Great news for everybody who keeps hearing of Jan de Vries, but unable to read German or Dutch. Northvegr.org has put a very lengthy article by De Vries in English on their website. The article appeared in a Finnish scholarly magazine in 1931 and is called Contributions to the study of Othin especially in his relation to agricultural practices and popular lore.
This article of almost 80 pages sheds light on a great many different aspects of Wodan/Odin. You can read about “agricultural practices and popular lore”, but De Vries also writes about his role in Scandinavian mythology (was Odin ‘imported’?), the name Odin (coming from Odr), etc. In the process you will learn about the Wild Hunt and the Wild Hunter (since the “Wilde Heir” is not the same as the “Wilde Jacht”), archeology, theories by contemporary scholars. All in all a great read and a great exposé of our national Germanic scholar available to the English speaking world.
Go here: The new Northvegr center
Hopefully Northvegr will track down more texts of De Vries.
Beste Roy
In het najaar brengt van 2011 brengt Werkgroep Hagal een vertaling van dit werk uit. Op z’n minst mogen de werken van De Vries in het Nederlands verschijnen. Wij houden U op de hoogte.
It seems the link to this fascinating study is down.
Therefore I’m providing a (temporary) scanned PDF version of the text here: .
regards,
Q
Apparently, the link got lost: http://www.mediafire.com/?ygi4cr68o3pswk7
Indeed, Northvegr revamped their website. I put the new link in the announcement.