Saga of the Volsungs, pt. 2 (live in Colorado) 

This series is so much fun. I love story time.

I really enjoyed this one as I enjoyed the first one! I love how we get to see your personality and humor and you really seem to enjoy telling us these weird and awesome stories and I would really like for you to do more of these videos! It’s nice to get to know the real Jackson like this! ☺️

The whole ascended fan-fic situation with the Saga of the Volsungs is by no means unique to Norse mythology. For example, Sir Lancelot was first introduced to the Arthurian mythos in French fan-fic, and Maid Marion and Friar Tuck had several hundred years of independent stories told about them before being included in any Robin Hood tales...

Hey Dr.Jackson, a note you might find interesting, if you read this, on the detail that Gunnar and Hogni were specifically beaten to death by their axe handles and not the blades in all the sources. You go on theorizing that it might be as a way as to not send them to their "good" afterlife, but I remembered something that might be of relevance here. We know that the Mongols (note that the Mongols and the Huns are separated apart by centuries, so a little grain of salt) had a superstition, or custom, that spilling "blue blood" is a bad omen, a frowned upon thing to do. When they killed people of high status such as kings, princes, dukes what have you, they would bludgeon them to death so to spill as little blue blood as possible, going as far as rolling a person in a carpet or rug and beating them to death this way, so no visible blood is spilled. The Huns are not the Mongols, but this could be a tradition that goes way back to the Huns, it would explain this quite well. If this is the case, it does shift your theory in the opposite direction. This way, the killings of Gunnar and Hogni by bludgeoning and not by cuts ("by the sword") would not be as a "spit to the face" way of dennying them a good after-life, but actually as a recognition that these are worthy individuals of high status that deserve their blood to not be spilled, a brutal way of showing respect. Thought this would be interesting. Am loving these series and am binging the live sessions, happy there's more to come and hope you'll do more once this yearly thing is over! All the best!

Thank you for posting these talks! I always look forward to the next one! They are a bit like your excellent Great Courses series but more relaxed and informal while just as informative. I was lucky enough to stumble across a version of the Volsung Saga adapted for kids when I was growing up (it was the eighties and libraries still had old copies from thr 40s floating around). Will have to get around to the ZZ Top version if I can find a goid translation soon!

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Have you added an Icelandic keyboard to your phone? May speed up some of those diacritics. I don't see the special o on the Icelandic keyboard though. I believe you can also add shortcuts for characters or even entire phrases. Such as typing "ae" and being suggested æ.

Have any spiderco knives?

1:20:00 As I have written before; we know a Reginher in 845 from The Annals of Xanten, who we assume is the historical Regnar.

Ay Simon in some of your older videos you spoke old English how’d you learn it

Second.