Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A Year of Viking Rituals by Scott Mohnkern

This is my review of Scott Mohnkern's book "A Year of Viking Rituals". Every Tyr's day (Tuesday) I will try to review a book, movie, or video game. Some of the reviews will be none heathen. You have been warned. Now to the review:


I few months back I was listening to Raven Radio's Podcast(http://www.ravenradio.info/) and tuned in to a conversation with Raven Radio's cast and Scott Mohnkern. Scott was promoting his book: "A Year of Viking Rituals". Listening to the podcast I thought that the book would be full of fluff. I decided to pick up the book to judge for myself.

In this book there is a brief description of the Gods, a hammer rite to set up sacred space, the invocation, and the libation in each section. The book has 172 pages broken down into twelve sections. Each section deals with a individual God, and has recipes and feast ideas for each blot.

Lets start off with the cons of this book:
Each section deals with a month in the year, and a God that corresponds with that month. Each section has a very brief summary of the God/Goddess in question. I would have liked more of a description on each God/Goddess, their attributes and domains, and samples of what one might blot to the Gods for.

The second issue I had with the book is that it is too short. I would have love to get more information on the blot structures, more examples and stories on blots that he participated in, and more Gods and Goddesses.

The third issue was with his sources. I notice that he referred to Wikipedia a lot in his foot notes. In the heathen community, using Wikipedia as a source is laughable. I couldn't take his sources very seriously.

The last issue is a preferential one. It has to do with the hammer rite. To me, the hollowing of space, making the sign of the hammer, calling the corners seem more like a Wiccan or Christian rite than a Heathen rite. This came across as a little fluffy to me , and I know that other heathens will see it that way.

These issues are something that will stop your educated heathen from picking this book up to add to their book hoard.

The pros to this book are minor:

Although this book comes across fluffy, it will give new members of the heathen community ideas for performing their own blots and sumbels. There is also a brief section in the back of the book that talks about the structure of a heathen wedding, and professing yourself to the Gods.

The other good quality of this book are the recipes that are found in each section. However if you are looking for recipes for your blots and sumbels, look no further than here: http://www.tjurslakter.nl/viking%20recepten.pdf

Overall the Cons outweigh the pros for this book. If you are looking for an okay starting point, or are stumped for blot ideas, pick this up; it may spring board some creative ideas. If $15 isn't a lot for that, then feel free to pick it up. Otherwise don't bother with this title.

I will be posting some ideas for blots on this blog, so save your money. This book gets ** out of ****.

1 comment:

  1. Hallowing the corners? Ewwww. Another thing that seems really fluffy about the book is the isolation of the gods and goddesses into individual sections. I personally feel that that's a holdover from Graeco-Roman sources that rejoiced in picking out each deity and their sphere. For sure it's normal to focus on one god or goddess as a time, even to spend special devotion throughout a life on one, but to put them in boxes is a severely limited way of thinking.

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