Early modern anger is informed by fundamental paradoxes: qualified as a sin since the Middle Ages, it was still attributed a valuable function in the service of restoring social order; at the same time, the fight against one’s own anger was perceived as exceedingly difficult. And while it was seen as essential for the defence of an individual’s social position, it was at the same time considered a self-destructive force. The contributions in this volume converge in the aim of mapping out the discursive networks in which anger featured and how they all generated their own version, assessment, and semantics of anger. These discourses include philosophy and theology, poetry, medicine, law, political theory, and art. Contributors: David M. Barbee, Maria Berbara, Tamás Demeter, Jan-Frans van Dijkhuizen, Betül Dilmac, Karl Enenkel, Tilman Haug, Michael Krewet, Johannes F. Lehmann, John Nassichuk, Jan Papy, Christian Peters, Bernd Roling, Paolo Santangelo, Barbara Sasse Tateo, Anita Traninger, Jakob Willis, and Zeynep Yelçe.

The aim of this book is to investigate the taking and giving of hostages in peace processes during the Viking Age and early Middle Ages in Scandinavia and adjacent areas. Scandinavia has been absent in previous research about hostages from the perspectives of legal and social history, which has mostly focused on Antiquity (the Roman Empire), Continental Germanic cultures, such as the Merovingian realm, and Anglo-Saxon England. The examples presented are from confrontations between Scandinavians and other peoples in which the hostage giving and taking was displayed as a ritual act and thus became symbolically important. Hostages were a vital part of the peace processes and used as resources by both sides in the 'areas of communication' within the 'areas of confrontation'. Literary texts as well as runic inscriptions, picture stones, place names, and personal names are used as source material.

Mythic discourses in the present day show how vernacular heritage continues to function and be valuable through emergent interpretations and revaluations. At the same time, continuities in mythic images, motifs, myths and genres reveal the longue durée of mythologies and their transformations. The eighteen articles of Mythic Discourses address the many facets of myth in Uralic cultures, from the Finnish and Karelian world-creation to Nenets shamans, offering multidisciplinary perspectives from twenty eastern and western scholars. The mythologies of Uralic peoples differ so considerably that mythology is approached here in a broad sense, including myths proper, religious beliefs and associated rituals. Traditions are addressed individually, typologically, and in historical perspective. The range and breadth of the articles, presenting diverse living mythologies, their histories and relationships to traditions of other cultures such as Germanic and Slavic, all come together to offer a far richer and more developed perspective on Uralic traditions than any one article could do alone.

European Paganism provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of ancient pagan religions throughout the European continent. Before there where Christians, the peoples of Europe were pagans. Were they bloodthirsty savages hanging human offerings from trees? Were they happy ecologists, valuing the unpolluted rivers and mountains? In European Paganism Ken Dowden outlines and analyses the diverse aspects of pagan ritual and culture from human sacrifice to pilgrimage lunar festivals and tree worship. It includes: a 'timelines' chart to aid with chronology many quotations from ancient and modern sources translated from the original language where necessary, to make them accessible a comprehensive bibliography and guide to further reading

This volume presents a comprehensive exposition of both the prehistory and medieval history of the whole of Scandinavia. The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

Vilhelm Grønbech was a preeminent professor of the history of religion at the University of Copenhagen in the early twentieth century. His vast breadth of knowledge of world cultures and religions had profound effect on Danish academic thought, and in The Culture of the Teutons, Grønbech turns his keen analysis toward his own culture, that of Germanic Europe. Grønbech draws upon a rich panoply of sources in the Norse sagas, legal rulings, and historical figures both living and mythological to deliver for us a compelling thesis of the tribes that harried Rome, of the Viking Age, of pagan rituals and later widespread adoption of Christianity as much more than the sum of bloodthirsty plundering, as less charitable historians have condemned them. Instead, we delve into a culture alien to that of Tacitus or the Greeks, misunderstood for hundreds if not thousands of years. In seeming contradiction, the pagan worldview is foreign compared to our own today, or to the culturally imperialistic Romans who documented their "barbarian" foes, yet one cannot be truly estranged from his own ancestors. The genius of The Culture of the Teutons lies in Grønbech's ability to weave together what at first glance appear polar opposites, but in reality are inexorably linked. The various Germanic tribes of Europe, the Teutons, place unshakeable value on honor, family, and religion to create a society perplexingly carnal yet sophisticated, advanced yet close to nature. And nowhere is this clearer than in their settlement of inhospitable lands such as Iceland or the Faroe Islands, in which they brought order to a seemingly untamable environment. The impact of the peoples of Northern Europe on world history today is so vast no amount of spilled ink can pay it justice. Antelope Hill Publishing is proud to bring this expansive tome back into the limelight for a modern English-speaking audience, now complete with a substantial glossary, index, and hundreds of footnotes to confer important cultural context that would have been assumed common knowledge to its intended Danish audience. This complete edition includes volumes I and II, published in 1909 and 1912, respectively.