#norse gods homoerotic art

[gifts-of-heimdall-runes]

Norse Gods: Discovering a Cult of Odin

Original Image: 'Odin' by Djvenom45 [DeviantArt] [slightly edited!]

Posted: 28th June 2023

[maedivae]

[astronicht]

Okay I'm almost done with Fellowship, here's an incomplete list of shit I noticed and thought was buck fucking wild on my first ever read-thru: medieval edition.

In literally the second line of the book, Tolkien implies that Bilbo Baggins wrote a story which was preserved alongside the in-universe version of the Mabinogion (aka the best-known collection of Welsh myths; I promise this is batshit). This is because The Hobbit has been preserved, in Tolkien's AU version of our world, in a "selection of the Red Book of Westmarch" (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits). If you're a medievalist and you see something called "The Red Book of" or "The Black Book of" etc it's a Thing. In this case, a cheeky reference to the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest). There are a few Red Books, but only Hergest has stories).

not a medieval thing but i did not expect one common theory among hobbits for the death of Frodo's parents to be A RUMORED MURDER-SUICIDE.

At the beginning of the book a few hobbits report seeing a moving elm tree up on the moors, heading west (thru or past the Shire). I mentioned this in another post, but another rule: if you see an elm tree, that's a Girl Tree. In Norse creation myth, the first people were carved from driftwood by the gods. Their names were Askr (Ash, as in the tree), the first man, and Embla (debated, but likely elm tree), the first woman. A lot of ppl have I think guessed that that was an ent-wife, but like. Literally that was a GIRL. TREE.

Medieval thing: I used to read the runes on the covers of The Hobbit and LOTR for fun when I worked in a bookshop. There's a mix of Old Norse (viking) and Old English runes in use, but all the ones I've noticed so far are real and readable if you know runes.

Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you once spent months of your life researching the early medieval art of galdor, which was the use of poems or songs to do a form of word-magic, often incorporating gibberish. If you think maybe Tolkien did not base the entirety of Fellowship so far around learning and using galdor and thus the power of words and stories, that is fine I cannot force you. He did personally translate "galdor" in Beowulf as "spell" (spell, amusingly, used to mean "story"). And also he named an elf Galdor. Like he very much did name an elf Galdor.

Tom Bombadil in fact does galdor from the moment we meet him. He arrives and fights the evil galdor (song) of the willow tree ("old gray willow-man, he's a mighty singer"), which is singing the hobbits to sleep and possibly eating them, with a galdor (song) of his own. Then he wanders off still singing, incorporating gibberish. I think it was at this point that I started clawing my face.

THEN Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you've read the description of the scop's songs in Beowulf (Beowulf again, but hey, Tolkien did famously a. translate it b. write a fanfiction about it called Sellic Spell where he gave Beowulf an arguably homoerotic Best Friend). The scop (pronounched shop) is a poet who sings about deeds on earth, but also by profession must know how to sing the song or tell the story of how the cosmos itself came to be. The wise-singer who knows the deep lore of the early universe is a standard trope in Old English literature, not just Beowulf! Anyway Tom Bombadil takes everyone home and tells them THE ENTIRE STORY OF ALL THE AGES OF THE EARTH BACKWARDS UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE MOMENT OF CREATION, THE BIG BANG ITSELF and then Frodo Baggins falls asleep.

Tom Bombadil knows about plate tectonics

This is sort of a lie, Tom Bombadil describes the oceans of old being in a different place, which works as a standard visual of Old English creation, which being Christian followed vaguely Genesis lines, and vaguely Christian Genesis involves a lot of water. TOLKIEN knew about plate tectonics though.

Actually I just checked whether Tolkien knew about plate tectonics because I know the advent of plate tectonics theory took forever bc people HATED it and Alfred Wegener suffered for like 50 years. So! actually while Tolkien was writing LOTR, the scientific community was literally still not sure plate tectonics existed. Tom Bombadil knew tho.

Remember that next time you (a geologist) are forced to look at the Middle Earth map.

I'm not even done with Tom Bombadil but I'm stopping here tonight. Plate tectonics got me. There's a great early (but almost high!) medieval treatise on cosmology and also volcanoes and i wonder if tolkien read it. oh my god. i'm going to bed.

edit: part II

[thevagueambition]

1, 10, 13, and 22 for the history ask? C:

1: Favourite historical person

I already answered this one here. Short answer: Magnus Hirschfeld.

10: Pieces of art ( paintings, sculpures, lithographies, ect.) related to history you like most ( post an image of them)

It's probably no secret that I have a fondness for homoerotic neoclassical art, lol

Aesthetically I have other art movements that speak to me more (post-impressionism, for instance) but what fascinates me about neoclassical art is also the whole... god, like European obsession with the classics and how that intersects with different aspects of society and how like, there's a huge difference between studying what the classical world was actually like versus what people through history have thought the classical world was like and how that has been used rhetorically at different points in time and....!

I'm going to go with That One Minotaur Sculpture Where It Looks Like Theseus Is Riding Him (ie Theseus and the Minotaur, Antonio Canova, 1781-82). Aside from the pose being both amusing and genuinely erotic, the fact that it is eroticised in this way also talks to contemporary art theory and like, the homoerotic as part of the artistic ideal in itself and how classical subject matter was used to filter that?? Idk, there's just a lot going on with that sculpture and the culture surrounding its creation lol.

13: Something random about some random historical person in a random era

Ah, erhm... Gah, I find this one difficult, I'm more about broad movements than specific people...

According to her autobiography (which I have only read random snippets of, it can be found here in Danish, German, British English and American English), when Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener first arrived in Paris, they stayed in the hotel room Oscar Wilde had been staying in when he died and they were inspired to reread a few of his works.

22: Random historical fact about the place you are at the moment

The first written reference to the village that would become Copenhagen in historical sources is in Knýtlinga saga, where it's referred to as Höfn or Havn (literally "Harbour").

Old Norse Sveinn flýði fyrst til Sjólands með þat lið, er undan hafði komiz ok honum vildi fylgja, en Magnús konungr sigldi þegar eptir honum ok kom at Sveini, þar sem heitir í Höfn; lá hann þar fyrir fám skipum; (source) Danish Svend flygtede først til Sjælland med de folk, der var undkommet og ville følge ham, men kong Magnus sejlede straks efter ham og traf Svend på det sted, der hedder Havn; dér lå han med et fåtal af skibe. (source) Quick English translation of the Danish by me Svend first fled to Zealand with those of the survivors who wanted to follow him, but King Magnus sailed after him at once and met Svend at the place that is called Havn; there he lay with a small number of ships.

This reference seems to check out with archaeological data as a village located around where central Copenhagen is today, from what I've read.

Of course the more famous early reference to Copenhagen is the second one, where Bishop Absalon was granted dominion over a slew of areas by the pope with "Hafnia" among them.

__

Thanks for asking!

[blue-saaaaargent]

I posted 4,356 times in 2021

52 posts created (1%)

4304 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 82.8 posts.

I added 4,659 tags in 2021

#marvel - 1297 posts

#sp - 1221 posts

#wandavision - 414 posts

#wwdits - 322 posts

#loki - 298 posts

#wandavision spoilers - 281 posts

#loki spoilers - 224 posts

#wanda maximoff - 222 posts

#tfatws - 207 posts

#art - 173 posts

Longest Tag: 133 characters

#yeah like. as a white person we should definitely be aware that we can still participate in forms of oppression against our poc peers

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

kate’s mom picking out a red dress for her to wear and kate wearing an all black suit instead. that’s kinda lgbt

151 notes • Posted 2021-11-25 04:52:53 GMT

#4

WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT

META TIME

SO, everything up until the “we crossed the threshold” bit was scripted, right? By Kang? And he wanted Loki and Sylvie to take over running the TVA for him. He said he was looking for a good person to replace it but realized it would be best if it were the TWO of them. 

He knew they were coming. He planned it that way. He wanted the two of them to work together as a unit, as a couple. He WROTE THEM to have feelings for each other! 

Loki and Sylvie have not come together romantically at all naturally. This whole time it’s been other people insisting that their bond is romantic - weird as hell, but romantic - while their very chemistry screams against it. Loki and Sylvie clearly have a genuine bond and care about each other, but as friends, as equals, as pseudo-siblings. Now they’re writing their own story, now they have free will, and their kiss under free will wasn’t genuine, it was a deception. I think that once no higher power is dictating their feelings, they’re going to realize that while they love each other, they’re not in love. Or at least Loki is bc it’s seemed pretty one-sided

182 notes • Posted 2021-07-15 00:31:29 GMT

#3

Why are the marvel disney+ shows all so goddamn fruity. like first we have homoerotic witches and honestly just the entire vibe of wandavison, then we have the “you want to fuck me so bad it makes you look stupid” chaos of tfatws, and now loki with a norse god and interdimensional time bureaucrat manipulating each other into liking them and reluctantly liking them too and might actually address loki being genderfluid and honestly im having the time of my life

258 notes • Posted 2021-06-17 01:24:02 GMT

#2

Why has no one giffed that scene in black widow when melina tells yelena there’s a change of plans bc she completely destroyed one of the engines and they’re now crashing bc rachel weisz’s delivery killed me

324 notes • Posted 2021-07-10 22:13:44 GMT

#1

Maybe I’m just hormonal but the queer allegory in Luca made me sob. Like luca running from the threat of his parents “sending him away” and alberto being abandoned by his dad and luca trying to protect himself by turning on alberto and showing the importance of found family and those old ladies who revealed themselves as sea monsters in solidarity at the end??? I think it hit especially hard because the characters are just so young. I think every queer person can see themselves in those scared little kids and it made me want to protect all the kids that are going through that right now and tell them it’s going to be okay. Or maybe it’ll seem less dramatic in a few days when I stop pmsing idk

4629 notes • Posted 2021-06-19 20:32:24 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[gifts-of-heimdall-runes]

Pantheon of Norse Gods: THOR

Pantheon of Norse Gods: LOKI

Pantheon of Norse Gods: BALDR

Pantheon of Norse Gods: ULLR

•

All images were created by Djvenom45 on DeviantArt.

•

Djvenom45 account has since disappeared from DeviantArt, so these personal downloads will preserve these unique, delicious, and slightly risqué posts for posterity.

[gifts-of-heimdall-runes]

Odin

Artist: Sandra SanTara (2008)

Original images was slightly edited by gifts-of-heimdall-runes.