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Curated playlist

Writers on Germanic paganism

  • J. R. R. TolkienOn his 21st birthday, Tolkien proposed by letter to a woman who was already engaged.
  • François-Xavier DillmannFrançois-Xavier Dillmann's French translation of Snorri Sturluson's Edda came out in 1991.
  • Lotte MotzIllness ended Lotte Motz's teaching in 1984, so she turned to Norse giantesses.
  • Karl Joseph SimrockKarl Simrock lost his government job for writing a poem praising a revolution.
  • John LindowJohn Lindow became a Berkeley authority on Old Norse myth, Sami and Finnish mythology, and Inuit religion.
  • Wilhelm MannhardtFolklorist Wilhelm Mannhardt dropped his own solar theory of myth as his survey answers came in.
  • Jacob GrimmJacob Grimm and his brother expected their dictionary to take roughly ten years. It was finished in 1961.
  • Hilda Ellis DavidsonHilda Ellis Davidson used burial mounds to study Norse beliefs, which was almost heretical in 1943.
  • Rudolf SimekOne Austrian scholar wrote a book tracing trolls from Norse myth to the internet.
  • Gabriel Turville-PetreIn August 1942, the Foreign Office sent Gabriel Turville-Petre to the Faroe Islands for two months. The stated purpose was "in order to study the inhabitants, their politics and conditions of life." Edward Oswald Gabriel Turville-Petre was…
  • Hamilton Wright MabieHamilton Wright Mabie passed the bar exam but hated practicing law. In 1879 he started writing for a magazine.
  • Georges DumézilGeorges Dumézil was shut out of French academic jobs after his thesis. His teacher told him to go abroad, to Istanbul.
  • H. A. GuerberBetween 1893 and 2017, publishers issued 104 editions of The Myths of Greece and Rome, in both English and French. WorldCat lists them in 1,194 libraries around the world. The author, Hélène Adeline Guerber, signed her books H. A. Guerber.…
  • Kevin Crossley-HollandKevin Crossley-Holland failed his first Oxford exams, then found his lifelong passion. It was Anglo-Saxon literature.
  • Peter Andreas MunchPeter Andreas Munch, a trained lawyer, became Norway's leading medieval historian. He also entered the Vatican archives.
  • Viktor RydbergA single 1862 book kept Viktor Rydberg out of the Swedish Academy for fifteen years. It denied that Christ was divine.
  • Åke OhlmarksTolkien wrote a guide to names because of a Swedish translator. Åke Ohlmarks had altered The Lord of the Rings.

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