Heathen Gods in Old English Lit: 22 (Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, Series Number 22)
Cambridge University Press, 1/12/2008
EAN 9780521030267, ISBN10: 0521030269
Paperback, 392 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
Heathen gods are hard to find in Old English literature. Most Anglo-Saxon writers had no interest in them, and scholars today prefer to concentrate on the Christian civilization for which the Anglo-Saxons were so famous. Richard North offers an interesting view of Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian paganism and mythology in the pre-Viking and Viking age. He discusses the pre-Christian gods of Bede's history of the Anglo-Saxon conversion with reference to an orgiastic figure known as Ingui, whom Bede called 'god of this age'. Using expert knowledge of comparative literary material from Old Norse-Icelandic and other Old Germanic languages, North reconstructs the slender Old English evidence in a highly imaginative treatment of poems such as Deor and The Dream of the Rood. Other gods such as Woden are considered with reference to Odin and his family in Old Norse-Icelandic mythology. In conclusion, it is argued that the cult of Ingui was defeated only when the ideology of the god Woden was sponsored by the Anglo-Saxon church. The book will interest students interested in Old English, Old Norse-Icelandic and Germanic literatures, Anglo-Saxon history and archaeology.
Preface
List of abbreviations
1. Nerthus and Terra Mater
Anglian religion in the first century
2. Ingui of Bernicia
3. Ingui's cult remembered
Ing and the ingefolc
4. Woden's witchcraft
5. 'Uoden de cuius stirpe'
the role of Woden in royal genealogy
6. Aspects of Ingui
-geot and Geat
7. The cult of Ingui in Beowulf
8. Ingui's marriage
natural phenomena
9. Ingui's death
the world-tree sacrifice
10. Paulinus and the stultus error
the Anglo-Saxon conversion
Bibliography
Index.