Euro-cultural heritage issues

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This Mixes politics AND religion.

A big portion of our civil, social and cultural traditions come from the glorification and adaptation of greek/roman myth, law and cultural practices.

Aspects of that are not always the most positive. I think of Socrates being forced to drink poison for the "good" of society. In many ways, the ancient roman and greek ideals, their sense of justice that is, could be quite emotional and treacherous.

I also see that the continuance of political backstabbing seen in modern democratic governments has a commonality with the roman senate, even if people are not being outright murdered.

It was only as a teen that I became aware of the surpressed nordic european traditions. In school we read the Iliad and not the Eddas. I find I vastly prefer my ancestors weregild(man-price) to the blood revenge(vendetta) favoured by the mediterranean people(of the time), and I wonder about the negative influence this has had on our society.

I understand, of course, that there are many people here that DO have ancestry from those peoples, and thus your thoughts will be doubly valuable to me.

So here is the question(finally).

Do you think modern western society would be better served to have not supressed the northern european bronze, iron and dark age traditions in favour of the ideals of the greek mythos?

This is for people of all the world to answer of course.

Those in the third world might need to read a little on it, and all of us should consider the political and social climate of the descendants or the nordics. By this I mean countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, The Netherlands...Some of the best places to live in the world.

Certainly those that feel oppressed should have some strong opinions on the matter.

Maybe it just appeals to me as an aspie because they had firmer rules than the mediterranean sense of justice.


Discuss. Please.

I think that the Nordic cultural traditions are more like ancient Rome and Greece and less like the more recent Christian imprints.

The polytheism of the Ásartrú is very parallel to the old Greek and Roman religions. The US legal system bears a mark of Rome, but it is very much an English Common Law system, and the Angles and Saxons were viking types. I read Beowulf when in high school, along with a bit of Shakespeare and some Ibsen.

The ´cannon´ of literature can be biased towards the classics of Greece and Rome, true. But much of that was groundbreaking and did change the way people think. Pythagoras was a radical dude. The Socratic method still makes sense. Yes, making him drink henbane was harsh, but the viking literature is not free of murders and wars and rape and pillage.

Should the Sagas and Eddas be more widely taught in schools? Maybe. There is no shortage of things to pick from, and sometimes people hate things they are forced to learn.

I don't think people in the 3rd world care which European culture gets how much focus - either they want to promote their own traditions, they don't care, or they want to adopt whatever beliefs are popular in the west.

Real-Iceland.com - the site hasn't been updated for a while, but has some good content.

Do you think modern western society would be better served to have not supressed the northern european bronze, iron and dark age traditions in favour of the ideals of the greek mythos?

The Nordic vikings were never known to be very peaceful people.The Eddas are full of revenge, murders, duels, wars etc. etc. Violence was nothing to be ashamed of in the good old days. Perhaps they didn't have the opportunity to stab each other in the back with daggers, they just cleaved skulls with axes...

The vikings were not really admirable people. Their legal system was just as unstable as their society in general. Different tribes fought each other and there was no real government in any part of Scandinavia before 900 Ad. There were kingdoms, of course, but the power of those kings was not very strong and they were rarely able to control greater areas than their own villages. I exaggerate somewhat but I guess you get the point.

The man-gild appears in early Medieval (ca. 1200 AD) Scandinavian laws and was probably a very old tradition. This law may or may not have been followed in remote areas where there was no kings or "noblemen".

The political and social climate in the modern Nordic countries has nothing, or very little, to do with Viking-age traditions. Much has happened since that.

(Sweden can't be the best place to live in; the Swedes are notorious bureaucrats.They create chaos out of nothing. Besides they are not very good at ice-hockey:) )

From my readings in old Norse mythology, it bears a strong resemblance to the Greco-Roman pantheons and also contains a few traces of Hindu mythology. (The "Lay of Rig", with its description of the creation of a caste system, may be relevant here.)

Both the Poetic Edda and Snorri's Prose Edda were put into written form some years after the Christianization of Scandinavia and also allude to a knowledge of Christian mythology. In some places, the description of Ragnarok in the Voluspa bears more than a passing resemblance to the book of Revelations. Barring a major archeological find of a pre-Christian text, we may never know if the stories have been accurately transmitted.

As for "The Nordic vikings were never known to be very peaceful people", the Viking age only started around the year 800 CE. This is rather close to the time of Charlemagne's atrocities, and I suspect the initial raids were retribution for attacks on Norse and Saxon villages.

(Oh, and weregild rocks. Compensation is vastly superior to eye-for-eye-for-eye... madness.)

What's that quasi-secret group that Rumsfeld and others belonged to and that espoused the Roman imperialist dictum? Skull and Bones something something? [i don't feel like googling it right now]

It's true that our warlike and imperialist ways come directly from the Graeco-Roman tradition (in many ways), but I'm not sure that Nordic (what the Romans called "Barbarians") or even certain Asian traditions would be much better alternatives.

We were screwed as soon as the patriarchy took over, diminishing or eliminating the role of goddesses in their religions (from what they called "pagan" traditions), glorifying violence and warfare, and asserting human dominance over nature. Though humankind has often shifted between matriarchal and patriarchal cultures, the classical tradition--which is essentially death- rather than life-affirming--has dominated from the time of the ancient Greeks to this day.

And yes, we do have lots of "man"-made machines, technological doodads, and monolithic buildings to show for it (which, had we remained a matriarchal society, we may or may not have had today). But I'll take a life of napping in warm breezes, dancing, singing, laughing, loving, and foraging a couple hours per day for food (over staring for hours at radioactive machines, ingesting psychiatric "medications," blowing myself to bits in wars, and prostituting half of my waking life for the benefit of a corporation) any day.

But I'm just a woman; what do I know?

[does that sound bitter? sorry, it's past my bedtime.]

Yes, well funny you should mention the diff. btw bonobo/chimp, because bonobo is matriarchal/peace-loving and chimps are the opposite--kind of like Neanderthal vs. Hss (or AS vs. NT, to generalize a bit). The pic is actually a reconstruction of an Australopithicus (sp?) child's remains found last year or so (same species as Lucy). So, it's a human.