It’s not a stretch to say that Midgard and Asgard are the two most important worlds of the Norse cosmos, for they are the homes of us humans and our gods. But…have you ever wondered why they’re both conceived of as fortresses? It’s not a coincidence. In this raid, we’ll go through the must-know details of both Midgard and Asgard; but, more importantly, we’ll also discuss why the Norse used fortifications to describe them. If you’ve already plundered my previous raid on The Migration Period, you’ll know that it’s all part of that lovely longue durée.
Want visuals? This raid is also a video at youtube.com/@fjorntheskald!
You can also find more plunder, from interactive lessons to digital maps, at fjorntheskald.com!
Sources & Further Reading:
- Snorri Sturluson, Edda, translated by Anthony Faulkes (Everyman, 1995).
- Jackson Crawford trans., The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes (Hackett Publishing, 2015).
- Neil Price, Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (Basic Books, 2020).
- Especially chapter 1, “The Home of Their Shapes”
♫ = “Firesong” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
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