Now, I haven't made any New Year's resolutions per se, but I have decided something of a similar nature, and that is that I will make more book reviews in video format here on YouTube and Odyssey.
Of course, in accord with your wishes, I am but your humble servant.
I posted a poll to Telegram, and the majority of you would like to see more book reviews in video format.
So, here we go.
Here we go.
And of course, we do start with, as you can surmise from the title of the video, the Poetic Eda.
And we have a nice edition here.
Admire this absolute unit, thick boy, big boy.
Now, it's actually not that much to read because half of it, or half of the poetry at least, is in Icelandic.
So, you can see there that one page in the original Icelandic, the other page in English.
Now, of course, it contains this edition, it contains a lot of explanations, notes, introductions, that sort of stuff.
Also, as you can see, a foreword by our man Survive the Jive.
Good stuff.
So, it's very much information in addition to the poetry itself.
So, the poetry section, half Icelandic, but the introduction and everything like that, it's in English.
So, yeah, great stuff, great stuff indeed.
Now, there are those who are much more knowledgeable when it comes to the Poetic Eda.
This is the first time I read it.
Now, of course, I've been familiar with the sacred Havamal for many years, so it was nice to finally get to the source material.
And I will say the following: this video, this is just my first impressions on the book.
And maybe I'll make a video in a few years when I've read it a few more times, meditated upon the poetry, certain stanzas, etc.
Now, what I would say though with this fine book right here is that it doesn't really give you any precise answers because what it is, this is written by Icelandic men in the Middle Ages, and they are, you know, the poetry, the epics, the myths, they are much older and they have been transmitted orally.
So, I don't know how much has been lost in translation, but what we can say, and this is only my view, this is only my first impression upon reading it, is that you know, we can get a sense of the material, but can we pinpoint exactly everything?
No, perhaps not.
And, you know, a lot of the extra information in the book is speculation: could this stanza have been misplaced, or should this stanza belong somewhere else, or stuff like that.
So, it's not a precise thing we're talking about here, but you can definitely read it if you want to get a good sense of the Germanic Weltanschauung, so the Germanic worldview.
And just reading it without understanding exactly everything, we can see that certain things are, you know, always coming back to the storyline, no matter which poet, or poem, or story.
So, honor, war, love, vengeance, knowledge, the gods, stuff like that.
So, we can get a good sense of what is important to our ancestors.
So that is something you can view it as if you read it for the first time to get a nice sense, a nice feel for the overall vibe that comes to you.
Now, something else I thought to mention.
I want to take our beloved lady Freya in defense here.
It's quite common to hear heretics and Christians and people to claim that she was promiscuous.
And there are, of course, certain myths that would support this, but there's a particular poem, the Loki Sena.
And in this particular poem, it basically consists of Loki insulting the gods and the goddesses.
And he says, and he says to Freya that, yeah, basically you are promiscuous.
But he also says to the male gods, he accuses them of cowardice and unmanly behavior.
And of course, none of the gods, at least not as far as I know, were cowardly or unmanly.
So it would be Loki actively lying to provoke them.
And the same thing would go for Freya.
He says that to provoke her.
So we can see a few things by reading this particular poem that unmanly behavior, cowardice for men, very bad.
That is something you can insult others.
So it's important to not be cowardly or unmanly.
And for a woman, then it's important to not be promiscuous.
So we can actually see Loki's lies and insults as you know the opposite of the ideal.
So that Freya would be promiscuous.
Doesn't really hold up if you interpret it in that way.
I know there are other myths such as she's supposed to be to have slept with four dwarves, but this can also esoterically be interpreted as her imbuing a certain piece of jewelry with the four elements.
Something like that.
Just top of my head, coming up with something there.
So it doesn't really mean that, but if you read it too literally, you can construct a narrative to fit your agenda.
And of course, this was very useful for the early Christians to try to portray a goddess as promiscuous.
And modern feminists could also do it.
But for a sincere, devoted pagan that honors Freya, we should, of course, defend her in that regard.
But again, I'm not an expert, I'm just speculating, I'm just sharing something I found in this fine tomb of knowledge.
Now that about how you can interpret the certain myths at least, and of course I need to defend our Lady Freya here.
Now something else, and probably you saw this on social media, I posted one of my favourite stanzas, or two stanzas rather, and I will read it.
And I will read them to you now as well so that you can admire the beautiful poetry.
Now, I didn't actually quote Bellows word for word because I replaced certain words to make it more epic, and I will do so now as well.
So here is my take on it.
I know that I hung on the windy tree, hung there for nights full nine.
With a spear I was wounded, and offered I was to Odin, myself to myself, on the tree that none may ever know, what root beneath it runs.
Neither horn they upheld, nor handed me bread, and there below I looked, I took up the runes, screaming I took them, and forthwith back I fell.
How about that?
Absolutely epic.
This is poetry at its very best.
I will make a separate video on how to appreciate poetry, but basically my point is that you need to find these very epic moments that conjures up a really, really nice image in your head that you can just keep with you.
So I can't stop thinking about these two stanzas.
Very powerful indeed.
So Odin Hung himself, he offered himself to himself for nine nights to gain the knowledge of the runes.
Now, anyway, I have rambled on enough about this.
I could of course talk a lot more about it.
Read it for yourself if you feel so inclined.
View it as a good source material if you want to get really deep into it.
Then of course, if you are a beginner, if you don't know where to start, this might be a bit too heavy.
You can read or, you know, get familiar with myths in different ways if you feel that's an easier step to begin with.
Now, also, I would like to say that this is an edition by Imperium Press.
This video is not sponsored in any way, but it's a good publisher and I'm comfortable in promoting them because they do great work with our great classics.
And of course, speaking of which, you have a rather controversial poem, The Rigstula, where Hemdal goes around and he creates the different casts.
I will not say more about it here, since this is on YouTube as well, but yeah, it's a bit controversial, but it appears as it should here, so they haven't done any funny alterations to the story, which perhaps you could find in different publishers because of political reasons.
No, anyway, that being said, I have a Wild Hunt Challenge video incoming in a week or so.
