You must be kidding: Snorri makes Odin a
wanderer from Troy and you ask how I know what his literary model is ... I hope
you don't buy stuff like "Aesir = Asiamen" as based on fact. No-one can blame
Snorri for working like other scholars did at his time (only harder and better
than most), but one does have to verify his information before accepting it. If
one knows something about the historical, intellectual and ideological context
of Snorri's work, and the mediaeval world-view in general, the sources of
Snorri's inspiration are obvious. Here is an excellent article (by Heinz
Klingenberg) about the background of "The World According to
Snorri":
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/2odin.pdf
For those of you who can't read German,
there is an English summary of the main theses at the end. Let me quote the most
relevant points:
"(15) Western learned prehistory derives sustenance from
a historical consciousness We too!
We too-a royal house, a people, or a
wealthy Icelandic farmer ("... en ek heitik Ari"; Ættartala
Sturlunga)-participate in a glorious past, have our place in world history and
the history of salvation, are links in a genealogical chain deriving from ...
Japheth ... Aeneas or Brutus-Britus (great-grandson of Aeneas, British
origin-legend) or Frigas (brother of Aeneas, Frankish Troia-legend) or, to be
sure, from the Priamus-grandson Trór=Þórr.
"(16) Trojan prehistory of Romans,
Britons, French, Germans, Scandinavians is _nonhistory_ (from the point of view
of modernity), but an important phenomenon of medieval intellectual
history. Frankish tradition ties Trojan origin to the idea of translatio
imperii. In Snorri's Learned Prehistory the idea of translatio sapientiae
proliferates (supra, item 7). Snorri can thus bring to bear the cultural
potential of Old Iceland, the heritage of eddic mythological poetry (booked in
Iceland), skaldic poetry (a domain of Icelanders since the 10th/11th century).
It is this contribution from Old Iceland which Snorra Edda takes into account:
Prologue (Learned Prehistory), Gylfaginning (Asiamen's mythology, including
eddic mythological poems), Bragaræður and Skáld-skaparmál (the language of
skaldic poetry derived from Asia), Háttatal (skaldic hending, a cultural
patrimony of Odin and his people).
"(17) With Snorri's Learned Prehistory
and concomitant we-too-consciousness, Nordic Middle Ages prevails over brittled origin-traditions
of Germanic antiquity. Moreover, Snorri is willing to discard defining features
of an indigenous Germanic culture origin, language, traditions, laws) in favor
of Asian descent, language, customs, and laws. Historicizing Odin - closely
associated from earliest times with the intellectual life and social structures
of Old Scandinavia - as an immigrant from Asia exacted a toll."
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
From: tgpedersen@...
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent:
Friday, August 03, 2001 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Geats
--- In
cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> --- In
cybalist@..., Håkan Lindgren <h5@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> ... Anyway, if this is what Snorre says, given the distance in
>time
> and space (Snorre died in the 13th century), how much can we use
>him
> as a reliable historical source?]
>
>
>
It's a bit like using the Aeneid (Snorri's literary model, complete
>
with a hero coming from Troy)
How do you know that?
>as a reliable
historical source.
Yes, and even worse, to read the Iliad as if it referred
to an actual
event. And no wild claims from some German amateur
archaeologist can
change this basic fact.
>I'm
> referring
not to Snorri's accounts of Scandinavian affairs, which
are
> of
course more reliable, but to the Prose Edda, and especially to
the
>
Prologue, where he rationalises Germanic gods as ancient heroes
(and,
> being a Christian writer, justifies his preoccupation with them by
> pretending to write history).
How do you know that? If you had been
a Public Attorney, I wouldn't
be much convinced. You have postulated (not
proven) a motive for
Snorri to lie, and then you proceed to claim he did
just that.
>Unfortunately, lots of people nowadays
> read
Snorri uncritically.
Which means, I suppose, that you should reject
everything he wrote of
Odinn and Asgard etc. And your reasons
are?
> Piotr
Torsten