Investigations Into Germanic Mythology
08.04.202500:16
An interesting depiction of Yggdrassil and the nine worlds, I recently found online at https://www.beingawakened.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/representation-of-the-nine-realms-in-norse-mythology-1024x712.png (Artist Unidentified).
05.04.202502:50
And I cannot emphasize enough: Modern eddic scholarship is not very old, less than 300 years old or so, and really did not get into full swing until the later half of the 1800s. Modern scholars do not have all the answers, and we cannot assume they are correct because they are the "professionals".
05.04.202502:50
That worldview he speaks of would be that of Snorri, described in Gylfaginning ch. 15-16, where he describes the placement of Yggdrassil's roots. It does appear to be completed despite some obviously issues, when one tries to illustrate it visually. But we can clearly see in Snorri's text, he is basing his description of Yggdrassil on the eddic poem Grimnismal, especially stanzas 29-31, so we can trace it back to its primary source and get a more accurate picture of the Old Heathen worldview as Rydberg demonstrates. From the beginning, the scholars have always used Snorri's Edda to explain the older eddic poems, but we must recognize that the Eddic poems were in fact Snorri's own source, and that he likely knew them in manuscripts form, which we know circulated during in time. Saxo speaks of a large trove of Icelandic historical documents about 30 years before Snorri wrote his Prose Edda, and the oldest copies of the Poetic Edda we have date from about 30 years after Snorri's time. So we know such manuscripts were available to Snorri.
Reposted from:
Germanic Faith
05.04.202502:50
CHAPTER III.
NORSE MYTHOLOGY COMPARED WITH THE GREEK.
"Dr. Dasent says the Norse mythology may hold its own against any other in the world. The fact that it is the religion of our forefathers ought to be enough to commend it to our attention.. "
The Religion of our Forefathers by Professor Rasmus B Anderson
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65910/65910-h/65910-h.htm
NORSE MYTHOLOGY COMPARED WITH THE GREEK.
"Dr. Dasent says the Norse mythology may hold its own against any other in the world. The fact that it is the religion of our forefathers ought to be enough to commend it to our attention.. "
The Religion of our Forefathers by Professor Rasmus B Anderson
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65910/65910-h/65910-h.htm
05.04.202502:50
Ours is one of the completest and best-documented mythologies known from the ancient world
05.04.202502:50
The Prose or Younger Edda (Gylfaginning only)
Translated by George Webb Dasent 1842 https://germanicmythology.com/ProseEdda/DasantPROSEEDDA.html
Translated by George Webb Dasent 1842 https://germanicmythology.com/ProseEdda/DasantPROSEEDDA.html
05.04.202502:50
The early translations are very helpful for researchers and epicists to trace these ideas and find the original sense of the word. This is one of the reasons that the heirarchy of sources is so important. We trace all things back to their original source whenever possible.
05.04.202502:50
Some of his words are a little confusing to me but overall he at least seems to take Norse mythology as telling of a complete worldview.
05.04.202502:50
This is interesting. Anyone familiar with Dr Dasent?
"Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race—whatever discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths—about the Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of circumstances, but two before all the rest—the one their settlement in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures incorrupt; the other their late conversion to Christianity—their cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched fragments of a faith, the articles of which its own priests had forgotten to commit to writing, and which those of another creed had dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could reach. In the two Eddas, therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo’s stilted Latin, which barely conceals the popular songs and legends from which the historian drew his materials, we are enabled to form a perfect conception of the creed of the heathen Norsemen. We are enabled to trace, as has been traced by the same hand in another place,[21] the natural and rational development of that creed from a simple worship of nature and her powers, first to monotheism, and then to a polytheistic system."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8933/8933-h/8933-h.htm
"Whatever disputes may have existed as to the mythology of other branches of the Teutonic subdivision of the Aryan race—whatever discussions may have arisen as to the position of this or that divinity among the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, or the Goths—about the Norsemen there can be no dispute or doubt. From a variety of circumstances, but two before all the rest—the one their settlement in Iceland, which preserved their language and its literary treasures incorrupt; the other their late conversion to Christianity—their cosmogony and mythology stands before us in full flower, and we have not, as elsewhere, to pick up and piece together the wretched fragments of a faith, the articles of which its own priests had forgotten to commit to writing, and which those of another creed had dashed to pieces and destroyed, wherever their zealous hands could reach. In the two Eddas, therefore, in the early Sagas, in Saxo’s stilted Latin, which barely conceals the popular songs and legends from which the historian drew his materials, we are enabled to form a perfect conception of the creed of the heathen Norsemen. We are enabled to trace, as has been traced by the same hand in another place,[21] the natural and rational development of that creed from a simple worship of nature and her powers, first to monotheism, and then to a polytheistic system."
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8933/8933-h/8933-h.htm
05.04.202502:50
05.04.202502:50
Here is the same passage from Anthony Faulkes translation of Snorri's Edda from 1988, the one most people use today. Notice that he translates the word lúðr as "ark" in the Prose passage, but translates it as "box" in the quotation from Vafthrudnismal! His use of the word "ark" there clearly indicates he sees Bergelmir as a Norse Noah.
05.04.202502:50
These early scholars like Dasent are not out of date or antiquated at all. They are working with the same material we are, without the benefit (and sometime detriment) of the opinions of later scholars. As you noted, Dasent makes some very useful observations, as did Anderson, and Rydberg and others whom modern scholars rarely reference today.
05.04.202502:50
In his translation from 1770, Percy renders translates the same word as "bark" meaning boat, and refer to the flood in his notes.
05.04.202502:50
Snorri uses the word lúðr in the prose and in the verse from Vafthrudmismal he quotes. It litrerally means mill-box, and rationally one could think of it as a wooden box, and akin to a boat. That was the first understanding among the early translators. Dasent's is only the second English translation and its about 20 years before the American Civil war. The Poetic Edda would not be translated fully into English until 1865-66, during the time of the American Civil War by Benjamin Thorpe. So these texts and this scholarship is really not all that old. So it would be foolish to believe that scholars know all there is to know about this religion.
05.04.202502:50
These early translators were very influencial on subsequent translators, because these were the some of the few books available in English at the time.
05.04.202502:50
05.04.202502:50
As one of the early translators of Snorri's Edda, he translated lúðr (mill-box) as a boat or "skiff".
28.03.202502:25
Thus we have established a Heirarchy of Sources from the most to the least reliable, identifying the Eddic and Skaldic poems composed by Old Heathen skalds, alongside contemporary historical accounts and Old Heathen works of art, as our best primary sources; And the works of Snorri Sturluson, including the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, and the first nine books of Saxo Grammaticus' Danish HIstory (Gesta Danorum) as our best secondary sources, when it comes to knowledge of the Old Heathen gods and their mythic history.
05.04.202502:50
05.04.202502:50
So here we have a modern scholar translating the same word in two different ways in the same passage! In reality, the word means "millbox" and Vafthrudnismal st. 35 refers to Bergelmir being "laid on a millbox". In Old Norse poetry, a part of something (like a spearpoint or a millbox) can represent the whole (like a spear or a mill), so here it means Bergelmir was "laid on a mill". He was ground up, and his bones became rocks and his flesh became soil, just like his grandfather Ymir before him. In Skirnismal, Freyr's servant Byggvir threatens to do the same thing to Loki. So Bergelmir was not originally a Norse Noah and wasn't saved with his family in an ark. Snorri doesn't really say that either. Snorri simply says he and his family servived the flood by "climbing up on his lúðr".
05.04.202502:50
These early translations are a record of the scholarship at time and by following them through time up to present day, we can see how the scholarship has evolved over the years. It hasn't changed much. Scholars today believe that Bergelmir was saved in a boat, like Noah, But they understand the stanza from Vafthrudnismal st. 35 as saying Vathrudnir remembered "when Bergelmir was laid in his coffin (a wooden box)" in other words when he died.
05.04.202502:50
The first English translation of Gylfaginning from 1770 (the Time of the American Revolution) was by Thomas Percy, who was translationing it into English from a French translation by Paul Henri Mallet, who translated it from an abridged copy of Snorri's Edda, which regrouped the original chapters down into "Fables". So Dasent's translation was the first copy of Gylfaginning that was a true translation from the ori9ginal text. It did not include Skaldskaparmal.
05.04.202502:50
I cannot fault him for it. The early scholars were trying to make sense of it, and their frame of reference for a flood surviver and his family was Noah and the Ark
28.03.202502:18
Since the eddic poems themselves are clearly older than Snorri and composed by actual heathen skalds , they naturally contain a more accurate reflection of the ancient heathen worldview, being conceptually closest to the source. Thus, when Snorri’s statements conflict with the older poetic sources which are his acknowledged source, the older poems along with historical and archaeological information should be taken as a more reliable record of heathen belief. We must remember that Snorri himself treated the poems he quotes and paraphrases as older than his own work, and in regard to skaldic verse, knew the names of the authors dating back as early as the 10th century.
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