Empfehlungen basierend auf "Gods, Demigods and Demons"

Myths and Legends of the Celts is a fascinating and wide-ranging introduction to the mythology of the peoples who inhabited the northwestern fringes of Europe—from Britain and the Isle of Man to Gaul and Brittany. Drawing on recent historical and archeological research, as well as literary and oral sources, the guide looks at the gods and goddesses of Celtic myth; at the nature of Celtic religion, with its rituals of sun and moon worship; and at the druids who served society as judges, diviners, and philosophers. It also examines the many Celtic deities who were linked with animals and such natural phenomena as rivers and caves, or who later became associated with local Christian saints. And it explores in detail the rich variety of Celtic myths: from early legends of King Arthur to the stories of the Welsh Mabinogi, and from tales of heroes including Cúchulainn, Fionn mac Cumhaill, and the warrior queen Medb, to tales of shadowy otherworlds—the homes of spirits and fairies. What emerges is a wonderfully diverse and fertile tradition of myth-making that has captured the imagination of countless generations, introduced and explained here with compelling insight.

In the dying days of the eighth century, the Vikings erupted onto the international stage with brutal raids and slaughter. The medieval Norsemen may be best remembered as monk murderers and village pillagers, but this is far from the whole story. Throughout the Middle Ages, long-ships transported hairy northern voyagers far and wide, where they not only raided but also traded, explored and settled new lands, encountered unfamiliar races, and embarked on pilgrimages and crusades.The Norsemen travelled to all corners of the medieval world and beyond; north to the wastelands of arctic Scandinavia, south to the politically turbulent heartlands of medieval Christendom, west across the wild seas to Greenland and the fringes of the North American continent, and east down the Russian waterways trading silver, skins, and slaves. Beyond the Northlands explores this world through the stories that the Vikings told about themselves in their sagas.But the depiction of the Viking world in the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas goes far beyond historical facts. What emerges from these tales is a mixture of realism and fantasy, quasi-historical adventures, and exotic wonder-tales that rocket far beyond the horizon of reality. On the crackling brown pages of saga manuscripts, trolls, dragons, and outlandish tribes jostle for position with explorers, traders, and kings.To explore the sagas and the world that produced them, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough now takes her own trip through the dramatic landscapes that they describe. Along the way, she illuminates the rich but often confusing saga accounts with a range of other evidence: archaeological finds, rune-stones, medieval world maps, encyclopaedic manuscripts, and texts from as far away as Byzantium and Baghdad. As her journey across the Old Norse world shows, by situating the sagas against the revealing background of this other evidence, we can begin at least to understand just how the world was experienced, remembered, and imagined by this unique culture from the outermost edge of Europe so many centuries ago.

Norse Mythology explores the magical myths and legends of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Viking-Age Greenland and outlines the way the prehistoric tales and beliefs from these regions that have remained embedded in the imagination of the world.The book begins with an Introduction that helps put Scandinavian mythology in place in history, followed by a chapter that explains the meaning of mythic time, and a third section that presents in-depth explanations of each mythological term. These fascinating entries identify particular deities and giants, as well as the places where they dwell and the varied and wily means by which they forge their existence and battle one another. We meet Thor, one of the most powerful gods, who specializes in killing giants using a hammer made for him by dwarfs, not to mention myriad trolls, ogres, humans and strange animals. We learn of the ongoing struggle between the gods, who create the cosmos, and the jötnar, or giants, who aim to destroy it. In the enchanted world where this mythology takes place, we encounter turbulent rivers, majestic mountains, dense forests, storms, fierce winters, eagles, ravens, salmon and snakes in a landscape closely resembling Scandinavia. Beings travel on ships and on horseback; they eat slaughtered meat and drink mead.Spanning from the inception of the universe and the birth of human beings to the universe's destruction and the mythic future, these sparkling tales of creation and destruction, death and rebirth, gods and heroes will entertain readers and offer insight into the relationship between Scandinavian myth, history, and culture.

Journey into a world of gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, extraordinary creatures and fantastic monsters with this beautifully illustrated introduction to Ancient Greek mythology. Perfect for children aged 7 to 9, this collection contains more than 30 enthralling new retellings of favourite myths as well as some you might not have heard before.Including Theseus and the Minotaur, The 12 labours of Herakles, and the escapades of Jason and the Argonauts, each myth is told in engaging modern language, which is easy for children to understand yet still retains the humour and intrigue of the original tales. Stunning illustrations by multi-award winning artist Katie Ponder breathe new life into each classic story.Additional feature pages delve deeper into the mythical world, providing profiles of the gods and a map detailing Odysseus' long voyage home from the Trojan War. The reference section provides key background information, such as Ancient Greek storytelling and the incredible beasts of the myths, and a pronunciation guide.Greek Myths is the perfect gift, featuring foil on the cover and beautiful illustrations throughout. Children will love exploring the tales by themselves or as bedtime stories. It will be treasured forever.

Part of the 'Element Encyclopedia' series, this is an A-Z of alternative history. It helps you discover everything you wanted to know about secret societies like the Freemasons, the historical mystery of Atlantis, why King Arthur, Leonardo da Vinci and Hitler are key figures, plus conspiracy theories, forgotten sciences, and ancient wisdom.

The world-renowned classic that has enthralled and delighted millions of readers with its timeless tales of gods and heroes.Edith Hamilton's mythology succeeds like no other book in bringing to life for the modern reader the Greek, Roman and Norse myths that are the keystone of Western culture-the stories of gods and heroes that have inspired human creativity from antiquity to the present.We follow the drama of the Trojan War and the wanderings of Odysseus. We hear the tales of Jason and the Golden Fleece, Cupid and Psyche, and mighty King Midas. We discover the origins of the names of the constellations. And we recognize reference points for countless works for art, literature and culture inquiry-from Freud's Oedipus complex to Wagner's Ring Cycle of operas to Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes ElectraBoth a reference text for scholars of all ages and a book to simply enjoy, Mythology is a classic not to be missed.

In a moonlit graveyard somewhere in southern Italy, a soldier removes his clothes in readiness to transform himself into a wolf. He depends upon the clothes to recover his human shape, and so he magically turns them to stone, but his secret is revealed when, back in human form, he is seen to carry a wound identical to that recently dealt to a marauding wolf. In Arcadia a man named Damarchus accidentally tastes the flesh of a human sacrifice and is transformed into a wolf for nine years. At Temesa Polites is stoned to death for raping a local girl, only to return to terrorize the people of the city in the form of a demon in a wolfskin.Tales of the werewolf are by now well established as a rich sub-strand of the popular horror genre; less widely known is just how far back in time their provenance lies. These are just some of the werewolf tales that survive from the Graeco-Roman world, and this is the first book in any language to be devoted to their study. It shows how in antiquity werewolves thrived in a story-world shared by witches, ghosts, demons, and soul-flyers, and argues for the primary role of story-telling-as opposed to rites of passage--in the ancient world's general conceptualization of the werewolf. It also seeks to demonstrate how the comparison of equally intriguing medieval tales can be used to fill in gaps in our knowledge of werewolf stories in the ancient world, thereby shedding new light on the origins of the modern phenomenon. All ancient texts bearing upon the subject have been integrated into the discussion in new English translations, so that the book provides not only an accessible overview for a broad readership of all levels of familiarity with ancient languages, but also a comprehensive sourcebook for the ancient werewolf for the purposes of research and study.

"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! have nothing on Rose, at home in a thicket of menacing creatures."—Choice We have always conjured up creatures never seen in nature, from flying horses and two-headed birds to fire-breathing dragons and enormous killer skunks, as well as fantastic distortions of our own image, from giants to nubile maidens. In these pages you will meet extraordinary beings from Hindu and Navajo religions, Scandinavian tales, Russian folklore, Lithuanian stories, Irish oral history, American tall tales, and Aztec myth. Just some of the monstrous entourage: • Baku, a benevolent Japanese monster with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, and the legs of a tiger, who helps people by devouring their nightmares. • Kurma, the giant tortoise of Hindu myth, whose upper shell forms the heavens and lower part the earth. • Missipissy, the feared fish serpent of North America's Great Lakes region. This illustrated encyclopedia not only identifies and describes individual beasts in their cultural context but also groups them together across cultures and discusses common mythological strands and conceits.

Myth is oral, collective, sacred, and timeless. Fantasy is a modern literary mode and a popular entertainment. Yet the two have always been inextricably intertwined. Stories about Stories examines fantasy as an arena in which different ways of understanding myth compete and new relationships with myth are worked out. The book offers a comprehensive history of the modern fantastic as well as an argument about its nature and importance. Specific chapters cover the origins of fantasy in the Romantic search for localized myths, fantasy versions of the Modernist turn toward the primitive, the post-Tolkienian exploration of world mythologies, post-colonial reactions to the exploitation of indigenous sacred narratives by Western writers, fantasies based in Christian belief alongside fundamentalist attempts to stamp out the form, and the emergence of ever-more sophisticated structures such as metafiction through which to explore mythic constructions of reality.

Robert Graves, classicist, poet, and unorthodox critic, retells the Greek legends of gods and heroes for a modern audience And, in the two volumes of The Greek Myths, he demonstrates with a dazzling display of relevant knowledge that Greek Mythology is “no more mysterious in content than are modern election cartoons.” His work covers, in nearly two hundred sections, the creation myths; the legends of the births and lives of the great Olympians; the Theseus, Oedipus, and Heracles cycles; the Argonaut voyage; the tale of Troy, and much more. All the scattered elements of each myth have been assembled into a harmonious narrative, and many variants are recorded which may help to determine its ritual or historical meaning, Full references to the classical sources, and copious indexes, make the book as valuable to the scholar as to the general reader; and a full commentary on each myth explains and interprets the classical version in the light of today’s archaeological and anthropological knowledge.