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Troldenes krig : vikingetroens hemmelige kamp fra Harald Blåtand til i dag
127 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1981
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July 8, 2019
Troldenes Krig (“War of the trolls”) by Flemming Nielsen is a description of how people were affected after the introduction of christianity into Denmark, and the vaning beliefs in the asetro (“Neopaganism”). Through historical writings, primarily that of older and younger Edda (The “poetic edda”, a major unnamed collection of anonymous poems from the historical periode), the author walks us through the changes in danish society and its effect on people day to day life. We get several core stories from the nordic mythological religion, and tales of how gods, trolls and other beings had direct impact on the day to day life, and whose influence can still be seen in many parts of the country, by church architecture, boulders in the countryside and place names. We also get to hear how it lost out to the ‘stronger’ christianity, again through tales of direct clashes between the two cultural beliefs.
Overall it is a very enjoyable collection of stories, with some speculation by the author, and few cross ties between different historical depictions. Unfortunately it is not very deep, and doesn’t go into great detail or analysis of the individual stories. Nor does the author try to paint an overall picture of the clash between nordic paganism and christianity, so in the end it is merely a somewhat random collection.
If this is your first entry into nordic paganism, you will most likely enjoy it, but you will not come out with a clear overview of things. If you have a vague idea of what the belief system is about, then it is a good book to retread some of the tales, and get a nice look into how this religion directly affected people. But are you looking for detailed analyses of how the religions interacted and made way for each other, then this is not what you are looking for. I quite enjoyed it for what it was, but I do feel it could have been quite a bit more with some more thorough analyses.
Overall it is a very enjoyable collection of stories, with some speculation by the author, and few cross ties between different historical depictions. Unfortunately it is not very deep, and doesn’t go into great detail or analysis of the individual stories. Nor does the author try to paint an overall picture of the clash between nordic paganism and christianity, so in the end it is merely a somewhat random collection.
If this is your first entry into nordic paganism, you will most likely enjoy it, but you will not come out with a clear overview of things. If you have a vague idea of what the belief system is about, then it is a good book to retread some of the tales, and get a nice look into how this religion directly affected people. But are you looking for detailed analyses of how the religions interacted and made way for each other, then this is not what you are looking for. I quite enjoyed it for what it was, but I do feel it could have been quite a bit more with some more thorough analyses.
Displaying 1 of 1 review