Roles of the Northern Goddess

Rating:
Summary: Faulty premise leads to faulty conclusions
Review: Davidson has produced a useful book on Northern European Goddess history and tradition. She draws on early literature, legend, folk traditions (and records of now extinct folk traditions), and archaelogy to construct several categories of functioning for the Goddesses. She discovers Goddesses who are both nurturing and demanding, healing and destructive, revered and feared. Davidson includes Celtic, Norse, Finnish, and Latvian Goddesses, and frequently compares them to Mediterranean and Near Eastern Goddess roles.

She first considers the Goddess as Mistress of the animals, examining her roles as Hunting Goddess, Ruler of the Wild, Guardian of the diary [sic] herds, as Dog and Horse Goddess.

Next, she examines the Goddess as Mistress of the Grain, considering the most ancient roots associating Goddesses with fertility of the earth, the connection between Goddess and plough, the possibility of Goddess as Corn Spirit, and how the Grain Goddess of the North differed from Grain Goddesses of more temperate regions.

Davidson then takes up the Goddess as Mistress of the Distaff and Loom, looking both the context of Goddess and weaving in the ancient world as well as the differences in Northern Europe. She considers the Oseberg wall-hagnings, retrieved from a burial site, and illuminates Goddess figures found there. She also examines the interplay between weaving and destiny, the Goddess as Weaver of Fate.

In addition, she considers the domestic role of the Goddess as Mistress of the Household. She discusses Guardians of the home, the association between Goddess and fire and water, and the role of the Goddes in the birth and nurturing of children.

Finally, she examines the Goddess as Mistress of Life and Death, writing of her role as healer and in the realm of death. She also considers Northern European funeral rites and how they help us understand the roles of the Goddess.

Davidson points out that when we sentimentalize the Goddess, as so many white-light-bunny-fluff-goddess-of-the-week books do, we lose a great deal. She draws on Jung in her synthesis that the Goddess is both attractive and nurturing as well as repulsive and frightening. In her conclusion she points out that the Goddess was much more than simply the "Great Mother."

The book has a useful index and an excellent bibliography. It was poorly copy edited, however, with several typos. I also wish that Davidson had done a better job of separating out the layers of history through which she excavates. The meaning of stone-age evidence is poorly differentiated from the meanings of myths recorded in the middle ages or folk practices recorded in the 17th century. This is a significant problem which the book poorly addresses.

Five stars for depth and breadth, but knocked down to four stars for the failure to explicitly consider the impact of various historical contexts on the available evidence and on her interpetation of it.

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Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: Hail! I highly recommend this book to those whom walk the Way of the Lady(Freya). Freya is a goddess of witchcraft(called seithr in Old Norse), love, and nature(lets also remember that the word witch is Anglo Saxon, thus Teutonic). I suggest reading this book next to Witchdom of the True by Edred Thorsson. For Frith and Kinfolk, Isenwulf Wodheart

Rating:
Summary: Overall, well worth reading
Review: I found this book to be well-researched and full of fascinating and detailed information. However, the Heathen reader will have to get past some of the terminology used in order to benefit from these books. By this I specifically mean the repeated use of such terms as "the Northern Goddess." (The italics are mine in both cases). I do not believe that their use is meant to be taken in the ultimately non-polytheistic sense in which Robert Graves or Wiccans might use them. Nevertheless, I found their use to be somewhat annoying.
Roles of the Northern Goddess needs no other introduction to gain the attention of the serious modern Heathen than the fact that it is written by Dr. Hilda (Roderick) Ellis Davidson, one of the most renowned scholars of Germanic religion. Her first substantial work on the subject is The Road to Hel, which, I believe, was her doctoral dissertation. Published a couple of years after World War II, it is still a useful source of information on the many, complex and often contradictory viewpoints of the Afterlife held by the old-time Heathens. Amazingly, the last I heard, she is still alive, well and an active scholar!
This book is less Freya-centered than is Näsström's book, but she still appears with great frequency. Ellis Davidson compares the Northern Goddesses with Goddesses from other, related cultures, especially Celtic ones. The book explores the Goddesses by functions, including "Mistress of the Animals," "Mistress of the Grain," "Mistress of Distaff and Loom," "Mistress of the Household," (these last two are more functions of Frigga), and "Mistress of Life and Death."
In her concluding chapter, the author discusses the cults (organized worship) of the Northern Goddesses and the rituals associated with them. She stresses that Norse Goddesses (and for that matter Norse Gods) tend to be multi-functional, with considerable areas of overlap. The book as a whole is greatly enriched by sketches of ancient images of Goddesses and other relevant finds.

Rating:
Summary: Overall, well worth reading
Review: I found this book to be well-researched and full of fascinating and detailed information. However, the Heathen reader will have to get past some of the terminology used in order to benefit from these books. By this I specifically mean the repeated use of such terms as "the Northern Goddess." (The italics are mine in both cases). I do not believe that their use is meant to be taken in the ultimately non-polytheistic sense in which Robert Graves or Wiccans might use them. Nevertheless, I found their use to be somewhat annoying.
Roles of the Northern Goddess needs no other introduction to gain the attention of the serious modern Heathen than the fact that it is written by Dr. Hilda (Roderick) Ellis Davidson, one of the most renowned scholars of Germanic religion. Her first substantial work on the subject is The Road to Hel, which, I believe, was her doctoral dissertation. Published a couple of years after World War II, it is still a useful source of information on the many, complex and often contradictory viewpoints of the Afterlife held by the old-time Heathens. Amazingly, the last I heard, she is still alive, well and an active scholar!
This book is less Freya-centered than is Näsström's book, but she still appears with great frequency. Ellis Davidson compares the Northern Goddesses with Goddesses from other, related cultures, especially Celtic ones. The book explores the Goddesses by functions, including "Mistress of the Animals," "Mistress of the Grain," "Mistress of Distaff and Loom," "Mistress of the Household," (these last two are more functions of Frigga), and "Mistress of Life and Death."
In her concluding chapter, the author discusses the cults (organized worship) of the Northern Goddesses and the rituals associated with them. She stresses that Norse Goddesses (and for that matter Norse Gods) tend to be multi-functional, with considerable areas of overlap. The book as a whole is greatly enriched by sketches of ancient images of Goddesses and other relevant finds.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but you have to take it with a grain of salt
Review: I'm a typically quite cynical of 'Religion' and 'Women's Studies' books that contain the word 'Goddess' in the title. I have seen far to many horrible goddess orientated books that are simply geared to make money off of a relatively gullible and uneducated few. Hilda Ellis Davidson has constructed a modern masterpiece within the pages of 'Roles of the Northern Goddess.' This work is a rare find for those who are interested in the goddesses and women of ancient Northern Europe. It is extremely well researched and cited. Her bibliography contains approximately three hundred entries. Though I have purchased the paperback, I should have bought the hardcover: it is a valuable edition to my library.

Rating:
Summary: Long and winding evidence to support goddess worship
Review: The tenor of this book is one of attempting to peer through centuries of Christian influence to show what the religion of the goddess may have been like. But in almost every of its presentations often is too loose in character to be truly fulfilling and abounds in conditional statements. It probably fails most in how it presents the subject in categories and then presents examples from the observations and works of others in an attempt to bring things to light. In doing so it tends to lose your appreciateion of variation in perceptions over time and place, which is understandable due to the scarcity of hard and sure information. But then it is this lack of certainty that makes it a book of possitbilites rather than information. However, if it were not for the obvious continuation of goddess worship into the Christian age with the Virgin Mary, I might doubt that there were any widespread goddess cults simply from the arguments this book provides.

It might have been better to have divided the book up by region, rather as History of Pagan Europe does. Instead the dearth of hard evidence is supplemented by comparisons to notions of goddess worship much further south of north. At best it is a collection of what can be said in a scholarly manner, but is rather too dull of a presentation to be an exceptional read.

Rating:
Summary: Faulty premise leads to faulty conclusions
Review: This is quite likely the worst book HRED has written. That said, there is still much of value. To find it though, one must wade through the author's agenda- she was in her One Great Goddess phase- and incomplete as well as unconnected examples of, well, sometimes one can't be quite sure just what she is trying to say or prove.

If your starting point is the premise that there was One Great Goddess, fine, you will love this book. If you want a scholarly evalution of Germanic goddesses, you will need to go elsewhere.