Talk:Old Norse religion

Requested move 23 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved to Old Norse religion. It's a borderline decision, but Cuchullain's book search has demonstrated that the proposed title is more common in academic sources, which we generally assign more weight, particularly as the topic is an academic subject. Recognizability/precision (favoring "Old Norse") vs. conciseness (favoring "Norse") concerns seem to even out. No such user (talk) 08:15, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

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Norse religion → Old Norse religion – The term "Old Norse religion" is generally favoured by academics specialising in the study of this pre-Christian belief system. The archaeologist Anders Andrén for instance noted in a recent publication on the topic that "Old Norse religion" is "the conventional name" applied to the pre-Christian religions of Scandinavia. There are certainly other terms that Reliable Sources also use—"pre-Christian Norse religion", "Norse religion", "Norse paganism", "Nordic paganism", "Scandinavian paganism", "Scandinavian religion", and "Northern heathenism"—but "Old Norse religion" appears to have the widest usage among RS at present. It is therefore the most appropriate term as per WP:COMMONNAME and per WP:TITLE. In addition, "Old Norse religion" helps makes it clearer that the article is talking about the pre-Christian belief system of Northern Europe, as practiced by speakers of Old Norse, rather than the modern Pagan religion which we deal with at Heathenry (new religious movement) and which might more easily be confused with "Norse religion". Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:40, 23 August 2017 (UTC)--Relisting. DrStrauss talk 18:44, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Relisting note: last relist

Weak support. I doubt many readers would think of Scandinavian-focused neo-heathenry when they see "Norse religion", but I think some might think the article should include Scandinavian Christianity. "Old Norse" is clearer in that respect, but otherwise I don't have any big preferences between "Old Norse religion", "Norse paganism" (which is a little bit more likely to be confused with neo-paganism) and the existing "Norse religion". I don't really follow the arguments above about out of scope material; this article should include later medieval folk beliefs only insofar as they illuminate paganism, and should not include Tacitus. The evidence for the ancient beliefs of the Norse peoples are overwhelmingly in Old Norse (some of it runic); it's likely I'm missing a point. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:48, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Support as nominator (if such a thing is permitted). Midnightblueowl (talk) 23:00, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

It's unnecessary and discouraged but harmless IMO. Andrewa (talk) 23:42, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Support. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 02:47, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose as over-disambiguation. COMMONAME does not mean "use the most common name in very recent and highly specialized sources". This would also be a PoV problem, since adherents of modern Nordic neo-paganism (under a wide variety of names for the religion and for the particular religious organizations) largely (though not entirely consistently) consider their current beliefs and practices an extension of the original, not a reinvention. While you, I, or the next guy might debate that, it's not our job to presuppose the conclusion of that debate by picking titles that do so. And it would be a WP:CONSISTENCY problem; we'd then be in the position of debating numerous other over-disambiguating moves of other pre- or non-Christian religions to "Old [whatever] religion" titles. In everyday English, "Norse" already universally implies "old"; when we don't mean the ancient Norse, we use "Scandinavian".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:49, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

• I think that there might be a misunderstanding here. The "Old" in "Old Norse religion" does not designate the age of the belief system in question. Rather, it is a reference to the language of Old Norse, which was spoken by the Nordic societies among which this religion existed. There would be no comparable "Old Roman religion" because a language called "Old Roman" never existed, so nobody is suggesting that the "Old... religion" should be rolled out consistently across other articles. As for the claim that there is a POV problem with "Old Norse religion", well I just don't see that at all. Virtually all academic specialists in the field of religion treat modern Heathenry as a separate subject to the pre-Christian belief systems of Scandinavia (even if they are very interested in how the latter is inspired by the former), so we are hardly imposing a fringe or otherwise problematic viewpoint by acknowledging this distinction in our articles. Midnightblueowl (talk) 10:53, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Nothing to disambiguate, so the more concise title is preferred here, with the lead and the existing redirect coping with any confusion. Andrewa (talk) 23:42, 28 August 2017 (UTC)
• Support. It does appear that reliable sources tend to call it "Old Norse religion" rather than just "Norse religion". While "Norse religion" turns up somewhat more hits on Google Books, most of the relevant hits are actually using "Old Norse religion", including these from the first page of hits alone:[1][2][3][4][5][6] It appears most of the higher caliber sources are using "Old Norse religion"/"Old Norse Religion"/"old Norse religion".--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:06, 29 August 2017 (UTC)
  • I think we need to clarify several principles here. First and most important, this seems to be saying that a hit for old Norse religion doesn't also count as a hit for Norse religion in deciding the common name. I think it should count for both the long and the short version. Those familiar with the less concise name will recognise the more concise one unless it is ambiguous, and in this case it is not ambiguous.
  • Secondly, it's a slippery slope when we start to rank reliable sources as to how reliable they are. What exactly makes them higher caliber sources and who decides this? A source is reliable (or not) for a particular type of information. So far as common English usage goes, all reliable sources count. If we start to rank them we'll end up with academic usage, rather than common usage, and this would be a major shift of policy. Andrewa (talk) 06:48, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I don't understand your first point. A search for "Old Norse religion" would not turn up hits for just "Norse religion" except for false positives. On your second, of course we consider how reliable sources are for the subject at hand. From what I can see, it appears "Old Norse religion" is more common in academic books on the subject, while many hits for "Norse religion" minus "old" are pop works like these:[7][8][9] When the subject of the article appears in the title of an academic book or article, it tends to be under "Old Norse religion".[10][11][12][13] This leads me to believe that Midnightblueowl is correct on this point.--Cúchullain ^t/c 14:02, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

You've identified the issue very well.

My point is, these are not false positives at all. Why should they be? Just because the shorter phrase is often, or even most commonly, used as part of the longer phrase, that doesn't mean we need to use the longer phrase as the article title. To justify using the longer phrase as the title, we'd need to show that it is almost always used, and it clearly isn't. Andrewa (talk) 00:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

We need to show that it's the most WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources, which appears to be the case.--Cúchullain ^t/c 02:59, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Cuchullain: Of your three "pop" examples, the first, Lindow, is academic (and published by OUP); its title is Norse Mythology because that's traditionally been used as a proxy for studying the religion. (I'm going to cite that book a few times.) The third is Thomas Carlyle, writing in a long-gone cultural environment (and if I remember rightly a bit of an intellectual snob '-) ). So while you have a point about pop usage, those examples don't support it well. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:05, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

I didn't intend that first link to the Lindow book - it doesn't seem to use either version of the title. I think the link I meant was this one that has a similar title although at least currently it doesn't have a preview.[14] The Carlyle book is an example of the type of thing that pops up on Google for "Norse religion" minus "old" - a reprint of an out of date work. Whatever you want to call it, it's not useful for establishing "Norse religion" as the common name in current reliable sources. Another pop work using "Norse religion" from a later page is this, plus this one that actually uses "Ancient Norse religion". Others aren't discussing this topic, but rather Norse neopaganism,[15][16] and others are transparently not reliable sources.[17][18] There are also many apparently academic sources that just use "Norse religion" or similar,[19] but if the first several pages of Google Books results are any indication, it's less common than "Old Norse paganism".--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:25, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

• Support per the case made by Midnightblueowl and the other support comments above. Randy Kryn (talk) 00:26, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Counterproposal

Norse religion → Norse paganism – Where there no Norsemen who followed other, non-pagan religions, e.g. Christianity? See Gothic Christianity as an example of Old Germanic Christianity. I will not be surprised if a significant fraction of the Norsemen were also Christians. If so, it will make the current title erroneous which assumes 100% of the Norsemen were pagans. We do not call the article "Gothic Christianity" as "Gothic religion", as that would also be an erroneous title. Therefore, to be neutral as per WP:POVNAMING, I suggest to move this article to "Norse paganism". 1) "Norse paganism" is not only a more WP:PRECISE and neutrally worded title, but also a very common name, that reflects the scope of this article in a better way. 2) The suggested title is also WP:CONSISTENT with other related articles' articles like Anglo-Saxon paganism. Khestwol (talk) 11:20, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It was moved from that title in 2012; you might want to look at the arguments made there. Personally I think "Old Norse" would serve the same purpose; of course during the process of conversion there came to be Christian Norse. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:08, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

"Norse paganism" also seems to be less common than the "(Old) Norse religion" versions.[20] And many hits aren't for historical Norse religion, but Norse neopaganism.[21][22][23]--Cúchullain ^t/c 17:25, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Short citations need to include years

I am starting this section because of this edit by user:Yngvadottir and this statement on the talk page "because this article uses that horrible alternative way of sourcing that I can't get my head around" by User:S Marshall.

Examples of how to format short citations

The citation style here is that used in WP:CITE called short citations. What that means is that a short inline citation is used and it is supported by a long full citation in a references section (in this article the section is called "Sources"). The only thing unusual about the long full citations is that they are on separate lines staring with an indent ":" rather than the more usual bullet point "*" . I for one suggest that is changed. It does not really matter whether templates are or are not used in short citations. But the output should look the same (consistent style). I personally prefer to use templates, but for those who do not then it does not matter as they can construct a non-templated short citation that looks the same. If {{sfn}} is used it has a number of advantages. The most important is that if there are duplicate page numbers to a source then it automagically combine them. So {{sfn|Doe|2001|p=101}}produces a short citation like this. If I then add another sentence lower down the article it will combine the sentences. This has the advantage that if the first sentence and citation are later removed the the later one will still function properly{{sfn|Doe|2001|p=101}}. Note that {{sfn}} default to using "author, year, page number(s)" and appends a dot. If the template {{harvnb}} is used then to work with {{sfn}} it is usually put inside a "ref...tag" pair. <ref>{{harvnb|Doe|2001|p=102}}.</ref> like this. notice that I have added a dot at the end so that it appears just the same as the style used in {{sfn}}. If more than one short citation need with the same page number using {{harvnb}} then the ref tag pair has to be given a name. although any name can be used it is recommended in Citing sources#Repeated citations that "author year page" is used. So the short inline citation then looks like this<ref name="Doe 2001 p103">{{harvnb|Doe|2001|p=103}}.</ref> To repeat that short citation use <ref name="Doe 2001 p103"/> like this. The problem with named tag pairs approach is that if the sentence and the supporting first citation using <ref name="Doe 2001 p222">{{harvnb|Doe|2001|p=222}}.</ref> then a subsequent use of <ref name="Doe 2001 p222"/> fails now days with a warning. This means that over time using named reftags instead of {{sfn}} will involve more maintenance and the construction is more complicated because it is easy to accidentally include a reference to the same page number more than once. However there are cases it is desirable to use harvnb and ref tags because of issues like those described in WP:CITEBUNDLE and WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT. With both {{sfn}} and {{harvnb}} the thirds parameter is to something other than a page (eg a chapter) use loc= in place of p= if the reference is to more than one page use the parameter pp= in place of p=. The last method and for those not very familiar with using templates and short citation is to simply use text like this <ref>Doe 2001, p. 301.</ref> which produces a short citation like this. Notice the comma after the "year", the space after the "p." and the dot at the end. The citation now looks just like one formatted with {{sfn}} so the style is consistent. This brings me to the issue of year. It is quite common for the same book but different edition to be used or for an author with the same name. If the year is not included it is not possible without looking through the history of an article to find out if the editor intended to link the short citation to the long one. Even if there is only one editor with the current name in the references section there may be another book added later on, so including the year is a fail-safe. In this case suppose we change the last citation to <ref>Doe p. 301.</ref> like this. At the moment it is clear by implication that the book refers "Doe 2001". However if at some later date an editor adds a book Doe, Jane (1901). My first book. OCLC 2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) to the long citations and adds a short citation elsewhere like this <ref>Doe 1911, p. 401.</ref>. Although their addition is clear, it is now impossible for a reader to tell which book is supporting the short citation <ref>Doe p. 301.</ref>. For this reason adding the year to a short citation is a fail-safe for future changes even if currently not needed. Notes references Doe, John (2001). My first book. OCLC 1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) Doe, Jane (1901). My first book. OCLC 2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

user:Yngvadottir when you made this edit you included a short citations like this <ref>Abram, pp. 2, 4.</ref><ref>Andrén, p. 106.</ref> in doing so you removed for example {{sfn|Abram|2011|p=2}} that, through the use of a year, is a fuller citation. Is your citation to the same long citation in the sources section or to a different one? Please include years (and dots at the end) when adding short cations for the reasons I have explained in the collapsed text above. -- PBS (talk) 10:22, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

@user:Yngvadottir in the case of Andrén there are several books in the sources section written by that author, so it is a good example of why <ref>Andrén, p. 106.</ref> is not adequate and confusing. -- PBS (talk) 10:26, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to explain it, PBS, but I find the system with years completely unmanageable. It was imposed on the article by Midnightblueowl, who started a rewrite. In deference to them, I am not reverting their rewrite wholesale but rather trying to keep their references, so I have to go section by section, and I'm afraid the imposed ref system, requiring constant scrolling to the bottom while trying to remember the year, is just too much of an added burden. So I'm using a simple system - with short titles where I notice there are multiple works by the same person cited - and I reckon when the rewrite is reasonably complete, someone such as Bloodofox can put back that overly complex style if they decide to do so (for example in order to put the article through GA). I apologize for the resulting patchwork, but the rewrite was not good and I believe it is more important to first fix it. Another point worth considering is that Midnightblueowl doesn't have a good grasp of the scholarly literature and I believe the works referenced are going to change quite a bit. Again, I apologize: it would have been vastly easier for me and looked adequate faster if I'd just reverted their changes, but I didn't want to simply negate their work. (I see you also changed the headings in the citations/further reading area; that's a further illustration of how clueless I am about the citation format Midnightblueowl chose to impose. I just can't find my way around it.) There's a section above mentioning the chnage of citation format and my objection to it, where another editor agreed that fixing the article should happen first. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:14, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

@PBS: About a month or so ago the article was in an absolutely terrible state; most of it was not even referenced and of the references that were used, a wide variety of different citation styles were employed. I spent several days incorporated material from no less than forty academic reliable sources produced by historians, literary specialists, and archaeologists into the article, standardising the referencing system as I went. Yngvadottir disliked my referencing system and the length of my prose, and was concerned that I replicated some of the factual errors that appeared in some of these sources. They proceeded to rewrite various sections of the article, changing the references, removing others, and in some places adding unreferenced material. When I objected to some (not all) of their changes, we found ourselves in a situation of edit warring. I felt that the issues which I raised at the Talk Page were largely rejected out of hand, with dialogue coming to little. I have since taken a back seat as I did not want to engage in edit warring but I have misgivings about many of the changes that are being made. Yngvadottir has a very good background knowledge in Old Norse literature and I respect their expertise in this field, however I have concerns about how accessible their additions are to non-specialist readers and share your concern about the unilateral changing of the citation system and the various problems that this has caused. Personally I would like to see more discussion about future additions being made on the Talk Page rather than being imposed onto the article without any prior debate. Midnightblueowl (talk) 15:31, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Really, Midnightblueowl, I'm in a quandary here. You unilaterally changed the reference format from a mix of fairly accessible ones to one that is a barrier to editing; it was not established, it is new with you. I recognize your hard work and as a result have not merely begun again, which would have been a lot easier, but your rewrite was poorly focused and poorly informed. Unfortunately I have limited time, but I'm doing my best to work with your material, including for now keeping most of your references. The result is a patchwork, but it's more accurate than it was. (And again, I have to say, for an introductory article I disagree that what was there before was terribly bad.) Yngvadottir (talk) 17:16, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

• I've been trying to teach myself {{sfn}} with my most recent new article (which is admittedly in a half-formed state at the moment) and I'm slowly starting to make sense of it. But it's unfamiliar and draining for me to work in that way. I would propose that we return to the standard reference format, that has been used in this article for a long time, until we have the broad structure of the article laid out and an agreed list of references to work from.—S Marshall T/C 18:29, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

  If you are not comfortable with using sfn, simply add the short citation with <ref>surname year, p. page.</ref></nowiki> or <ref>surname year, pp. pages.</ref></nowiki>. -- PBS (talk) 08:05, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

@user:Yngvadottir in the case of Andrén there are several books in the sources section written by that author, so it is a good example of why <ref>Andrén, p. 106.</ref>, is not adequate and confusing. You say "I find the system with years completely unmanageable. However it is the standard method on Wikipedia to construct short citations, and if you are going to edit cooperatively with other editors over a number of different articles you are going to come across it frequently. So lets cooperate now and use this as a test example. There are four long citations which could be supporting the short citation <ref>Andrén, p. 106.</ref>. The years are 2005, 2011, 2014 and possibly 2006 (the last is unlikely becuse there are 3 joint authors). Which of the four long citations support the short citation <ref>Andrén, p. 106.</ref>? -- PBS (talk) 07:59, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry, it is not. I know it's preferred in GA and FA, but WP:CITVAR still obtains and Midnightblueowl put the cart before the horse rewriting this article from the get-go with that new style. I agree, I need to go back over some of the early changes I made and figure out which Andrén Midnightblueowl was citing. But it was more important to start fixing the article, and I wanted to try to keep as much of their work as I could. Once the article is in decent shape, then you and Midnightblueowl and Bloodofox and all the rest of the GA gang can convert it. At that point I suspect the works cited will be even further from what they were. Yngvadottir (talk) 14:33, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

@user:Yngvadottir. It is rather nice to come across someone who thinks that I am in a GA gang! I know some of those editors who edit FA and GA articles -- such as Nikkimaria -- prefer that I keep well away from the GA and FA process. The tool-labs editor interaction tool shows that Midnightblueowl, Bloodofox and I have only edited this one article in common, considering that our combined tally of edits comes to just over 200,000 that I think shows that we are not a gang. My interest in this article goes back to 2007, but I have only made 4 edits, two in 2007 and two recently (two of the 4 page moves). Midnightblueowl has made 611 edit to this page the first being in May 2008. Yngvadottir AFAICT your first edit was at 19:26, 23 August 2017. Among other things it changed inline cations that were using the template {{sfn}} into inline citations that did not.

As to the style used for edits if one looks at the expansion that took place in 17–26 April 2012 the editor who expanded the article chose to use long and short short citations. If one looks at the edit immediately before Midnightblueowl's recent edits starting on 3 August 2017, there was no consistent style it included embedded links (exposed URLs) and also citations that were duplicates. Both of these are explicitly excluded by WP:CITEVAR, and as the citation list contained both, there was no longer a consistent style. So rather than wait for the article to be fixed please fix the citations that you have broken by removed the year (as when you did so you broke the consistent style that was under development). This is something you can do quickly and it will help people who come here to read the page. -- PBS (talk) 20:54, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say I have limits. I have the flu right now, and have learned to avoid editing when I have a fever, so I'm keeping away from this or anything else challenging (what you see me doing today is the result of addiction, and I've been making errors). If you think it's that urgent, note the abbreviated titles I have been using and please feel free to fix the ambiguities I created. However, Midnightblueowl's imposition of this reference style was just that, by their choice, and I'm afraid that while I'm one of very few editors here capable of fixing their rewrite, I absolutely cannot handle the added burden of keeping their favored citation style; as it is, trying to keep as much as possible of their work requires me to concentrate ferociously because of the constant remembering of numbers and checking all the way at the bottom of the page (not to mention the fact it obscures repeated refs, of which there are a ton because of the way Midnightblueowl worked). As S Marshall has reasonably said twice now, the final format of the refs can be sorted out once the article is rewritten, and I'll add once again, and I think anyone who compares the sections I've re-done with Midnightblueowl's work can see this, the sources cited are going to change. I mentioned you along with the others because you all use this impenetrable citation style, which I know of as something used in GA and FA; my apologies for wrongly thereby associating you with GA, but most of us do not use it. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:14, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

"I'm one of very few editors here capable of fixing their rewrite". There's an alarming degree of WP:Ownership here, which is particularly concerning given the refusal to act in a collaborative manner by discussing proposed changes at the Talk Page first. "I absolutely cannot handle the added burden of keeping their favored citation style" - this is a citation style that is very, very widely used across Wikipedia, particularly among those who focus on adding content rather than gnoming. Moreover, it is very easy to use. Incredibly simple, in fact. It was the established citation style of this article before you arrived and started editing it just a few weeks ago, and if you are going to edit this article then you are expected to use it. You are now having an unrelated editor who has come in and independently raised this issue, so it isn't just me expressing my sour grapes. Please, Yngvadorrir, just listen to what other people are saying and try to act in a more collaborative manner. You may know a lot about Old Norse literature, but you do not own this article and cannot bulldoze your personal preferences onto it. Midnightblueowl (talk) 16:44, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I have been bold and reverted Yngvadottir's recent changes to the prose. This was necessary because of the large number of problems with the recent changes; it does not mean that the pre-existing variant is inherently better in every way. Various unreferenced sentences had been added. Citations were messed up (various citations stated "Abram" when in reality it was Andren's work who was being referenced) and a new, problematic referencing style had been imposed. I have not, however, removed their referenced additions. Let's be clear: there should be no more unilateral changes made to this article. No more additions of material, no more changes to the prose, no more changes of the citation style, unless it has been discussed and agreed upon at the Talk Page first. This applies to me as much as to anyone else. This has to be a collaborative project. I have always been—and remain—happy to work with Yngvadottir and others to improve this article, to the extent that it would meet the criteria expected at GAN and FAC. This is the only way that we are actually going to progress with this issue and not descend into edit warring and other unpleasantness. Midnightblueowl (talk) 17:41, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

And I am going to revert your edit(s) and then see if I can fix the ambiguous citations you have both mentioned (which will take me a long time). Here is what I had just written and edit conflicted with you.

I'm sorry, Midnightblueowl, but I have been trying to respect your work. However, quite apart from the strange importance you attach to citation style, which I'm visibly not the only person to regard as something that can be changed again much later, I don't appreciate your presenting the style you introduced for the first time as having been established in the article. The article did not previously use it; it used a mix of styles (like many, possibly even most) Wikipedia articles. You attempted a rewrite you were not qualified to do. I objected here, and Bloodofox agreed with me that it might be better to start anew, but since you had done so much hard work, I have tried instead to fix it, starting with what was most urgent. Luckily, there is no deadline on Wikipedia, because I just don't have the time to complete the task rapidly, especially since you have made it hard for me (or most other editors) by using that citation style. I've flagged here, in edit summaries, and in hidden notes where the next effort should be. I apologize if I am not being as diplomatic as might be advisable, but your rewrite was bad, and it will take a while to fix it, and nobody else has stepped up who has the necessary knowledge. And I have the flu and don't want to further muck things up for readers and fellow editors by doing such a complex task right now, although I had planned to work on it yesterday and today. No, I will not submit changes for review in advance, and more than you did when you started radically rewriting the article based on poor knowledge of the field and good faith effort. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:43, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

• Reverting two weeks' worth of work over some citations is ... uncollegial. Midnightblueowl, please practice what you preached, and please also respect 3R/EW. Yngvadottir showed more than a bit of good faith by working on the material before reverting; you can't just simply dismiss that. Well you can, I guess, but you shouldn't. Drmies (talk) 18:10, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

You are right that there is no deadline on Wikipedia, which is part of the reason why you, I, and anyone else have plenty of time to discuss proposed additions and prose changes here at the Talk Page first. Wikipedia is a collaborative place and that means that we really should be working together rather than in any form of competition. I'm certainly not asking of you anything that I am not asking of myself. I will not unilaterally change the article without consulting you and others first. However, I do expect the same from you. The only alternative is for ongoing edit warring or for one of us to pack up and leave. From your editing history I can see that you are primarily a WikiGnome with little or no time spent actually sitting down and writing an article, getting it to the status where it could be recognised as GA or FA status. Would I be right in thinking that this is actually the first time that you have focused on writing a particular article? It may be true that I do not have a PhD in the study of Old Norse religion and Old Norse literature and am thus not an accredited expert in the field. But I have read extensively on the subject. Moreover, I do know how to write a good Wikipedia article, based on the appropriate use of sources, in accordance with Wikipedia's policy. That's what I intend to do here, and I would be more than happy to do so with you. Please, work with me on this. Let's talk about things before we make changes; we don't have any deadlines, we can take things easy. Midnightblueowl (talk) 18:15, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Let me suggest then that "there should be no more unilateral changes made to this article", as you said earlier in bold print, is laying down a dictate where possible intent and tone simply don't jive; fortunately the most recent comment has a more positive tone. Changing a bunch of citations is work, but patching up broken relationships is more work. Have you all agreed on a referencing system? Agree on that and move on--are you all agreed on content? structure? sourcing? There's so much more exciting stuff to talk about. Drmies (talk) 19:48, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

A revert by User:FreeKnowledgeCreator seems to be nothing more than an attempt to harass someone they've been picking fights with for years. The user has shown no interest in this article, or in this talk page discussion. Drmies (talk) 02:20, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Drmies, you may wish to re-familiarize yourself with WP:AGF. Please do not make unjustified assumptions about why I would make an edit. I have no interest in picking a fight with you, or reverting your edits for the sake of it. You greatly over-estimate your importance to me (you personally are of no real interest to me at all, in fact). You are also wrong in asserting that I have shown "no interest in such topics"; I noted some time ago to Midnightblueowl on my talk page, in response to a question from her, that articles on religious subjects interest me. I have edited them sporadically, even if you were not there to notice, Drimes. Note that I made three edits to this article back in August of this year, well before the present dispute - see this and the two edits that follow. Now with that aspect of matters dealt with, can we discuss the article? Having carefully reviewed the entire discussion above, I do not find Midnightblueowl's position unreasonable. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:00, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Yet here you are, reverting me within four hours after my edit. Drmies (talk) 03:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I am not going to endlessly respond to accusations of bad faith editing. You asserted that I have shown no prior interest in this article or topic area; you are wrong, and the edit I linked to above shows as much. Now unless you want to discuss something substantive - something which actually relates to the article rather than to perceived personal grudges - there is nothing more for me to say. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:27, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I think {{sfnm}} is a step too far for those learning how to use templates. As some sentence were already supported by <ref>{{harv}}; {{harv}}.</ref>; I have converted {{sfnm}} templates to that format. -- PBS (talk) 09:49, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

There are several short citation to "Simek" but no long citation. The only book for which Simek is the author is currently in the "Further Reading" section:

Simek, Rudolf (2008). Dictionary of Northern Mythology (new ed.). Boydell & Brewer. ISBN 978-0859915137.

If this is the reference book then it needs moving in to the Sources section and the short should be changed to link to it.{{sfn|Simek|2008|p=num}} or {{sfn|Simek|2008|loc=section name}} or both {{sfn|Simek|2008|p=num|loc=, section name}}

The citations for Abram and Davidson, are a mess because there is more than one book and some of the short citations simply give author and page number so it is impossible to tie them to the correct source. I say two Abram books because some of the citations are to <ref name=Abram73>Abram, "Old Norse and Germanic Religion", p. 73.</ref> This may be a mistake on the author because other link are to <ref>Andrén, "Old Norse and Germanic Religion" ...</ref> and in fact there is only one Abram citation. -- PBS (talk) 11:18, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

The inline citations to Turville-Petre without a year are unclear because one of them is to Turville-Petre , Volume 2, p. 150. are all the others the one in the Sources section (1975) is that volume 1? what are the publishing details for Volume 2?

The inline citations to Näsström without a year are unclear because there are two different long citations in the Sources section.

I have now been through just the first four of the list of short citations without years and all of them have problems!. I suggest that those who have access to the books check the references and add years to all of the short citations. -- PBS (talk) 11:27, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@PBS: The citations that now state "Abram, "Old Norse and Germanic Religion" (Yngvadottir's wording) originally stated "Andrén 2011". It is problems like these which have led me to believe that the most constructive way forward lies in reverting all of Yngvaddotir's recent, unilaterally-imposed formatting changes (albeit not their useful additions). When it comes to Old Norse literature, they know their stuff, but the complete mess of a formatting change (and the repeated, blunt refusal to desist from changing the citation format when asked) just make me bang my head against a brick wall. When I've tried reverting the formatting of citations to their previous, correct form, either Yngvadottir or Drmies simply edit war to restore it. Deeply frustrating. Midnightblueowl (talk) 13:23, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, there may be instances where in trying to preserve as much of your work as possible—including your choice of survey books to cite—I got the wrong name. I could go over my edits and fix that, and undoubtedly should. (Others could have, but I should.) I'm sorry, I tried to preserve as much as I could of your citations, and evidently messed up. The constant remembering and scrolling is very hard for me, and in any case at a later date the article will need a good shake-out for referencing. We should not for example be using either Jolly's work on the change of religions in Anglo-Saxon England or Näsström's work on her view of Freyja for general points on Norse religion.

Others, including Drmies, are now editing the article, including the lead and iconography sections, which I had avoided looking at for now. They need extensive re-rewriting, because as was discussed way, way above, the Midnightblueowl rewrite was poorly planned and badly executed. Since I'm a bit better today and have a little bit of time, I had thought to make a short response here and then start on the next section I had planned to work on, but I would now edit conflict with several people, so I probably shouldn't try.

The statement above that I don't appear to have written any articles—it may have since been removed—has shaken my faith in your ability as a researcher, Midnightblueowl. If you haven't already, you might simply look at my user page. No, I don't take articles to GA or FA, although some that I have worked on have later passed those processes with editors who care about such things, including Bloodofox. Admittedly, I'm an odd editor, partly because I edit Wikipedia under varying degrees of distraction and limits on my time, so often I choose a little task that I can do under such circumstances. Which should really be nobody else's business in a volunteer internet project. I envisage this article being rewritten to a satisfactory standard and then someone—presumably you with or without others—taking it through GA, since that's what you do and you have already claimed it on your user page.

Any article curator is open to the charge of ownership, but in this case we have competing rewrite processes. You claimed this article as yours to rewrite, making a slew of bold changes, even after issues were raised about them here, and even while admitting you were learning as you went. You imposed the citation style as part of that bold rewrite, although you have claimed ever after that it was "established". It was not. Your insistence on its not being even temporarily changed is ownership. Unfortunately it's impenetrable (probably to many readers, too) and as such was just one too much of a problem for me in trying to fix your poor work. I know the work was in good faith, so I wanted to save as much of it as I could, but I have limits.

Drmies says we should discuss the shape, sourcing, and other basic issues regarding the article. That would have made sense if the rewrite had been a collaborative effort from the start, but it wasn't, it was a bold rewrite that needs to be redone. To honor your work, that means revising it and then discussing what further changes need to be made. Personally, I see this article as introductory, which means it should be brief and link to our specialized articles: I've been adding wikilinks you did not make. (At least as important as links to concepts of religious studies.) On the other hand, it's also the appropriate place for covering the quite varying views of Norse religion that different scholars have had and continue to have. And the lead section should match whatever that comes out looking like, so should either be rewritten several times as the article changes or be reworked last. For what it's worth, that's the overarching plan in the back of my head.

I'd like to continue working on this article, but there went an hour of my writing time. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:06, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir up to now I have assumed that you were editing in good faith, but this edit was either made in bad faith or stupidity. I have spent a lot of time explaining why editors should add years to the short citations: (1) so that the citations meet the requirements of a consistent style -- note I specifically stated that there is no need to use templates to do this and gave I examples in this talk page section with and without tempates; (2) as a fail-safe, because author even if adequate at the moment is not future proof. In adding {{full}} and an explanation on this talk page, I expect a reasonable editor behaving cooperatively to remove the {{full}} template and insert the year, because thanks to your error "—I got the wrong name" you created a very good example of why the year is a desirable fail-safe to include.-- PBS (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@PBS: Then put it down to stupidity. You like years - I get it. To me they are noise; they require the reader to click, and me to scroll allllllllll the way down, to see what is being referenced. The Abrams error, for which I apologize, comes from my not realizing we were over-identifying one single work, which in turn comes from my trying to be respectful to Midnightblueowl's work (which is why I am confident I am still editing in good faith; I am still trying to preserve their references rather than rewriting from a blank slate). The short title is a better failsafe even when it's an idiot like me; the title didn't match the author. And moreover, not giving the relevant topic title in a reference to Simek's work is shortchanging the reader; it's a specialized encyclopedia, and several pages include multiple topics. The article is undergoing extensive rewriting. Like many Wikipedia articles, it in the past had a mixed citation system. It can have a mixed citation system until the rewrite is complete. And it needs to so long as I am to work on it, I'm afraid, because I can't handle sfn and because I need a visual cue of which sections I have rewritten or added (particularly because the order of sections has needed and will need changing). You and others can and should impose a consistent citation format when the rewrite is at the polishing stage; I would think that would also be the time to decide whether all works cited should go in that system or whether some articles used only once or a couple of times should just be cited in full in the footnote. Also what is cited will continue to change: there are a huge number of survey books, for example, and currently for many points we're citing what either Midnighblueowl or I had first to hand. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:42, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

"Simek's work" see above I explained how to handle those with page numbers and the section header. You write "It can have a mixed citation system until the rewrite is complete" but if you look at my last posing that is not adequate because for example, when I looked at the first four authors in the list of short citation, they could not be linked to long citations because there was not enough information in the short citation. This is why it is necessary to put in the correct citation when it is added, not when the article reaches a certain standard. I have spent literally hours in the past with the tool Wikipedia:WikiBlame trying to work out which specific edition of a text an editor added some time in the past when that editor is no longer around to ask. If they had added author, date page number, when they added the citation, in most cases it is easy to link to the long citation. In this case I have pointed out the problems with four authors for example:

Näsström, p. 12. which of the two long citation support that short citation?

This is not something to be left for later. If a year had been added this would not be a problem. Running Wikipedia:WikiBlame would probably identify it, but that is time consuming.

It is really quite rare for two editions published on the same year to be referenced in an article, but it is very common for two different edition or two different titles with different years to be referenced in an article. Wikiepdia has a mechanism in its templates for dealing with two article by the same author in the same year. It allows for the date parameter to take a year consisting of four numbers and a single letter. --PBS (talk) 20:29, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Yngvadottir with this edit I think you have disruptively by changing my good faith edit. Your comment of "Reverted 2 edits by PBS sneaking sfn refs back into rewritten sections on the argument that Abrams requires a year: only one work by author cited. Identified work cited in a Davidson and 2 Näsström refs. Tweak" is a statement of bad faith as my edits stated "Added year to all Abram citations". You said in the RfC below "and in any case I'm incompetent to adapt some of my citations to one format. At this stage, worrying about citation format is impeding progress on the article". Yet you actions contradict what you say as you clearly are "worrying about citation format", and altering edits that others have made in good faith. I am ping the others in this conversation and the RfC below to see if they agree with me that reverting changes to citations that others have made in good faith to meet one style in that edit is disruptive: User:Midnightblueowl, user:FreeKnowledgeCreator, User:Drmies, User:Chris troutman User:S Marshall -- PBS (talk) 08:59, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

• We need to go back to WP:V. The cited source must clearly support the material as presented in the article. An editor who can't deal with sfn (which is, after all, an obscure variant citation style; I've been here ten years and I'm only just figuring it out) is trying to develop the article, and when you use sfn in this way, she can't identify which source you're talking about. I mean, we could argue about where the behavioural problem here lies (i.e. Is it with unilaterally reverting sfn-related edits? Is it with unilaterally enforcing them? Was it unilaterally converting an established article to sfn in the first place?), but that goes nowhere good. I would prefer to go back to what WP:V says: it has to be clear. So we need to let Yngvadottir work in a way that lets her identify the sources unambiguously, and switch over to sfn at a later point.—S Marshall T/C 10:49, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

@PBS: I stand by my edit summary. I have told you why we don't need a year for Abram; you simply changed the citation format for all the Abram citations because of your personal preference for numbers. I went through and at the same time fixed what other problems I could see that I had created in trying to work with Midnightblueowl's edits; I noted these in my edit summary in case someone saw other problems I needed to fix. I'm afraid we simply disagree on the need for a year; I note you did not insert a year for any other author we are citing only once; and I have said I will fix any actual errors I have introduced, and so I went ahead and did so for those I found in that edit. I am afraid I cannot agree as to who is editing in bad faith in this exchange, because I am out of understanding of your insistence on redundant info in the Abram citations that gets in the way of my continuing to rework the text. A side effect is that for the past week I haven't been able to do any new rewriting. I apologize for that. I have limited time. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:55, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

PBS please don't ping me for stuff like that. I don't care--if someone wants to impose some system, that's fine, but let them do it. That goes for you, it goes for Y. I'm sure you're not pinging me here as an admin, and I'm telling you, as an editor I couldn't care less. I'm just a drive-by editor. Drmies (talk) 23:46, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

The point is Drmies, I had to ping all who have expressed an opinion or none, otherwise I could be accused meatpuppetry and selectively pinging like-minded editors. -- PBS (talk) 09:53, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

"Rites of passage and other rituals"

First I'd like to thank Yngvadottir for creating a new section on "Rites of passage and other rituals" and for adding additional information on rites of adoption and weddings into this article. It's good stuff. What I would like to suggest however is that we rename the section to simply "Rites of passage". The wording "and other rituals" feels a little too amorphous - after all, other rituals could mean almost anything, including to the sacrifices to which we already devote a whole section. I'd also like to suggest that we merge the first two paragraphs here into one. The first paragraph is made up only of two fairly short sentences; the second paragraph contains only a single sentence. This results in these two paragraphs being really a bit too short and a merger would be appropriate, particularly as they both deal with broad issues of childhood, family identity and kinship. Does anyone have any particular objections to this proposal? Midnightblueowl (talk) 14:31, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

I would prefer to keep at least some short paragraphs in this article; some things are so lengthy, especially at present, that the prose looks a bit overpowering. I also have the thought that someone may usefully come along with an amplification. So that's why it's paragraphed taht way, and I'd rather not - instead I'd like to make the burial bit shorter if possible. "Other rituals" came from my uncertainty as to whether all of these were unequivocally rites of passage, plus my thought that I might have forgotten a rite that it would be better to include there than under worship. I guess I'm not averse to simplifying the section title if everybody feels the vatni ausa and blood brotherhood can be safely classified that way. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:55, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

In that case I'll leave the mini-sentence paragraphs as they are for now. It is possible that they could each be expanded a little in future. I'll trim off "and other rituals" from the section title, with the proviso that we might wish to re-add it (or add something else) in future. As for the burial section, I can't really see anything that could easily be removed, to be honest, except perhaps the detail on the at Kaupang ship burial (even then, I would rather keep it as an interesting mini 'case study' for the reader). Burial is a big component of what we know about Old Norse religion, particularly through archaeology. What we could do is branch off the 'burial' as a separate sub-section (or sub-sub-section), which would thereby shorten the overall "Rites of passage" section. How would that work? Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:14, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

No, I brought it into there because that's its religious context. It's purely the archaeological circumstances - a culture that largely used wood and that did not have many distinctive temples in any case - that gives burial suck prominence. Religiously, we have no evidence this was a religion that placed great emphasis on burial rites as opposed to other rites. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:00, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

That's why I said "Burial is a big component of what we know about Old Norse religion, particularly through archaeology." I certainly do not claim that burial and death rites were inherently a big part of Old Norse religion, just that they are a big part of what we know about the subject. It's for that reason that I suggest it could warrant a separate subsection (or perhaps a sub-sub section in the "Rites of passage" sub-section). Midnightblueowl (talk) 21:16, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

• Would we say the manumission of a thrall is a "rite of passage" within the meaning of this article?—S Marshall T/C 21:51, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Bloodofox or one of the other experts will probably remind me of something I'm forgetting, but I don't recall any instances of heathen/pagan manumission. Vǫlundr secures his own freedom, for example. So I can't answer the question regarding its religious dimension. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:58, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

The Viking Answer Lady tells us about a manumission ritual but I'm still not sure how reliable she is.—S Marshall T/C 16:44, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Citation System

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Simple question: Which citation style should this article employ?

• Option (1): {{sfn|Andren|2011|p=56}}
• Option (2): "Andren 2011: 56" (as plain text)
• Option (3): "Andren, p. 56."
• Option (4): "Andren, "Old Norse and Germanic Religion", p. 56."
• Option (5): "Andren 2011, p. 56."
• Option (6): {{sfn|''Old Norse and Germanic Religion''|p=56}}

Further explanation: According to WP:CITEVAR, "citations within any given article should follow a consistent style". As this article existed up till August 2017 ([24]), that was not the case, with a wide variety of different citation styles being employed. As there was no community of editors active on the page, I was WP:BOLD and in my expansion of the article standardised the referencing using Option 1, the sfn/harv style ([25]). I considered it particularly appropriate given that this is the citation system employed at thematically linked articles like Norse mythology and the FA-rated Heathenry (new religious movement). User:Yngvadottir has since started rewriting the article's prose, replacing instances of option 1 with a mix of options 3 and 4, on the basis that these are easier to edit with. Concerns have been raised by User:PBS that option 3 generates confusion in the context of this article, because "Andren, p. 56" does not stipulate which of Andren's works (for instance) is being referred to (multiple works by the same author are cited in this article). As per Wikipedia policy, there needs to be a standardised system introduced and the decision which to adopt should be made via WP:Consensus, after which all editors should abide by it in their edits. Midnightblueowl (talk) 19:37, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment I have added an options "5" and "6" -- PBS (talk) 20:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
• Defer decision till rewrite is complete. The mixed situation we have now is temporary and I intend it to be so. It enables me to fix and improve the rewrite and keep track of my work. Per NODEADLINE and the fact both my short citations and the sfn system provide the reader with complete information - assuming I've now found and fixed all my errors? - the citations do not have to be made consistent yet. It's also better to wait because what is cited will continue to change; we may eventually not cite some references we cite now, and I have already added several and will add more. I have a personal opinion on the ultimate citation system but insofar as some editors intend to take this to GA, that becomes none of my business, and in any case I'm incompetent to adapt some of my citations to one format. At this stage, worrying about citation format is impeding progress on the article. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:53, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• An RfC like this will take a month, at the very least, before it comes to any form of conclusion. Even if a decision is made in this time, it need not inherently affect your edits, for we can always defer on implementation until a point that is convenient for all. Midnightblueowl (talk) 20:01, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

• A good reason to close it down right away! -- PBS (talk)

• Use (1) or (5) and sometimes (6). Style has nothing to do with the use of templates (that is an old argument that goes back to about 2005 and editors like SV who hate templates), so as they appear visually the same options "1" and "5" are the same. I don't endorse "2" because it varies in looks/style from "1" and "5". "3" is inadequate because it does not fail-safe (as was proved earlier today). Sometimes it is necessary to use option 4 or 6 because there is no published date on the long citation (this is a common problem with web sites) so to link the short to the long article options 4 or 6 are needed, to link 6 via {{snf}} use ref={{sfnRef|''Old Norse and Germanic Religion''}} in the long citation. -- PBS (talk) 20:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
• Options 1 I think you misread CITEVAR. This RfC is a waste of time. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:57, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
• Nobody disputes that the article should use sfn when it's in a more complete state. There's no deadline for getting there. Yngvadottir is a subject matter expert who struggles with sfn and wishes to develop the article using a different citation system. It would be courteous and collegial to allow Yngvadottir to work with her preferred style for the time being and do the converting later.—S Marshall T/C 17:00, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

  I agree which is why I support among others options (5). -- PBS (talk) 08:37, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

• Comment Generally supportive of sfn, but agree with other editors, converting will be quicker - if the article is being heavily developed, sfn can slow things down. Of course, editors working on the article should provide page numbers and complete cites, to make the conversion easier during cleanup. Seraphim System ^(talk) 22:40, 9 October 2017 (UTC)
• Options 1 and 5 As per PBS, this provides an easy way to accommodate both editing styles in a uniform citation style. It also ensures that citations are unambiguous by including dates, the importance of which an expert on the subject should recognize. I see no drawbacks to going this route now, which will also reduce or eliminate the need to convert later. Clean Copy^talk 05:58, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
• Options 1 and 5 as per PBS and Clean Copy^talk (editor is a volunteer for Wikipedia:Feedback request service)--BoogaLouie (talk) 14:21, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

• • Comment. I'm seeing several people placing a great importance on dates. In addition to the fact that that is merely one way to differentiate between publications by the same author, and one I find opaque, there are two issues related to this topic that I feel I should point out. First, this is not a field that progresses linearly, such that later work is better, or even builds on all previous work; there are separate traditions of interpretation in different places, linguistic bariers, and rival theories (as in many non-science fields with a sprawling scholarship). Secondly and perhaps more crucially, many works have been republished and has multiple citable dates. Even Dronke's relatively recent Poetic Edda has been reissued. The third edition of De Vries's work on the religion/mythology is an exact reprint of the second, and has been further reissued. One of Ellis Davidson's handbooks turns up with multiple dates, partly because of paperback reprinting in both the US and the UK. Then there are Greenwood Press reprints of, for example, Turville-Petre (1977, I just checked Worldcat), and those are are identical in text (for some books they omit illustrations). For Dumézil's works in the original French, the year is important, because he revised them without the fact being clearly noted in the publication info, but for many other scholars, several years could be given and the text would be the same. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

    Using dates to identify a work is absolutely standard; as far as I know, there is no citation system that does not include these. When, as you say, there are multiple editions of a work, if a page number is referenced without a date, it can be impossible to find the cited text, as it is not clear which edition is referred to. Clean Copy^talk 20:48, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

    I'm not sure what you mean; of course all citation systems identify the date somewhere, but not all of them include the date in every parenthetical or footnote reference to a work previously cited. The issue here is that the format imposed in Midnightblueowl's rewrite attempt uses dates as the identifier in every repeated citation. By no means does every citation system do that, and it's actually a problem for many of the sources this article is citing and will need to cite. Nobody is suggesting the date should not appear at all, and one of the reasons I prefer other footnoting styles is that they provide a full citation the first time a work is referred to, rather than requiring the reader to click through or scroll down to see what's meant by the code. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:02, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

    Some citation systems use (ibid. p. 4), but its use is discouraged on Wikipedia because it makes inline citations fragile. All it takes is for someone else to add another inline citation to a different source between the first and the ibid. to break the ibid. citation. In a similar way relying on a source to be unique with only one edition is just a fragile and that is why it is best to include the year as part of a short citation. Then in future if another edition is added the year protects the initial citation, otherwise the short citation could be supported by one of two long cations making it impossible to tell from the text which one was meant. Occasionally there will be two editions in the same year (typically of a book published in the US and the UK by separate publishers, as was traditionally the case), in which case the Wikipedia templates have a build in solution—add a lower-case letter after the year (eg 1998a and 1998b)—so that the two editions can be identified and linked using the standard {{harvnb}} templates (see Help:CS1#Date range, multiple sources in same year). -- PBS (talk) 17:17, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

    I think you've missed my whole point, or maybe I've missed yours. Nobody's advocating the use of ibid. or yet separating refs from what they reference. Including the year as part of the short citation, as you call it, does nothing to deal with the problem of republished books, in fact it instils a false confidence that the source was only published in that version in that one year; there is nothing authoritatively identifying about a particular year if the source has been reprinted, and many of these books have. Also, the sfn format masks repeated refs; Midnightblueowl frequently reused the same page of the same source, but that repetition simply sinks in a sea of "name, year" refs in that system. Maybe that's where you get the idea ibid. is relevant here, since that is a method of indicating a repeated reference, one Wikipedia rightly avoids? Yngvadottir (talk) 19:26, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

    Reprinted editions do not change anything, as it is the copyright date, not the printing date, that is used. Clean Copy^talk 03:18, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

    It is??? First I've heard. Either way, it's not a clear way of distinguishing works by the same author in footnotes for readers; and it's unnecessary when tehre's only one work cited. So I do not see the necessity for the year to be present in every footnote. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:46, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

    This begins to seem a very clear situation.

    1. It is standard practice in any academic work to include dates in citations.
    2. This may seem unnecessary when there is only one work cited, but this is a dynamic encyclopedia, and there is a reasonable chance that other works by the same author may later be included, as well, at which point an undated citation will automatically become ambiguous, and someone will have to try to figure out which work is meant. Best practice is clearly to include the year from the beginning.
    3. I have heard absolutely no justification grounded in the needs of an encyclopedia for not including dates. None whatsoever. Clean Copy^talk 08:05, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

    The dates will be there in the full footnotes and the bibliography entries, either way. There is no purpose to imposing one method of short citations, and WP:CITEVAR applies. Academic works also continue to vary; footnotes or parenthetical references that use years as identifiers have spread out of the sciences, but are still far from pervasive. In any case, this is not an academic work; it's an encyclopedia. In my opinion, requiring the reader to click or scroll twice to identify a source is an impediment; others differ. But putting it in terms of absolutes is based on untenable assumptions. In any case, as I said far above, the citation format can be revisited when the article is completely rewritten to a decent standard, and I will likely have no part of that discussion since the long-term objective is to get it to GA, which is something I don't do. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:01, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mythology Section

Hello everyone. I see there's a lot of discussion going on here about sourcing and so on. I haven't had a chance to dig into this lately, but my schedule is opening up a bit.

As I see it, this article's main weakness is that it delves too deeply into details and relies far too heavily on authors who make dubious, general statements. The discussion regarding Heimdallr we had earlier is one such example (a runic inscription explicitly mentioning the god was in fact unearthed by archaeologists around the publication of Abram's book, despite his poorly considered claim).

First, let's talk about the "death" section of this article. There's a lot of conflation and confusion in this section about what the Prose Edda says and what it doesn't say. Much of this is unhelpfully referenced to "Snorri", who may and fact have not authored much of the Prose Edda. As the Heimdallr inscription circumstance details, statements like "There is no archaeological evidence clearly alluding to a belief in Valhalla" are totally useless. That applies to nearly everything in the corpus. It tells us nothing.

Next, the comment "The concept of Hel as an afterlife location never appears in pagan-era skaldic poetry, where "Hel" always references to the eponymous goddess" is also useless. For example, the etymology of the name Hel makes such associations inherent, as many scholars have discussed over the past few centuries. This is far too much reliance on Abram.

Then there's a comment on Fólkvangr cited to Abram. What is attributed to Abram here implies that the Prose Edda is the source of this claim, whereas the same stanza in fact appears in Grímnismál (and is even quoted in the Prose Edda). The statement "In mythological accounts, the deity most closely associated with death is Oðinn" is a bizarre statement — many figures, particularly female beings, are closely associated with death in the very same narratives. There’s plenty of specialized discussion about this out there.

These are just a few examples. I think this article needs to be reconsidered in an overview or directory format than its current state. We have detailed, highly developed articles on many of these topics, and there's no way this article can begin to cover the complexities surrounding specific topics such as, say, rebirth in North Germanic religion (which is currently not even mentioned here...). :bloodofox: (talk) 03:13, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I mentioned the rebirth article in a sentence I added regarding personal names. Yes, the sourcing needs to be improved; I've been gradually incorporating more Davidson and more Turville Petre, and adding de Vries (who covers a lot more) and Simek, so that we get away from Abram and Andrén, but as recent scholars they should be used. The sections I haven't yet rewritten, I've barely looked at; your points are valid but I'm not sure we should even have a separate Mythology section here.

Drmies raised an issue regarding the use of the word "sources"; he ultimately rewrote a sentence I had written on that. I had intended to deal in the Sources section with the fact that all the written evidence—including the heathen skaldic verse, the most reliably heathen literary evidence—was first written down after the conversion, presumably by Christians, and that we necessarily rely heavily on the Prose Edda, which contains a manual of Norse mythology as well as skaldic quotations, but was of course written by a Christian. Drmies sees the term "sources" as necessarily implying "primary sources", i.e., heathen sources. I don't see it as having that implication; how can we make that clear without saying the same thing in the Sources section and all over again later? Yngvadottir (talk) 03:28, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

I've looked over the "Sources" section here and I think I see what you mean. Right now it's a bit of a mess in that, again, the section decides to dive into a handful of opinion-interjected specifics instead of providing a general overview of the literary record and saving the specifics for more focused articles. Currently, our Norse mythology article breaks this down the complex attestation situation both accurately and succinctly. Of course, as you know, solid familiarity with primary, secondary, and tertiary sources on this topic is a necessary requirement for working on this complex topic, something we're going to need to demand from anyone who approaches it. :bloodofox: (talk) 07:09, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Would the "heathen sources" be runestones? (And incidentally is it right to say "heathen" here? or "pagan"?)—S Marshall T/C 16:59, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Some runic inscriptions are explicitly heathen, some are explicitly Christian, and some could be read either way. Many are quite secular (or so we’d call them today) — the alphabet was used for all sorts of purposes before it was superceded as a byproduct of Christianization. “Heathen” and “pagan” are both widely acceptable today, though you’re likely to see most anglophone academics employing “pagan” over “heathen”. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:07, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

@S Marshall: What they said—plus, it becomes a continuum. Snorri was a Christian: but he undoubtedly knew more Norse myths than any modern, and he quoted reams of skaldic verse; the verses he quotes have a high probability of having been accurately transmitted to him as the heathen poets composed them, but it isn't 100% because it was oral transmission through a change in religion. Some sagas also preserve skaldic verses; they are a little less certain because there is less certainty about the date the saga was committed to writing (or composed), so there's a higher chance of fake verses having been added. The sagas themselves have all been subject to varying opinions as to their authenticity: once upon a time they were taken at face value, some later scholars have regarded them as entirely medieval fictions, between those extremes there are a range of opinions, including many scholars regarding the religious material specifically as likely to be fictional (such as the temple descriptions in a couple of Icelandic sagas). The ancient kings of both Sweden and Norway are represented as fictions by some individual scholars. There's a continuum of reliability to the written sources, but where its more reliable end is and what passage should be placed where on it are more or less vigorously debated. Then the article should mention the widely divergent interpretations of the petroglyphs. Some scholars also attach importance to the Trundholm sun chariot, and some regard the Gundestrup cauldron as Norse; others hardly mention these archeological artefacts. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:27, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

@Bloodofox: Well, if we limit editing of the article to those who know the scholarship inside out, I'm not sure that includes me. There's always going to be some recent hotshot I haven't read, and there are enduring disagreements. I'm mulling over how to reorganize the article, and considering getting the different scholarly views—including the shamanism theory, to which we are currently giving prominence—out of the way at the outset before diving into beliefs, cultic practices, etc. For one thing that would help explain the continuing deep disagreement over temples. On the whole, I agree, not just because it's a huge field, but also because the popular books tend to merge discussion of Scandinavian religion with discussion of continental German and Anglo-Saxon religion (Tacitus keeps coming up, for example, and many of the books we currently cite devote considerable space to the conversion of the English). Even though this is the version of Germanic paganism about which we know most, it takes knowledge to winnow out what's not relevant to this article. And I'd also like to see more attention paid to shifts over time. But I've been trying to honor Midnightblueowl's effort—and reflect the fact that they gravitated toward more recent sources, which we should try to use where we can—by initially at least, keeping as much of their work as possible. So some of what both you and Drmies have objected to is Midnightblueowl's work that I haven't yet even examined closely—notably the lead, which I really think should be rewritten last, after the shape and emphases of the rest of the article are more or less clear—and some is me trying to be respectful. And some is likely me having less than perfect mastery of the scholarship. I feel competent to rewrite the temples/hofs section. And I do see one of the major functions of this article as being to link to our existing articles, quite densely, although I think it should be done in running prose rather than an endless series of "Main article" notes. But please, jump in and rewrite, or re-rewrite (unless I missed a revert, the bits I have rewritten or added should be identifiable by using conventional short refs rather than sfn under the hood), a section, such as Sources. And I hope Drmies and S Marshall—and others who are good at explaining things—will continue to help out too. I would probably have written more clearly if I'd done the rewrite from scratch, but then there also wouldn't have been nearly so many references, and Midnightblueowl has stated that everything must have a reference. As it is, I'm all too aware that I haven't been producing prose with the clarity of a lecture. In addition to the likelihood that other experts will see stuff I've failed to include; heck, I only added in fulltrúi/godfriend the other day. Please further refine it. Yngvadottir (talk) 19:13, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Three further thoughts from me:-

1) I wonder if we're missing an article. Maybe somewhere between Vikings and Old Norse religion we need something like Old Norse society or Old Norse culture that contains less specialist concepts?

2) I'm almost scared to mention this, but did you know someone's written Viking Childhood? I found that by accident while I was looking at the article structure we currently have and comparing it with what we need.

3) Germane to religion, as opposed to mythology, seems to be a brief section on what people mean when they say "religion". Defining "god" is notoriously slippery but as I understand it the Norse "gods" were mortal and doomed to die at Ragnarok; and Baldr had already died. Other religions have figures that die and are reborn, as a metaphor for the seasons, but as a non-expert I'm intrigued by a religion where gods die and don't come back. I feel like the article is missing all this content on what makes this a religion, rather than a mythology attached to a culture.—S Marshall T/C 20:52, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

I was hoping someone else would answer this - I don't have a background in comparative religion. But I personally think that would be stepping too far back. And I suspect what one expects of a religion varies depending on one's own history as well as philosophical leanings: Karen Jolly's book on the elves and the transition of religions in Anglo-Saxon England makes useful points about how most people just bumble along fitting things into how they already lived and thought. Those of us who discuss this religion run into assumptions about "earth religions" and about all religions being pacifist that make me tempted to recommend people just read "Hávamál" and then get back to me. Having so much material purporting to be about pre-Christian Norse life and thought is a privilege, but it doesn't include reams of commandments/rules, and of course it has to be treated somewhat sceptically. On the other hand, "mythology" can be seen from different angles. To get cynicism out of the way first, I have said in other contexts that "mythology" is the term reserved for sacred stories of religions that the speaker does not wish to grant full rights as religions. (Lindow puts it more diplomatically. This is the "lie" meaning of myth.) To flip that, myths are by definition the sacred stories of a culture, so by my definition, all mythologies are important to the self-definition of cultures, and that makes them religious within that culture. The most useful category is that of indigenous religions, many of which have seemed similarly hard to define or otherwise surprising to moderns studying them (Sami traditional belief, even more so than Norse, although part of that may be that they kept a lot of their secrets); although we have qualms today about using such a term for colonisers rather than those they invaded and killed, I am unaware of any cases of proselytisation of Norse paganism, so I don't feel too guilty about it. But there have been a startling variety of scholarly conceptions about how the religion worked. So I'm for just presenting it, including a representative selection of those scholarly views, past and present, and letting the reader fit it into their worldview. (Which from my experience, including reading the scholars, they will do anyway.) Yngvadottir (talk) 17:48, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

• I didn't think the Vikings were pacifist, but I think I will read the Hávamál. Is the Benjamin Thorpe translation reliable? And for Snorri's Edda, is the Anthony Faulkes translation reliable?—S Marshall T/C 21:44, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
  • It's a bit old; Bellows and Hollander are old, but less so; of those two, Hollander takes more liberties. I would recommend Dronke as best (however, I'm at work; in case Evans' edition includes a translation, that would also be excellent, but I don't believe it does). For the Prose Edda, Faulkes is adequate and has the advantage of being complete, but except for the poetry and the þulur, it's not a challenging text to translate, and so if you only want to read the prologue and the stories, the two old translations, Brodeur and Young, are fine. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:17, 30 September 2017 (UTC)