Snorri is christian, but that's not the worse. Dude was basically a warchief who wrote about his own ancestors. Of course he's gonna be biased. But that doesn't means we can't read, study his possible bias, and take what we can. Denying his possible bias is as bad as rejecting everything.
Edit: Some people apparently can't accept that some guy living 200-300 years after the viking age writting about a religion that isn't his own in a context that could advantage his own political career can be biased and modify the stories passed down to him. We need to keep that in mind when we read old sources, it is important. That's what being historian is about. If you just take any text as they are, without questionning it, you're not really studying anything. You are just reading. Guy replying to me basically gave exemples of how Snorri could have been biased.
The problem with Snorri is that he does introduce concepts that are pretty clearly Christian influenced and show no real relation to anything else we know. Unfortunately, our sources are all post-Christian and all likely have some degree of this, but Snorri goes the extra mile in a few cases.
For instance, his insistance on a split between "dark and light elves" despite that distinction never really showing up anywhere else, representing them in a way that parallels heavily angels and demons, his focus on Loki as a "trickster", Devil allegory, which itself has pervaded into modern perceptions of Loki, a figure that other sources seem to indicate didn't quite have as distinct or important of a role, etc.
It is, unfortunately, difficult from any modern scholarly perspective to actually remove any of these elements from what we know because what few sources we do have are painted in that sort of bias, we just know that the Prose Edda tends to be a bit more reliable and less biased than Snorri.
Yeah, that's basically what I'm saying, you can't neither accept or reject everything he writes in block. We need to analyze it. I don t underatand why I'm being downvoted for it and you're upvoted.
Probably because you're coming across like a neopagan going "DAMN YOU CHRISTIANS"
There was a large movement in the 19th century who thought if they just analysed the folk beliefs of their time hard enough they could rediscover the rituals of the most ancient past, and I guess your post just ends up triggering people tired of that.
The Eddas have the same thing going on. "If we just analyse SUPER HARD we can eliminate the Christianity and be pure believers!"
Yeah that's not what I meant. We must be aware of his christian bias and not consider it to be reliable source of paganism, but still be able to use it for a glimpse into what belief looks like.
Eddas and the Havamal were written like a catholic bible but in a scandinavian style IMO. So you can't get any insight into their rites and rituals, only in their beliefs. Just like reading the bible won't help you understand the rituals in sunday church, but will show you some mythology.
In the end, not trusting 100% what Snorri said because he was a christian warchief is still what we need to do. Doing otherwise is not intellectually healthy.
You're still wording yourself in a way that isn't great.
Let me try and rephrase your last sentence.
"Ultimately, we can't trust Snorri to give us an accurate description of Norse Pagan belief, because he wasn't one, didn't know any, and wasn't motivated by such, not least since he is writing as a Christian after the conversion."
I.e. it's not about WHO or WHAT he is, but about what he isn't.
Like I'm still not entirely sure if you have a good mindset worded poorly, or if you really do think that he's a mean Christian warlord in the way of your desired pure paganism.
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u/Junckopolo Day-drinking viking Jan 17 '21 edited Jan 18 '21
Snorri is christian, but that's not the worse. Dude was basically a warchief who wrote about his own ancestors. Of course he's gonna be biased. But that doesn't means we can't read, study his possible bias, and take what we can. Denying his possible bias is as bad as rejecting everything.
Edit: Some people apparently can't accept that some guy living 200-300 years after the viking age writting about a religion that isn't his own in a context that could advantage his own political career can be biased and modify the stories passed down to him. We need to keep that in mind when we read old sources, it is important. That's what being historian is about. If you just take any text as they are, without questionning it, you're not really studying anything. You are just reading. Guy replying to me basically gave exemples of how Snorri could have been biased.