December in Review (Patreon)

My new year starts today, since I was so sick over the last four days I can barely tell you what my name was before I fell ill. This morning I'm up to about 25% capacity, and much like Gandalf after his fight with the Balrog I'm not even sure this counts as the same lifetime any longer.

Probably the "biggest" video of December was part 1 in my remake of my extremely old video about the Afterlife. Part 1: Hel and General Concepts looks at descriptions of Hel (both the place and the being) in our Old Norse primary sources, and discusses some basic facts about the afterlife in Old Norse belief that I think we are inclined to forget or gloss over today. One of my biggest points in the video is that the Old Norse afterlife is physical, i.e. the body and the soul seem to go together. Our modern-day idea that the soul goes somewhere else seems unfamiliar to the Norse sources, but also to ancient and medieval thinkers of many other religious traditions. This is an example of what I'm warning about in my video about not being so anxious about the influence of the assumptions of medieval Christians like Snorri, but more about the influence of the assumptions that we (800 years further away than Snorri) import into our interpretation of an ancient belief system. About two years ago I also touched on that here.

Part 2 in the afterlife series will take a detailed look at Valhǫll (Valhalla). I am still assembling all the primary sources that I want to cite in what will surely be another "big" video.

My in-depth discussion of the afterlife is meant for someone who already has some basic familiarity with the Eddas, but I know that many people find my videos when they're searching for answers to more basic questions. One that I'm trying to answer clearly for as many people as possible is what the difference between the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda really is. 

In the vein of general language learning, I also posted an introduction to how the different noun cases of Indo-European languages (like Old Norse, German, Russian, Latin, etc.) are used. The video does not use examples from any specific language, which I hope makes it more approachable by someone learning any of them.

I continued Egill Skalla-Grímsson's story in part 4 and wrapped it up in part 5 (technically in January, but as I mentioned I strayed out of thought and time, and each day was as long as a life-age of the earth). I also talked about some of the adventures of the shieldmaiden Hervǫr from my upcoming translation of her exciting saga.

I remembered that my "2017 Youtube Retrospective" was a popular video at the end of last year, so I also wrapped up this year with a "2018 Youtube Retrospective." And on Christmas Eve I posted probably my least Norse-related video ever, my own original Christmas carol called "Bronc-Bustin' Santa." 

The special surprise project with Hackett that I alluded to in the Retrospective video? You can be sure that you'll hear about that here first.

Stella also tells me that all the international patreon holiday cards are mailed. A big thanks to Stella for repackaging and readdressing all of those.

On another note, I moved my Tuesday updates to Mondays in the last weeks to avoid Christmas and New Year's Day. I might continue to post on a Monday/Thursday(/Saturday) schedule as I liked the way that split the week more evenly.

Thank you for your continued generous support on Patreon going into another year!