Talk:Heathen hof

Passages based on foreign-language Wikipedias

For the record: The "Background" and "Changing scholarly views" sections and the Tissø part of "Archeological evidence" are mostly based on the Danish article Hov (helligsted). The Gamla Uppsala part of "Hofs in the written record" is partly and the Uppåkra part of "Archeological evidence" is mostly based on the Swedish article Vikingatida tempelbyggnader.Yngvadottir (talk) 18:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Vin?

This is admittedly a minor detail, but I'm not aware of "vin" ever being used to describe a sacred place. Norsk stadnamnleksikon ("Norwegian Encyclopedia of Place Names") only mentions the meaning "meadow or pasture". Any sources or examples of it being used to mean sacred place? Maitreya (talk) 14:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder to check this. I probably found it in Magnus Olsen. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:18, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Found it in Turville-Petre and added another page ref. (At the same time I modified the comparison with the German usage that DBachmann had marked as dubious, adding a Cleasby-Vigfusson ref. Although they are not great etymologists, they clearly assume it's the same word. I did remove the statement about modern Scandinavian usage with the meaning "farm", although if I find that in Olaf Olsen, I'll re-add it.) Turville-Petre draws on Magnus Olsen to state that vangr and vin both signify "sacred meadow", i.e., an open-air place of worship. This GoogleBooks snippet view includes both p. 66, where he talks only about vin in these terms (footnote 15 supporting that is on p. 295 and is to Magnus Olsen's Farms and Fanes of Ancient Norway, pp. 227–) and p. 237, where he also lists vangr in the same terms; I've added that page to the article note. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:09, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have access to Turville-Petre's work in full, but I have to say I'm skeptical. The Norwegian works I've looked at, such as the aforementioned Norsk Stadnamnleksikon and Namn i Noreg : ei innføring i norsk stadnamngransking ("Names in Norway: An Introduction To Norwegian Place Names Research"), basically suggest that some locations with names containing the component vin were used for religious purposes, but that this was incidental. As a comparison, Canterbury is an important religious center in England, but the suffix -bury does not have any religious meaning. Most names using the -vin suffix are clearly not connected to religious practice, but are simply descriptive (of the terrain, soil, prominent features, etc.). Examples (original Norse names in parentheses): Ryen (Hrúgvin) = Rye Meadow, Bryn (Bruvin) = "Meadow by the bridge", Grini (Granvin) = Spruce Meadow, Løren (Leirvin) = Clay Meadow. As such, I think there's little reason to assume that vin in itself ever meant "sacred place", although some places with names incidentally containing the -vin suffix were of course considered sacred at various times. Maitreya (talk) 13:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

I'll look it up in Magnus Olsen (I have a copy somewhere here, acquired since I originally wrote this article), but since Turville Petre is only viewable in snippets on GoogleBooks, here are the relevant passages:

p. 66: It was seen that a small group of place-names containing this element [Óðin-] has been identified in Tröndelag. One of these, Onsöien, was recorded earlier as Odinsyn, said to be from Óðinsvin (Óðinn's meadow), and -vin, denoting a sacred meadow, or place of worship is said, as a place-name element, to belong to a very early period, even to the Bronze Age. [Ref. to Farms and Fanes of Ancient Norway, 1928, 227 ff.]

pp. 237–38: The place-names of Scandinavia provide rich evidence of sanctuaries and holy places. They were often out of doors, and the words vangr, vin, akr (meadow, cornfield) were applied to them, as well as haugr (mound). The name Forsetalundr, in eastern Norway, may preserve memory of a grove dedicated to Forseti, son of Baldr. [Ref. to Farms and Fanes of Ancient Norway, 280]

In the first passage, which concerns evidence for where Óðinn was worshipped, he is clearly only speaking about placenames compounded with a god-name; in the second that isn't so clear. (The next paragraph is on vé.) But clearly he regards such place-names as indicating cult-places at least when they are so compounded. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:01, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

The sources I've been referring to also agree that examples such as Onsøyen ("Onsöien" is an outdated spelling) were most likely places of worship, but only because it's explicitly Odin's meadow, as opposed to any old meadow. Actually, I think the best indication that -vin as such did not mean sacred place is the sheer number of -vin names that are utterly trivial (see my earlier examples). Maitreya (talk) 13:38, 12 March 2013 (UTC)

Hello. Is it possible it was a misspelling and meant to say vi? In a Danish context 'vi' means a place of worship or a sacred place. It is seen in many place-names even today. I have sources if its needed. RhinoMind (talk) 01:49, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Scope of article

This article covers Norse, Anglo-Saxon, ancient, and modern heathenry. I have therefore reverted the move and an earlier removal of categories that left out the Anglo-Saxon, and also reverted the removal of references to modern hofs. I also suggest looking through the sections of the article that discuss the changing scholarly opinions on the farmhouse hof theory before changing the lead; there appear to have been two different styles of ancient hof, and there is now ample scholarly support for the notion of purpose-built hofs, based on recent archeology but also on Yeavering - so it really doesn't work well to restrict discussion to Norse. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:17, 10 March 2013 (UTC)

Then why is it called "heathen hofs"? Hof only means temple in (West) Old Norse after the end of the Viking Age. Nobody would call an Anglo-Saxon temple a hof. Why is there a section called "changing scholarly opinions"? Is that opposed to some unwritten section on "unchanging scholarly opinions"? WP:NAME would suggest a title like "temples in Germanic paganism", not some cryptic piece of US Astatru slang, as this article is clearly not about Asatru (except for a brief and entirely misplaced section at the end). If you are going to write an article about "heathen hofs", or temples in Germanic neopaganism, at least have the basic circumspection to look at your own sources and don't cite Ásatrúarfélagið as trying to build a "hof" when the source clearly states they want to build a "temple". If, however, you find a source that says, for example,

Borgarráð Reykjavíkurborgar samþykkti að úthluta Ásatrúarfélaginu lóð undir hof í Leynimýri á fundi sínum á fimmtudaginn.

You will find it uses the term hof because it is using the Icelandic language throughout. And hof happens to be the word for "shrine" or "temple" in Icelandic, and the Icelandinc newspaper would use hof even if it was about a Hindu shrine.

I guess I am saying, if you are going to prevent people from trying to salvage this article, you should at least try and fix it yourself. --dab (𒁳) 11:35, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

And I'm saying, look at the role played by Yeavering in scholarly coverage of the topic. (As well as, more contentiously, the stave church argument.) Germanic pagan temples redirects here, and so does Anglo-Saxon temple, so it's not hard to find; and the nature of the topic precludes usefully splitting off the Anglo-Saxon into a separate article. I could see making the former redirect the main title, but the bulk of the article would still be about the hof issue, since like it or not that is the term that has established itself. I don't quite follow your point on "changing scholarly opinions": I believe the section clearly summarises the situation without giving undue weight to either the older assumptions, the Olsen theory, or the fringier theories such as the Arcona comparison. And that situation is that opinions among scholars have gone through several changes, so it seems wrong to me to just call it Scholarly opinions as if it's a theoretically static area. I have some more material on Anglo-Saxon that I've been meaning to integrate, and the question above reminded me that there's room for more on what Magnus Olsen thought, but I was aiming for a balanced article and I think it is that. (Whereas the foreign-language articles are all more limited in scope and reflect that. It was nice to have both them and their sources available; the internet is a wonderful thing, although I wish that plan were not missing from the pdf of the Yeavering report!) Now let me look at your recent changes. --Yngvadottir (talk) 11:54, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

In response to your labeling the section trivia, I rechecked Gladsheim's website but thought the Icelandic hof should be listed first and the Gladsheim site should be a ref rather than an inline link, so I made those changes, but I still don't believe it's trivia. There are modern hofs; it's not as if I'm listing every one I'm aware of that ever operated :-) If coverage appears of a group elsewhere - for example in Denmark or Sweden - deciding to set up a hof rather than always using an open-air vé, I'll happily incorporate that. But vé is way too broad a term, and hof is the term usually employed in scholarship, including that that takes Olsen's view that they were farm buildings most of the year. That is because the West Norse literary texts adopted that term, yes - and that is also the reason that is the term normally used in modern Icelandic, yes. (Although I notice the is.wikipedia article specifies.) I don't see that as any argument against using the term - it is the most accurate and widely used one. As I say, I could see substituting "temple", but not specifically "Norse" temple, and as such, "heathen" provides the most unambiguous label, although "Germanic pagan" is a runner-up. --Yngvadottir (talk) 12:16, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Reading Dab's rationale above, I see no reason for a rewrite. His complaints seem to boil down to the title of the article and a section title ("changing scholarly opinions"). A discussion over the name would be one thing (I would prefer "Temples in Germanic paganism" or something of the sort). I see nothing wrong with the section title. I would organize the article differently myself, but my way isn't the only way. The article is generally well referenced throughout and there are no issues of synthesis or neutrality that I can detect. As no real rationale has been provided for the rewrite tag, I am removing it. :bloodofox: (talk) 02:31, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

hof, hofs

I was wondering where the English hof, hofs had suddenly come from in neopagan jargon. I suppose it turns out this is connected with the coverage of the Icelandic Asatru temple in the media beginning c. 2006: the Icelandic word for "temple" happens to be hof to begin with, of course derived from the Old Norse word (while Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have adopted tempel). The modern Icelandic word has undergone semantic narrowing. The Old Norse word means "hall" (i.e., the Germanic longhouse). An encyclopedic article about Norse (or Germanic) cult sites will include such halls, but will also extend to other sites. The best existing coverage on the Germanic longhouse I could find so far is here.

It is correct to use hof for pagan temples in medieval Iceland, and it is easy to find literature that does so. The extension of hof to "Germanic temples" in general seems to have happened on-wiki, and the plural hofs is clearly a neopagan innovation, presumably originating in the 2000s (I find it in print in 2013). --dab (𒁳) 09:26, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

The plural usage is derived from the Danish of Olsen's work and to a lesser extent other non-Icelandic Scandinavian sources. The history of the scholarship makes it impossible in my view to separate the issue of "Were there Germanic temples?" from the issue of "How does the word hof come to mean 'temple' in Old Norse texts and what does it tell us?" Also, the data do not support a simple statement that hof means "hall", even if one sets aside the role of the word in scholarship. I have therefore moved the article back and reverted Dbachmann's changes. A formal Requested Move process? Yngvadottir (talk) 13:36, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Please, discern the Nazi propaganda

Could you please find more info bout the Ranheim site? Because numerous Nazi propaganda sources claim it was demolished by the current regime in Norway. Was it? Was it not? Was the whole story a hoax?--Adûnâi (talk) 08:33, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Well, first things first: Those who propagandize are the ones who are obliged to provide evidence for whatever they claim. That is a general rule of thumb. Otherwise their claims are just untrustworthy. Like weird UFO stories and such. I mean some people claim humanity is enslved by an alien race of lizards. You would not expect that to be countered by providing evidence that all human beings are not of an alien lizard-race, right? That is not how things work in The World of Logic. That being said, I suggest you advertise on the Ranheim article, as your issue is only concerned with Ranheim and not Heathen Hofs in general. Last, there are two sources for Ranheim up here on Wikipedia already. Maybe they will solve your problem?

• Fant hedensk helligdom uten sidestykke in Norwegian
• Store Norske Leksikon: Ranheim

RhinoMind (talk) 19:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi I am back. I have added this solid source on Ranheim (to the Ranheim article):

• Preben Rønne: Horg, hov and ve – a pre-Christian cult place at Ranheim in Trøndelag, Norway, in the 4rd – 10th centuries AD, Adoranten (2011)

It is the best and most credible source I could find and probably the best there is.

What you mention about "destruction" is perhaps a process welknown in many other archaeological diggs. Archaeologists are called in, because construction work requires their delicate work on sites and objects found during the construction process. When the archaeologists have done their job, construction takes off again, building on the former excavation site. I guess that is what is happening here too? Depending on your POV you could call that process "destruction" if you like. In the case of Ranheim, it would seem a bit odd that construction should pave over the cult site, if there are large standing stones, etc.. I suggest you ask the "propagandists" what they actually mean and what is going on at the Ranheim site exactly. Don't ask about political/ideological stuff, just the basic facts. They should be able to provide some useful clues I guess? Cheers. RhinoMind (talk) 19:38, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the research! The update to the section is greatly appreciated. I am interested in this topic for the sake of anyone googling by the keyword "Ranheim Pagan site," they are likely to find some Nazi propaganda on the issue as this article isn't at the top of the search results (blogs such as this are). But the link you have provided agrees with those pieces. If I'm not mistaken, "Nå skal Ranheims unike helligdom fjernes for alltid for å gi plass til boliger" means that the site would be demolished (at least, as per info from 2011, it's weird that there was no uproar in the following years, that's why it looked like a hoax to me at first). And you seem to have confirmed it... Shouldn't it be mentioned in the articles (both here and on Ranheim)? It's a pretty significant and controversial part.

It's a bit off topic, but I have to mention it. Isn't preservation of cultural heritage such as this Germanic site one of the aims of archaeology? Is it really acceptable to destroy it merely collecting the information? This story is so weird, it really plays into the Nazi depiction of Christians wiping out the remains of the ancient Germanic culture. Sorry for the rant.

My issue with it in terms of improving the article is what appears to me as a double standard. We have an entire article dedicated to the malicious neglect of Pompeii (the site which has been preserved for 200 years so far), yet this goes unnoticed and underreported.--Adûnâi (talk) 21:48, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi. I haven't looked into it really, but from a first glance, I can see that the site didn't contain anything of significance to preserve other than the arcaheological documentation itself. Try to have a look at the images in the academic paper for example. I couldn't see any "standing stones" for one thing. Also this site is only 15 meteres in diametre, and in no way comparable to the entire city of Pompeii!

Whenever there is a monument deemed unique and signinficant enough for preservation, the laws already demands authorities to preserve it. The significance of a monument is evaluated from a scholarly and academic POV, not a political or economical perspective. That is how these things are handled in general.

I don't know what really happened at the Ranheim cult site after the excavation and subsequent documentation. And neither does anybody else it seems. If anybody knew, they would be able to provide some solid info about it, rather than disconnected sentences and speculation from an article in a newspaper. If we are to proceed from here and write anything about the fate of the Ranheim hof on Wikipedia, it is important that solid info and refs about it are unveiled. This should be first priority. After that we could perhaps add something about the "uproar" as you call it. But are we sure there was an "uproar" or was it just some folks posting something in an on-line debate? An issue should be evaluated as significant and notable enough if we are to add it to Wikipedia. As a second priority you could gather refs about the "uproar" and we could have a look at it. But that is second priority. First priority is to gather solid knowledge of what actually has happened at the Ranheim hof after excavation. The basic facts.

PS. Whatever happened, I myself am pretty sure it has been handled professionally and certainly not with a political agenda in mind. I do know, however, of both private people (present and past) and authorities (past) that have demolished and destroyed significant pre-historic and historic sites in Scandinavia. Mostly because of ignorance or economical motives. It is now completely illegal and has been since the 1930s. RhinoMind (talk) 22:13, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

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