Anthesteria & Vikings

I'm doing two history subjects this semester and I am very excited about each of them. The first is Classical Athens and obviously deals with Ancient Greece and particular the nation-state of Athens. In the first lecture I learnt about one of the festivals that would be taking place now, that is, at this time of the year in Ancient Greece. The Ancient Athens calendar was related to the lunar calendar, and this particular festival goes for three days and started yesterday on February 28. The festival is called Anthesteria and is related to Dionysus, the god of drinking and merriment. Its basically a wine festival and a 'respect the dead' festival and each day has a special theme. Day One, Pithoigia, literally the 'opening of the casks', was a day when everyone, including slaves and children, drank the wine which had been fermenting for a year. Day Two, Choës, the feast of the beakers, was another day of merrimaking, when people would dress up and meet with friends and drink more. Drinking clubs met to organize drink-off matches, the winner being he who drained his cup most rapidly. And the wife of the archon basileus (like the Mayor) went through a ceremony of marriage to the wine god, in which she was assisted by fourteen Athenian matrons, called geraerae, chosen by the basileus and sworn to secrecy. Day Three, Chytroi, was a festival of the dead, when cooked pulse was offered to Hermes Chthonios, Hermes in his capacity of a god of the lower world, and to the souls of the dead, who were then bidden to depart. Funky. So today we are on Day Two and I'm having a glass of wine to celebrate. The stories about some of the Ancient Greek gods is even more interesting.

The other history subject is called Viking Studies and deals with the people of Scandinavia roughly around the Middle Ages. This is a really interesting subject because a major component of the studies is studying the old language of Old Norse. In class yesterday we studied a nursery rhyme in Old Norse, the first line of which is reproduced here. Litla, gula hænan fann fræ, þat var hveitifræ. I'm pretty excited and I think its pretty cool, although somewhat useless. But there are plenty of other things I know and do which could be considered just as useless, so its silly to think like that. Some interesting things to note about Vikings:
1. They didn't have horns on their helmets.
2. The term 'viking' at the time only referred to those who went off pillaging.
3. They could roll their longboats across land in order to travel between rivers.
4. They were well kept and not barbarians like many people believe.
5. There are no written contemporary sources (except for runestones) so our knowledge of Vikings is very much shaped by the opinions of those they attacked.