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Lecture

Odin: The Art of War

In course

HUM-365: Darwin, religion and science

Ce cours revient sur l'histoire des opposants à Darwin et au darwinisme : créationnistes, néo-créationnistes, partisans du dessein intelligent. Quels sont leurs arguments ? Quelles sont leurs stratégies ? Que font-ils de certaines découvertes récentes ? ...

Description

This lecture delves into the Norse mythology surrounding Odin, focusing on his role as a god of war and poetry. It explores Odin's cunning strategies in battles, his relationship with other gods, and his connection to magic and poetry. The lecture discusses Odin's sacrifices, his quest for knowledge, and his attributes as a powerful deity. It also covers Odin's involvement in significant events such as the death of Baldr and the mead of poetry. Through the analysis of various myths and poems, the lecture sheds light on Odin's complex persona as a wise and enigmatic figure in Norse mythology.

Instructor

Jean-François Bert

Official source

Related concepts (17)

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly existed before that. Evidence of ritual human sacrifice can also be found back to at least pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica as well as in European civilizations. Varieties of ritual non-human sacrifices are practiced by numerous religions today.

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more humans as part of a ritual, which is usually intended to please or appease gods, a human ruler, public or jurisdictional demands for justice by capital punishment, an authoritative/priestly figure or spirits of dead ancestors or as a retainer sacrifice, wherein a monarch's servants are killed in order for them to continue to serve their master in the next life. Closely related practices found in some tribal societies are cannibalism and headhunting.

Military strategy

Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek word strategos, the term strategy, when first used during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow sense as the "art of the general", or "the art of arrangement" of troops. and deals with the planning and conduct of campaigns, the movement and disposition of forces, and the deception of the enemy. The father of Western modern strategic studies, Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), defined military strategy as "the employment of battles to gain the end of war.

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of one or more animals, usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Human sacrifice, where it existed, was always much rarer. All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered; some cultures, like the ancient and modern Greeks, eat most of the edible parts of the sacrifice in a feast, and burnt the rest as an offering.

Attrition warfare

Attrition warfare is a military strategy consisting of belligerent attempts to win a war by wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel, material, and morale. The word attrition comes from the Latin root atterere, meaning "to rub against", similar to the "grinding down" of the opponent's forces in attrition warfare. Attrition warfare represents an attempt to grind down an opponent's ability to make war by destroying their military resources by any means including guerrilla warfare, people's war, scorched earth and all kind of battles apart from a decisive battle.

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