The Ledberg Runestone
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The Ledberg Runestone
The author of Demon Jack delivers the first novel ina daring Southern urban fantasy adventure perfect for fans of Jim Butcher and M.D. Massey. Magic: To some, it’s spectacle. To Jonah, it’s pure profit. A shaman for hire, Jonah can tap into his powers as easily as turning on a light switch, but the real money is in putting on a show. And after putting himself in debt to the Carver brothers, Asheville’s version of a mafia, in order to save his father’s business, he’s in need of some real money. Then a mysterious woman makes Jonah a staggering offer: $20,000—to find and deliver the Ledberg runestone, a legendary artifact of Norse myth. He’s suspicious of the case and the buyer, but when the Carvers threaten Jonah’s father if they don’t get their payment within the month, Jonah starts his investigation. As he explores Asheville’s seedy magical underbelly, Jonah discovers he’s not alone on the hunt. Will Jonah survive long enough to save his father, or will his past of swindling mortals and dodging debt collectors finally catch up with him? “The plot itself is fun . . . We have twists and an exceptional one at the end; but what holds it together is this unique character and the foundations it lays for something truly epic to come.”—Fangs for the Fantasy
The Viking King’s Golden Treasure
A newly discovered material rewrites early Danish Viking history. In 2014 a 11-year-old girl, Maja Sielski, and her younger sister Julia, made a sensational discovery among their deceased grandmother's belongings. They found a small golden plate with a Latin script telling the story of the legendary Viking king Harald Bluetooth. It soon turned out that the golden plate was once placed in the king's tomb and this tomb contained world's largest known golden treasure of Viking-era. A transcript of a previously unknown chronicle, "Gesta Wulinensis ecclesiae pontificum" from the 990s has also been found. The manuscript was written by the king’s own priest Avico, probably in an attempt to canonize the king after his death in year 985. Avico has been in the service of the king since the 950s. His extensive account gives a remarkable and dramatic picture of the Viking age Scandinavia during the 10th century. Here is a story of the struggle for power and the foundation of the future dynasties in Denmark, Sweden and Norway as well as Viking raids in Ireland and England. The account also tells of the founding of the legendary Viking fortress of Jomsborg and the fortress’s powerful mercenaries. The book describes in detail these unique facts, but it also gives an overall picture of the Viking Age era for those who are not familiar with the subject. The Curmsun Disc The Curmsun Disc is a concave gold disc of a weight of 25.23 grams (0.890 oz) and a diameter of 4.5 centimetres (1.8 in). The Danish Viking king Harald Bluetooth and the name of the stronghold of Jomsborg is mentioned in the latin inscription on the disc. The disc was reportedly found as part of a Viking Age hoard discovered in 1841 in the cellar crypt of the ruined chapel at Groß-Weckow village in Pomerania. This location is just east of the bank of the river Dievenow and near the place where the semi-legendary Viking stronghold of Jomsborg stood between the 960's and 1043. According to the author the entrance to the crypt was accidentally discovered by a 12-year-old Heinrich Boldt (actor Ben Affleck's said-to-be maternal great-great grandfather), who was playing with some younger children at a construction site near the ruined chapel.
Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages
Author: Stephen A. Mitchell
language: en
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Release Date: 2011-06-06
Stephen A. Mitchell here offers the fullest examination available of witchcraft in late medieval Scandinavia. He focuses on those people believed to be able—and who in some instances thought themselves able—to manipulate the world around them through magical practices, and on the responses to these beliefs in the legal, literary, and popular cultures of the Nordic Middle Ages. His sources range from the Icelandic sagas to cultural monuments much less familiar to the nonspecialist, including legal cases, church art, law codes, ecclesiastical records, and runic spells. Mitchell's starting point is the year 1100, by which time Christianity was well established in elite circles throughout Scandinavia, even as some pre-Christian practices and beliefs persisted in various forms. The book's endpoint coincides with the coming of the Reformation and the onset of the early modern Scandinavian witch hunts. The terrain covered is complex, home to the Germanic Scandinavians as well as their non-Indo-European neighbors, the Sámi and Finns, and it encompasses such diverse areas as the important trade cities of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Stockholm, with their large foreign populations; the rural hinterlands; and the insular outposts of Iceland and Greenland. By examining witches, wizards, and seeresses in literature, lore, and law, as well as surviving charm magic directed toward love, prophecy, health, and weather, Mitchell provides a portrait of both the practitioners of medieval Nordic magic and its performance. With an understanding of mythology as a living system of cultural signs (not just ancient sacred narratives), this study also focuses on such powerful evolving myths as those of "the milk-stealing witch," the diabolical pact, and the witches' journey to Blåkulla. Court cases involving witchcraft, charm magic, and apostasy demonstrate that witchcraft ideologies played a key role in conceptualizing gender and were themselves an important means of exercising social control.