The 11th ‘heathen yearbook’ is again around a 100 pages, but to reach this, a large part is printed in a smaller font. This large part is a translation (into Dutch, the language of this publication) of several paragraphs of Jan de Vries’ Altgermanische Relgionsgeschichte. Indeed, not every Dutchman likes to read German. Besides, the books of De Vries are not easy to find (or expensive) and there are some Dutch heathens who like make translations. Their current project is the massive Altgermanische. The paragraphs printed are about giants, ghosts, goblins and the like.
The next text is a heavily illustrated investigation of the heart symbol by Gerard. He found the symbol in two forms all over the world and reaches some surprising conclusions.
Editor Boppo Grimmsma wrote a text called Runes In Frisia or ‘Frisian runes’. Not many rune-inscriptions have been found in Frisia, but Grimmsma argues that the Frisian ‘Futhorc’ is not entirely the same as the often compared Anglo-Saxon ‘Futhorc’. Some investigators even distinguish between the two and speak about Frisian runes found in the UK. Grimmsma tells us about the development of the runes and the differences between the two mentioned Futhorcs.
Now follow three very different stories of 999 words that were based on the same photo and read at the Friday-night of the 2012 Yule weekend.
A nice peek into the daily, heathen lives of previous king Gerard and (by now also previous) queen Weorþan is granted in the form of an interview with the two.
The last article is of Axnot van Fivelgo. He initially intended to write an article about his investigations into faerytales, but when he found out that most people have to background whatsoever in this subject, he turned his article into an introduction into this field of investigation. His nice text refers to authors and methods that I have come accross in the comparable field of comparitive myth. Lots has been catalogued and structured in both fields in the past century. The author also gives a few faerytales to illustrate his search, starting with a Dutch faerytale that is older than the books of the brothers Grimm.
As always the ‘heathen yearbook’ is a nice publication with scientific and lighter material. It comes nicely printed and is not expensive. The availability is limited though, so if you want your copy, click on the cover and order it rapidly.