Derek Prescott

“It is like a man | whom no one loves,-- Why should his life be long?”
― Anonymous, The Poetic Edda

“When in the seventh century King Redwald of East Anglia provided one altar in his church to sacrifice to Christ, and another small one to offer victims to devils,1 he was not behaving childishly, or cunningly hoping to get the best of both worlds, but merely acting according to normal heathen custom, since acceptance of one god did not mean that one wholly rejected one’s neighbour’s deity. This indeed must have been one of the most difficult lessons for the new converts to Christianity to learn, and while they gained in single-mindedness, it is to be feared that they lost much of their old spirit of tolerance. The”
― Hilda Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

“The exuberant exaggerations of the Irish sagas are not for the northern gods; Freyja, Thor, Loki have the robust common sense which the Vikings themselves admired hugely,”
― Hilda Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

“Men brave and generous live the best lives, seldom will they sorrow; then there are fools, afraid of everything, who grumble instead of giving.”
― Anonymous, The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes