAY wrote for The Times for many years. He was born in Transylvania and studied at the universities of Budapest and Edinburgh. He came to Britain after the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

23 SEP 2020 · Anglo Saxon Runes The word RUNE means secret or mystery. Runes had a religious meaning and were used in religious ceremonies. They were a charm or a spell as well as a way of writing messages. The Anglo-Saxons believed that if you used the right runes in the right order, they could have magical powers. For example, a prisoner could magically release himself by carving certain runes You can see that some of the runes are quite like capital letters: Some are easier to guess if you turn them upside down, although some are not at all what you might expect: writan (= to carve runes) and ridan (= to interpret runes) became our words write and read.

17 SEP 2020 · The king of the Anglo-Saxon gods was Woden, a German version of the Scandinavian god Odin, who had two pet wolves and a horse with eight legs. Other gods were Thunor, the god of thunder; Frige, goddess of love; and Tiw, the god of war. No detailed account of Woden and his mythic adventures survives from the Anglo-Saxon era; nevertheless, this ancestral figure remains present in the cultural imagination of the English people even centuries later. The famous ecclesiastical historian Bede is the first known Anglo-Saxon author to describe this mythic genealogy in Book I, apitula 15 of his Historia claiming:  Duces fuisse perhibentur eorum primi duo fratres Hengist et Horsa….Erant autem filii Uictgilsi, cuius pater Uitta, cuius pater Uecta, cuius pater Uoden, de cuius stirpe multarum prouinciarum regium genus originem duxit,  “From the first, their leaders (the Anglo-Saxons) were held to be two brothers, Hengest and Horsa….They were sons of Wictgils, whose father was Witta, whose father was Wecta, whose father was Woden.”

16 SEP 2020 · In this episode, we talk indirectly and directly about Wyrd and what it means, we talk about the conversion of the English to Christianity and lots of things that happened before and after the conversion. We talk about Wyrd and discuss the Norns as well as the belief that Wyrd was part of the Christian god's plan according to Alfred's writings.  But overall this is an enjoyable episode that looks into Anglo Saxon life and their religions.

16 SEP 2020 · In this episode, we read three Anglo Saxon Poems. We start with the Seafarer, then move on to the Wife's lament and finally moving on to the Wanderer. All of these poems are very well known and show a way of thought that is no longer with us. The poems hint at life and how it was lived, They also delve into depression and unbalanced psychosis. These poems were written by people who knew similar people to those in the poems. I hope you enjoy the episode.