It is intriguing to me that the writer of this poem had a knowledge of parts of scripture. It makes me wonder who brought the Bible, or at least some of its accounts, to this region by the tenth century. I do not understand the combination of this with all of the mythology. It seems that they believed that God is a heavenly father along with some other correct doctrines, but they did not let go of their traditional religion. This is true in the case of many cultures. We cannot seem to separate ourselves from what we hold close. This shows that we do not like change, but we must let go of the things of the world and follow Christ alone. Our calling is to be in the world and not of it.
I commented on Hannah and Nate's posts.
The first half of your post is one of my favorites this week. It seems that the Geats and danes are possibly similar to the Japanese in Endo's Silence. They take the faith, but keep their culture. Awesome observation.
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