This issue is already the ninth ‘heathen yearbook’ and the fifth that I review. The A5 size booklet again looks better than before with glossy paper and a colour cover, well bound and well printed. Most of the texts are from the hand of Boppo Grimmsma who wrote the introduction, tells the reader why to visit the Externsteine (also on the cover, but the photo is ‘photoshopped’ a bit of course), he interviewed the Dutch author Aat van Gilst and the Frisian novellist Willem Schoorstra. A lengthy article of Grimmsma is about the Balder myths. The author gives some information about the different interpretations that scholars in the course of the years gave to the myth and comes to his own less black-and-white conclusions in which one explanation does not exclude every other. Michiel de Nijs contributed an article about working with land-spirits and similar beings. At the end the reader will find the five stories that were read at the 2011 Midsummer weekend, this time with as theme a fairytale with a mythological foundation. The result is a nice 104 page booklet (written in Dutch of course) that you can get by clicking on the cover and following the instructions.
Eala Roy,
Thank you for your fine book report; again.
Your blog has an amazing array of articles. Bravo. A joy to read. Also amazing is the amount of books you read, and on varying subjects. From hard history to esoterical classics.
Let me expand a little on your book review:
The front cover shows the Externsteine in the Lippe district in Germany. A natural and historical marvel. It’s almost a proven fact that the site was a pagan shrine for sun worship. On top of the rock formation I erected the Irminsul,; symbolic for the heathen revival in the Saxon lands.
Aat van Gilst is an author that treats, in length, Germanic myth, history and folklore. Because he is not a part of the scientific in-crowd, and did not have to fear for his career, he was able to publish freely on subject matters that were taboo for quite some time (aka continuation of pagan Germanic practices an thought into christian times).
Willem Schoorstra wrote a novel about the life of the greatest Netherlander ever: King Rêdbâd. The heathen Frisian king (known in Dutch as Radboud) that refused to be baptized an saved Friesland from the perilous and abject Christian doctrine. Alas with the death of the great king, Friesland did succumb to this disease of the mind: cosmopolitical monotheism.
Keep u the good work Roy,
It is appreciated