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Norse - The Night journey
Identifier
017165
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Vikings – Neil Oliver
Archaelogist Flemming Kaul has suggested it is possible to discern the direction of travel of many of the engraved ships. Those moving left to right were often associated with depictions of horses – and so symbolised the passage of the sun across the sky during daytime. By contrast, the vessels sailing right to left, accompanied by fish or snakes, represented an ancient belief in the star’s journey beneath the sea, back to it starting point, during each night. All of it points to a lost religion that lay embedded within one society after another for thousands of years. Aboard ship or chariot across the sky by day, escorted under the sea on the backs of fishes, snakes and water birds by night, it was an endless journey that provided a framework – a scaffold that supported the very fabric of existence