Germany’s Fairy Tale Road is a Grimm adventure

"Germany celebrates the contributions of the Brothers Grimm with the Fairy Tale Road, which makes a serpentine route for nearly 400 miles through the back roads and countryside of Hesse and Lower Saxony. It was here that the brothers were born and collected their stories.

... For lovers of quaint villages and towns nestled amid pastoral landscapes, this is an ideal tour for parents and grandparents seeking to relive their childhood and for children to explore the sights where the stories took place."

Read the full article by Bob Taylor about this tour dedicated to the Brothers Grimm, whose collection of fairy tales marks its bicentennial this December, at the Washington Times.

Sliasthorp, Fabled Viking Military Town, Possibly Unearthed In Germany

"In what may be one of the biggest digs of the 21st century, a team of Danish archeologists believe they have uncovered a once thriving center of Viking activity, Sliasthorp, the fabled military base occupied by the earliest Scandinavian kings.

Since excavations began in 2010, roughly 200 buildings, along with weapons, precious jewelry, glass beads, and silver coins have been unearthed at Füsing, near the Danish border, National Geographic reports, findings that they say offer valuable insights into the military organization and town planning of what is thought to be the earliest Viking settlement in the historical record."

Read the full article at the Huffington Post.

Scientists find runes on ancient comb

Thanks to Hex Magazine for this item:
"Archaeologists have found the oldest engravings of letters ever to be discovered in central Germany, officials from the area announced on Thursday.
The ancient letters, called runes, were scratched onto a 12.5 centimetre-long comb by Germanic settlers in the second century, scientists working on the site in Saxony-Anhalt believe." The complete article may be read at The Local.

Five hundred new fairytales discovered in Germany

"A whole new world of magic animals, brave young princes and evil witches has come to light with the discovery of 500 new fairytales, which were locked away in an archive in Regensburg, Germany for over 150 years. The tales are part of a collection of myths, legends and fairytales, gathered by the local historian Franz Xaver von Schönwerth (1810–1886) in the Bavarian region of Oberpfalz at about the same time as the Grimm brothers were collecting the fairytales that have since charmed adults and children around the world."

The full article may be read at the Guardian. One of the fairy tales, "The Turnip Princess," may be read here.

Remnants of Revenants: The Role of the Dreaded Draugr in Medieval Iceland

Via Medievalists.net: "The term 'revenant' is a French term for ghost, derived from the verb revenir, 'to return.' The Icelandic term is more specific to the returning and violently unhappy dead: the feared draugr. These Scandinavian ghosts are almost always purely physical. They rise from the burial grounds (howes), bash the living, and generally make horrible nuisances of themselves until heroes overpower them and destroy their corpses for good. They owe their place in folklore to earlier Germanic literature: a heroic and supernatural tradition that shows up in the medieval Icelandic sagas and ghost stories from northern England."
Read the full article by Mistresss Caitlin Christiana Wintour at Caitlin's Crossroad.

Yule and Christmas: their place in the Germanic year

From the preface: "This book treats of the problems connected with the Germanic year - the three-score-day tide of Yule, the Germanic adoption of the Roman calendar, and the introduction of the festival of Christ's Nativity into a part of the German year, which til then had apparently been without a festivity. It traces the revolution brought about by these events, in custom, belief, and legend up to the fourteenth century. By that time, the Author believes, most of the fundamental features which go towards the making of modern Christmas had already come to have their centre in the 25th day of December."

Written in 1899, this book by Alexander Tille is available in a digitized version at Google Books.  Though focusing largely on Germany, Tille also devotes two chapters to Scandinavian customs regarding Yule and the Midvinterblot.

The Winter Goddess: Percht, Holda, and Related Figures

Article by Lotte Motz which first appeared in Folklore (vol. 95:ii,  1984):

"The figures under discussion appear under two  main designations: Frau Holle, especially prominent in Hesse and Thuringia, and Frau Perchta who belongs, above all, to the Alpine regions. Various other names have also been  recorded, such as Stampa, Rupfa, Luzie, Frau Frie, or Frau Gode."

A PDF of the complete article is available at Winterscapes.

Viking religion Asatru: A new research project explores the faith of Odin's descendants

This article, in German, is about the study of Asatru as practiced in present-day Germany and in part compares it with Asatru as practiced in Iceland. It may be found at the Grenz | Wissenschaft-aktuell  (Current International Science) blog site.