Wane Wyrds

So last night I was surfing through the Netflix lineup of documentaries and came across the doc The God Who Wasn't There. I watched it and thought it was so interesting, hey, why not write a blog about it. This doc was directed by a former fundamentalist christian turned atheist, and it's premise is an examination of the historical, factual development of Christianity in it's earliest days. This is something I have been studying in depth for my Humanities courses as of late, so naturally I was interested.

The image of the snake, serpent, or dragon has always troubled me. I think this is in part because of my Christian upbringing, and in part because of the natural primitive repulsion we all still carry on some level. For many the snake is a symbol of mortal danger, and to some it inspires irrational fear. I am not afraid of snakes, but I do carry a natural wariness of them. But anyway, back to the point. The serpent in Nordic mythology. Thanks to my new enrollment at the University of Oklahoma, I now have access to a wealth of information on just about any subject in the world thanks to the online resources of the University resources. Today I was reading an article called Fragments of Ancient Beliefs: The Snake as a Multivocal Symbol in Nordic Mythology by Gro Mandt. Though I did not find anything in it that blew me out of the water, I did find some interesting ideas there that I thought were worth a bit of blogging. One point was the discussion of the snake as rather ambiguou...