Show Notes
Send us Fan Mail ***welp, Shawn missed the years on the reigns of Hákon and Eric by an entire century. Edit to fix coming hopefully in the next day. yikes**** In this episode, Shawn follows up on the poems Eiríksmál and Hákonarmál, which detail the deaths of King Eric Bloodaxe and King Hákon the Good and depict both entering the Norse afterlife of Valhalla. From there, Shawn takes a closer look at what the surviving sources actually tell us about Odin's hall, who ends up there, and what exa...
More from Sagas w/Shawn - Gods and Kings
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Shawn delivers part two of his Tales of Ireland series, focusing on the voyage of a certain monk who lived in the southwestern portion of the Emerald Isle: St. Brendan. Brendan sets out across the North Atlantic in search of the Promised Land of the Saints and an Island of Earthly Delights. (He is a man of the cloth, so it is not what you are thinking.) On this seven-year adventure, he finds himself on top of a giant fish, sees the devil and the betraye...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Shawn continues his series on the Kings of Norway with Hakon the Good, the first Christian king of Norway and another son of Harald Fairhair. Raised in the court of King Æthelstan of England, Hakon returns home to challenge the rule of his half-brother, Eric Bloodaxe. If you remember from our previous episode, the lords of Norway welcome this new claimant if it means they can be rid of Eric's wife Gunhild. (To be fair, Eric also had the small problem of...
Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Shawn returns to his non-existent roots and once again discusses gods and kings. Specifically, Eric Bloodaxe, King of Norway (and later Northumbria), who according to the saga sources can trace his ancestry back to the Norse gods Odin, Freyr, and Njörðr. The discussion begins with the rise of his father, Harald Fairhair, and the world he left behind for his many sons (Eric included). Shawn then follows Eric’s rise as well, while also exploring why his r...
Send us Fan Mail In our final episode of our series on Thor, Shawn wraps up Thor's non-existent story arc, tying the Zelda I mean Norse timeline up in a way that makes sense to tell his story for the podcast. Thor continues to confront his own limits navigating life despite all of his strength. In doing so, he understands a couple very human traits of his, that he will never be perfect, and he will die. The discussion focuses on the events surrounding the death of his half-brother Balde...
Send us Fan Mail Ignore the part of the episode where I stated the "Magog and Gomer, Father's of Ireland" in the title. Love, Shawn. In this St. Patrick’s Day episode of Sagas w/ Shawn - Gods and Kings, we dive into one of the most fascinating medieval texts in Irish tradition, the Lebor Gabála Érenn, also known as the Book of Invasions. The text attempts to explain the origins of Ireland and its people by, like every text Shawn has reviewed, weaving together mythology, genealogy, and the bib...