Nationbuilding: How People Move, Talk, Think, Organize, & Structure Themselves, 1888, Amsterdam University Press' Wrote:To modern eyes, the historical emphasis on the importance of hospitality between guests and hosts seems to be of exaggerated, even absurd levels of importance. We forget, with our modern mass transportation systems, or even just the freedom of movement that dragon-riding grants, that prior to the domestication of dragons, a journey of twenty miles was a day’s trip by foot, with no guarantee of shelter or food at the end of it, except for hospitality. Thus these rules resulted from tradition, practicality, and social necessity in order to keep peace between neighbors.
Further emphasizing hospitality’s importance, in nearly all pre-dragon societies and religions, hospitality was mandated by divine decree or example.
…the Norse religion’s canon offers up the Hávamál, with the oral antecedents of the text dating prior to the Reformation, which details significant instructions on the duties and responsibilities of hosts and guests, dictated by Odin as wisdom and instruction on proper behavior…
…the Abrahamic religions all have strong injunctions and passages about the importance of hospitality. Beginning with Abraham himself, he offered bread and gave a feast to guests and was blessed—and the subsequent passages deal with Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities that routinely and violently breached hospitality and were destroyed in divine punishment…
…Hinduism tells of the god of death, Yama, in the story Nachiketā, who returned home after an absence to find that he had kept a guest waiting for three days. Having violated hospitality by causing trouble for a guest, even unknowingly, Yama offered his guest three boons, and revealed secrets of the gods in the act of fulfilling them…
From Berk, to Nidaros, back to Berk, to the Vatican, to Berk again, to Snotlout Sigurd in Constantinople, and finally to a small holding in Alba, hospitality and other social interactions are a recurring theme in this week's A Thing of Vikings. Between dominance and inducement, which ...Is Mightier...?
https://archiveofourown.org/works/104089...s/32675874
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12639117/43...Of-Vikings