The Viking Offense
I was recently told that my pride in my heritage is offensive. I was told that the "viking" culture is offensive and shouldn't be resurrected. I saw this and did my best to to be respectful... it was extremely difficult. First of all, viking isnt a culture its a job title meaning one who seeks fortune through trade or war. The culture is Nordic, and i do come from norse decent. Norse society was rather progressive for its time period, woman have basically the same rights as men. They could own property and had an equal say in public matters. Mind you this is in a time where only the Hindus belived similarly. Were the vikings brutal? Definitely. But at that time all warriors were.
My family still holds a lot of the old traditions. Though the "gods" have been removed from them. We even do a modern version of the Christmas sacrifice, Jolblot. we burn the tree on new years eve. We take the decorations down and bring the good into the next year and burn the tree disposing of the bad so ahs to not brong it woth us into the future.
There are alot of fun, beautiful, stuff like that in our culture. I don't see why we cant all learn from each other and make the world a better place!
So because of that one person taking offense, i will from here on out, reference you who enjoy my blog as my fellow vikings!
I don't see any problem with it. I think it's actually quite good that we learn these things about ourselves and 'resurrect' little bits of the past. It encourages us to learn and grow.
I have pagan ancestory, but I don't know an awful lot about it. I just know I have some somewhere because I am fair skinned, blue eyed and red haired, not to mention I live in the UK. Some people might find that offensive too, because I do not worship God and my ancestors didn't either.
There will always be someone who opposes us, just don't let it oppress us. :)
My family still holds a lot of the old traditions. Though the "gods" have been removed from them. We even do a modern version of the Christmas sacrifice, Jolblot. we burn the tree on new years eve. We take the decorations down and bring the good into the next year and burn the tree disposing of the bad so ahs to not brong it woth us into the future.
There are alot of fun, beautiful, stuff like that in our culture. I don't see why we cant all learn from each other and make the world a better place!
I completely agree. Putting aside prejudices and understand one another.
I have many friends around the world, Christian, Catholic, Muslim, Hindi's. I love learning new things about them, their culture, their religion. It's fasinating!
I'd love to learn more about these traditions you and your family do. :)
As they come up i will post some of them, if grandmother gives her permission. She is head of the family.
Oh right! That's interesting.
Would love to read some more of your blogs about it.
Ill write a post with her permission. Let me call her
Don't feel like you're having to go out of your way for me, I'd hate to feel like I was a burden to you and your family.
I'm just curious, that's all. :)
Lol there is no shame in asking. Its just a bit different then most American families so it might take A LOT of explanation. But ultimately its up to grandma
I assume Dalek Sec is from Dr.Who. My son is a huge Whovian.
That would be correct. We are also Whovians. One of our other dogs is called Tardis
Right on! :)
One can only wonder why someone would take such offense to something such as this. I am of Norse decent also.
Off topic, but because you brought vikings up I just have to share, my husband and I visited Ireland. In Dublin we went to a viking museum! It was awesome. Long story short, husband is of Irish decent and we found out that the vikings took many Irish into slavery, and basically put Dublin on the map. Now it's a joke between the two of us. Haha.
Lol they did establish multiple colonies in and around Ireland. On my mothers side im a McGrail. The McGrails are of house Neil and direct descendants of Neil of the nine hostage and of Vikings who settled on our island of Barra. On my father's side im Swedish.
I love your inner family joke. It makes me laugh at the thought of you running into the house with an axe demanding the cups and plates.
The person was Christian and was arguing that because vikings killed Christians the vikings must be demons. Why would we be proud of being demons. Also they had no idea of history other then what their pastor and the tv told them... especially when it comes to the religion.
I tried to be as civil and respectful as i could if you go to my youtube channel the conversation is there.
Ah that's okay, I don't need to drudge up the drama. Haha. I just think people are silly. I, personally, am an atheist, but if I were to believe in anything, I would totally bring back the Norse gods and belief systems. Paganism is amazing - to me, they basically gave earthly matters God's names and believed moreso in the earth than anything else. Which I think we should get back to. Haha.
That is a really cool perspective. But did you know that Norse pagans originally didnt see them as what we considered gods? They may have been more powerful and might have created us but they were not what we would call gods today. Actually that concept was imported with. Christianity especially since it was the Christian scribes who wrote all known texts containing the eddas