h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A579756

Since I have been taught about Norse Mythology at almost every school I have attended I thought I might as well share some of my knowledge. It is one of my first attempts at writing an entry....be gentle....

//R

This article seems to be kind of brief for the material that you're trying to cover. I'd recomend trying to flesh out the list of gods a little more. Also, if you're going to have a group of linked articles like this, you may want to consider posting it as a University project.

Some suggestions:

The Guide's style guide frowns on using the first person. You may want to change the line: "There is the same slander and deceit that I thought only existed in cheap soap-operas" and change it to "There is slander and deciet that are usually confined to cheap soap-opears."

Odin has some other alternative names, including Woden, which in turn gave us the day Wednesday. You might want to include the fact that several of our days of the week are named for Norse gods.

There's something a little screwy about some of the links too. Make sure they're in the text format. I suspect that some of them are listed as <LINK HREF ...

Hi R!

This entry reads quite like the introduction to something much bigger - and looking over at your space I see there's more to come

You might consider starting a h2g2 University Project! The University of Life is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/C573.

University Projects cover a topic *in depth* and with as many entries as you like. Projects go into the Guide straight away (not via Peer Review) and it's a good idea to call for help from other researchers (if you like, and Two Bit could be one of them, so it seems ).
Projects can be a whole lot of work, but hey, they earn you a shiny 'Field Researcher' badge .


Otherwise, if you don't like the idea of having a Project, you can still run a series of entries about the subject matter through Peer Review. In that case I would recommend to change the title of this entry into something like 'Norse Mythology: The Gods'.

Anyway, you're on the right track!


Bossel (Scout)

Well, r, it's a start. Norse mythology, like all mythologies (including the modern euro-american mythology of market economy) is very big, meaning that such a short article naturally can't even begin to cover the whole area. A very short into, placing Norse mythology in it's environs of other European mythologies, might help, but that's not what you tried to write. Links and similarities, say, to the Finnish Kalevalla, the Sami mythology, ect. are at least as interesting as the sililarities til the greco-roman myths.

Try and revamp so that the first article is a good starting point for diverse excursions int details of the Norse and other mythologies.

We need a lot of good entries on Mythologies, but I'm to lazy to try and write them.

By the way, I'm disappointed that you didn't even mention Thor Heyerdahl's ongoing research in Anatolia or somewhere to prove that Odin was in fact a real person that migrated to the north from asia minor some 8-10,000 b.c.e.

Keep trying, R, you just need to rethink the form somewhat.

~^M^~

I agree that the entry is a little brief for the topic. Also, there are a number of points I take issue with.

Firstly, I think it's wrong to suggest that the Vanir were more peaceful. Earth gods are often a bloodthristy bunch, and the Vanir are no exception. Just look at poor old Mimir, decapitated because the Vanir felt that the _other_ hostage was below par.

You also make it sound as though Frejya was born Aesir, which she wasn't, and omit her role as a chooser of the slain.

Surely you should also mention the sacrifices of Odin - giving up his eye, hanging on Yggdrasil and so forth - and his constant quest for the wisdom and power to avert Ragnarock.

What you have is good, but even as an introductory article, this seemed pretty sparse on detail and information.

The Prophet.

I just had a look at some of your other entries. Most of them have the same problem as this one - vis that they are rather sparse - but the creation one is brilliant. If you're going to put an entry in for peer review at this stage, that's the one to go for.

I have to second however the suggestion that you should take the whole project to the h2g2 University of Life. You plainly have the material to make an excellent university project, and you'll get a little virtual flag to show for it as well.

The Prophet.

I realize English isn't your first language. You're doing pretty good in it, but sometimes you use "it's" where it should be "its" (such as "Mjolnir would return to its owner's hand").

Also, your link to the creation story is busted. I found my way there, though, and it was well worth the effort.

As a reader of Thor comic books, I enjoyed your entries. Keep working!

(signed) Administrator-General 42, who considers Thor more realistic than telekinesis.

I'll check out this Universety of life thing. My internet connection is pretty dodgy so I haven't been able to explore h2g2 properly.

Regarding Odin and all the stuff he has done: I was planning on making a special entry for him but it is taking a bit more time than the others as I don't know so much about him in my head.

As mentioned above
Woden: wednesday
Thor: Thursday
Freya: Friday

(I don't know about tuesday. Sunday and Mo(o)nday are self explanatory and Saturday was originally Saturn day for the Roman Titan)

It certainly works very well as an introduction to the subject , well written and flows nicely.

Your first two links are broken though, they don't go to the articles you want. Try Earth's creation instead of the HREF tag and cut out the &#8221; that you've got at each end. The last link you've got works fine although it is a repeat of the first. Do you really need two links to the same article?

Sorry 'bout the links, I'll fix them.

Btw, many of swedish names for the days are the same as English.

Söndag (sunday)= Solens dag (The sun's day)
Måndag (monday)= Månens dag (The moon's day)
Tisdag (Tuesday)= Tyrs dag (Tyr's day)
Onsdag (Wednesday)= Odens dag (Woden's day)
Torsdag (thursday)= Tors dag (Thor's day)
Fredag (friday)= Freys dag (Freya's day)
lördag (saturday)= Not named after a person, it is the day of clenliness. It apparently comes from lögardagen, ie the day when you had a bath.

//R the

Maybe you could point out that Norse Mythology has arguably had a bigger impact on English speaking society than Greek or Roman myths since they kindly donated the sources of the names of the week it would give a little more relevance to researchers that maybe hadn't heard of the stories before

AFAIK Saturday is 'Saturn's Day'; a brief Classical intrusion. Then again, English is a mongrel language.

The Norse-Germanic influence on the days of the week I think is primarily Saxon, rather than from the Danelaw period. Tuesday - to take an example - is Tiw's Day, Tiw (spelling may be incorrect) being a Germanic version of Tyr.

The Prophet.

Great start, R.

The suggestion that you start a University project is an excellent one. There is certainly a lot of material to explore.

Any links you include should be to Edited Entries. Any others will be removed during editing.

JTG

... which is not the full truth University Projects go in as they are (cross- and reciprocal links included), and it's always possible (so I've heard) to have the SubEd include links to entries which arrive somewhat later at the Edited state. If all else fails, there's still the possibility to append a conversation and supply the links there

Which is also not quite true.

The reason Uni projects are cross linked is because they have been subbed by the time the project is unveiled. Editorial policy is to reject links to unedited articles, so that we don't end up with a lot of dead links and links to inexplicably unrelated subjects. Entry numbers change after editing anyway, so there is little point in including links to unedited material.

Part of the Sub's job is to add a good balance of pertinent links. In addition, anyone can suggest that new links should be included to an Edited Entry at any point.

JTG

oh, thanks a bundle

So this myth has been explained now, on with the other one please!

So what is going on with this entry?

Is there a Uni Project now? is it still on review as a single entry?

?????,

Dancer

doesn't seem so. R has unsubscribed from this thread.

How can you tell?

Just post something, go to R's page and see it not popping up in his thread list


Dancer