In Norse religion, Asgard ( Old Norse: Ásgarðr ; meaning " Enclosure of the Æsir ") is one of the Nine Worlds and is the country or capital city of the Norse Gods surrounded by an incomplete wall attributed to a Hrimthurs riding the stallion Svaðilfari, according to Gylfaginning.

As such, various modern scholars have begun to apply the term to three groups of separate faiths: Historical Polytheism ( such as Celtic polytheism, Norse Paganism, the Cultus Deorum Romanorum and Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism also called Hellenismos ), Folk / ethnic / Indigenous religions ( such as Chinese folk religion and African traditional religion ), and Neopaganism ( such as Wicca and Germanic Neopaganism ).

Asatru, a modern-day revival of Germanic Paganism, holds " that the Eddas, Myths and Norse Sagas are the divinely inspired wisdom of religion ".

The tree of life appears in Norse religion as Yggdrasil, the world tree, a massive tree ( sometimes considered a yew or ash tree ) with extensive lore surrounding it.

Norse mythology, sagas and literature tell of Scandinavian culture and religion through tales of heroic and mythological heroes.

The indigenous pre-Christian belief system of the Anglo-Saxons was a form of Germanic paganism and therefore closely related to the Old Norse religion, as well as other Germanic pre-Christian cultures.

In Old Norse, ( or, plural ; feminine, plural ) is the term denoting a member of the principal pantheon in the indigenous European religion known as Norse paganism.

The new religion, which replaced the old Norse religious practices, had many advantages for the king.

The story examines religion through the eyes of Alex, a Christian political activist who is corrupted by Margrethe, a Danish Norse cruise ship hostess — and who loves every minute of it.

Ukko is held by researchers of religion to be largely parallel to the Indo-European patriarchal sky deities, including but not limited to Zeus and Juppiter of the Classical Greco-Roman pantheon and the Norse god Thor ( albeit with properties of Odin.

So entirely did even his immediate circle ignore his religion that Eyvindr Skáldaspillir, his court poet, composed the poem Hákonarmál on his death, representing his reception by the Norse gods into Valhalla.

Many historical faiths also made use of them, including Greek and Norse religion.

In Scandinavia, the old Scandinavian religion contained human sacrifice, and both the Norse sagas and German historians relate of this, see e. g. Temple at Uppsala and Blót.

Such stories also have counterparts in other Indo-European mythologies: the slaying of the serpent Vritra by Indra in Vedic religion, the battle between Thor and Jörmungandr in the Norse story of Ragnarok, the Greek account of the defeat of the Titan Typhon by Zeus.

The parallel to Norse Ymir is often considered to reflect the myth's origin in Proto-Indo-European religion.

Ultimately stemming from Proto-Indo-European religion, Thor is a prominently mentioned god throughout the recorded history of the Germanic peoples, from the Roman occupation of regions of Germania, to the tribal expansions of the Migration Period, to his high popularity during the Viking Age, when, in the face of the process of the Christianization of Scandinavia, emblems of his hammer, Mjölnir, were worn in defiance and Norse pagan personal names containing the name of the god bear witness to his popularity.

Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson ( July 4, 1924 – December 23, 1993 ), a native of Iceland, was instrumental in helping to gain recognition by the Icelandic government for the pre-Christian Norse religion.

In addition to the island of Hârn itself, products have been released covering the nearby regions of Shôrkýnè ( a large feudal kingdom with a weak king ) and Ivínia ( an analogue of Scandinavia complete with fjords, Vikings, and a religion similar to that of the old Norse ).

Religion in Iceland was initially the Viking religion that believed in Norse mythology.

Norse religion refers to the religious traditions of the Norsemen prior to the Christianization of Scandinavia, specifically during the Viking Age.

The conception that diseases and death come from invisible shots sent by supernatural beings, or magicians is common in Germanic and Norse mythology.

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Asgard is derived from Old Norse āss, god + garðr, enclosure ; from Indo-European roots ansu-spirit, demon ( see cognate ahura ) + gher-grasp, enclose ( see cognates garden and yard ).< ref >; See also ansu-and gher -< sup > 1 </ sup > in " Appendix I: Indo-European Roots " in the same work .</ ref >

Alfheim (, " elf home ") is one of the Nine Worlds and home of the Light Elves in Norse mythology and appears also in Anglo-Scottish ballads under the form Elfhame ( Elphame, Elfame ) as a fairyland, sometimes modernized as Elfland ( Elfinland, Elvenland ).

Álfheim as an abode of the Elves is mentioned only twice in Old Norse texts.

Old Norse askr literally means " ash tree " but the etymology of embla is uncertain, and two possibilities of the meaning of embla are generally proposed.

Ægir ( Old Norse " sea ") is a sea giant, god of the ocean and king of the sea creatures in Norse mythology.

( from Icelandic for " Æsir faith ", pronounced, in Old Norse ) is a form of Germanic neopaganism which developed in the United States from the 1970s.

is an Icelandic ( and equivalently Old Norse ) term consisting of two parts.

The first is -, genitive of, denoting one of the group of Norse heathen gods called.

The term is the Old Norse / Icelandic translation of, a neologism coined in the context of 19th century romantic nationalism, used by Edvard Grieg in his 1870 opera Olaf Trygvason.

( plural ), the term used to identify those who practice Ásatrú is a compound with ( Old Norse ) " man ".

A Goði or Gothi ( plural goðar ) is the historical Old Norse term for a priest and chieftain in Norse paganism.

The word aegis is identified with protection by a strong force with its roots in Greek mythology and adopted by the Romans ; there are parallels in Norse mythology and in Egyptian mythology as well, where the Greek word aegis is applied by extension.

Ægir is an Old Norse word meaning " terror " and the name of a destructive giant associated with the sea ; ægis is the genitive ( possessive ) form of ægir and has no direct relation to Greek aigis.

The exact derivation is unclear, with the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall all being possible candidates.

A draugr, draug or ( Icelandic ) draugur ( original Old Norse plural draugar, as used here, not " draugrs "), or draugen ( Norwegian, Swedish and Danish, meaning " the draug "), also known as aptrganga (" afturgöngur " in modern Icelandic ) ( literally " after-walker ", or " one who walks after death ") is an undead creature from Norse mythology, a subset of Germanic mythology.

Frigg ( sometimes anglicized as Frigga ) is a major goddess in Norse paganism, a subset of Germanic paganism.

* The Danish tongue or Old Norse, the parent language of all North Germanic languages

By the 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse, had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse.

Old Norse Frigg ( genitive Friggjar ), Old Saxon Fri, and Old English Frig are derived from Common Germanic Frijjō.

The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat earth cosmography of the earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi ( a world-tree: Yggdrasil, or pillar: Irminsul ) in the centre.

Surviving accounts of Germanic mythology and later Norse mythology contain numerous tales and mentions of female goddesses, female giantesses, and divine female figures.

Other female deities such as the valkyries, the norns, and the dísir are associated with a Germanic concept of fate ( Old Norse Ørlög, Old English Wyrd ), and celebrations were held in their honor, such as the Dísablót and Disting.

It is also noted to have been a place of dwelling for Balder, Forseti's father in Norse and Germanic mythologies.

Memory of the Hunnic conquest was transmitted orally among Germanic peoples and is an important component in the Old Norse Völsunga saga and Hervarar saga and in the Middle High German Nibelungenlied.

Huginn and Muninn's role as Odin's messengers has been linked to shamanic practices, the Norse raven banner, general raven symbolism among the Germanic peoples, and the Norse concepts of the fylgja and the hamingja.

* Germanic paganism, Finnish Paganism, Norse paganism

English is thus more closely related to West Frisian than to any other modern language, although less than a quarter of the vocabulary of Modern English is shared with West Frisian or other West Germanic languages because of extensive borrowings from Norse, Norman, Latin, and other languages.

It was during the Viking invasions of the Anglo-Saxon period that Old English was influenced by contact with Norse, a group of North Germanic dialects spoken by the Vikings, who came to control a large region in the North of England known as the Danelaw.

Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing ( declined ) adjective.

The practice of forming kennings has traditionally been seen as a common Germanic inheritance, but this has been disputed since, among the early Germanic languages, their use is largely restricted to Old Norse and Old English poetry.

Still others maintain it is of generic Germanic origin, not necessarily Scandinavian, comparing it with the German Knute, Dutch knoet ( both meaning knout ) and with Old Norse knutr, Anglo-Saxon cnotta and English knot.

The word manuscript derives from the Medieval Latin manuscriptum, a word first recorded in 1594 as a Latinisation of earlier Germanic words used in the Middle Ages: compare Middle High German hantschrift ( c. 1450 ), Old Norse handrit ( bef.

Midgard ( an anglicised form of Old Norse ; Old English, Old High German, Gothic Midjun-gards ; literally " middle enclosure ") is the name for the world ( in the sense of oikoumene ) inhabited by and known to humans in early Germanic cosmology, and specifically one of the Nine Worlds and in Norse mythology.