First Asatru Temple in 1,000 Years

  In Iceland an Asatru temple will be built in March in Öskjuhlíd Hill that overlooks the capital of Reykjavik for the first time in 1,000 years. The temple will be circular and will be 350 square meters ( 3,767 square feet) and will house 250 people. The temple will be dug 4 meters (13 feet)  down int the hill, built with a dome on top to let in the sunlight. The sacred numbers of 9 and 432,000 are used in the design. Completion oft he temple is expected to be complete in the summer of 2016.

  Says  Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, high priest of Asatru Association "The sun changes with the seasons so in a way we are having the sun paint the space for us".

  The temple sight was donated by the city of Reykjavik to the Asatru Association but the buildings costs, is  estimated at ISK 130 million ( USD 975,000 EUR 860,000), will be raised by the Association.


  In Iceland Asatru Association has tripled in membership in the last decade to 2,400 members out of a population of 333,000, according to data from Statics of Iceland.

   When the temple is complete Icelandic worshipers (and I assume those that visit Iceland) will be able to publicly worship at a shrine to Odin, Frigg and Thor. The temple will host weddings, and funerals,. The group will also confer names to children and initiate teenagers, similar to other religious communities.


SOURCES:
 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/02/iceland-temple-norse-gods-1000-years?CMP=share_btn_fb

http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/01/30/asatru-temple-be-built-reykjavik

Nature's Smartest Birds - Ravens by PBS

    Was just looking around on Youtube at nothing in particular and stumbled across this PBS documentary about ravens. It's not the greatest because..well, there is no real mention of Odin or Huginn and Muninn, but other than that it is a good piece talking about the raven's intelligence.
                                                                                                                                                                         

Voluspa

What better way to get to know the Vikings than by starting with the first and best known poem of the Poetic Edda,  Voluspa . I will post two stanzas from Voluspa every so often, in the same post.

  Voluspa tells the story of the world's creation and its end as related by a volva ,Norse seeress, to Odin, major god in Norse mythology and ruler of Asgard.

  The Voluspa is one of the most important primary sources for the study of Norse mythology. It is found in the Icelandic manuscript thought to have been written in the 1270's, Codex  Regius and in one of the few medieval Norse manuscripts of which the author is known, Hauksbok  by Haukr Erlendsson and many of its stanzas are quoted or paraphrased by the Icelandic historian, poet and politician, Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda.

  Voluspa consists of approximately 60 alliterative verses known as a fornyroislag stanzas. In Sophus Bugge;s, a 19th century Norwegian philologist and linguist, edition of the Hauksbok version has 59 stanzas while the Codex Regius version has 62 stanzas. Each manuscript contains stanzas not found in the other manuscript. Bugge's normalized version contains 66 stanzas.

Odin and the Volva