The Question of Ancient Scandinavian Cultic Buildings: with Particular Reference to Old Norse hof

The article focuses on the question of ancient Scandinavian cultic buildings, with particular reference to the concept Old Norse hof. I survey the semantics of this term in written sources, in poetic traditions, in the Sagas of the Icelanders and in place names. My hypothesis is that the term does not refer to a static phenomenon, but rather its meaning varies across different sources and contexts. It is therefore often difficult to apply it as a general concept, or to connect it with a specific type of archaeological find or structure, as has occasionally been the case in the archaeology of religion

Jens Peter Schjødt: Initiation Between Two Worlds: Structure and Symbolism in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religion.

Jens Peter Schjødt har under de senaste decennierna haft en central ställning inom forskningsfältet fornskandinavisk religionshistoria. Många forskare med intressen inom fältet var därför nyfikna och hade stora förväntningar då det blev offentliggjort att han skulle försvara sin doktorsavhandling Initiation, liminalitet og tilegnelse af numinøs viden. En undersøgelse af struktur og symbolik i førkristen nordisk religion vid Aarhus universitet i maj 2004. Den danska stencilavhandlingen trycktes dock endast upp i ett begränsat antal exemplar och har varit svår att få tag på för forskare runt om i världen. Nu är det problemet löst, då avhandlingen översatts till engelska och publicerats i bearbetad form med titeln Initiation Between Two Worlds: Structure and Symbolism in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religion i serien The Viking Collection. Resultatet är ett imponerande verk som är mycket innehållsrikt. Det framgår att författaren arbetat med det i närmare tjugo år

Towards a Unified View of Inhomogeneous Stellar Winds in Isolated Supergiant Stars and Supergiant High Mass X-Ray Binaries

Massive stars, at least ∼10 times more massive than the Sun, have two key properties that make them the main drivers of evolution of star clusters, galaxies, and the Universe as a whole. On the one hand, the outer layers of massive stars are so hot that they produce most of the ionizing ultraviolet radiation of galaxies; in fact, the first massive stars helped to re-ionize the Universe after its Dark Ages. Another important property of massive stars are the strong stellar winds and outflows they produce. This mass loss, and finally the explosion of a massive star as a supernova or a gamma-ray burst, provide a significant input of mechanical and radiative energy into the interstellar space. These two properties together make massive stars one of the most important cosmic engines: they trigger the star formation and enrich the interstellar medium with heavy elements, that ultimately leads to formation of Earth-like rocky planets and the development of complex life. The study of massive star winds is thus a truly multidisciplinary field and has a wide impact on different areas of astronomy. In recent years observational and theoretical evidences have been growing that these winds are not smooth and homogeneous as previously assumed, but rather populated by dense “clumps”. The presence of these structures dramatically affects the mass loss rates derived from the study of stellar winds. Clump properties in isolated stars are nowadays inferred mostly through indirect methods (i.e., spectroscopic observations of line profiles in various wavelength regimes, and their analysis based on tailored, inhomogeneous wind models). The limited characterization of the clump physical properties (mass, size) obtained so far have led to large uncertainties in the mass loss rates from massive stars. Such uncertainties limit our understanding of the role of massive star winds in galactic and cosmic evolution. Supergiant high mass X-ray binaries (SgXBs) are among the brightest X-ray sources in the sky. A large number of them consist of a neutron star accreting from the wind of a massive companion and producing a powerful X-ray source. The characteristics of the stellar wind together with the complex interactions between the compact object and the donor star determine the observed X-ray output from all these systems. Consequently, the use of SgXBs for studies of massive stars is only possible when the physics of the stellar winds, the compact objects, and accretion mechanisms are combined together and confronted with observations. This detailed review summarises the current knowledge on the theory and observations of winds from massive stars, as well as on observations and accretion processes in wind-fed high mass X-ray binaries. The aim is to combine in the near future all available theoretical diagnostics and observational measurements to achieve a unified picture of massive star winds in isolated objects and in binary systems.SMN acknowledges support by research project ESP2016-76683-C3-1-R. LS acknowledges the Italian Space Agency financial support INTEGRAL ASI/INAF agreement n. 2013-025.R.0, and the grant from PRIN-INAF 2014, “Towards a unified picture of accretion in High Mass X-Ray Binaries” (PI: Sidoli). AGG acknowledges support by Spanish MICINN under FPI Fellowship BES-2011-050874 and the Vicerectorat d’Investigació, Desenvolupament i Innovació de la Universitat d’Alacant under project GRE12-35. IK, MK, and JW are supported by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie under grant number 50OR1207 of the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt. MK also acknowledges support by the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie under Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt grant 50OR1113. AS is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under grant HA 1455/26. JMT acknowledges research grants ESP2013-48637-C2-2P and ESP2014-53672-C3-3-P. This publication was motivated by a team meeting sponsored by the International Space Science Institute at Bern, Switzerland

Blod och blót : Blodets betydelse och funktion vid fornskandinaviska offerriter

In this article, Snorri Sturluson’s description of the pre-Christian sacrifice of Hákonar saga góða 14–18 is discussed from a source-critical perspective with a focus on the sacrificial terminology, the bloody rites and the ritual objects used. In addition to this, I broaden my documentation to other sources that inform about the ancient Scandinavian sacrifices in order to investigate whether Snorri’s description is based on old traditions. In this context I also establish a broader comparative perspective, including Greek and Roman sources. During the latter part of the article the significance and function of sacrificial blood in the Viking Age religion is discussed, in which earlier interpretations are also taken into ac­count. The overall hypothesis is that the blood had an important significance in the Viking Age calendrical rituals in Scandinavia, just as Snorri suggests. In the kind of rites depicted by Snorri the blood was perceived as a sacrificial gift (i.e. “the divine part”) of a communion meal

The Pre-Christian Cult of Dead Royalty in Old Norse Sources : Medieval Speculations or Ancient Traditions?

The intention of present study is to investigate the information about the pre-Christian cult of a dead king presented in Óláfs þáttr Geirstaðaálfs from the perspective of history of religions. It is argued that even though the narrative about King Óláfr Guðrøðarson contained in this þáttr cannot be regarded as a historical source in a general sense (since it is partly affected by anachronistic Christian ideas, and includes other aspects which must be considered as rather fantastic), it nonetheless contains memories of ancient customs and rituals related to the old ruler ideology (which seems to contain a sort of hero cult), which were passed on to the medieval scribes of the þáttr by means of living oral tradition. Information from other types of sources, such as skaldic poetry, ecclesiastic narratives, archaeological materials, medieval laws and mythic traditions, support such assumption