OK. Let's do this. It seems the consensus is we should go ahead with a DECAMERON fundraiser.

👉 If you want to make a contribution, you will find all the usual options (including crypto) here.

I will start working on the schedule and talk to guests right away. Let's make this happen! We have little time. 🙏

The theory that the Æsir-Vanir war was an allegory for a war between the invading Indo-Europeans and the Early European Farmers/Hunter Gatherers is deeply flawed.
Most importantly, cognates to the Vanir gods are found in other Indo-European religions. The most obvious example is Freyja/Ēostre, cognate to Greek Eos, Baltic Aušrinė, Roman Aurora and Vedic Ushas, the most-mentioned goddess in the Rig Veda.
Myths of wars between gods exist in other Indo-European religions, such as the Titanomachy of Greek paganism, the wars between Devas and Asuras, and the battle between Shiva and Vishnu in the Puranas. It is not at all unique to Germanic paganism.
Painting by Donn P. Crane, 1922.

If the Aesir/Vanir war must be reduced to a mere mythologised historical event, in an euhemeristic convention, then it would more plausibly represent conflicts between competing Indo-European groups of Scandinavia in the early Bronze Age.

Or, since the war does not take place in Scandinavia anyway, it could represent a memory of older conflicts on the steppe.

But Germanic folk HAVE a tradition of mythologised historical events! See Atlakviða for eg. In such narratives the humans remain humans but sometimes interact with gods. Whereas the Aesir/Vanir war does not involve any humans nor does it take place in Midgard. There is no reasons to think it portrays anything other than gods.

Not only did Celts and Scythians have tattoos, but it seems Germanic people did too. Besides Ibn Fadlan's description of Vikings tattooed from fingers to neck with blue/green images of trees and symbols, but there is evidence the nobles of the Northumbrians and West Saxons in England had tattooing practices too. The practice of "scarring and dyeing" of the face or body, usually to mark the death of a loved one is recorded in several sources including; Poen Hubertense (8th century) 53, CCSL 156: 114, Poen Floriacense (8th century) 48, ibid., 101and Poen Merseburgense a 131, CCSL 156: 162.

"Some half dozen continental penitentials from the late 8th to the late 9th century testify to self-mutilation by mourning kinfolk. Under the heading of "Lamentation for the Dead," two prescribed penance for a mourner who "lacerates himself with his nails or sword over his dead or pulls his hair out or rends his garments." In the others, the mourner cuts his hair and tears at his face with his nails or sword because of, or after, the death of parents or sons. These records are not from England, but during their visit there in 787, Pope Hadrian's legates noted the "frightful scars" and dyes (tattoos?) sported by some of the Northumbrian and West Saxon gentry; these may have been the result of ritual self-laceration of the same sort." Legatine Synods - Report of the Legates George and Theophylact of their proceedings in England 19, Haddan and Stubbs

Here are some translations of the original Latin church texts:

"if any thing remained of the rite of the pagans, it is torn away, despised, and cast away. For God formed a beautiful man in beauty and appearance; but the pagans, by a diabolical instinct, brought upon them terrible scars, as Prudence says; "dyed and harmless paltry dirt." For he seems to do wrong to the Lord, who dishonors and disgraces his creature."

"Certainly, if someone for the sake of God would suffer this injury to be dyed, he would receive a great recompense from it. But whosoever does it from the superstition of the Gentiles, does not profit him to salvation, even as to the Jews the circumcision of the body without credulity of heart."

The practice persisted among Christians and was hated for its association with Gentiles (pagans).

"You also put on your garments, after the manner of the Gentiles, whom, by God's help, your fathers were expelled from the world by arms, you put on: a marvelous and exceedingly astonishing thing; so that you may imitate the example of those whose lives you have always hated."

So basically tattooing was part of some rite to the dead, and it was banned by the church because of Jewish beliefs. Aversion to tattooing is explicitly connected to Judaism in these early references.

The Swedish island of Gotland has an incredible history that left amazing stones carved with pictures and symbols relating to an ancient cult of the sun!

https://youtu.be/AXuf9pjciMc

Jacob Grimm recorded a survival of Woden worship in Blekinge, Sweden and Mecklenburg, wherein farmers would leave a section of rye unharvested for Odin’s horse. They would braid the tops together and sprinkle them with water, take off their hats and bow, and recite thrice;

"Woden, take care of your horse now, with thistle and thorn,
so next year we may have better corn!"
Another version was;
"Woden, Woden, feed your horse now, with thistle and thorn, next year, better corn!"

He noted that it was said during winter nights, he could be heard roaming the fields with his hunting dogs (Freki and Geri?).

This was likely a remnant of offerings on Winterfylleth and/or Álfablót; in the Austrfararvísur, Odin is mentioned during a sacrifice to the Álfar. In rural regions of Scandinavia and Germany, the Old Ways never fully disappeared.

Art by Carl Emil Doepler, 1905. ⴲ

Very interesting to consider axe head intensity in Bronze age Britain. If they were a currency then it reveals economic activity

“Brodir had been a Christian and an ordained deacon, but he had cast aside the faith and become a renegade and sacrificed to heathen spirits and was very skilled in sorcery. He had armour which no steel could bite. He was both big and strong and had such long hair that he tucked it under his belt; it was black.”

Njal’s saga describes a strong Icelander named Brodir who, having been fully educated and ordained as a deacon, then reverted to the true faith.

“Those who lived in Asgard present to us now the usual confusing clutter of names, of ancient gods, great once, but overtaken by changes in human sensibility, of overlapping attributes, of sectarian preferences, the whole given a mysterious inner logic by that Indo-Aryan groundswell whose steady but almost imperceptible movement surfaces only in an occasional name, an occasional characteristic. Thus we have All-father, a variant perhaps of the Vedic Sky-god, Dyaus, altered by the Greeks to Zeus; for the Romans, a version of his name, Dyaus-pitar, or Sky-father, became the familiar Jupiter. In Scandinavian mythology, his attributes - but not his name - became those of Odin. Thus the divine was transmuted.”

Peter Brent “The Viking Saga” 1975

Brent had misunderstood the IE theory such that he seems to believe all European paganism was derived from the Vedic religion. However, he was on the right track with identifying the mythic cognates.