Shield-maidens appeared in many of the Norse sagas and heroic poems. A shield-maiden was a fierce female warrior. She was wild and determined, proud and honourable, fearless in battle, and in some cases, able to control fate. One of my favourite examples of a shield-maiden in Norse literature is Hervor.   Hervor was born into a noble family, but she was wild and strong-willed. She refused to live the quiet life. Taking a man’s name, she joined a band of Viking warriors and sa

Gilgamesh was one of the earliest figures in human history to stand at the intersection between fact and myth. While he was the semi-divine protagonist of The Epic of Gilgamesh , one of humanity’s oldest surviving literary epics, he was also a real-world Sumerian king. In this post, we’ll find out exactly how Gilgamesh rose to become a god-king of Sumer. First, let’s look at the historical background behind Gilgamesh’s reign. In the fertile region of ancient Mesopotamia, Sume

In Old Norse, poets were called skalds. Skalds were highly regarded oral storytellers operating in Viking society. They specialised in skaldic poetry, an elaborate form of verse that often praised whichever king they served. Skaldic poetry was a complex system where words were woven together with skill and intricacy. This began with the poetic structure. The skalds used a form of verse called drottkvætt. A drottkvætt stanza was written in eight lines. Each line had six sylla

The Anglo-Saxon elegies are some of my all-time favourite poems. They are an extremely beautiful form of Old English poetic verse that is full of loss, longing, and lamentation. The poems often explore things like personal grief, the transience of life, and the inevitability of fate. Sounds cheery, right? Let’s get started! First of all, who were the Anglo-Saxons?... The Anglo-Saxons were the dominant cultural force in England from the fifth to the eleventh centuries. They li

History gives us facts: dates, names, and events , things that can be verified. It gives structure to the past. But history is limited. It focuses on what can be proven and documented, which means it often leaves out inner experience. History can tell us when a city fell, who led the army, and how long the siege lasted. What it cannot tell us is what it felt like to watch the walls burn, or to believe that the gods had turned away. History gives us the skeleton of the past, b