Viking Literature

If you are interested in the Vikings, you'll want to read some of the Sagas and the Havamal. The Sagas are tales of the lives, loves, battles and feuds of real people in the Viking period. Many of them are available free on the net. One of the most famous, and best, is the Saga of Burnt Njal. Another is the story of the trollish warrior-poet Egil Skaligrimsson. There is a web page in Iceland devoted to Egil and his Saga, and related stories. You can read the saga on-line at the Northvegr Page, or the Blackmask Page. You can also download Kormaks, Grettis, and Njal's Sagas in zip format. For laconic drama, there's always Heimskringla, the story of the kings of Norway. There's a good general introduction to the sagas in Iceland with commentary, links to some of the English texts, and many of the texts in their original Icelandic.

If you are a lover of fine books, and have a bit of cash on hand, you might want to look at The Complete Sagas of the Icelanders, edited by Vi�ar Hreinsson. This is the complete and definative body of Viking Literature in new translations. It's not inexpensive, but if you like real books rather than downloaded text files you might consider it. I'd read some of the cheap or free versions first however.

The Havamal contains advice the "High One", Odin himself, on how to get along in life.

Just a little Me :)

Like all people I was born psychic but unlike most it didn't get suppressed when I got into school, or at least not as much, as I spent many hours alone each day and much of the summers by myself on my grandma's farm. (Psychic is a catch all phrase for a whole host of skills and abilities, so most psychics don't tell the future etc...) Mom, Grandma and Great Grandma encouraged me with tea leaf reading, palmistry, astrology and zodiac, and lots of stories from the old country of Russian witches and ghosts. They also told me to talk to the spirits and be friendly just as if they were people :) My aunt taught me meditation and some yoga. So I had quite a magical background, even some Dianic Wicca in my early years on Vancouver Island. My greatest strength though lies in my empathy. I always know what people are feeling and who they are feeling it toward, and, in a crowded room this can be a bit much. But in a room full of strong emotion it can be overwhelming so I am not much for certain family get-togethers where there is a lot of people not getting along... even if they are being cordial. Needless to say school was terrible with all those teenage emotions run rampant... :) Since then I have developed psychometry (Object reading) specifically for use in massage therapy and reiki. I have been known to start massaging someones neck and then ask about a foot injury that they had... :) I have had some great shamanic or psychic experiences over the years with animals, animal spirits, and spirits in general from long years of playing with Coyotes on grandma's farm to seeing Coyotes and foxes in Kansas come right up to me to having a vision of being a tornado to having numerous run ins with Ghosts over the years. I am a big fan of shamanic cultures like the Celts and the old Norse witch are very similar to native american culture. The Welsh call the Raven Bran, and the Norse are big on Ravens especially Odin's Ravens Hugin (Knowledge) and Munin (Wisdom) who would fly around and see and then come and whisper in Odin's ear what they saw. On Vancouver Island Raven myth is very strong and I got to know the Ravensong myth about a Salish hero of that name. Then one day the local store called and told me my tarot deck was in. I didn't order such a thing but I went down to take a look and there it was the crow tarot deck. (crow being the smallest raven) So I decided to call myself Bran Ravensong as it was kind of beating me over the head for a number of years :)