bibliobob

I have also just finished reading another interesting book, the 1964 book Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by the Cambridge professor Hilda Ellis Davidson. This book covers the pre christian gods and myths of Scandinavia, Iceland, northern europe and the Anglo Saxons.

Except for a brief acquaintance with Wodan and the Asgardian pantheon I had little knowledge of this material and it is very interesting to me. The gods mostly got together and fought giants. One of the supernatural powers of the gods was the ability to eat and drink a lot. Think James Beards with more superpowers.

Davidson traces christianity's rise and the resulting war against the old gods, a process that started in britain in about the sixth century. Tandem efforts occurred in the germanic lands where the old religion was only now practiced by pockets of Danes, Frisians and Saxons. In Norway, in the tenth and eleventh century, two christian kings named Olaf tore down the old altars and idols, much like what we see happening today in certain areas of the arab world and africa. Lost a lot of valuable information about the native religion.

Vikings continued to battle it out with Christians and their new gods in the late eight hundreds and were the scourge of the nascent church. We learn much from the epic poems of the era, like Beowulf as well as the Codex Regius, a small vellum found in an Icelandic farmhouse in the 17th century.

By the way, I have been getting some very interesting collections of old books of late. The book I am thumbing open in the picture above is Bello Belgico from 1651, hand inscribed and containing a beautiful illustration. Jesuit. Written by Fabiana Strada and published in Rome. I love the goat skin, the feel of the old parchment.

Back to Northern Europe; like many mythologies, these myths revolved around climate and seasons. Freya, Davidson explains was a sun god. And she brings up Carl Jung's work to illustrate the fact that the same myths, with interchangeable names and faces, permeate our collective consciousness wherever we may happen to reside on the spinning ball.

Our Jack and the Beanstalk tale is paralleled in Polynesia with the hero Maui climbing  to the sky. In Ur it is Jacob's ladder which is echoed by a priest climbing the ziggurat. In Siberia the myth transforms to a magical shaman climbing a ladder cut into a beech tree.

One other thing that links most ancient belief systems is the belief in a remote, distant father archetype sky god and a nurturing earth mother goddess.

Ludwig Burger - 1882

We are introduced to the Prose Edda, a book that recounts the old gods and culture, written by an Icelandic scholar named Snorri Sturluson around 1220. We meet Thor, grandson of King Priam and son of Odin, husband of Frygga. In the center of the world is a mighty ash tree called Yggdrasill. Its branches stretch across heaven and earth alike. Below is the well of Urd, the sacred spring of fate, where the gods gathered daily both to parley and to settle disputes.

In the great emptiness of Ginnungagap, a living creature first appears, the great giant Ymir arises out of the melting ice. Under his left arm grew the first man and woman, from his feet were borne the frost giants. He feeds on the milk of the cow Auohumla who releases a new being Bor. The sons of Bor were Odin, Vili and Ve, who end up slaying Ymir, their ancestral father.

We meet the wolf Fenrir, the archer Ull, Hel, who presides over the land of death.

*
Later we are introduced to the actual germanic warrior tribe the Chatti, the berserks or berserkers. They wore an iron ring collar on their neck which could not be removed until they had killed. This is first century and is described by Tacitus.

They sacrificed to Tiwaz, the god of the battlefield and Wodan, lord of the kingdom of death. Very ugly battles, these warriors slaughtered everything in sight, the gods demanding that blood flow in their honor in battle.

*

Lorenz Frolick - 1895

The whole story of Thor and the hammer mjollnir is quite interesting and was itself taken from an even older german god, Donar. The hammer was a very important symbol, akin to a christian cross and its iconography flourished into the tenth century. Archaeologists have found historic artifacts from the transitional period with both hammers and crosses extant. The hammer and double axe icons go back even farther in the area, apparently back to amulets worn by Lappish shamans, the hammers being hooked together to form a swastika, a familiar form of antiquity.

*

I could go on and on but will spare you. Some of us like Graves and Patai, Campbell and Jung. Not some others cup of tea. The book is dry and drags on, but does fill some convenient holes for those interested in the study of human beings and their belief systems.

Die Helden und Götter des Nordens, oder das Buch der Sagen. c. 1832