Tuesday, May 26, 2015

My Vegvísir patch. Now I will never get lost.

I finally sewed my Vegvísir patch onto one of my PFDs. If you know me at all you know that I studied Norse and early Germanic mythology and I thought this was kind of fitting for a PFD. My wife bought the patch for me.

The Vegvísir is also known as the Viking or Icelandic compass. 

The symbol is attested in the Huld Manuscript, collected in Iceland by Geir Vigfusson in 1860 (but consisting of material of earlier origin). A leaf of the manuscript provides a drawing of the Vegvísir symbol, giving its name, and, in prose, declaring that "if this sign is carried, one will never lose one's way in storms or bad weather, even when the way is not known".

It is said to be associated to Ægir.
In Norse mythology, Ægir (Old Norse "sea") is a sea jötunn associated with the ocean. The Jötnar are a mythological race that live in Jötunheimr, one of the nine worlds of Norse cosmology.




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